“You zipped him away.” Mal’s mind was spinning a mile a minute. “He knows Zeus knows where I live.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Where is he?”
“At the precinct. He’ll have a tough time getting back on the streets—”
“His father will get him off.”
“Mal. Let me worry about that. Are you okay? How did he even get in here?” Danny asked more insistently.
Mal had lost himself in the chaos of it all, but he’d known something was wrong when he got back from the store. Dunkirk must have snuck in when he went out and stayed cleverly hidden. Mal was fine now though. He had to be fine. This was nothing like the other night.
Gripping the hand resting just below the cut on his arm, he relaxed and enjoyed the feeling of Danny’s touch. “It doesn’t matter. I’m okay. Get the kit.”
Maybe it was Mal’s imagination, but it seemed as though Danny flushed with color when their eyes met, gazes lingering just a little too long, as his thumb brushed Danny’s fingers…and then Danny was gone again.
Mal breathed in the smell of garlic in the air and the cooking sweet potatoes not quite done, filling the room with their aroma since Danny had taken them out and turned off the oven. By the time he shifted and let himself sink back into the sofa, Danny was back. He got a steak out of the fridge for Mal’s eye, an actual steak, which made Mal chuckle even as he held it up against the quickly forming bruise.
“I can ice my own wounds, you know,” he said.
“I figured. But you’re hurt and exhausted, so don’t strain yourself. This needs stitches,” Danny indicated the cut on his arm. “I can do it, but you’ll want something for the pain.”
“Already do, Sparky.”
Danny nodded and disappeared again, only to blink back into existence with Mal’s bottle of ibuprofen and a glass of water. He was one to talk about straining himself. Mal downed the pills. Slowly, Danny helped him remove his shirt to better get at the wound.
While Mal sat there with a steak at his eye, Danny cleaned the cut, disinfected it, and carefully stitched him up. When he was done,Danny’s gentle touch placed a bandage over the wound and smoothed the edges with his fingers.
“Déjà vu,” Mal said, as he set the steak aside and reached up to grip the wrist of the hand tending to him.
They were inches apart on the sofa, Mal resting back on the cushions while Danny had one leg up to get closer to him.
“Not the kind of déjà vu I want,” Danny whispered, as if afraid to speak too loudly when the rest of the room was quiet.
Danny let Mal hold his hand in place on his arm, while his other hand strayed, drifting down to Mal’s hip and resting at the edge of one of his larger scars. Mal had many, from years of abuse and a hard way of living. Normally, when Danny touched one, he pushed on with confidence, but tonight, the raised scar tissue made him snap to his senses like he’d been in a trance.
“Sorry,” he said and pulled both hands away.
But Mal reached for them, hung onto them, and brought Danny’s hands back to his skin. “It’s okay. Broken bottle one night when Dad got drunk. Now I get to add another knife wound to the collection.” Mal smirked as he nodded at his bandaged arm.
Danny smiled with him, but it was a sad, shattered expression. He teased the tips of his fingers over the scar tissue. “Are all these really from…” With a startle, he tried to pull away again as if he’d said something he shouldn’t.
“My father?” Mal said, refusing to let him go. “Not all. Most though. Some are from prison. Some dumb mistakes. Fights like tonight. But most…yeah, they’re his.”
Taking Danny’s hand still resting on his hip, Mal drew it upwards, guiding it across his bare chest until he reached his shoulder and the faint circular scar tissue near his clavicle.
“Freezer burn. From his powers. Because I broke my leg when I was eight and I cried. He wanted to teach me a lesson. Teach me how to keep pain in and never let anyone see it. So he held the tip of a frozen finger there until it burned.”
Danny’s brow furrowed with indignant anger.
Mal trailed the hand lower to a particularly bad scar across his stomach—his worst and the one he remembered the clearest. “First knife wound. Caught me with a boy in my room. Would have killed himif I hadn’t stood in the way. I took the brunt of it. Let him run off. Never brought a boy home again, not ‘til Dad was gone. Brought a couple girls home,” he shrugged.
“Girls?” Danny asked with a touch of humored skepticism bleeding through his concern. He splayed his hand flat against Mal’s stomach, warm and intimate in his touch.
“Occasionally. Not as often.”
Danny nodded but his smile quickly faded, his eyes trained on the scar and the affectionate way he traced it with his fingers. “Sometimes…I think my dad hates me because…” he trailed and the motion of his hand slowed. “There’s something I never told you. About the night I killed Thanatos.”
