What was that look? He’d seen feral dogs friendlier than that. It was almost as if Hurley was the one being wronged, and not the grieving son that had to watch him touch his dead father.

It also did absolutely nothing to help his situation. If there was one thing he had not expected to have to deal with, it was getting turned on by a rich, heartless bastard at his own father’s funeral. The absurdity alone made it impossible for him to just ignore it, as much as he might have wanted to.

Malachi was hyperaware of every breath, every ‘sad’ little sigh; had his father’s death simply stripped him raw? Left him all too sensitive to every shift, too aware of every possibility?

Hurley squeezed the dead man’s broken neck, but all Malachi could think about was that cruel hand constricting his own.

He closed his eyes. Squeezed them shut ever tighter still, on the off-chance that once he opened them, he might see something easier to wrap his head around than three stiffs in one man’s funeral.

For all the solemnness he tried to maintain, the ghost of a smile cracked his façade.

“It would have been a far better use of his body, don’t you think?”

Why was he saying this. Why was he saying this to Chris Hurley.

“It’s rather wasteful, this. Letting him rot when he could have been put to use,” Malachi finally dared to open his eyes again. Why was- did Hurley just… smell it? The corpse? It smelled of chemicals and powder, how pleasant could that be?

Right, right. Malachi was weird, but this man was… really weird.

Suddenly it struck him that Hurley’s fascination might have been entirely different from his own. And- fuck, he had just said ‘put to use’ when his odd guest was over here holding the corpse by the neck and sniffing it.

“…He’s to be buried in the morning,” Malachi whispered, against all alarms that sounded in his head.