The sensation of being shaken was the first thing that penetrated his sleep. Tobias’ voice followed, and the smell of alcohol came with it. Cracking his eyes blearily, he blinked up at Tobias, who was standing over him with a hand resting at his shoulder. It seemed at some point, he had drifted off while watching the television. It had been some program discussing various types of birds and their habitats, and that hadn’t been enough to keep him awake.
“What time is it?” He asked with a yawn, stretching the muscles that had found time to bunch up as he slept.
“Just past one.”
That woke him up more than before, as he had been asleep for just over three hours, if he correctly remembered the last time he’d looked at the clock. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, wanting to be up and about when Tobias emerged from the shower. From the smell of smoke and alcohol on him, however, it seemed that Tobias had found something to entertain himself with while Azrael snoozed on the hotel couch.
“You have been drinking.”
Tobias only nodded. “C’mon, we’re going up to the roof.”
Azrael stood, half pulled to his feet by Tobias’ insistent tugging. “The roof? Why?”
“Because it’s the only sort of place in this damned city where I ever felt safe and somewhat happy.”
He simply nodded and followed Tobias out into the hallway, and then to the elevator. The ride up was quiet, save for the sound of the machinery. Tobias was deep in thought, if the far off look in his eyes was any indication. There was still a feeling of tension about him, but he didn’t look nearly as aggressive and angry as before. If anything, he seemed more cautious and fearful than when they had first arrived.
“Tobias,” he began, now a little worried, but was interrupted by the ding of the elevator as the doors slid open onto the top floor of the hotel. Tobias walked out of the elevator, turning left and continuing on without a word. Frowning, Azrael had little choice but to follow him to the end of the hallway.
“That says we are not allowed up there,” Azrael pointed to the sign, indicating it was for employees only.
“Yeah, looks like the same door they had back then, too,” Tobias snorted, pulling out his wallet to slide a card between the door and the frame. Jiggling the handle for a moment, Tobias successfully popped open the door, returning the card to his pocket. Grinning impishly, he motioned for Azrael to follow him, mounting the stairs that led to another door.
The next door wasn’t locked, so Tobias was able to hit the bar in the middle of the door and send it swinging wide open. Azrael followed him through, watching as Tobias pulled a shoe off and slipped it between the door and the frame, preventing it from closing completely. From the look of the door, you needed a key to get back inside and Azrael understood Tobias’ action immediately.
Azrael turned around, taking in the sight of the city splayed out before them in a sea of buildings and glittering lights. They weren’t as high up as many of the buildings, but they were up high enough to feel separate from it, all the same. The sounds of the streets drifted faintly upward, soft background noise to the city before them.
“Amazing,” Azrael breathed as he stepped forward to take in the vista. It looked so different to what he had seen on the street level, yet everything down there could be seen from up here, too. All it took was a shift of perspective, and suddenly the city was just a wonder, rather than one fraught with possible danger and a sense of dizzying unease.
“Don’t go too close to the edge, Mr. Heights,” Tobias warned him, “we’re several stories up.”
Azrael inched forward to the edge, if only out of sheer stubbornness, to peer down. Dizziness passed over him as he stared over the edge to the street below. Though he knew they weren’t as high up as they had been in the mountains, it was something else to stare straight down from a height this substantial. There was no slope to break the sheer drop, making the distance between him and the ground brutally clear. Stepping back carefully, he shook himself with a slight sigh.
“Told you,” Tobias chuckled as he moved to the edge himself and sat down, letting his legs dangle over carelessly.
“That does not seem very safe, Tobias.”
“No, a good gust of wind could probably knock me off. Sometimes, I would sit on this roof, or on others around here, and just look out on the city. Some nights, I almost hoped that the wind would push me off. Sat on this roof once during a pretty bad storm. All that wind and lighting, and not once did I come close to falling.”
Azrael glanced around and realized there was nowhere to sit comfortably near Tobias that wouldn’t involve him also dangling his limbs off the building. “Heights were a comfort to you because they offered that danger?”
“Heights were comfortable to me because they were an escape. Being knocked off would have just been a permanent escape. It was just a thought in the moment, you know. If I had really wanted it to happen, I would have just cut out the middleman and thrown myself off one night. But that wasn’t the kind of escape I really wanted, and I didn’t really want to sit on rooftops all night either, but it was better than the alternative.”
Azrael resolved to simply stand there, crossing his arms across his chest. “What were you escaping from?”
“My life?”
“Is that not what brought you here in the first place, escaping your life?”
Tobias’ head snapped up, turning to glance at Azrael shyly. “I’ve done a lot of that in my life—running away. It’s what got me out of the hell that was my home as a kid, and it was what got me out of here eventually, which had become its own hell. Guess because it worked out for me the first couple of times, it just became a habit. Didn’t really think about how much I’ve run away from things until tonight, but I guess I can’t deny it either.”
“What were you running away from, Tobias?”
Tobias said nothing at first, turning his face to look back out onto the city, hiding his expression from Azrael’s view. Silently, he began kicking his feet out, and letting them drop back down just as quickly. The fidgeting was something Azrael had seen from Tobias before. It always heralded him talking about something serious, something that had been weighing heavily on him. It was as if he needed to build up some sort of momentum before he dove into speaking about what was going on in his head.
“I didn’t come to this city right away, you know that? I actually spent a few weeks on the road, not sure where I wanted to end up. Paul had given me the truck and some money, but he hadn’t given me anywhere to go. He’d offered for me to go with him then, but since I didn’t, I had nowhere else. Until I called him.”
“You called him?”
Tobias nodded slowly, with his face still turned away from Azrael. “I still remember the gas station I was at. It was in Virginia or something. I remember what it looked like, the smell of it. Hell, I even remember what the guy behind the counter looked like as I tried to make the call on the half-broken payphone shoved into the back. Paul left me his number when he’d fled, and that’s what I called. He told me to come here, to this city, where he had a place for us to stay together, if I wanted. He had a nice deal going with the landlord in the place he was living, and he could bring me into it, too.”
“Was that…here?”
Tobias shook his head. “No, this hotel was just one of my few…haunts. The place Paul and I lived in is gone by now, I’m sure. It was scheduled to be demolished the last time I got bold enough to look it up, years ago. I don’t want to know if it’s still there or not, I’d be too tempted to burn the fucker down. I dreamt about doing it then, and I would want to do it too badly now.”
Azrael edged forward, listening even as he tried to summon the courage to sit beside Tobias. “Was Paul lying?”
Tobias laughed at that, “That’s the worst thing about people. They don’t lie as much as you think, but they do like to tell half-truths, and it’s the half they don’t say that’ll get you in the end. I came up here alright, excited to have somewhere to be, somewhere to go, with someone I knew. I met up with Paul, and I met the landlord the same day. Jack was his name, and he was the nicest guy I ever met. Took one look at me and immediately agreed that I could live with Paul under the same arrangement. Didn’t tell me what the arrangement was though, just said he’d talk about it later. He let me have a couple of weeks of peace, and baited the hook until I was trapped.”
“You were held, against your will?”
Even as the question fell from his lips, he wanted to take it back. In all the millennia he had existed, hearing billions of tales from souls the world over, he had never wanted to hear a person’s story less than he did right now. This story was already wreaking havoc on Tobias, Azrael could tell from the way he curled in on himself. Azrael was unwilling to stop Tobias from telling the story, from picking at old wounds. He knew he needed to let him continue, but God in Heaven, how he didn’t wish to see him relive the pain all over again. Even if he thought facing the past was the best way to move on, it was another story to see the growing shadows of pain on the face of someone you loved.
“Not really? It was an apartment building that he owned. Not a very big one, but enough to have a dozen apartments in it that he used. Usually there were two or three people to each apartment, all guys. Paul and I had our own place together. And I got to live there for a couple of weeks, rent free, my own room, and Jack was even nice enough to help a lot with the groceries. Well, it seemed nice enough at the time. That’s another thing about people: they’ll make the worst poison taste sweet.”
Azrael was now afraid he knew where this story was going and inched closer to Tobias, nearly to the edge himself. “What was the poison?”
“I had to earn my keep,” Tobias said, his words flat. “That was what Jack told me when he finally pulled me aside. I won’t bother with the way he worded it, because it was just a really nice way of saying that he wanted me to sell my body to pay my way. I hadn’t even had sex yet, just a bit of fooling around as a kid, and a really embarrassing attempt to kiss Paul again after I had moved in. I didn’t know the first thing about being a whore. I tried to refuse but…well, Jack could be very persuasive when he wanted to be. I was seventeen, a runaway, guilted and threatened. I had no way to defend myself against him telling me I owed him for his keeping me for this long, for him putting me up, that I could be jailed and sent back home for running away, and for stealing from him.”
Tobias wouldn’t have been the first person he had known to be used like that. Humanity may have grown mighty in its collective power, but its individual transgressions never seemed to change. Part of him had hoped that perhaps this one sin might have died out. His horror at its existence was old, though no less diminished by time. It was the fact that Tobias had been one of those victims that drew the look of horror on his face.
“That...foulness. You were drawn into it?”
“Youth brings money,” Tobias told him, a bitter recitation of words he’d probably heard told to him before. “And my inexperience didn’t matter, anyway. Jack told me that I would learn, then he took care of it, and made sure I would have a very good idea of what was expected of me.”
Azrael felt a twist in his stomach. “Took…took care of it?”
“Took care of it.”
“Tobias,” he breathed, hearing the haunting emotion behind that short sentence. Tobias however, kept his face turned resolutely forward, refusing to look at Azrael. He couldn’t look away from Azrael any further without putting his back to him. And Azrael wasn’t sure if Tobias was simply lost in the memories or if he was afraid of what would happen if he looked at him directly. Azrael wanted so badly to touch him, but feared shattering the strength Tobias was using to speak.
“After that, he made sure I always had some ‘clients.’ His word for them, not mine. They were just a bunch of dirty men who didn’t care what they were screwing, so long as it was young and good looking.” Tobias’ voice took on a hard edge, his jaw tightening. He paused long enough to root around in his pocket and bring out a rumpled pack of cigarettes. Seeing the pack opened, and some of the cigarettes gone, Azrael realized where the smoky smell on Tobias had come from.
“I have never seen you smoke before,” he said, his voice quiet as he crouched to ease his legs over the edge without looking down. As the smoke billowed about Tobias, Azrael was struck by the sight of him against the backdrop of the city. For a moment, Azrael would have sworn he was seeing into the past. It was too easy to see the world-weary kid, already mature at the age of 17. It was a short-lived illusion, disappearing the moment Tobias shifted. Yet, having seen it, it was all the harder to resist the urge to reach across and touch Tobias.
“I quit after I left here, seemed like a good moment to try it again,” Tobias lit one of them, inhaling to release a cloud of blue-gray smoke. “Awful things, I hate them, remind me of being here. But, it seemed like an okay idea when I bought them. It was just another escape for me.”
“He turned you into a prostitute.”
Tobias nodded, not once glancing at Azrael even as he settled uncomfortably next to him. “Yeah, I whored myself out for a pimp. He had a nice system going, too. If we weren’t back when we were supposed to be, he wouldn’t feed us. If we broke any number of his dozens of rules, he would take something away, though food was a favorite. Break too many, and you were out on your ass in the street. All it took was for you to see someone who used to live in the house, hustling on the street, to know you had it better than them. You might be selling your body, but you had a roof, heat, clean water, and you could feed yourself. Sure you lived under the roof of a man who controlled you, tormenting you while smiling the whole time, but it was better than getting fucked in an alley for a few bucks.”
“He fed you, but you did not feed yourselves?”
Tobias gave an ugly snort. “What? Ourselves? With what money? He had it set up so that we went to the people who wanted ‘company’ for the night. They paid ahead of time, and ‘clients’ were told not to tip. Paul tried to make sure we never saw a penny of our own, I don’t even know how much my ass was worth for a night of fun for some old guy here on business for the weekend. He didn’t care if they hurt you either; said that the bruises made us look kinkier, more desirable, just so long as it wasn’t the face.”
“They hit you?” It was said with more fury than sadness. There had been souls aplenty who had come to him, victims of sadism, and the souls of the cruel themselves came as well. He knew the madness that could drive mankind to brutal extremes, but he had never made peace with it. Even when he tried to help the souls of abusers and murderers, he could never understand what lay in them to kill their hearts. It was even worse to know that in the course of Tobias’ life, he had been exposed to even more of the poison of men’s souls.
“It wasn’t enough for some of them, that I was selling my dignity right along with my body. No, they had to take more than that, too. Some of them really got off on leaving marks on me, just like they got off on doing it to others. I was one of the lucky ones, though. I didn’t fill out till I was out of here, but I was still pretty big. It was the little guys who got it the worst, and there were a couple who…didn’t come back. Jack never even talked about them. He just dragged their stuff out and waited for the next person to take their place.”
“He held you there, against your will. You had nowhere to go, and this man used that to his advantage to make money.” It wasn’t a question from Azrael, but a blazing accusation. God above, when did it end for Tobias? Where was the point in his life where he could point and say that some moment of joy was untainted, untouched by pain and heartache? Where was his peace?
“Drugs were a big favorite of his, which tells me just how much money he was making off of us. He took pleasure in the fact that he could get some of us hooked on something, and keep feeding it out to keep people in line. Those were the worst ones, the ones hooked on something. They were the easiest to control, and it meant he could sell them out to even worse people, and more often.”
“You never…?” Azrael couldn’t bring himself to finish the question. He could never condemn Tobias if he really had given into the escape of drugs. There were far worse things that Tobias could have done to escape from his situation. Murder, especially that of the foul man, Jack, or any one of Tobias’ clients would have been acceptable to Azrael. It was becoming almost impossible for him to hold on to that objectivity, and universal compassion that he had used when dealing with angry or hurting spirits. This wasn’t just the soul of a spirit who had come this way. This was the pained soul of a man he loved more than himself.
Tobias shook his head. “No. I mean, I tried some things, and once in awhile I would do something with a ‘client’ or to make Jack get off my back. But I never did anything with a needle; I refused. I think the only reason Jack didn’t throw me out on my ass about that was because I said I didn’t wanna risk catching something and giving it to some of my ‘clients’ who were return customers. Paul wasn’t as lucky as me.”
“Was it the drugs, or was it one of the clients?”
“Heroin,” Tobias stated blandly, his voice too sharp, too controlled to be anything but forced. “It was how he kept ahold of him, and in a way, on me. If it meant keeping Paul with me, even doped up on smack and useless as a friend, I would behave myself. Jack knew it, and he knew that shit would keep Paul in line, too. Didn’t even care when he got sick. Wasn’t until it was too late that I even realized what was wrong with him.”
“What happened?”
Tobias finally glanced at Azrael, his face stretched and tight with pain. “Dunno if it was the needle-sharing or a trick, but he caught HIV. We didn’t know it until it became full-blown AIDS. Jack refused to pay for any sort of medicine, or to let Paul get on any sort of public care. Didn’t want knowledge of his little moneymaking scheme to get out. So he just kept shoveling more of that junk into Paul.”
“Is…is Paul…” Azrael could very well have seen this man, and not remembered him. Even as a full angel, he could not remember every spirit that came his way. He couldn’t help but wonder how many souls had come his way, their lives touched by the very man that would draw Azrael into humanity.
“Yeah, he’s dead,” Tobias replied flatly. “Even with all the drugs, he couldn’t really keep going the way he was. His body was falling apart, and he was almost to the point that even the most desperate of tricks wouldn’t have touched him. Fuck knows how many people he had infected before that, who only saw a junkie they could screw, rather than someone who was sick. Before Jack could throw him out to rot on the streets though, he…he took care of it himself.”
Azrael said nothing, staring at Tobias until Tobias’ haunted gaze lifted to meet his. “All he needed was a razor, and time alone in our bathtub. That was all it took. I was the one who found him, of course. Jack quietly took Paul's body out, and I never saw him again. I was left to clean up the mess, and wonder when it would be my turn.”
It took more courage than he thought it would to finally break the silence and ask, “What did you do?”
Tobias looked up, almost startled by the question and laughed softly. “Me? I got mad, that’s what I did. I had spent almost two years in that place, stuck under the roof of a man who wanted me to sell myself until there was nothing left and he could throw me away just like he’d done with Paul. So I got mad. I also got smart, though. Funny how smart someone can get when they went through the shit I did growing up.”
The proud smirk on Tobias’ face as he glanced toward Azrael, sent a shiver down his spine. There was a coldness there, sitting in the depths of Tobias’ eyes. It was so markedly different from the warmth Azrael had come to expect. It wasn’t hate, or even anger, but a grim determination brought about by the most basic drive to survive. Tobias had been through hell, and knew all too well what it took to fight his way to the other side.
“See, these ‘clients’ weren’t allowed to tip. But some of them did after a while; the regulars who liked me did, anyway. Some of the clients were just people in town long enough for a business trip, a quick overnight lay, and that was it. Those were easy to steal from. If you got them just right, you were able to slip some money from them here and there. It’s kinda funny how you can be so rich not to miss a couple hundred dollars from your wallet. Or maybe they just wrote it off and didn’t wanna make a fuss over it and draw attention to themselves, I don’t know.”
Azrael found the courage to reach forward, curling his fingers into Tobias’. “You took their tips, and you stole from others?”
Tobias nodded slowly, lost in the memories. “I had to be careful about it, too. Some people you could steal from, while others you just weaseled a bit of cash out of. Sometimes, the gifts were some piece of jewelry or clothing, and if you knew certain people who would buy it for more than a pawn shop would pay, you could get some good money. I was careful, though. It took me another six months until I had the money I needed.”
He sighed, squeezing Azrael’s fingers in acknowledgement of his presence, and hopefully of his comfort. His voice was fragile as he recounted the time he took hiding away the money. Tobias was reliving the memories of what must have been, for a time, more nerve-wracking than leaving his childhood home. Azrael could only imagine the will it must have taken to keep calm as he hid the money that would save him, piece by piece; to remain in control, even as he risked losing his life to a brutal thug.
“How did you sneak out?”
“Sneak? Didn’t have to sneak. He never worried about people leaving. No one had anywhere to go. Their families were dead ends, and shelters rarely kept people. I did the only thing he wouldn’t have expected me to do: I walked out.”
“And went where?”
Tobias’ voice grew a little stronger, recounting how he wandered out into the world. Leaving only an anonymous message to police in Detroit, his conscience freed, as he drifted with little to his name, except for what he had been able to take with him. Somehow, it hadn’t surprised Azrael to learn that Tobias had ended up on the coast. There, he was free to dip his feet into the ocean, find safe and dignified employment, and even have a home to call his own.
Azrael smiled tentatively, hoping his next words would be encouraging rather than send Tobias even deeper into this dark mood. “Is that when you met David?”
Tobias looked up, smiling softly with a wistful expression, tinged with the faintest pain. “Yeah, it’s when I met David. But he’s a story for another time, maybe. It’s a very happy story, just with a sad ending.”
Azrael nodded slowly in understanding, laying his head on Tobias’ shoulder. Tobias tensed under the contact, jerking slightly as if surprised. Azrael said nothing, only holding Tobias’ hand all the more firmly and breathing deeply of the smell of him under the smoke and booze.
“You don’t care?”
It was Azrael’s turn to jerk in surprise, pulling his head back to stare at Tobias in wonder. “Not care? Of course I care! I cannot begin to fathom the horrors you must have endured while living there, or how you managed, after all that and the horrible treatment of your parents, to have been able to open your heart to David as you did. Or how, even after losing him, you could find it in yourself to open it once more to me. It breaks my heart that such awful things could happen to someone as beautiful inside and out as you.”
Tobias’ eyes widened, first in shock, then in utter awe at Azrael’s speech. His mouth dropped open, working soundlessly as he tried to the find the words he needed. His mouth snapped shut, and his eyes swam. Azrael could see him struggling, fighting for the control over himself that Azrael was only now realizing was forced constantly.
“Tobias,” Azrael breathed, reaching out to take hold of both of his arms and turn him toward him. “You did nothing wrong. There is no shame in being a victim, in surviving what happened to you and moving past that. You did what you needed to survive, and you did not once bring harm to another being, save yourself. Let go of the guilt that I can see in your eyes right now, Tobias. You are allowed to be okay.”
Tobias opened his mouth, perhaps to protest, and in an instant, his face crumpled. Startled, Azrael caught Tobias as he slumped forward, the two of them flopping gracelessly backward onto the roof, away from the edge. Tobias’ body shook against his, huge, wracking sobs that seemed to rip through him with each and every gasping breath he tried to take. Whether to scream or speak, Tobias continued to gasp deeply, each exhale an ugly sob that tore through Azrael’s insides.
He wrapped himself around Tobias and held him tight against his chest. No words would suffice, and there was no comfort he could give other than this gesture of affection, and of his presence. Tobias’ sobs were muffled against his chest, carried off by the wind. The sound was heartbreaking, but in it, Azrael could hear the years of pain being washed away for the first time. Tobias gripped him fiercely, refusing to let go as he cried tears for those he had lost, for those he had left behind, and most of all, for himself. Azrael would be here, to hold him, and see him through all of it.