Work Text:
Adjusting to life after the apocalypse is difficult. On the one hand, he got a hundred years of memories back, his sister back, and a family he hadn’t known was his family for over a decade back. But on the other, he had to accept a century’s worth of thoughts in less than five minutes, accept that he’d completely forgotten Lup and that he’d been carrying her around for over a year, and accept that his friend, his family, stripped him of his entire being and life and everything that made him Taako just to go through with a plan he could have helped her with had she asked.
Suffice to say he’s having a little trouble fitting back into a world where everyone knows his face after bouncing around planar systems for a century and then becoming no one for twelve more years.
It doesn’t matter that he saved the world, he just wants a minute to breathe.
It’s been almost a year, a few months shy of it, and the house he finds himself living in feels almost unbearably empty. Kravitz is there when he can be, but he’s dragged away too often, work of the reaper needed now more than ever. He may have help from Lup and Barry now, but the fact that two of the world’s saviors are liches does nothing to deter the popularity of necromancy.
He’s not lonely, of course. Even if he were, Taako would never admit to it. Lonely? Him? The entire world loves him now, what more could he want?
Ren is a massive help, managing the school affairs while he tries to keep himself grounded.
He doesn’t visit Sazed, especially not for some sort of bullshit closure. He got his closure, or as close to it as he’s willing to get, in Refuge. He knows he didn’t kill those people, he knows he should have died with them, that Sazed probably expected him to. Him turning himself in for putting arsenic into forty people’s food doesn’t make him feel any better.
It does nothing for his aversion to cooking.
Lup is the first to mention it, after everyone’s gained their memories back. It’s not like she can eat, but she can watch him enjoy the food, and for her that’s enough. Or it would be, if he allowed himself to make anything with any sort of complexity.
He’s aware that she watches him make the food, meticulously inspect it for any off color, any off smell that could destroy its eater, and if anything looks or tastes wrong, he throws it away. He doesn’t cook for other people, can’t bring himself to. Small things, maybe. The macarons were easy enough, but he’d forced himself to take a bite from each batch just so that if there were adverse effects they’d hit him and not the others. Nothing with magic, never with magic. He doesn’t care that it wasn’t his misspell that killed the eager, happy faces staring up at him. Old habits die hard, and trying to break this particular habit might make him sick.
“Bro bro, whatcha doing?” Lup floats into the kitchen and sets her spectral body onto the empty counter next to him. He’s dicing onions to brown in the frying pan on the stove, and he blinks a couple of times to remove the onion essence from his eyes.
“Why dearest Lup, what does it look like?”
“Well it looks like you’re cooking, but the real question is, do you plan on sharing?”
“Do you wanna pretend to eat? Because I’m fairly certain liches can’t eat. But if I’m wrong be sure to let me know.”
“I meant with the people who have physical bodies, dummy. Don’t think for a second though that you’re missing out on me eating your food once my body’s done. You’re the only one I trust to make something worth eating as my first meal in years.”
He pauses, casting her a sidelong glance. She’s staring at him, features focusing into a clearer face than she normally has. Taako goes back to cutting up the onions.
“Well of course,” he says, trying his best to mask the underlying shakiness. “No one else in this mish mash family unit we’ve made can cook worth a damn. Taako’s the only one for you, Lulu. I’ll make you whatever you want.”
“Thirty garlic clove chicken?”
He brings the knife down hard and it makes a too loud noise on the cutting board under him. No one speaks, and he stares at the half diced onion under his hand. His appetite’s left him, not that he really had one in the first place, so when he finally moves he grabs a container and slides the onion into it. Lup makes a distressed noise as he puts it away and dumps the dishes unceremoniously into the sink.
“Taako—”
“Hmm, well, I’ve decided that I’m not hungry. If anyone wants to finish dicing those onions and make themself something with them they’re free to.”
He turns to leave and Lup flashes in front of him. Her face has gone all lich blurry again, and he stares down the fuzzy empty space in the red hood.
“I was there you know, with you and the Chalice in Refuge.”
“Let it go, Lup.”
“You know it wasn’t you, Taako. You know that.”
“Mhm,” he says, crossing his arms and popping a hip out to get more comfortable, seeing as Lup is apparently dead set on having this conversation now.
“So why won’t you let anyone else eat what you make? You barely let yourself eat it.”
“I cook for others. If you remember Refuge, then you have to remember the bomb-ass macarons I made for Candlenights. Everyone loved those.”
“And I remember you tasting each batch and waiting to make sure you weren’t poisoning anyone. You’re not going to hurt anyone.”
“You don’t know that,” he says, voice low. “My hand might slip, or I might accidentally magic something good into something bad. I’m not taking the risk.”
“You wouldn’t be taking any risk—”
“Lup,” he says tiredly, scrubbing at his face. “I’ll make you whatever you want when you get your body back, alright? Just not… that one. Anything else and I promise it’ll be the best meal you’ve ever tasted.”
“I’m holding you to that. And we’re cooking together, goofus. I’ve missed cooking with you.”
Taako gives her a small smile, because he’d love nothing more than to have his twin at his side again, handing him bowls and mixing ingredients in perfect time with him. The idea of serving her anything that comes from his hands may make his blood run cold, but he can’t refuse her this.
“Alright doofus, whatever you want.”
When Lup gets her body back, it takes her a while to get used to having a body again, so her superfine motor skills are a little worse for wear as she gets used to having the restrictions of skin and bones and muscles. He lets her mix the spices together, though, and makes her slowly cut up vegetables so she doesn’t accidentally hurt this new corporeal form.
He doesn’t eat, but her watches her carefully, making sure there’s no sign of her lich form dragging its way out of a dead body because of what he prepared her. It doesn’t happen, and his shoulders slump down in relief as she grins at him, eating enthusiastically.
His relief lasts all of five seconds before she gets up on her unused wobbly legs and drags Barry over to eat too. They made way too much food for just Lup to eat, and he wonders now if that was her intention all along. She shoves a forkful of food into his mouth with probably more force than necessary and doesn’t give Taako enough time to do anything more than make a distressed yell as Barry eats.
Barry gives him a Look as he chews and swallows before smiling at him again. There’s no doubt that he knows what happened in Glamour Springs, and for a brief, horrible second, Taako wonders if he was one of the people in the audience.
“This is really good,” he says, and Lup absolutely beams at him.
“Of course it is, it’s a Taako patented recipe, we accept nothing less than the best,” he says, feigning nonchalance.
“How about we get some others up here to eat some of this sweet grub, bro bro?”
She’s already reaching for her stone of farspeech, and Taako lunges over the table to grab her arm, stopping her. “Lup, I get what you’re doing, but please don’t.”
“Why not?” She shakes his hand off and picks the fork back up, taking another bite. “We already know it doesn’t kill us two, why not the rest of the crew?”
“Lup,” Barry says, giving Taako another look, but this one is a bit more apologetic. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
She doesn’t seem to have any trouble remembering how to use her face muscles as she has a silent conversation with Barry through facial expressions alone, and finally she relents, sighing and taking another bite.
“Fine. But we’re taking everything you don’t eat for leftovers.”
“Deal.”
When they leave, Taako worries himself sick that something will go wrong during the trip home, that something will spoil or that there was some sort of delayed reaction. When he finishes vomiting up his worries in the bathroom he waits an acceptable amount of time to call Barry’s, not Lup’s, stone. He’ll tell him honestly if something went wrong, unlike Lup, who would lie through her dying mouth to make him feel secure in himself.
“Nothing bad happened, Taako,” is what Barry says when he answers.
“Can’t a guy just call up his pseudo brother in law to see how he’s doing?”
“We just saw each other this morning. I know you care, but I promise you nothing was wrong with the food.”
“You’re absolutely positive?”
“Absolutely positive.”
“You tell me if that changes, okay? I don’t want you lying to me to spare my feelings.”
“That’s why you called me, right? You don’t trust Lup not to lie to you about this?”
“Mmm, something like that, Bluejeans.”
There’s some shuffling in the background, like the stone’s getting covered, and then Barry’s back. “Lup says ‘Tell my reaper loving idiot of a brother that I love him.’”
“Well tell my nerd loving lich of a sister that I love her too. And that technically she’s a reaper lover, now that the two of you are full fledged reapers.”
There’s some muffled laughter from the stone, and Barry’s voice gets a little more serious again.
“Is there anything we can do to help, Taako?”
“Help what?” he asks stonily. “Just cause I’m not the biggest fan of people eating my food anymore doesn’t mean I need help, Barold. Just means chaboy’s gotta work his way back up to serving food again, that’s all.”
“I know you had… trouble with the memories and accepting certain things—”
“If I remember right we saved the fucking world after getting our memories back so I’d absolutely love it if you didn’t patronize my ability. I’m fine. And even if I weren’t, you think Lup’s gonna be all kinds of peachy keen now that she actually has to get rest? What about Magnus, or Ango? Or Merle and Davenport? What about you, Barry? I remember you dying a couple fucking dozen times right along with the rest of us, so you don’t get to lord your ‘stability’ over my head.”
He’s seething. They don’t get to act like everyone but him is doing just fine and dandy after remembering a century of their lives that was stripped from them. Barry is quiet on the other line, and Taako considers leaving him like that, setting his stone somewhere far away so they can’t contact him and holing himself up into the projects for his school and the entire brand surrounding it. But he won’t, he can’t bring himself to even pretend abandon these people that he cares about so much.
“…Taako—”
There’s a scuffle from the stone, and he can hear Lup whisper shouting something and the stone getting passed between the two of them before the noise settles down and it’s quiet for just a second longer.
“Hey Taako? Babe? My idiot brother whom I love? I’m gonna need you to listen to me, and listen real hard and good. Not one single fucking one of us is ‘fine,’ alright? Not one single one. Nothing was ever really fine on the Starblaster, and it sure isn’t now. But we’ve gotta make the best of it. We saved the fucking planar system! We saved all these people, but fuck if the shit we went through wasn’t bad. And the twelve years after all the plane jumping we did weren’t great either. We’ve gotta start healing, though, bro bro. We can’t just let our bad habits swallow us whole. I’m here for you, and so is Barry, and Magnus, and everyone else. I can’t speak for your spooky boyfriend, but I know he is too. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
He’ll deny with his dying breath that he’d started crying while she was talking, but he does take a second to compose himself before giving her a small, minimally choked off sounding “Okay.”
“Good. You need anything before I drop back into getting used to being in a body again? Do you want me to stay on the line?”
“No, I’m good Lulu. Tell Barold I said sorry for snapping at him?”
“He already knows, but I’ll be sure to tell him personally. You’re sure you don’t need anything else? Want me to pop into the astral plane and see if Skele-Krav can come home?”
“Really, Lup, I’m good. You call me if you need anything, okay?”
“You too, bro bro. Love you.”
“Love you too,” he says, and the stone fizzles into silence.
Carey and Killian’s wedding is soon, so soon, and he knows they’ll ask him to cook for it. He’ll have to pull himself together by then, come to terms with cooking for other, living, breathing people again, and getting used to watching them eat it.
He thinks Lup might be a good place to start. Maybe Kravitz. He’s technically not alive, but he does enjoy food occasionally, and he’d probably be able to tell Taako if there was anything dangerous about it.
They’ve never talked about it, but he knows Kravitz knows about Glamour Springs. He’s the Reaper, forty new souls all from the same place had to arouse some suspicion. Everyone around him knows it wasn’t his fault, but the sentiment doesn’t make him feel any better.
So he’ll start small, start with Kravitz and Lup and maybe Barry and let them eat his food until he’s comfortable sharing it with people whose flesh bodies actually mean something in the long run, who could face actual, real death consequences from him poisoning them.
He still doesn’t eat much.
---
Sleep is a whole other matter.
Technically, he doesn’t have to sleep, just meditate. But they’re similar enough that the lines get blurry sometimes, and he’ll drop into dreaming without meaning too.
Night terrors always did run in the family. Taako’s always gotten them, and on especially bad nights, Lup does as well.
If he doesn’t sleep for days, he’ll get a little fuzzy, but it’s much better than falling asleep, than dreaming. Kravitz doesn’t sleep much, but when he does it’s at Taako’s house, slipping into bed next to him after long days of dragging souls back to the astral plane or disrupting someone’s ill planned necromancy group. His body is cold in a way that’s somehow comforting, but the fact that he doesn’t breathe, that he doesn’t have a heartbeat, is just a bit disconcerting.
It’s the worst when he wakes up frantic to make sure he’s still alive and finds no sign of it other than the fact that he startles awake when he starts crying. Some nights he’ll leave the room as quiet as he can, pull himself together in the hallway or the bathroom so he doesn’t wake Kravitz up from his rest. And then he’ll pad back into the room like nothing happened and curl his body back under the covers. Or he’ll get ready for the day, start an elaborate meal that takes hours to prepare and then wait for Kravitz to wake up, only taking a bite or two for himself, just to taste test, just to be certain.
Kravitz isn’t stupid, of course, and he knows when he wakes up to the smell of breakfast and quiet noises from the kitchen that it was a bad night. In his opinion, which Taako both loves and hates, there are far too many bad nights.
Sometimes, he doesn’t wake up right away. Sometimes he’ll wallow in his dreamscape, screaming in the real world until he either hits himself awake, falls off the bed, or Kravitz, braving flailing limbs, shakes him out of it.
Tonight is one of those nights.
His dreams start innocent enough. They’re on a planet, the seven of them, and it’s early in the cycle. This is maybe the fourth year they’ve been trapped bouncing through different planar systems, and this world seems gentle. There’s animals, but not ones they can communicate with. Smaller, humanoid creatures live in the woods, but they seem terrified of the Starblaster and its crew.
Him and Lup are off in front of the others, crossing a shallow river. There’s stones sticking up from it, ones they can step on to keep from getting wet, and Lup is hopping from rock to rock, balance perfect, nimbly landing on top of each one.
He remembers this.
He reaches a hand out to grab her, but he’s too slow, and her foot slips anyway, sending her careening sideways and into a nearby rock.
He remembers the crack her head had made on the surface, her slumping into the water, red twisting out from her head.
He remembers her not getting back up.
He doesn’t remember screaming, but he doesn’t remember a lot after that, because everything got terrible. There were still ten months left in this cycle, he had to last ten months without her, just because her foot had slipped on a rock and she’d cracked her head open.
Magnus is in front of him while Merle sits over Lup, pulling out his bible and muttering something that he can’t hear. Magnus shakes his shoulders, makes him make eye contact, and then-
And then they’re in a different cycle, a later one, where The Hunger had come a day early, and they weren’t prepared. Magnus shoves him backwards as the opalescent creatures take over his body, yelling for him to run back to the ship, and all he can do is stare, slack jawed, horrified, as Magnus gets slowly buried under the smoky bodies, hand reaching out and-
And he sees Kravitz, arms breaching the surface of the oily, sludgy water in the astral plane. His face breaks free, and he must forget himself because he drags in a breath of unneeded air before yelling out and getting pulled back under, hands scrambling for something, for anything to grab ahold of, and Taako can only watch as the last traces of his fingers disappear from view.
Angus stands next to him, and then he’s flung backwards, his little boy body hitting the pile of stuff he’d shoved in front of the door with a sickening sounding crack before he slumps forward, wand broken in two pieces in front of him. He doesn’t get back up.
Merle chokes on the air he’s holding as the crystal takes over his body too fast to do anything about, wrenching pained breaths from him as his face turns into bright pink tourmaline.
Barry screams at him, telling him the Light is so close, so so so close, as he gets dragged backwards into a cave by an angry ice monster, blood streaking out from under him as he shrieks and goes quiet.
Davenport holds his side as he steers them out of the way of the Hunger, blood pooling underneath him as he slumps onto the wheel before finally giving in and collapsing to the floor.
Lucretia sits next to him, sketching the wildlife in this new planet, and she reaches down to inspect one of the smaller bugs near her, and it burrows its way under her skin as she scratches at it, pained noises pouring out of her mouth as it takes over her body, eating her from the inside out, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it as she falls over in front of him, twitching.
“Taako.”
The town of Refuge gets swallowed whole by fire and teeth and anger, and he watches as it doesn’t reset, and the bodies lay under rubble.
“Taako!”
The world falls around him, Hunger dragging down everything in its path, stabbing through his family’s bodies, devouring them whole in front of him. And he screams.
“Taako, please, wake up!”
Hands grab his shoulders to shake him awake, and he screams again, punching the person in the face. A pained “oof,” comes from them as they let go, surprised, and Taako scrambles for his wand. He needs something, anything, to defend himself. He can’t find it, and fuck, he hates not having a conduit for his magic but he guesses he’ll just have to make do
“It’s me, Taako, it’s Kravitz.”
The person in front of him has their hands up, and he slowly recognizes the features of the face staring back at him. The tenseness drops from his shoulders, and he’s stuck staring at Kravitz, eyes wide, breathing heavy.
“It’s Kravitz, you’re okay, we’re okay love.”
There’s a rushing in his ears and he tries to find words but they won’t come. He’s stuck making this quiet, shaky whimpering noise that gets Kravitz to come back closer, and he drops his head on his shoulder. Kravitz’s arms come up around him, running a cold, steady hand through his hair.
His chest isn’t moving underneath him, and Taako’s hands grab at his shirt. He tries to find words.
“Your- y-you- breathe. Please.”
The message gets across, and the slow rise and fall of his chest starts. Kravitz hums a song that Taako’s never heard before, and the movement of his breathing coupled with the gentle vibrations of his vocal chords lulls him back down into a quiet state. Not asleep, he won’t fall back asleep tonight, but into a less panicked mindset.
Kravitz doesn’t let him go when his breathing settles down, if anything he clutches him closer. Taako mumbles out quiet apologies when he finally finds his words, and Kravitz just shushes him, humming a little louder. He rocks them in place, solid and unfaltering as he holds him close and pets through his hair, untangling the strands.
When he’s finally composed, awake and less afraid, he pulls back and doesn’t make eye contact, staring instead at the place on his cheek where he’d punched.
“Taako.”
“Fuck,” he says, swallowing hard. “I hit you.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“I hit you. You can’t just say that you’re ‘not hurt’ and expect things to be fine.”
“You didn’t know who I was,” he says, trying to be placating, but it only hikes up his nerves. “I’m not worried about that.”
“Well I am! You not giving a shit about me literally punching you in the fucking face is more worrying to me than the fact that I got a night terror. That shit’s nothing new, but you being fine with me hitting you isn’t fuckin—”
“Taako.” Kravitz’s voice is stern but not unkind. Taako’s mouth shuts with an audible click. “Look at me. I’m fine. I woke you up when you weren’t expecting me to, and it’s partly my fault for trying to grab you like I did. I’m not going to let you deflect and blame yourself for this.”
“I still get to be sorry, you know. You don’t get to take that away from me, Bone Man.” Taako flops back down dramatically onto his pillows. “You didn’t sign up for this shit.”
He can feel Kravitz frowning at him and shuts his eyes in retaliation. “And what, exactly, do you think I signed up for?”
“Well it wasn’t The Baby Sitter’s Club: Punch Your Sitter in the Face edition, that’s for sure.”
Kravitz is quiet, and the tension in the air is palpable. “Is that what you think I see this as? Some sort of… watch over job? That I’m just here to make sure you’re alright and that I don’t care beyond that?”
Taako groans. “Fuck, Krav, no. I know it’s not that. I just… I know you signed on for something more equal.”
“Do you not see this as equal?”
“I’d like to, but I know I make things difficult a lot. Taako’s difficult, but you do so much of the fucking work in the relationship I’m kind of surprised you’re still here.” His exhaustion and leftover nerves have made him loose lipped, and he says it without thinking. Kravitz doesn’t need to breathe, but he sucks in a breath anyway, and Taako realizes what he just said.
“Oh shit,” he says, sitting up, and Kravitz pulls him into a hug before he can say anything else.
“I love you,” he says, voice gentle. “I love you, and I’m not leaving. I wish you would say something when you feel like this, when you feel like I’ll get tired of you and everything that you bring with you, because I won’t, Taako. I promise you, I won’t leave.”
He thinks of the Hunger, dragging him down into inky murky waters and shudders, burying his face in his shoulder.
“Do you want to talk about your dreams?” Kravitz’s voice is soft in a way that feels like home, and that terrifies him, but he’s still lulled into a sense of security.
“Mmm, just people dying, you know, the usual.”
“People?”
“Mhm.”
“Anyone in particular I should be worried about dying?”
“Hmm, nah. All in the past. Couple of made up deaths crafted from some real good memories, couple of real life deaths that didn’t mean shit because of the Starblaster. Still didn’t feel great.”
“I’m sure not,” Kravitz says, and Taako finds it ridiculously ironic that he’s complaining about death to Death.
“I ever tell you about the time Lup died in the second month of the year by slipping on a rock and cracking her head open? It was a real good goddamn year.”
His tone is bitter, and Kravitz holds him tighter.
“Or the time Barry was eaten alive by a giant ice monster and he was still trying to tell us where the Light was as he was screaming?”
Kravitz starts his low humming again, and Taako can’t keep his stupid elf mouth shut.
“Or when L-Lucretia tried to write about a bug, but it crawled inside of her and ate her from the inside out? And all I did was sit there and watch?”
He still hates Lucretia, hates her for what she did to him and all of them. It doesn’t matter that almost all of the others have forgiven her, he can’t, not yet. But that was one of the worst of the memories from their hundred year journey, watching her twitching and crying out on the ground, fingers digging into herself to try and get the bug out.
Taako shuts himself up after that, losing himself in the humming and the swaying and the cool warmth around him. Kravitz doesn’t go back to sleep, and he knows he doesn’t need the rest but Taako still feels like the world’s biggest asshole for depriving him of it.
He’ll try to make it up to him in the morning, with breakfast and attention, and Kravitz will assure him that he doesn’t need to do anything to “make it up” to him, that there’s nothing to make up for. He’ll file that away for later, but for now he’ll still shower him in affection regardless of what Kravitz thinks he does and doesn’t need to do.
---
On a day that Kravitz is gone, Taako wakes up alone. He sits up and stares at the sheets. Empty. Cold.
He checks the time and finds it’s already the afternoon, half the day already gone. Scowling, he swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, walking down the stairs to the kitchen. He can’t feel his body and every noise is a little muffled, but his head’s too foggy to focus on that.
He wants… carrots? Yeah, he wants to cook up some carrots. He grabs them and a knife from the drying rack and places them down on the cutting board lying on the counter. The repetitive clunk of the knife on the board is distracting, and he stares, chopping up the carrots one after the other.
Clunk.
He wonders numbly if he’ll wake up as the day goes on.
Clunk.
What’s Lup doing right now? Is she reaping souls? Lording her lichness over the necromancers who practically worship her and Barry?
Clunk.
Maybe he should do something good for Angus soon. He’s got an inkling that he doesn’t think they appreciate him as much as they do.
He brings the knife down again and a flash of pain runs through his hand. His gaze focuses on his fingers, the blood slowly oozing down to mix into the carrots.
The pain is grounding, and he just stands there, staring at the cut on his fingers. He’d run out of carrot, and his fingers were next in line. He didn’t cut through them, but it spans across the four of his fingers, half deep and painful.
The entire lack of sensation focuses in on his hand, the pain heavy and forward, and he can feel his heartbeat in his fingers.
He turns around and vomits into the sink.
When he’s finished expelling the bile from his stomach he rinses out the sink, and with it his hand. It’s bleeding heavier now, and he wraps a stray dish towel around it. The throbbing has gotten washed over by the numb static again, and the blood soaks slowly into the towel.
He can’t focus on shit right now, and he needs… something.
Taako makes his way into the bathroom, turning on the hot water in the shower and shedding his clothes. The towel on his hand goes with them. The spray of the shower is scalding, but he can’t feel it, curling up under the water.
He stays in the shower until the heat makes his head feel swampy and feverish, and then stays some more. It pelts at his back. He doesn’t shampoo or condition or use any type of soap, just sits there surrounded by the steam. When the water runs cold, he stands up on wobbly, shaky legs and turns it off.
He towels himself off, squeezes the water out of his hair first, and then scrubs off the rest of his body, wrapping the towel around his hips. His hair is tangled, damp, heavy. It clings to his back and sends an uncomfortable shiver up his spine. The sensation is cloying, and no matter how much he moves it, tries to detangle it with his fingers, it drags at his skin, sticks to his body.
Nothing makes sense right now, and he pulls at it. His body feels like it’s just to the left of where he’s standing, staring at the fog covered mirror. He rubs at it, can’t feel the cool mirror, and stares. He doesn’t recognize himself.
He can’t-
He-
He grabs the scissors and violently hacks at his hair. He needs it gone. It clings to him wrong and drips stray water down his back and it feels suffocating. The strands fall to his feet around him, and he stares at his wonky reflection in the refogged mirror. His hair sits jaggedly just below his chin.
He can’t recognize himself even after.
The scissors hit the mirror, sending a crack spidering up the middle. They land in the sink, half open, and he walks backwards until he hits the wall and slides down it.
Taako stares at his hands, the hollow cut spanning his fingers. It had run out of blood in the shower. His mouth is moving, but he can’t hear what he’s saying. He can’t feel his body. He can’t feel his body. He can’t feel his body.
He hears a rift open and realizes he’s clutching his stone of farspeech and that someone is talking back to him. He’s been saying Lup’s name over and over to the last person he’d spoken to, and they’re trying to get him to explain what’s wrong.
Lup stands in front of him, looking frazzled, staring between Taako and the hair on the floor and the crack in the mirror with the scissors lying under it. She comes over and pulls the stone from his hands.
“It’s alright, Magnus. I’m here. Taako’s… alright.”
He can hear Magnus say something else, but he can’t fucking make it out. He’s amazed he can understand Lup. She sits down next the him, far enough away that no part of her touches him. He doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want her to be afraid of him. He just- he can’t feel where he is, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
“Hey, bro bro. Can I touch you?”
Taako nods, and he doesn’t stop nodding. She pulls him in close, wraps a hand around his head, and he collapses against her.
“Seems like you goofed up a little. Wanna ‘Taako’ bout it?”
He snorts and curls his legs up. He’s glad he’s at least got the towel to cover him. Not like his twin hasn’t seen him naked before, but there’s a layer of dignity he’d like to keep right now, and having a mental breakdown fully naked after showering is too far under that line. Having a mental breakdown in just a towel after showering isn’t all that great either, but it’s a bit better in the long run.
“Hey,” she says, and the disinterested tone she’s been trying to keep wavers, and he can hear the worry underneath. “What happened?”
“I d-don’t, Lulu I-I don’t know,” he mumbles into her shoulder, and then he hums out a noise because he can’t properly vocalize what he’s feeling right now.
She grabs his hand to hold and he hisses out in pain, halfway pulling it back. She grabs it again, more careful this time, and inspects the cut spanning over his fingers.
“Fuck, Taako, what did you do?”
“Didn’t realize I’d run out of carrot.”
She laughs a little, a pained sound that makes Taako feel like the worst brother in the world. He wraps his arms tight around her and squeezes. She squeezes right back.
“D’you wanna go get some clothes on and then I can clean up your hair for you?”
He lets out a noise of assent and Lup stands, pulling him up with her. She shoos him off towards his bedroom while she starts to pick some things up, and he feels the cold of the air on his skin. Taako puts on some clothes, something soft and warm, and pads his way back into the bathroom. The room is cleaner, and Lup’s sat a stool in the middle of the floor, towel over her shoulder and scissors in hand.
She places the towel around his shoulders and sets to work, the quiet snip of the scissors much gentler than it had been when he’d been chopping away.
“Are you feeling any less icky?”
“Mhm,” he mumbles, letting himself drift.
“You wanna talk about it?” Lup pinches his ear to keep him a bit more present, and he scrunches his face at her in the mirror. She scrunches right back.
“Mmm, nope. It’s no biggie, Lulu. Just some dumb brain shit.”
“You can’t lie to me, Taako,” she says, fluffing out his hair with her hands before going back to cutting.
“Well physically I can.” He catches her eye in the mirror and she looks a him with a sort of desperation that he hasn’t seen since the early days on the Starblaster. He swallows hard and averts his gaze. “But I won’t.”
She doesn’t press, giving him time to collect his thoughts, but he spends most of it wondering if she’ll think he’s crazy. The answer is no, of course not, she’s his sister and they’ve been through more shit together than a normal sibling duo should have had to deal with. But he can’t help but wonder.
“Lulu you, uh, you ever feel like you’re not in your body?”
She pauses, looking at him in the mirror. He’s already averted his eyes. “Sometimes,” she says quietly before resuming.
“Cool. Cool cool cool.” His hands grip the seat of the stool and he takes in a breath. “Think my heads a little fucked up right now.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It kinda super fucking sucks.”
She snorts out a laugh. “It does, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes I wish we were back on the Starblaster so I could die and reset and try this all over again.”
Lup doesn’t laugh at that one, and she sets the scissors down and rests her hands on his shoulders. He doesn’t like the way his body wants to shrink away from the touch. This is Lup, this is Lup, she’s not going to hurt him. She’s the only one he’d let touch him for the longest time, well into their century of plane jumping. But his body wants to revolt, and he tries to swallow down that feeling. It shivers up his spine anyway, and he knows she feels it. Her grip gets looser but she doesn’t pull away completely, and it’s minimally better.
“Taako that’s… that’s not great.”
“Spare me the speech, babe. I know that. Not like I’m actually gonna do anything, it’d just be nice if my head wasn’t so fucked all the time.”
“Memories didn’t go away when we reformed.”
“This is lost on you, clearly. It’s the principle, Lup. The idea of ‘Oh, I’m fresh, I’m new again, don’t gotta deal with all that bullshit this time.’”
She sifts her hands through his much shorter hair, shaking out all the stray bits that have clung. He looks at himself, staring at where his hair hits just below his jaw. He hasn’t had hair this short since him and Lup were young and alone, both of them chopping it off to avoid getting grabbed by it.
“I think you might wanna talk to someone about that, bro bro.”
“I’m talking to you about it right now.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Fuck no,” he says, standing and shaking his head to get all the hair bits off of him. “Taako’s not even gonna fuck around with that idea.”
“Taako, come on—”
“No!” He turns around to face her and she looks at him with wide eyes. “I’m not fucking doing that, Lup. I’m not gonna go to some stranger who thinks they know better about my hundred plus years of fucked up than I do just cause they heard the same story Junior spouted out as everyone else. I’m not taking some fucking life advice from someone who thinks they know every fucking thing about me just because Lucretia was so good at writing. Maybe you and Barry and everyone else is all fine and dandy talking to some random ass person that doesn’t mean shit in the long run about your decade stuck in an umbrella or his dying over and over again to find you, but I’m not.”
She gapes at him, blinking repeatedly like if she closes her eyes enough that whole outburst of his will disappear. He backs up, turning back around, and hears her angry huff of breath.
“Well excuse me for trying to be helpful, jackass. You like to pretend like you don’t have terrible shit going on with your head, like you’re some paragon of recovery, but you cut your fucking hand open and all your hair off today because you dissociated so bad. I’m just trying to make it so every time you feel like shit you don’t have a fucking breakdown in your bathroom and scare our family by only saying my name on your stone of farspeech!”
He’s so tired and angry and upset, and he knows it’s not at Lup, that it’s all at himself, but fuck he doesn’t want to admit that. But he doesn’t want to fight with her. And he doesn’t want her to yell at him about his bad habits like she did when they were twenty and she had to shake him out of whatever terrible state he’d put himself in that time. He grips at the counter so hard his fingers ache and stares blankly into the sink and wonders not for the first time if things would be better for everyone if he disappeared.
“Three of your family are reapers now, Taako, we’d know if you died,” Lup says small-ly behind him, and he realizes he’s been talking out loud again, and something thick lodges itself in his throat. Something drips into the sink, and he won’t acknowledge that he’s crying, not this time. That doesn’t stop Lup, though. She comes and wraps her arms around his middle and hugs him close. He wants the hug because it’s from Lup and that’s his twin and they always used to do this when the other was upset, pull them in from behind, but he doesn’t want to be touched all that much and it sends uncomfortable prickles across his skin but he wants the comfort but he doesn’t want it to be physical but he doesn’t want her to let go. The conflicting feelings make him cry harder and she holds him that much tighter, rocking them in place while he holds onto the counter.
The bad touch feeling goes away after a while and it just becomes comfort, so he turns around and wraps his arms around her too.
“You wanna go chill on the couch with some of Auntie’s fancy cocoa recipe?”
He nods and pulls away reluctantly. Lup keeps a hand on his wrist as they go downstairs, casting a small prestidigitation on the mess of hair on the floor. Lup and Taako set to work on the hot cocoa, passing each other spices and milk and cocoa powder. The kitchen smells warm as they fill up their mugs with the cocoa, whipped cream on top, a sprinkle of nutmeg finishing it off. He lets the warmth seep into his fingers from the mug, taking a sip and licking away the whipped cream mustache he’ll inevitably get from it.
Lup sits on the couch and Taako practically lays on top of her, forcing her to relax her posture as he shoves his head into her stomach. One of her hands sifts through his hair as she drinks her cocoa with the other. She’s warm, real, alive against him, and that’s more comforting than it probably should be.
She’s humming an old song their aunt used to sing to them when they were little, the low and comforting vibrations wrapping around him. He hasn’t heard this song in a long time, but it’s nice to hear it again.
They stay like that for a while, drinking their cocoa and holding each other like they did years and years ago. He hasn’t had any quality cuddle time with Lup since she got her body back, and he feels relaxed for the first time in ages.
Kravitz comes home eventually, pausing at the scene in front of him. Taako can see him taking in the short hair and the cut on his hand and Lup’s arms wrapped protectively around him, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead he comes over, presses a small kiss on his temple, and takes their empty mugs away.
He sits on the end edge of the couch with a book and lets Taako rest his feet and legs on his thighs and occasionally rubs a comforting hand up and down them. Taako’s surrounded by two of his favorite people. They feel like home and his heart swells up inside his chest so much it feels like he’s going to bust, but instead he closes his eyes and breathes deeply, getting lost in the comfort.
He can deal with talking about the hard stuff tomorrow.
---
Angus moves from house to house on his breaks from school. Sometimes he’ll stay with Taako and Kravitz, other times he’ll stay with Magnus. Carey and Killian take him in occasionally, and so does Lucretia. He’ll visit Merle, and even though he never lived or worked with Lup and Barry, he’ll visit them too. Taako and Magnus are who he usually stays with, though, and for this school break he’s with Magnus.
That’s not gonna stop Taako from visiting his (favorite) boy wizard detective. And he’d like to see Magnus, too. It’s been a while since they’ve seen each other.
He always forgets how awful it is to be bombarded with dogs whenever he goes to Magnus’s place. They’re always so excited and jump all over him until he finally gives in to the furry beasts and falls dramatically onto the ground as they lick at him. Magnus calls them back and Taako stands, brushing himself off before walking over. Magnus drags him into a bone crushing hug.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says, and maybe Taako had neglected to talk to him about what had happened that day with the hair cutting and the stone of farspeech so this hug and worry is a little bit warranted.
He returns the hug lightly, patting him on the back. “Yeah, you too, Maggie.”
Magnus lets him go and then does a double take. “Your hair!”
“Sometimes you gotta switch it up,” he says, mouth twisting into a smile. “Keep everybody on their toes.”
“I like it,” he says, starting to walk back towards the house. “Ango’s already here, and I think he’s trying to cook something to surprise you, but it’s not going too great.”
“What’s he trying to make?”
“I think it’s cookies, but the mix didn’t look right, and the smells not great either.”
Taako sighs and stretches his arms out. “Just got here and Taako’s already needed to fix a kitchen mishap, how wonderful.”
The smell inside the house is… off. It smells like cookies, but it’s definitely not right. Also it’s burning. He peeks around the corner to the kitchen and finds Angus engrossed in his mixing, flour on his arms, sleeves rolled up, little apron with the string double wrapped around his waist before knotting in the back. He doesn’t seem to notice the faint burning smell coming from the oven, and Taako walks in. He pulls his hat off of his own head and when he gets close enough, drops it on Angus’s.
He jumps, letting out a surprised little yelp as he drops the bowl back onto the counter, spinning around. He pushes the hat up out of his eyes, catches sight of Taako, and grins.
“Taako!” He goes in for a hug, and then remembers he has flour and cookie dough on his, well, everywhere, and thinks better of it. “You’re here early.”
Taako pulls him into a hug anyway. It’s not like he can’t fix whatever mess gets on his clothes, and he hasn’t actually seen Angus in a couple of months. The hug is all that he’ll let on that he missed him, though. Something about the hug is different, though. It’s almost like-
“You got taller.”
Angus pushes back out of the hug, looking a little proud of himself. “I did, Sir!”
“Come on now, Agnes, what have we said about the ‘sir’ thing?”
“Sorry Taako. But I did get taller!” Angus was at about the middle of his chest the last time he saw him. Now he reaches just under his shoulders, legs and arms looking a little more gangly. “A whole four inches!”
Taako holds up a hand to pause their conversation and grabs an oven mitt, pulling the partially burnt, very strange smelling cookies from the oven. He sets the pan on the stove and grabs a spatula to shuffle them onto the cooling rack.
“Oh. I didn’t realize they were done cooking. I don’t think those ones will be very good, though. The dough didn’t really turn out how I wanted it too, and then they started smelling weird in the oven, and I guess I lost track of time and now they’re burnt. I was trying to surprise you.” His voice gets a little smaller at the end, and Taako’s heart aches.
“Come on now, Ango, they can’t be that bad.” He picks up a cookie, blows on it to cool it off, and then takes a bite. They’re definitely burnt, but that’s not the bad thing. The bad thing is the overwhelming taste of flower that he’s getting from what should be normal chocolate chip cookies.
He forces himself to swallow that bite, as much as he wants to spit it out, and then sets the cookie back down, glancing at Angus. He’s got anxiety written all over his face, and Taako grimaces.
“Little dude, what the fuck did you put in those cookies?”
“Um, chocolate chips, flour, baking soda, brown sugar, salt, butter, vanilla—”
“Hold,” he says, going over to ingredients pile. Taking a second to smell the second batch he’s currently mixing, it smells essentially the same as the others. He finds the bottle of what should be vanilla extract and opens it, smelling. Yup. That’s it.
“Magnus, why the fuck do you have rose extract in your goddamn kitchen?” He yells, looking at the label. It seems to be haphazardly stuck on there, almost like it got peeled off of a different bottle. Rummaging through his meager spice cabinet finds him a lavender flavoring, a lemon flavoring, and an unlabeled bottle that, when opened, smells like vanilla.
“It came in a pack of four! I figured you’d probably find some way to use it whenever you came over.” Magnus comes into the kitchen, followed closely behind by Johann the dog.
“You got the wrong extract, Dango.” He hands him the right bottle, peeling off the incorrect label from the rose extract. “Maggie, you gotta help us remake these cookies.”
Magnus and Angus’s faces light up at the same time, and Magnus sets to work, rolling up his sleeves. Angus dumps out the ruined mix and cleans out the bowl, erasing the rose extract from the premises. He takes a moment to push the hat out of his face all the way, letting it sit on the back of his head, and Taako’s hit with a rush of some feeling that he’s not familiar with that he decides to deal with later. He’s got cookies to bake and people to teach.
He doesn’t let Magnus or Angus taste the cookie dough until he’s had a bite of it, ensuring that they’re not all poisoning themselves, and then he lets them go for it, making sure they have enough for a solid amount of cookies. There’s going to be a few more people in and out of the house for this break, and they want their guests to have something to eat.
He doesn’t let himself dwell on the idea of people actually ingesting these cookies, just tries to make sure that Angus knows how to make a decent chocolate chip cookie. This is beginner stuff. If he’s ever going to get good at baking he needs to know how to make a chocolate chip cookie. Magnus seems excited to be included in this cooking escapade. He wasn’t allowed in the kitchen on the Starblaster after he’d scorched a pot of boiling water. That was very, very early in their century.
When the cookies are in the oven and Taako and Magnus have coerced Angus into letting the dishes soak for a while before jumping straight into doing them, Taako flops into one of the chairs in the kitchen.
“So Ango McDango, tell me how Lucas’s terrible school is.” He stares at the way the hat sits on his head just like it sits on his own, the brim of it still falling into his eyes. He’s clearly not a practiced wizard hat wearer.
“Oh, it’s not so bad! I’m learning a whole lot, and I think he’s thinking harder about taking me on as a teacher.”
“Still no chance of coming over to the light side of magic schools?”
“Well you haven’t given me a good enough offer, now have you?” Angus smiles, and Taako scoffs, flipping his hair over his shoulder only to remember it’s too short for that now. He catches himself by pushing it behind his ear.
“I know we joke,” Angus says, and he sounds a lot less jokey. “But do you think I’d be a good teacher?”
“Come on, Angus. You’re one of the smartest people I know,” Magnus says, pulling him by his shoulder for a side hug.
“That’s not saying much, sir. Your whole family is made up of people who were top of their classes and hand picked for planar research.”
“No ‘sirs,’” Taako says absently. “And you might be right, but smarts isn’t all there is to do with it. You gotta be willing to be wrong sometimes, be open to suggestions from your kids. But you especially have to stand your ground, little man. You’re little, still a kid, and some people aren’t gonna take too kindly to being taught their histories and magics by a twelve year old.”
“Almost thirteen,” Angus says, looking down at his sock feet. “And I know that. And if I’m being honest it makes me real nervous. What if I’m not good enough yet? What if I don’t even want to be a teacher?”
“Then you got your whole life ahead of you, Django. No one’s gonna make you stick to the one thing your whole life.” Magnus readjusts the hat on Angus’s head. “You think I had my whole life figured out at twelve? There was no way. Shit, I didn’t even know what I wanted to do with my life when I was twenty.”
“Maggie, you were twenty for a hundred years.”
“That’s not the point. The point is, unless for some reason you get stuck on a spaceship travelling through planar systems for a hundred years and stay the same age that whole time, you have a whole life ahead of you to figure out what you wanna do. We didn’t do the same stuff for that hundred years, either. Everyone switched it up at some point. And Angus, I mean it when I say you’re gonna find something that you want to do with your life. Maybe it’s teaching, maybe it’s detective-ing, maybe it’s some wild mix of the two, or maybe it’s something completely different. And it’s okay if that thing you wanna do with your life switches halfway through. Don’t let anyone tell you you have to be one thing forever, because that’s just not how it works, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, still looking at his socks. There must be something real interesting on them, or he just really doesn’t want to look at either of them. Johann comes up and nudges his nose into Angus’s hands, forcing him to give him pets, and he lets a small smile come to his face.
When the cookies are done, they let them rest on the cooling rack for a while before Taako splits one up into thirds. He takes the first bite, holding up a hand for the others to wait while he swallows. After a moment he waves his hand and the others dig into their small piece of cookie. It’s warm and chewy and chocolatey, and he’s pretty proud of the others for making something this good. Not that he’ll ever say it, of course.
“When are Lup and Barry coming over?”
“Later tonight,” Taako says. “They’re bringing Kravitz with them, so it’ll be a big old reaper get together. I think it’ll be five-ish?”
“Cool. Merle’s gonna be here around six so that’ll work out great.”
“Are we making anything else, Taako?” Angus looks at him so earnestly that it hurts.
“Yeah, bubeleh, what d’you feel like making?”
“I’m not really sure. What do you think, Magnus?”
“Breakfast for dinner?”
“You just want my pancakes.”
“Correct!”
Taako sighs and starts clearing off the counter. “Do you want to help? Or just watch me and Ango?”
“Just watch, I think. I don’t want to ruin the suspense of your pancake recipe.”
“Ugh, fine. You,” he points at Angus, “are learning how to make Lup and Taako’s special pancake recipe.”
He leans in close so Magnus doesn’t hear, because apparently he doesn’t want to know how to make the most baller pancakes in the world. “The secret is that we use a waffle recipe instead.”
His eyes go wide and he nods enthusiastically.
“You keep that a secret, alright? No one needs to know that the best and only tasty pancakes out there are only good because they’re meant to be waffles.”
“Of course, sir! Yours and Miss Lup’s secret is safe with me.”
“No ‘sirs,’” he says again, and wonders why Angus has such a hard time dropping the honorific. While it’s not particularly bad, and he’ll accept it from the students at his school, he doesn’t like it from Angus.
“Ah, sorry s- Taako.” His smile gets a little wobbly. Taako plucks the hat from his head. If he’s gonna learn something as complex as breakfast food, he’ll need his eyes. Taako really should get him one his own size.
“Alright buddo. Here’s what we need to do.”
By the time they’re done mixing and about ready to start pouring onto the skillet, Magnus has stolen two more cookies and Taako practically kicks him out of his own kitchen. He watches kind of pathetically from the doorway, nibbling on the cookie and petting Johann.
While Angus starts pouring quarter cups of batter into the skillet, Taako starts on bacon. Another pan. He’ll have to wait to do potatoes until the bacon is done, they always taste better cooked in the bacon grease. A pot is set up to make applesauce, and he’s got a whole egg bake happening in the oven. Angus picked up on pancake making surprisingly quick, though he’s still a little messy at flipping them. The batter drags on the skillet a bit too much, but they’re otherwise fine.
A rift opens in the living room and Taako barely hears it, engrossed in cooking. He can hear Lup and Barry chatting with Magnus, and the dogs barking in excitement at the prospect of there being magically more people in the house. Cool arms wrap around his waist and a quiet greeting is said to Angus from Kravitz.
“Hello sir!”
“No ‘sirs,’” Taako says, turning his head to give Kravitz a kiss on the edge of his mouth. He looks exhausted, dropping his head on his shoulder, and Taako gives his arm a pat while he flips the bacon, knowing he just needs the contact right now.
“How’re those pancakes coming along, Angus? Hopefully my brother didn’t teach you the wrong way to make pancakes.”
“Hello Miss Lup!” At least he tacks Lup’s name on the back of the ‘miss.’ That he’ll let slide. He’s just so uncomfortable with the idea of Angus feeling the need to call them all ‘Sirs and Ma’ams.’ And Lup can tell him off if she wants to. “And don’t worry! Taako taught me your secret way of making pancakes.”
“Oh?” She looks amused. It’s not so much a secret in their family as Magnus doesn’t want the mystery spoiled for him. “And what secret is that?”
He beckons her down closer so the secret doesn’t carry, and Taako grins down into the bacon, enjoying himself in the smells of breakfast cooking. Kravitz mutters something unintelligible into his shirt and Taako hands him a finished piece of bacon. He munches on it quietly.
“Long day?” He asks quietly.
“Very long,” Kravitz answers. “Glad it’s over.”
“You get to have me and Ango’s breakfast bash for dinner tonight, so that’s a plus for your day.”
He feels a huff of laughter against his neck and smiles again. He taps Angus on the shoulder, pulling him from his conversation with Lup. “You wanna take a stab at making this apple sauce? I’ll take over pancakes.”
Angus nods, and they shuffle around each other, Kravitz still practically stuck to his back. That’s fine, he’s cooked with a person clinging to him before, not like it makes him incapable of pouring and flipping. Angus grabs the cinnamon, double checking the label, and Lup raises an eyebrow at that. Taako directs her to the pile of rose extract chocolate chip cookies and she nearly spits out her bite.
“What the fuck happened to these cookies, bro bro?”
“Maggie got rose extract and it got all mixed up with the vanilla. We made a good batch, but if you wanna give one of those to Barold for me I’d love you forever.”
Her face splits into a grin. Angus turns to their conversation. “I never got to taste one of those. Are they really that bad?”
“Oh Angus,” Lup says. “They’re very flowery.”
He holds out a hand and she stares at it for a second before slowly handing him a cookie. He takes a bite, pausing in mashing up the apples, and he’s quiet for a moment.
“…It’s not so bad,” he says.
“You don’t gotta lie to yourself about your cooking, pumpkin.” Taako’s trying to see if he’s lying, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that he’s not. It’s a horrifying realization.
“I’m not,” he says, taking another bite, and he can see Lup’s shocked face gaping at him.
“Lulu, I need you to go try that cookie on Bluejeans right the fuck now.”
She practically sprints out of the room, and then she’s dragged him into the kitchen, shoving a cookie in his hand and pushing it towards his mouth.
“Lup, what the fuck—,” she manages to shove it in his mouth and he bites down on instinct, chewing reluctantly.
Everyone stares, waiting. He chews, contemplating. “Is this a new recipe? Because I kinda like it.”
Angus cheers, and Lup and Taako screech in horror. “Barold! Get away from my sister right fucking now! Nasty jeans man!”
“What? It’s a good mix.”
“Score one for Angus McDonald!”
Kravitz holds his hand out and Angus hands him his half eaten cookie. He takes a bite of it and Taako can feel him make a face.
“It’s, uh, it’s certainly interesting, Angus.”
“Oh thank god my spooky boyfriend has taste.”
Taako hands him half of one of the actual good cookies and hands the rose one back to Angus. He munches on it happily as he mashes up the apples, sprinkling in cinnamon intermittently at Taako’s request. Lup takes over on bacon duty and, when that’s finished, starts on the potatoes. Barry and Magnus are talking animatedly about their recent excursions with the occasional drop in of fact checking from Angus or Lup. Kravitz seems to regain some of his agency and unslumps from Taako’s back, still keeping at least a hand on him. Merle gets there when everything’s almost done, busting into to kitchen like he wasn’t invited in the first place, slamming a couple bottles of Definitely Not For Angus liquid onto the table.
It feels like family.
He’s smiling as he flips the last pancake. It hasn’t been all that long since they got together like this, but it feels really, really good. Lup bumps his arm, and he looks at her.
“You’re grinning all goofy over there, bro bro. What’s on your mind?”
“Just, happy.” He doesn’t feel the need to lie right now. Lup knows him, and they’re being quiet enough that no one’s going to eavesdrop.
“Oh?” She switches over to elvish, and even that feels good. “Any reason why?”
“Family’s back together, Lulu.” He flips the last pancake onto one of the resting plates he’s got set up for the frankly ridiculous amount of pancakes he’s ended up making and shuts off the burner. “Look at them. They’re all happy. It just feels… right?”
“Sap,” she snickers, pulling the egg bake out of the oven and shoveling the potatoes into a bowl. Angus is still watching over the applesauce, even though at this point it’s just being kept warm. He gives them a look like he’s trying to figure out what they’re saying but can’t. Taako reminds himself to get him started on learning elvish. “Can’t believe you’re getting all mushy on me while you’re making pancakes for your family, Taako. Totally out of character.”
“Yeah, yeah whatever. You love them too.”
“Aww!” His ears prick back as Magnus practically rushes him. “Taako loves us!”
He’s swung up into his arms and fuck, he always forgets Magnus speaks elvish.
“Fuck off with your slander, Maggie! I love no one and nothing!”
He blows an embellished kiss in Kravitz’s direction just so he knows he’s just keeping up appearances, and Kravitz makes a show of catching it and pressing it to his heart. Taako can feel the blush rising up to his ears.
Magnus spins him around, handing him a few plates of pancakes while he’s carried to the table and says, “We love you too.”
He doesn’t smile, he has a façade to uphold, but he does press back against him a little more.
Kravitz sits on one side of him, Angus on the other, and the others scatter around the table. They dish up their food, and Taako spreads his applesauce on top of his pancakes instead of syrup like their Aunt taught them to do when they were little. Angus watches him, and then copies, and his eyes light up like a Candlenights tree.
“This is delicious, s- Taako!”
He bumps him a little. “You’re the one that made it, Agnes. I’m not the one you should be telling that to.”
He can see the smile on the boy detective’s face as he takes another bite and doesn’t even feel bad about how little teasing he’s done today.
Taako leans on Kravitz near the end of his meal, putting his hat back on Angus’s head. Lup throws a potato square at him and he catches it easily, popping it in his mouth.
He grabs Angus after dinner to do dishes with him. Technically, the rule is that those that don’t cook clean, but he’d like to have a private chat while the rest of them go and get wine drunk in the living room. Angus accepts this seemingly without a second thought. Taako knows better than that, though. He’s been around the world’s greatest detective long enough to know he always second guesses his interactions.
Taako takes washing and puts Angus on drying duty.
“You wanted to talk, s- Taako?”
Yep, there it is. “What’s up with all the ‘sirs,’ little man? Not that I don’t appreciate the formality, but we’re a little past that, don’tcha think?”
“Oh,” Angus says, scrubbing a little harder with his towel at a plate. “Force of habit, hard to break.”
“Anything we’re doing wrong to make you think you gotta call us ‘sir’ and ‘miss’ all the time?”
“Oh no, Taako! Not at all. I know it makes you uncomfortable when I call you ‘sir,’ but no one else ever really says anything about it? So it’s a harder habit to break when no one’s calling me out on it all the time.”
“That’s why you gotta come to my school. We’ll break you out of that one real quick.”
Angus laughs. Then he’s quiet again.
“People don’t like nosy little kids getting into their business all the time, trying to uncover secrets. They like you a little more if you address them with respect.”
Taako chews on that for a moment. “That the only place you got it from?”
Angus seems to have a battle with himself, setting down the pan he’s working on. “My, um, my parents preferred to be addressed with respect, too.”
“Gotcha.”
Angus looks at him quickly before looking back down at his hands, picking the pan back up. Taako shoves the hat down over his eyes, and Angus squeaks.
“Any, um, reason you don’t like being called ‘sir?’”
Taako does take a second to think that one over. It’s not that he hates it, it just feels wrong. “Just don’t like it. ‘Sir’ was for fancy fucks when me and Lulu were growing up, and we were anything but that. I guess we could be considered fancy fucks now, but that doesn’t mean I like it. And if I’m being honest, it makes me most uncomfortable when you do it.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you Ango. Who else am I talking to, Johann the dog? Made me think I’d done something wrong to make you uncomfortable for a while.”
“Oh, I’m sorry Taako. I can… I can try to stop if you like?”
“Don’t worry about it. I mean that.”
“But you—”
“You shouldn’t have to worry about me, Angus.” He uses his actual, given name, and Angus looks at him again. “Really. I feel like you might wanna try and break outa the habit just cause it’s from what I’m assuming are some not so great memories that I for sure never want associated with me or Magnus or anyone else I know and care about, but if it makes you less nervous or whatever the fuck then say it.”
Angus is quiet again, rubbing the dishes dry in silence, and Taako stiltingly hums out an old song he learned on a planet whose name he can’t recall.
“Do you ever get nightmares, sir?”
The question comes from nowhere, and it’s almost too quiet for him to catch. He doesn’t give an answer for a minute, letting it sit in the air.
“Yup. Sure do, Mango.”
He nods to himself, and it disrupts the wizard hat, so he shoves it up out of his eyes again.
“Does it…” he stops himself, thinking over his words, and Taako lets him. The noises from the living room are loud, but this moment in here is serious, he doesn’t want to break it just for some ill timed goof. “Does being awake ever feel wrong?”
“What do you mean by wrong?”
“Like, not right. A little off. Like you could be asleep but you know you’re not. Or you think you’re not, but you’re not quite sure? Or, um, or, hmm.”
“Like you shouldn’t be awake?” He waits until Angus gives him a small nod before continuing down where he hopes this isn’t going. “Like you don’t feel right being alive?”
Angus gives a barely perceptible nod, made obvious only by the hat. Taako bites at his cheek. Figures the kid’s got some trauma from all the shit he went through.
“I get that sometimes,” is what he says eventually.
Angus wrings the towel in his hands and doesn’t look up to get the next dish. He looks so small. Taako knows he’s getting taller, that he might get taller than him one day, but right now, hunched over his damp towel, wizard hat dwarfing him, he looks so little, too little for this.
“Me too,” he whispers.
“You talk to anyone about it other than me?”
He shakes his head no, and that sounds about right.
“You wanna?”
“It feels wrong, talking about it.”
Dammit. He was hoping the kid didn’t have his same bottle it up tendencies, but it looks like that ship’s sailed. “It’s better if you do.”
“Do you mean that, sir? Or are you just trying to make me feel better?”
“Little bit of both if we’re being honest. Lup’s been trying to get me to talk to someone about it other than her and Krav for the past forever, and I keep refusing. Strangers don’t deserve my sob story, you feel?”
“Mmhm.”
“But,” he says, wincing. “I’m also real bad at talking about shit, bubeleh. Way too bad to be giving you advice on what to do with your trauma. I’m the model of what you shouldn’t do. So what you definitely should do is go and talk to someone about it.”
“Only if you do too, sir.”
“That’s low and dirty Ango.” He smiles a little. “We’ve taught you well.”
“I mean it, sir. If you go and talk to someone about not feeling good in your body sometimes, I will too.”
“Fuck kid, don’t drag me down like this. I’ve got the Taako reputation to uphold.”
“There’s no reputation if you’re dead, sir.”
It’s said so flatly that it almost doesn’t register, and when it does his blood runs cold. “Hey, whoa, no one said anything about dying, Ango. That’s a real big step from where we just were. You hear me? That’s a real big bad step. Plus a bunch of people in your family are reapers so that shit ain’t gonna fly. Not like it would if they weren’t reapers, but a point is being made here.”
Angus snorts, and the cold, icy grip on his heart loosens just a bit. “You gotta tell me we’re not talking about dying here, and you can’t lie to me. I will get Merle to cast Zone of Truth on your ass just to make sure we’re not going anywhere too super scary with this, alright?”
Angus takes the initiative himself and casts Zone of Truth anyways, and he can see him willingly fail his check. He does too, just for shits and giggles.
“Not really,” is what Angus says. “Bad one off thought.”
“Good,” he says. “Keep it that way. Or you tell me if it’s not. I need you to promise me you’re gonna tell me if that comes back.”
“I promise, Taako.”
His shoulders sag and his inhibitions are gone as he drags Angus into a big, authentic, real feely hug. He hears a sniffle from the kid in his arms and sighs, holding him closer.
“Hey! Who cast Zone of Truth?” Merle yells from the living room. “I just told Barry his jeans looked good, and I need to know who I gotta hurt to make that go away!”
Angus giggle snorts into his shirt, and Taako rubs circles in his back.
“We all knew it wasn’t just plants that got you going, old man,” he yells back. “Now we know it’s Barold’s ass in his luxury fucking jeans!”
“They’re not luxury!”
Angus lets out one last little sniff before pulling away from the hug. He takes a second to compose himself and Taako does his best to put his mask of indifference back on.
“You wanna go hang with the fam?”
“Of course, sir!”
Taako throws him a juice from Magnus’s fantasy fridge so that he has something to sip on while all the adults get drunk off their asses and see who can stay standing the longest. The answer is Kravitz, because he’s actually physically dead, but Lup will probably take second.
Once Zone of Truth has dispelled and people have stopped talking about whether or not Barry’s butt is attractive in his discount denim, the party dies back down a little bit. Angus sits pressed against one of Taako’s legs with the newest Caleb Cleveland book, looking up occasionally to make a comment.
They retire well after midnight and, predictably, Kravitz takes first place yet again. Alcohol doesn’t affect him like it does everyone else, though he is a little tipsy, a little looser. Lup and Barry come in at a tie, lichdom granting them a higher alcohol tolerance, in Barry’s case apparently even higher than that of an elf as Taako refuses the drink he knows he’d regret. Angus gets another juice before going to bed, and he’s practically sleeping in his book by the time everyone decides to call it a night.
Magnus has a lot of extra rooms in his house just for stuff like this, and Taako and Kravitz eventually make their way into the room they usually take. Magnus gives him a wet affectionate kiss on his cheek before they go, and Taako shoves him off half heartedly. He grabs Merle up in what could be considered a hug but if asked was just a ploy for balance, and pats Barry’s face a few times. Lup gets a real twin hug, and Angus gets another real mushy affectionate hug.
As they’re sinking into the covers, Kravitz mumbling about his day of reaping, a knock comes from their door.
“C’mon in then.”
Angus creaks the door open slowly, peeking his face in like he’s doing something he shouldn’t.
“You want some sleeping buddies?”
His lips thin and he nods. “O-Only if you’re okay with it, sirs. I know I’m getting much too old for this, I mean, I’m almost thirteen, and it’s not like I really need—”
“Ango just get under these soft ass covers.”
“It’s fine, Angus,” Kravitz says, much more subdued.
He still looks uncomfortable as he makes his way to the bed, curling in next to Taako. He’s stiff as a board, and Taako sighs. Guess Taako gets to be middle spoon tonight and Kravitz gets to take over big. He spiders his arms around Angus until he relaxes into the pillows under him, and Kravitz leans into him.
“Y-You’re sure this isn’t—”
“Mmmmm, it’s not Agnes. You just get some of that good good sleep like the rest of us.”
He nods and breathes slowly, deeply. Taako can feel it when he falls asleep fully, asleep enough that he won’t wake up if Taako whispers.
“Kravvy,” he says into the quiet late night air.
“Mhm?”
“Keep an eye on Ango with your whole death sight for a while, will you?”
Kravitz goes still behind him, his false breathing stopping. “What’s—”
“Nothin’ too serious I don’t think. Just a real enlightening convo after dinner.”
“Of course.”
He squeeze the hand around his waist. “Thanks, Bone Man.”
A kiss is pressed to his neck as a response, and the fake breathing picks back up. It’s for Taako’s sake, he knows. He’s almost perfected the art of keeping it going all night. Taako drifts into sleep not long after.
He wakes up to Angus sitting up ramrod straight, body shaking. A quick check finds it to be almost seven thirty. Not a respectable time to get up, especially not after the night they had. He squeezes a hand at Angus’s wrist and feels him calm down, dropping slowly back into the bed.
“All good?”
“All good,” he says in a shaky little voice. It cracks a little, but he’ll ignore that. Angus curls back into his arms, breaths still stuttering, but he’s coming down slowly. They both fall back asleep after that, Taako a little more aware.
They’re all three woken up by Lup, knocking on the door. “Up, all of you! I didn’t slave away at this breakfast for nothing. I had to keep Barry’s bad cooking mitts away from all the food just to make it taste good.”
Taako hears Barry say something behind the door but can’t make it out. Probably standing up for his lack of cooking ability.
It’s closer to eleven now, a much more respectable time to get up in the morning. Angus stretches up and out of bed with a discontented noise and Kravitz wakes slowly, tightening his grip around Taako before sliding up. Taako stays down the longest, blinking his eyes open slowly. That’s the first fully restful sleep he’s gotten in a while.
The food smells like dinner food, and he almost laughs because it’s so obvious what she did. Because they had breakfast for dinner, they’re having dinner for breakfast. Kravitz’s stone of farspeech starts blinking, and he stares at it before sighing.
“Duty calls, I suppose.”
“I’ll save you some food.”
He kisses Taako briefly before slicing the rift back to the Astral plane. Angus scrubs at his eyes under his lopsided glasses and heads out towards the food. Taako follows not too far behind.
Lup hands him a plate and a cup of tea, which he practically inhales.
In the early morning, surrounded by his family, he smiles into his tea. Angus catches it before anyone else and mirrors it back at him. The room is bathed in sunlight, and he watches them all eat and laugh and talk to each other like nothing ever came between them. He breathes easy.