Page 7 of Lovesick Gods (Lovesick #1)

They’d been a team since night one. Because Danny owed Thanatos for Rick’s death and had been granted powers he refused to let lie dormant.

Because Lynn had dedicated her career to police work after a random Elemental attack took her husband years earlier and Thanatos was a reminder of that.

Because Andre had come up with far too many ideas about how to turn Danny into a superhero to be left out of the loop.

Slowly, limbs extracting one at a time, they released him. Within the hug, he’d felt grounded and good, but out of it again he just felt hollow.

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists tight. “Lately, no matter what I do, I just want to…hurt someone. Pound someone into the ground until they break and feel as broken as I do.”

“Danny…” Lynn said softly.

“I won’t do that.” He opened his eyes. “I know I don’t really want that, but sometimes I feel like I need to scream and hit something, and there’s no outlet other than patrol.

But I can’t risk losing it out there when people’s lives depend on me.

” He wished he hadn’t demolished the hospital bed so he had somewhere to sit.

Lynn smiled with endless patience. “Maybe you need to blow off steam another way. Talking about it, telling us what you’re feeling, that’s good, that’s a great start, but you are allowed to take a break.”

“What, take up a hobby?” Danny said humorlessly. “Date? Tried that, failed miserably.”

“Why does it have to be dating?” Andre said. “There are other ways to blow off steam, if you…get what I’m sayin’.”

“ Andre ,” Lynn wrinkled her nose.

“I don’t mean break some poor girl’s heart,” Andre held up his hands toward her defensively, “I mean mutual understanding that gettin’ busy is all that’s on the table. Everybody happy come morning.”

Danny huffed an abortive laugh. “Maybe, but that’s not really me , you know?”

“Hey, Elementals can’t attack every night,” Andre said more seriously.

“The rest of the OCPD can handle plenty on their own. We can do movie nights right here in the morgue, relax, and still be on call if something comes up. I miss getting our geek on, man.” He nudged Danny with his shoulder. “Get take-out. Play some GTA heists.”

“I will never understand how you two can fight crime and put away the people who commit heists,” Lynn said, “and then want to spend your free time pretending to be those same people in a video game.”

“Wanton destruction and escapism are good for the soul, sister,” Andre countered.

This time Danny laughed heartily. “I’d like that,” he said, thinking of all the nights that had differed from Camo, where the big bad had just been some car thief or purse snatcher. Zeus didn’t need to give up his evenings for that.

“It’s a date,” Andre said. “We’ll pick a night this week.”

“For now, just get some rest.” Lynn gripped his shoulder. “Maybe find some time to take off from work coming up, some vacation days if you can. You have a right to stop and breathe, Danny. If you were anyone else…”

“What?”

She sighed as her hand dropped back down between them. “It’s been weeks, Danny, months like this, don’t think we haven’t noticed. At times like these, some people find medication to be helpful.”

“Only my metabolism would burn through anything I took,” Danny finished what she hadn’t said. Having a healing factor wasn’t always a good thing. If he was…unbalanced, how could he find equilibrium again when he had superpowers?

“That doesn’t mean we can’t figure something out,” she said.

“Just keep talking to us. Don’t keep us in the dark.

Some time off and the right outlets may help.

But if they don’t, you should never feel like being miserable is okay or the norm.

No one is meant to go through life unhappy.

” When her eyebrows downturned in sympathy, Danny knew she spoke from experience not condescension.

Lynn had been in a similar state when she lost her husband, low and miserable like nothing could make life worth smiling over again, and she’d still found a way to crawl her way out.

“Thank you,” Danny said, looking to each of his friends in turn. “I mean it…thanks. Both of you. Maybe I needed this detour with Camo to get my head on straight.”

“Dude,” Andre sneered. “Camo? That sounds seriously lame. It’s Camou flage ,” he drew out the ending syllable dramatically, “excuse you. Otherwise, it sounds like Camel, and you better not ever get a supervillain who deserves a name like that.”

“I was thinking Erebus,” Lynn shrugged.

“Oh no,” Andre gave an even more exaggerated sneer. “Did you miss the part where we agreed to veer away from Greek mythology? That shit is getting old.”

Danny and Lynn both laughed.

Cho had taken up the title of Prometheus and dubbed his team the Titans years ago, fitting in a city called Olympus, but they had still been under the radar for the most part as thieves that rarely got caught.

It was Thanatos’s appearance that gave the citizens something to fear, which was why Andre had suggested the name Zeus for Danny, to remind people that someone just as powerful as the monsters was on their side.

“Do you know how annoying it is to say ‘Camouflage’ over and over again?” Danny said. “Camo just came more naturally to my internal monologue.”

“Well your internal monologue don’t get a say over my naming convention,” Andre turned back to him.

“Who’s the hero here again?” Danny held a mocking hand to his chest.

“And whose suit you wearing and tech you using, Miss Thang,” Andre snapped his fingers in a Z formation. To be fair, a very high-end 3D printer had made the Zeus suit and most of their tech, but Andre had been instrumental in the designs.

Laughing once more, this time it came out easier, freer, especially when Lynn and Andre joined him.

“Okay, guys, sleep,” Danny said, offering both of them a quick half-hug in gratitude.

“Tonight I’m going to sleep. I’ll keep you posted on anything else, I promise.

Scrounging up some vacation days sounds like just what I need. ”

?

Danny resisted the urge to hurl his phone at the far wall of the Pronto coffee shop.

He didn’t have any vacation days. Every time he thought he was getting better, feeling better, and maybe on the upswing out of whatever was wrong with him, something anywhere from the very small and mundane to admittedly tragic would rear its head and pull him right back down into the muck.

The barista had already gotten his order wrong once, and now his calendar betrayed that he had used up his last sick day and vacation day ages ago and wouldn’t accrue more for weeks.

“Danny!” the girl filling orders declared as she slid his drink onto the pickup counter. At least it was the right size and in one of those cups with a lightning bolt across it.

The thing about being a superhero was everyone tried to benefit from the brand, and Zeus sold . Danny’s favorite triple espresso drink had been renamed Liquid Lightning months ago.

He snatched up the drink without even a mild thank you and took a quick pull to feel some semblance of a caffeine rush but nearly spat his first sip onto the floor.

One of the girls in the back was new. She’d burnt the espresso.

It tasted terrible, but Danny didn’t have time to get back in line.

Pronto was always jam-packed this time of morning.

Shouldering his way through the crowd of people to the condiments station by the exit, he needed to add as much cream and sugar as he could to save his morning coffee fix.

A girl he’d seen at Pronto before, another morning coffee frequenter, flashed him a smile as he passed her and may have even added a greeting or good morning, but he ignored her and pressed on toward the sugar.

He knew he was being snippy, but he was not having a good morning.

He wasn’t having a good anything. All of Andre and Lynn’s supportive words and gestures the night before seemed stale now as Danny plummeted right back down to rock bottom.

He wanted to chuck his coffee at the window like he’d almost chucked his phone, smash the napkin case in his fist, take the extra coffee cup lids and crush them under his—

“Come on, Mickey, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t love the taste of lightning on your tongue.”

Danny’s own lid went flying to the floor as he fumbled to keep his very full coffee from spilling over his hands.

“Your euphemisms are not as funny as you think they are, sis. Coffee, black, is fine by me.”

Cho. And his sister Lucy. In Pronto. Shit .

Danny knew those voices, and Lucy always referred to her brother as ‘Mickey’.

“Right—coffee, black. With enough sugar to kill a diabetic,” she said, so close that Danny was certain they were standing right behind him, but when he dared to look, he saw that the pair had passed him unaware and now stood in line about two feet back. “And what, like your puns are so hilarious?”

“Clearly.”

Danny turned forward again so they wouldn’t catch sight of his face if they glanced back and tried to nonchalantly add cream and sugar to his coffee as planned.

It had been months since he’d seen Cho. He hadn’t dared track the man down when he first broke out of prison.

He’d been too busy waiting for his name to plaster all over the news— Prometheus reveals Zeus’s identity .

When that didn’t happen, Danny had expected another heist. He had to wonder if Cho’s lacking presence meant he was planning something bigger.

But why did Danny have to run into him now, after the interview with Liu yesterday and the disaster with Camo, when all of his hatred toward his nemesis was rekindled hotter than ever?

“He’s not so bad, you know, your little… Sparky ,” Lucy said in a whisper that would have gone unnoticed by anyone else, since most people were buried in their phones. “Just protective of his city, like someone else I know. Be honest,” she practically purred. “You wanna bend that boy in half.”