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Chapter Text

Kravitz watched Taako as he lounged in a clearing - well, levitated in a lounging position, so as to avoid actually touching the ground. Occasionally he waved a lazy finger and a conjured servant lowered a bunch of grapes to his mouth. It was hard to tell, but Kravitz was fairly certain the young god was turning the grapes into chocolate truffles as they touched his lips.

Without knowing why, Kravitz regretted having to end the scene of lazy hedonism laid before him. Perhaps because Taako seemed to enjoy his stolen life so thoroughly. Rules were rules, though, and Taako’s name was in the book. Kravitz shrugged. Every living thing must die.

Kravitz shrugged the indecision off his shoulders and stepped forward into the clearing. Taako didn’t appear to notice until Kravitz was nearly looming over him.

“Hail and well met, my dude,” he drawled when Kravitz caught his eye. With a long, cat-like stretch Taako dismissed the servant and stood, drifting softly to the ground. His eyes wandered up and down Kravitz’s black robes, a smirk on his face. “Love your look.”

Slightly perturbed, Kravitz raised a hand and summoned the book of the dead. It fell open immediately to the proper page. Kravitz focused his eyes there, although he knew already what it said, rather than meet Taako’s eyes. “I’ve come to take you to the underworld, Taako. It seems you’ve cheated death - death has come to collect.”

Much to his dismay, Taako snorted. “No can do, man. My schedule’s full up. Sorry to waste your time.”

Kravitz raised an eyebrow and the book disappeared, allowing him to hold his scythe in both hands. “This’ll be a lot easier if you come peacefully,” he offered. As he spoke, the flesh melted away from his face, leaving him in his grim skeleton form.

Taako laughed. “You know, you were way more enticing before. Just a tip.” He didn’t even attempt to move out of the way.

Well, Kravitz thought, the cocky ones are always easy. His scythe flashed through the air like lightning, swinging toward Taako’s neck. In the same heartbeat, Taako raised a hand to block it. Kravitz winced - it would have been better if he just took the blow to the neck, that would have been painless.

He completed the swing, but the blow didn’t land on Taako. Kravitz looked down, dumbfounded, to find his scythe transformed into a baguette - pleasantly warm, crusty, not at all deadly. Smirking, Taako pulled the loaf out of Kravitz’s unresisting hands and broke it in half, releasing the smell of freshly baked bread into the air.

“That’s a good bake,” he said, handing back half the baguette. Finally he did step back, just as Kravitz began to recover from the shock. “Hey hot stuff, what’s your name?”

“I go by Kravitz,” he answered automatically, searching for a back-up plan. His primary weapon had been turned into bread. He felt quite out of his depth.

“Kravitz, how do you feel about tentacle porn?”

Before Kravitz could do even wrap his head around that, black tentacles began to writhe up from the ground, curling around his legs. “What- your domain is food! How are you doing this?”

In the moment he’d been distracted, Taako had apparently summoned some kind of steed, which leveled Kravitz with a disturbingly intelligent stare. Taako shrugged. “I like to think of myself as a triple threat.”

The ethereal bicorn began to gallop off, leaving Kravitz entangled. As he disappeared from sight, Taako made some gesture with his hand by his ear - it was hard to make out - and called back, “Call me!”

Kravitz had failed to catch his mark before. It was to be expected, when one was reaping the souls of gods and all sorts of powerful creatures. Sometimes even vanilla mortals, when particularly crafty, could give him a run for his money. But they couldn’t run forever.

That said, Kravitz had never had a missed mark show up in his realm not a week after escaping him before. It put him right off his stride.

“Taako?” Kravitz raised a hand and his scythe appeared in it. Thankfully, it had returned to normal form when he banished and summoned it again. He narrowed his eyes. “Somehow I doubt you are here to surrender your soul.”

“I don’t do commitment,” Taako grinned and stuck his hands into the pockets of his skirt. “I was thinking more like dinner.”

Kravitz balked. Taako winked.

“You want to have dinner? With me?”

“Who else could I be talking to, big guy?”

Kravitz actually looked around, taking in a few stray souls shuffling about. A handful seemed to be watching the proceedings with interest, shooting encouraging looks. “Me, the god who tried to reap your soul. Who, incidentally, is still planning to do that?”

Taako continued to smile patiently. When Kravitz continued to stare, he shrugged. “That’s a misunderstanding. My people are working it out. I was thinking Fantasy Olive Garden?”

At some point, Kravitz decided to give up being confused. “Yes, fine.” He vanished his scythe and rendered his robes slightly more street-appropriate. “How do we-” get there, he began to say, before Taako summoned his ethereal horse-thing once again.

The bicorn met Kravitz’s wide eyes directly. “Yo, skeleton man.”

Kravitz suspected he would never really give up being confused. Not around Taako, anyway.

Dinner was surprisingly pleasant. Taako prodded Kravitz about his hobbies (none), his interests (few), and his domain (depressing), and seemed unbothered by his grim outlook. Kravitz asked Taako how he gained powers outside his domain, and received a surprisingly honest answer. He found himself pleased by Taako’s moment of vulnerability, which was why he forced himself to bring up the fantasy elephant in the room.

“Taako…” Kravitz frowned. For once didn’t want to talk business. “What is this? I mean, is that some kind of attempt to… to butter me up, so I won’t do my job?”

Taako reached across the table to take Kravitz’s hand - uttering a soft “whoa!” at his cold skin. “No way. I mean, it’d be pretty rude if you killed me at dinner, but I actually wasn’t lying when I said I have that handled.”

Kravitz could not believe that, but he put it aside, for the moment. “So this was a personal call…”

“Yeah,” Taako rolled his eyes. “I made it pretty clear I was interested, I mean there aren’t a whole lot of eligible gods out there.”

“You made it pretty clear? Mostly I remember you attacking me with tentacles.”

“Hot stuff? Call me?” Taako raised an eyebrow. “I actually thought the tentacle porn line would be a dead giveaway, but it’s cool if you’re not into that.”

Kravitz thought about that for a long minute. “You are either a very bad or a very prolific flirt.”

Taako shrugged. “Why not both, my guy?”

Chapter Text

Istus, Pan, and the Raven Queen are sort of upper-echelon gods.

The Bureau of Balance is a collection of minor gods.

The Director: goddess of the moon, management, secrets
Killian: goddess of warriors, order, hunting (read: ducks)
Carey: goddess of thieves, deceit, illusion
Avi: god of gateways, travel, occasionally booze
Johan: god of music, performance, memory
Lucas: god of technology, scientists, elevators
Leon: god of enchantment, chance
Angus: god of learning, knowledge, discovery
Robbie: god of dank potions and junk food, obviously

Merle: a favorite servant of Pan (though by all accounts a bad one), god of repair, regrowth, honesty.
Magnus: god of builders, carpenters, the hearth.
Taako: his domain was specifically cooking/food but after a favored worshiper (Sazed) tricked him into poisoning a temple full of people he ended up branching out into some weird places. Now it is cooking as well as orphans and, nebulously defined, self preservation.

Chapter Text

Kravitz hadn’t explored his own domain - well, his corner of the Raven Queen’s domain - in centuries, so he was honestly a little surprised to find out that anything could grow in the Underworld, let alone a whole garden. It was actually Taako who found it, and pointed it out to Kravitz when he dropped by to arrange another date. (Kravitz continued to wonder how exactly Taako kept getting into the Underworld, but he wasn’t going to ask. The last thing he wanted was more trouble for Taako.)

They took a stroll through the garden, Taako pointing out the different kinds of fruits and Kravitz introducing Taako to some of the spirits milling about. Kravitz found it embarrassingly romantic.

“Pomegranates, fuck yeah!” Taako pulled away to pluck a fruit from a small tree. “You put these in a salad with some spinach and chicken and-” He produced a knife from somewhere, scored around the fruit, and pulled the halves apart in a practiced, efficient move. Kravitz was mesmerized for a moment before he remembered himself, and darted forward to catch Taako’s wrist.

“Wait, Taako! If you eat that, you’ll have to stay in the Underworld.” As the words left his mouth, Kravitz remembered that technically he was supposed to be making Taako stay in the Underworld, because he was supposed to be dead and all. “And, uh, you don’t do commitment, remember?”

Taako blinked up at Kravitz, a hint of a smile on his face. He vanished the pomegranate and shifted so Kravitz held his hand rather than his wrist. “Thanks babe, you really saved my ass there!” He tugged Kravitz along the path and continued rattling off recipes that featured the various fruits of the garden.

Kravitz didn’t think of the pomegranates again for weeks, until Taako greeted him at their arranged meeting point by shoving a cardboard box at him. Inside were rows of pink-shelled macarons with dark filling, each one perfectly baked and assembled.

“They look delicious, Taako,” Kravitz immediately took one and bit into it, while Taako stared expectantly.

“Pomegranate macarons with dark chocolate ganache,” Taako preened, with that particular focus he had when he talked about cooking. “The trick is getting the batter to just the right consistency before you pipe the shells. And the pomegranate juice reduction, of course.”

Kravitz was halfway through his second cookie before it hit him. “Taako, where did you get the pomegranate seeds?”
“The real question you should be asking is where I got all those other ingredients.” Taako popped a macaron into his mouth and grinned with his mouth full. “Because at least some of them came from my realm. Now, I’m a simple idiot wizard, so I’m thinking instead of doing all the math, we just go splitsies between the realms and call it even.”

“I… don’t think that’s how it works,” Kravitz said, staring at the cookie in his hand. But if anyone could make it work… he looked up at Taako’s face, smug and self-satisfied. He looked as cool as ever, but he was carrying on about his macaron recipe, half-turned so Kravitz couldn’t see his eyes.

Kravitz shoved the remains of his macaron into his mouth. And then ate another. He wiped the crumbs off on his pants and took Taako’s hand, stalling his ramble. “Can we still go splitsies even if I eat most of the macarons?”

Taako smiled again, less smug and more genuine. “I dunno my dude, if you can’t control your sweet tooth you might have to get used to Chez Taako.”

“Well maybe if Chez Taako were a little more organized-”

“Why do you think I’m trying to nail you down, bone dog? Easier than finding a godly cleaning service.”

“Uh huh. I’m gonna make a chore wheel. And Taako?”

“Hmm?”

“I’ll always appreciate your cooking. But next time, just ask me to move in.”

Chapter Text

The raven lands right in the popcorn bucket, which is kind of embarrassing. Kravitz pulls it out so it can perch on his hand, moving on automatic. Ravens always mean a summons from the Raven Queen, and if the Raven Queen is summoning him…

Taako is kneeling in his seat to argue with the old man seated behind him. “If I were you, gramps, I wouldn’t be heckling the grim reaper on his movie date, capiche?”

The raven’s head swivels to Taako and then back to Kravitz, little black eyes emotionless, for all the disapproval Kravitz feels there. “Bring him,” the bird croaks, and vanishes as suddenly as it appeared.

“Yeah, keep going buddy, you’re just digging your own grave. Get it? Because my boyfriend is the grim reaper and you’re old and therefore close to death?” Kravitz tugs on the back of Taako’s shirt, pulling him back where he’s leaning halfway out of the chair.

“Taako?” Whatever Taako saw when he turned to answer Kravitz cleared the smirk from his face. Kravitz stood and Taako took his arm, pulling him down the aisle and out the nearest emergency exit door.

“What’s up, Krav?” Taako asked, once they were out under the sun. An alarm was sounding inside the theatre but he considered that to be firmly a Mortal Problem.

“I’ve been summoned by the Raven Queen,” Kravitz said. “Taako, you have to- you should go, somewhere. I’ll just… tell her I couldn’t find you.” Not that she would believe him, but she wouldn’t call him out on it. Probably. Maybe. Even if it didn’t work, it’d be better than just bringing Taako to her which he had just realized was unacceptable.

Taako didn’t look phased by this. He crossed his arms, picking at the sleeve of his crop top. “I told you I had that handled. She wants you to bring me with?”

Kravitz nods, jaw clenched.

“Alright bone dog, let’s go!” Taako prodded Kravitz’s arm, waiting for him to materialize the scythe. Kravitz didn’t move, staring pleadingly at Taako. “Babe, I’m not afraid of your mom.”

Kravitz held out a moment longer before he sighed and summoned the scythe. There really was no arguing with Taako, never mind the dread in his stomach. “She’s not my mom, Taako,” Kravitz said, and opened the portal.

The Raven Queen’s throne is black and unfathomable, high enough above Kravitz that looking up at her give him vertigo. Her face is serene and blank - not comforting or threatening, but inevitable. The feathers of her cloak gleam blue and green amidst the black, the colors shifting like an oil slick despite her impossible stillness. Kravitz isn’t afraid of his boss, in general, but it is hard not to be, in her throne room.

There’s also a goat-man, leaning casually against one arm of the throne, smiling as he chats with the goddess of death. He waved at Taako as they walked in.

“Taako! Doing alright?” Pan called to Kravitz’s boyfriend as they draw near the throne.

“Taako’s always good,” Taako said, complete with finger guns. Kravitz didn’t understand existence any more. “How’s your pet dwarf?”

“Merle’s good, he says hi. Thanks for helping him out with that, by the way.” Pan looked a little sheepish - Ha, sheepish, the functional part of Kravitz’s mind helpfully supplied - his cloven feet shuffling on the black marble floor.

“Well, he’s an idiot, he needed the help.” Taako shrugged. He leaned back comically to peer up at the Raven Queen, probably only keeping upright with a subtle levitation spell. “Are we all sorted out then? Kravvie here is about three breaths away from a panic attack.”

The Raven Queen… snorted, and then shifted slightly, and suddenly she was standing in front of the throne, only slightly taller than Kravitz. She turned toward Pan, smirking. “You tell Istus we’re even now, and the two of you can quit nagging me about it.” Pan nodded, throwing Kravitz and Taako a quick wink as she turned to face her reaper.

“Kravitz, the book.” Dumbly, Kravitz lifted his left hand, the book of the death coming into existence over it and falling open immediately to Taaco, Taako.

“Taako, you are hereby pardoned,” the Raven Queen said, and the bounty for Taako disappeared.

Kravitz watched as the book shut and vanished. “Wait,” he said, still looking at his empty hand. “When you said you had your people working on it you meant Pan and Istus?”

Taako looked as smug the day Kravitz met him. “Yeah, ‘cha boy’s got connections, baby.”

“Taako was helping out my buddy Merle on a favor for Istus,” Pan explained. “When he ‘died,’ so we told him we’d work it out with the Raven Queen. Istus won him off her in a poker game.”

“Istus is a cheat who knows how the cards will be dealt, and I would have let Taako go anyway,” the Raven Queen grumbled. “The poker game just expedited it. I’m very busy.”

“See Krav, told you it’d been fine. Your mom’s a reasonable lady,” Taako patted Kravitz hand as the Raven Queen and Pan smirked and shot each other conspiratory glances.

“My mom ordered me to reap your soul,” Kravitz didn’t yell, he just spoke slightly louder than he had intended. “I mean, she’s not my mom-” Kravitz’s jaw clicked shut on the rest of that sentence as everyone in the room started laughing at him.

“C’mon babe,” Taako said, as he forced back giggles and grabbed Kravitz’s hand. “We’ve got a date to finish, now that you don’t have to worry about my soul.”

Kravitz allowed himself to be dragged from the throne room, only pausing just before he went through the door to mouth “Thank you” to the gods still laughing at the foot of the throne.

The Raven Queen was impossible to read, but Kravitz thought she might have looked fond.