Page 59 of Lovesick Gods (Lovesick #1)

Andre and Lynn were still yelling for Danny to wait, please wait for them, they’d come get him, as he tore off the suit, leaving him standing quite visible in front of Cho in just his snug black underwear.

Cho tried to smirk at him, but he started to sink down the wall, and Danny dashed forward to catch him. Easing Cho to the ground, he crouched in front of him with his hands gently holding the other man, then removed his goggles for him and brushed his now bare hand along Cho’s cheek.

“Mal…” Danny scooted closer, would have climbed into Cho’s lap if he could. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry …”

“Wasn’t you,” Cho said, shivering but conscious.

“This one was.” Danny brushed a thumb over the scuff on Cho’s cheekbone from when he’d first thrown him into the wall. “I wanted to hurt you. I would have caused all of this without Ludgate if you hadn’t knocked some sense into me.”

“But I did…and you listened.” Smiling, Cho reached for Danny’s face in turn. “It’s okay—”

“It is not okay,” Danny bit out louder than he intended. Even as fresh tears slid down his cheeks, he held Cho’s hand to his face. “It’s never okay anymore. Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“Danny… hey .” Cho tugged him closer— closer —until Danny was in his lap, snuggled into the open duster. “Shh…”

Sniffling as he buried his head in Cho’s chest, Danny hugged him, but not too tightly, since he knew the man’s ribs were sore. “I didn’t mean any of it. Sometimes I say these things and I can’t stop myself, but that’s not an excuse. I should be stronger than this. I have to be stronger than this…”

“Calm down, Sparky. You think you’re the only person who’s ever experienced that? You are stronger. You are better. You’re not like me.”

The words startled Danny, tore at him, because Cho didn’t know.

He had no idea about the darkness inside of Danny.

“You’re...” he tried to say… something , but when the right words wouldn’t come, he pulled back to look at Cho—at his bruised and bloody face, at his kind eyes that he let so few people see.

“You are nothing like your father,” Danny said, and he’d say it a million times more if it always smoothed the lines from Cho’s face and made his armor and masks drop away. “Am I?”

“What?” The lines returned with a vengeance as Cho frowned and some of his usually hard exterior cracked into something else. “ No , Danny. Never.”

Cho kissed him, and for a moment, despite the tears on Danny’s face and the grief in his throat, there was nothing he wanted more than Cho’s lips.

But Cho hissed and pulled back. His lip was sore and bleeding. Because of Danny.

Feeling low and nauseous about it all, Danny still couldn’t help but snuggle in against Cho’s warmth—strangely warm, for an Ice Elemental. The dark night around them was filled with sounds from the city, but in their alley it was comfortingly still and quiet.

“I’m sorry, I can move, I just… I should get up. You need medical attention.”

“I’ll be fine.” Cho held Danny closer along the small of his back. “Might throw up on you if you squeeze too tightly though.”

Choking on distressed laughter, Danny scooted out of Cho’s lap. The other man’s lazy smile was tired, dazed. “You have a concussion. I should get you to Lynn—”

“No,” Cho shook his head, “too dangerous if Ludgate tracks us. We need to wait. Besides, I have my own doctor if I need one.”

“You do?”

“Nurse. But he’ll do in a pinch. It just looks bad, Sparky. Nothing some rest and ibuprofen won’t cure.”

He was being too dismissive, laying on the bravado to ease Danny’s concerns, when he looked almost as bad as Camouflage had that night when Danny lost it. “I’m sorry. I’m so—”

“Danny,” Cho said seriously, “you never have to be sorry for defending yourself.”

“But I wasn’t—”

“You thought you were. You were wrong. Didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt. Fine. But why should you have? If it had been Vaughn or Rivers, you would have stopped and listened to them.”

Danny honestly didn’t know if that was true—in the moment, in his anger. He thought he would. He would , wouldn’t he?

“Here.” Narrowing his eyes at Danny sitting in front of him in his underwear on the concrete, Cho pulled his long, sleeveless duster from his shoulders.

He settled it snug around Danny to cover him as much as it allowed.

“Sorry for the lack of sleeves, but you need this more than I do right now. And mmm…” He regarded Danny with that familiar glance down his body.

“Kept thinking of things to drape you in, Sparky, and here I stumbled upon the sexiest one by accident.”

Danny snorted and wiped at his eyes, a complete mess on the ground of an alley in his enemy’s signature costume piece. He hugged it around himself. The duster smelled like Cho.

“I’m just an old thief with a bad track record. You had every reason to believe what you did. Means you’re learning. You shouldn’t be so trusting of scoundrels,” Cho grinned.

“Not even of you?” Danny grinned back.

“Especially not of me.”

Danny wasn’t so sure anymore. When Cho’s expression softened, he didn’t look like an enemy.

Danny wanted to kiss him again, would have if not for the split lip.

He wanted to hold him, keep him safe, keep him with him for…

forever. But he couldn’t say that. It was too dangerous.

This was all too dangerous and stupid and…

and Danny didn’t care, he just wanted to keep feeling what Cho made him feel.

He kissed Cho’s cheek where it wasn’t bruised or scratched. “I will never hurt you again.”

“Now, now,” Cho said, “don’t get carried away. I might deserve it next time.”

But he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t . “Mal, I…I have to tell you something.”

“Sure, Sparky. But let’s get out of this alley first, huh? Gotta be somewhere better we can go for now. Hey…” Glancing around them, he shifted to look behind Danny. “Where’s the suit?”

“Oh, uhh…” Danny looked over his shoulder at where he’d ripped the suit off of him. He couldn’t exactly leave it for someone to find. He needed to destroy it.

Wearing nothing but his underwear and Cho’s duster, he got to his feet and ventured back into the middle of the alley, feeling the ground with his foot.

Cho stood behind him, a little wobbly but steady enough.

Danny still wanted to make sure he got checked out by someone with official medical credentials, whoever this ‘nurse’ might be.

Finally, Danny felt the scrape of fabric on his foot, though there appeared to be nothing in front of him.

Reaching down to pick the suit up, he wondered how best to dispose of it, when his hand accidentally gripped the spot on the glove that triggered the invisibility.

The suit shimmered into existence in his fingers.

Danny gasped and dropped the suit with a start. The air was too still as he waited for something to happen, for Ludgate’s laugher to come resounding up at them like some storybook monster.

When nothing happened, he released a shaky laugh and looked at Cho, who had his hand out, like he was ready to fight regardless of the state he was in. Then Cho relaxed, and they shared a smile.

Danny reached for the suit again.

“There you are, Zeus.”

The mosaic of Ludgate’s image flickered to life, and faster than Danny could pull back, a hand reached out of the many mirrors as if they were one—a thousand tiny reflections working in sync—and seized Danny’s wrist.

By the time he screamed, he was already being pulled into the suit like disappearing down a rabbit hole.