Skin and Bones (boyxboy) ✓

Chapter Eighteen

It was one thing to be carried around by someone when you're not the smallest guy and a totally different thing to be carried around as they leap through the air apparently unseen or ignored by anyone else below until they land back on your roof to deliver you home.

I couldn't look. I'm not afraid of heights but I'm sure as hell afraid of falling. I pressed my face up against his chest, breathed in and tried to ignore the fact that neither of us were on steady ground, the wind rushing through my hair as he jumped into the sky further than gravity normally allowed, without a parachute.

I climbed off him with unsteady legs as he set me down on the roof and finally unclamped my arms from around his shoulders, not wanting to let go even with the roof beneath me.

"I..." I swallowed. "That seems like a safety hazard..."

Death ignored me as he walked forwards towards the window. "I would never let you fall."

I put my hands on my knees trying to catch my breath. "Right, sure... but just in case..."

He squinted at me as I hobbled towards him like a man made of jelly. "We should probably strap me into a parachute or something next time."

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not travelling that high."

I walked up to the window and stopped, groaning. "Wait, why did we go to the roof? I can't open the window from the outside."

Death had the gall to laugh at that and I smacked him playfully on the shoulder, the idea of letting Death jump down three floors even with him crushing me with his grip was petrifying and I got the sneaking suspicion he was perhaps enjoying my fear. The slight smirk I saw on his lips when I made a mousey noise in response to a particularly strong gust of wind or the leap forwards from the floor that made my stomach fall and rise told me he at least found humour in it all.

However, luckily, the window wasn't actually locked, it was cracked open just a centimetre because it was the only way to air the living room. Of course technically that might be a bad idea but aside from Death I knew very few people who would go as far as climbing up to the roof to get inside someone's apartment.

So we stepped inside and the warmth was a relief. I switched on the lights and watched Death trail inside after me, closing the window behind him in the same way as before, the dark matter shutting it with a concerning snap.

And there he was, inside my apartment for a second time. Looking handsome as ever, a strangely dominating appearance in the slightly bare walls of the place. Beautiful and haunting.

The low light trickled in behind him, the lamp light directed towards him from his side. There was something about it that made every one of his features that much more sharp and bewitching, long eyelashes, a straight nose and thick lips. His perfect skin the biggest giveaway that he wasn't human at all.

I gulped, wringing my hands together out of nervousness.

So he was here. Now what? I didn't want him to leave.

"Do- Do you want some tea?"

He glanced at me as he sat himself down on the couch, spreading out and getting comfortable. He twisted a long finger in his hair and seemed to release a knot in it, his long black as space hair spilling out of nowhere and cascading down his side.

"Come." He demanded.

But the tenor of the voice, the underlying dominating tone, I felt like I knew where he was going with that and I wasn't totally sure what to do.

Climb him like a monkey frame?  Came the sound advice from the prepubescent kid in my head...

I didn't totally understand where he sudden buzz of anxiety came from, why I felt like sneaking around him, hiding and fumbling around.