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Pokotho eventually learnt how to directly possess those in his hive - to live through them as if their body was his own. He decided to test this by possessing Emma. Paul couldn’t help the heartbroken sob that wrenched itself from his throat when he saw Emma - no, not Emma, she’d died for good, Pokotho now - eagerly run towards him, grin unnaturally wide as if he didn’t understand how to smile. His steps were too harsh, pounding against the earth - he later confessed that he barely knew how to walk.
Now that he was able to, he never stopped touching Paul. He would hug Paul tightly if the man seemed upset, genuinely believing that this form of comfort would cheer him up. He’d hold his hand because that’s what all of the couples did in classic musicals. He’d pull Paul into waltzes and tangoes, humming to himself happily as he finally got to play out his fantasies. He gave overdramatic, flowery confessions of love, straight out of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and every breath the god took brought Paul more anguish.
Emma would not have wanted this. She was good, she was kind, and she’d known her own mind. Big, romantic gestures hadn’t been her style, she was so different from Pokotho. The one time Paul had lost his temper and yelled this at Pokey, the god’s eyes went wide and doleful, almost like Bambi. Tears shone in those eyes - once a beautiful brown, now a sickly blue - and the Singular Voice’s bottom lip quivered with genuine sorrow as he stuttered:
“B-but… I thought you liked her better. I know I’m not handsome but I thought you found her prettier, so I was only trying to…”
Her voice was all wrong. Pokey’s musical baritone voice now came out of Emma’s lips, even his posture, the way he stood, was so unlike the woman Paul had once loved. As Pokey tried to explain why he’d done what he’d done, he raised a hand to brush against Paul’s face, face stricken when the former office worker shied away from his touch. He was even more devastated when Paul told him to go away, physically pushing the god because even though Paul despised him, he knew that Pokey wouldn’t hurt him - he genuinely believed that he loved Paul.
Pokey had no understanding of the more… physical aspects of love, and Paul was not willing to enlighten him. So when Pokey made Paul curl up in bed with him, they just talked, or Paul tried to drown out the sound of Pokey singing love ballads to him, somehow believing that this would make Paul love him back. One day, Paul cut the deity off in the middle of a particularly heartfelt rendition of ‘I Know You’ from Sleeping Beauty to ask:
“Do you ever regret what you’ve done?”
Pokey stopped singing and tilted Paul’s head up to look him in the eye. Then he replied:
“I regret every wasted hour and minute where I did not know you. I wasted my entire existence in solitude, I had no idea how wonderful love feels.”
Paul sighed heavily, forced to gaze into Pokotho’s eyes. The god still looked so sincere, so lovestruck, that Paul almost mistook the deity’s affection to be genuine. But he had to be playing some sort of mind game - he’d seen the way that Pokey could manipulate people into joining his hive. His tongue was not silver, or golden, but a slime-coated blue, forcing his poison down the throats of anybody drawn in by his honeyed words. He was trying to break Paul down emotionally, just because his will was stronger than the others. That’s what he told himself anyway, because he couldn’t bear to entertain the alternative.
When Pokey finally fell asleep, still humming even in the depths of his dreams, Paul allowed himself a moment of weakness. If he ignored the ever-present smell of slime emanating from Pokey, he could pretend he was in bed with Emma, cuddling with the woman he loved. He gathered the remains of his love into his arms and pressed a kiss against her forehead (he never allowed Pokey to kiss him, not on the lips, not on the hand). Then, he whispered the words he would never get to tell her:
“I love you.”
When Pokey woke up the next morning, and found Paul wrapped around him, he would undoubtedly draw the incorrect conclusion that Paul was beginning to love him back. But for now, Paul pretended that he and Emma’s hearts still had the ability to beat, and he placed Emma’s head against where his heart had been. He fell asleep with a smile on his face.