He watched the flames reach higher into the sky, and he found himself wondering about his life choices once again. Everything up to this point had been because of the choices he’d made. Most of those choices had been destructive, dangerous, or just plain stupid. Everything from the moment Jacob had left his life had been filled with decisions he could no longer justify or explain away. All of them had been fueled by some need to self-destruct, as if he wanted everything to stop but lacked the will to commit that final act.

If he’d never allowed himself to fall into the downward spiral of too many drinks and too many drugs, he may have never ended up as a vampire. Alexandre had admitted he’d watched Azrael for some time, and he’d kept a close eye on him, so it might have still been possible. Azrael found himself wondering if, in time, the master vampire would have lost interest in him. He was, after all, just one more street kid who’d found a way to make a living off his illegal activities. How long would that have held Alexandre’s attention, until he found something more interesting to fill his time with? If Azrael hadn’t been so hellbent on destroying himself, he would have never ended up in that alley, forcing Alexandre’s hand to bring him over as a vampire.

Jacob, who’d been standing silently beside him, wrapped an arm around his shoulder to draw him close. “This isn’t your fault.”

“How can you say that?” Azrael asked quietly.

Jacob’s grip tightened. “How could you know any of this would happen?”

Azrael pulled away from him, his face twisted in anger. “Because this is what always happens to me and it’s because I’ve been doing nothing but making fucked up choices my whole life. The only good thing I ever did in my life was get my ass kicked that one day because they were screwing with you. That’s it!”

Jacob turned to him, frowning. “You’ve done a lot more good than that.”

“Like what Jacob? Make a buck off stealing things for other people? Get the attention of a master vampire? Get so caught up in partying and destroying myself that I ended up pushing him into making me a vampire? Everything that’s happened before this is my fault, dammit. If I hadn’t been making one fucked up decision after another, none of this would have happened,” Azrael all but shouted at him.

“Gabriel, you did the best you could with what you had. Why do you always do this?” Jacob asked.

“Do what? Take responsibility for what I’ve done?” Azrael demanded.

Jacob reached out to prevent Azrael from backing up further. “No, blame yourself for every little bad thing that happens to you. You did it all the time as a kid too. Something bad would happen, and you’d find a way to make it about how you fucked everything up, like you were this big screw up that would never do anything right. Maybe your decisions weren’t always the best, but you know what? Your life wasn’t the best to begin with.”

Azrael’s mouth thinned. “Others didn’t do stupid shit like I did. You didn’t destroy your life.”

“I also had help, a lot of help. And other people who got out? They got help too. The ones who didn’t get help? A lot of them got lucky. You didn’t get lucky, you didn’t have help. Before we were friends, and after, you didn’t have anyone but yourself. So I’m sorry if I’m not going to blame some lonely kid for not making the best choices. Any more than I’m going to blame an equally lonely adult, who’s had to do everything on his own, for continuing to struggle with doing what’s best for him,” Jacob told him, his voice holding quiet intensity.

“I never could learn,” Azrael muttered.

“You’ve always known what was right,” Jacob said.

Azrael looked at him incredulously. “Have you been paying attention to anything I said? My whole life has been about seeing what’s right and doing the complete opposite.”

Jacob held tight to Azrael, yanking him closer with a sudden flare of anger. “You saved some pitiful nobody from getting beaten up by a pack of asshole teenagers. You dragged yourself out of the slums, even if it was by using skills others would look down on. You were aware of what was happening when you were destroying yourself. You obviously mourn the deaths of humans you’ve accidentally killed when you’re out of control. You’ve tried your best to try to make this whole situation work in a way that doesn’t end in anyone dying. Fuck’s sake, you’re upset because two vampires, who were more than happy to kill you, are now dead. You might not have always done what was best for you but you did things your way. You’ve always been willing to do things your way, no matter what the hell anyone else had to say about the matter. You live your life by your rules and you follow a morality you had to build from scratch. Yes it’s messy, yes it’s bound to not always work, but you keep fucking trying!”

Azrael stared up at Jacob, shocked out of his mood. “Do you really think that about me?”

Jacob snorted. “Think? No, I don’t think it, I know. I’ve always admired that about you. Here I was, some scrawny no one, but I had a good family and some things in my life going for me for the future. Then this kid, who should have been no better than the punks who decided I was a target, comes along and shows me how wrong I was. I thought all I had to do was wait until I was old enough to get out of that place, and I would be able to find answers, find something that would lead me down the right path. But you never worried about that, you never worried about someone else showing you the way. You had shit parents, no one you trusted before me, and no one else even bothered with you. But you, you just kept going, making your own way in life. You didn’t have anyone helping you, you didn’t have some bright possibility of being free ahead of you, but you didn’t give a shit. I never realized how much of an idiot I was for thinking the world was going to give me answers to my life until I met you.”

Azrael stared, dumbfounded, as he tried to find the words. “You were the stable one. You were always the one who kept me even and balanced. How the hell could you have ever thought you were an idiot?”

“I was ‘stable’ because I’d started off with a good foundation, you didn’t. But none of that seemed to bother you. You just kept pushing forward. I’d never met anyone who was as stubborn, willful, and downright determined as you were. I’ve never met anyone like you since. You were the reason I could never really connect with any guy after we were friends. I could fuck them, but I could never admire them, respect them in the way I respected you. You were the one who showed me that we make our own way in life, and have to do shit on our terms or it isn’t worth shit. You always said you didn’t have shit, but I always thought everything you did have was worth so much more because you’d earned it for yourself,” Jacob whispered fiercely, his face inches from Azrael’s.

Azrael found himself at a loss for words as he tried to wrap his mind around what Jacob was saying. He’d always known Jacob had believed in him, supported him, respected him, and trusted him completely. He’d never entertained the idea that anyone, let alone Jacob, had even remotely admired him. His life had been one mess after another, with Azrael buzzing around in circles, trying to find a way to fix what he could and leave the rest to fate.

Jacob was saying everything Azrael wanted to hear but didn’t know until the moment he heard it. He wanted to deny it, wanted to throw it on the ground, far away, because he didn’t feel worthy of the praise. But Jacob was saying this, not some random person who barely knew him. This was a man who had grown to know almost every dusty, dirty corner of Azrael’s soul as they grew up together. This was a man he would willingly fight for, die for, and apparently kill for. Jacob had never lied to him, and Azrael was helpless in the face of Jacob’s earnest words, and the plea behind them that begged for Azrael to truly listen.

In that moment, he realized the enormity of the love he felt for Jacob. He didn’t know if it was romantic love, but he knew that didn’t matter. What mattered was just how much Jacob meant to him, and he knew now how much he meant to Jacob. He’d loved him when they were boys, as a brother, a friend, as someone he would throw his life down for in order to spend the rest of his life by his side. Azrael had never known anything like that with anyone else, and the concept, the rawness of the emotion, brought a tear to his eyes.

Jacob’s eyes began to glisten as he continued. “You were like the other half of me when we were kids, you know that? You were the one who woke me up to the kind of person I needed to be. I never forgot what I learned from watching you and I never forgot you either. I willingly took this assignment because I hoped I might see you. I didn’t want to look you up, because I was afraid of what I might find, but Gaia, did it feel amazing when I saw you in the bar that night. Now I have a chance to make everything we had as kids come back, but we can do it in a way we never could have then. I don’t want to just be your friend, I want to be your lover, your best friend, the one who holds you when you’re tired, and the one who shakes you when you’re being stupid. I want to wake up every night with you by my side, and I want you there whether we’re fighting a war or enjoying peace. I’m not letting you go, and I’m sure as hell not letting you blame yourself for all the bad things that happened in your life.”

There were no words for the painful joy that burned in Azrael’s chest. Unable to speak, he pushed himself up, cutting off whatever Jacob had left to say to kiss him. He was desperate to find some way to express everything roiling in his mind, a storm of all the things he would never be able to say but desperately wanted to. Warm tears slipped down his face as he held himself against Jacob. He didn’t know if it was enough, but he tried his best, clinging to Jacob as he allowed himself to believe every word Jacob had spoken.

When they pulled apart, Azrael stroked Jacob’s face. “I should have just tried to find you after I was old enough and had the money. I could have avoided all the bullshit and just stalked you for the rest of our lives.”

“I think you’re going to be doing that anyway, so I guess you win,” Jacob said, his own face wet with tears.

Azrael wished that were true, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. Even if they somehow managed to survive the rest of the night, and the nights after, mortality loomed over them. While Azrael would continue to live on as long as he wasn’t slain, Jacob would inevitably age. Azrael would forever be a young adult in body, but he would have to watch as his lover, his best friend, slowly withered and died. He could fight all he wanted, they could best every foe, but time was an enemy they could never beat.

“Stop it,” Jacob warned with a frown.

Azrael laughed. “You have to stop reading me like a book.”

“Maybe you should stop having dark, gloomy thoughts all the time and I wouldn’t have to,” Jacob told him.

“There’s just a lot to worry about,” Azrael said.

Jacob shook his head. “We’re going to face one problem at a time. Anything else and we’ll just go crazy. We dealt with the last problem, so now we have to worry about the next one. Not the problems after that, just the immediate one.”

Azrael wasn’t sure he could do that, considering there were a few problems he considered to be immediate. He would privately admit Jacob did have a point about all their potential problems. Getting out of the city alive and in one piece was a far more pressing concern than worrying over Jacob’s mortality.

“You know we can’t stay here,” Azrael said.

Jacob nodded. “Do you think the whole city is after us?”

Azrael thought about that for a moment. “There’s no way Merrick would come after me if he didn’t clear it with Alexandre first. Even if Merrick had indisputable proof that I’d killed Paul, he would still have to go through Alexandre. Alexandre’s my master and sire, he has a say in every little thing that happens to me. That means Alexandre knows, though I don’t know if the whole Camarilla knows. Alexandre can be private about a lot of things, so he might have kept it between him, Merrick, and Alexia.”

“So, we have to worry about your master coming after us now?” Jacob asked with a frown.

“Maybe not right away. Since Alexandre wasn’t here in the first place, it probably means he was willing to let Merrick have his fun. He was really hands off with me when it came to you, and he might have the same attitude toward Merrick coming for me. There’s a chance he might not know Merrick and Alexia are dead. That gives us time to collect your information, and find a place to hole up in,” Azrael said, nodding as he spoke.

“You want to hide, not escape?” Jacob asked, surprised.

“It would be easier to arrange us being transported out of the city during the day rather than at night. It’s not hard to pay someone to ship a couple of heavy boxes out of the city during daylight hours without being too curious about what’s in them. We’re close to the border, there are plenty of people used to being paid to not notice what’s in a box or two. That’ll suck for you, since I literally sleep like the dead, but it’s better than trying to slip the net directly,” Azrael explained.

Jacob winced. “How much money are we talking about for a bribe? I don’t exactly have much money anymore. I was waiting on the next exchange of money from the sept before all this shit went down. I’m pretty much broke.”

“Everything I have is back at my penthouse, which isn’t exactly the best place to go right now,” Azrael said with a grimace.

“You don’t have money holed away anywhere else?” Jacob asked.

Azrael shrugged. “The room I use to sleep in is like a vault. There’s nowhere I could think of that was safer to throw some money than in there.”

“So, into the lion’s den, huh?” Jacob asked.

It wasn’t quite the lions’ den, but it was definitely in the lion’s territory. “We might as well get your information first. No use letting you get your ass in trouble too. Let them use whatever you have and we can wipe our hands clean of the whole thing when we’re out of here.”

Jacob rubbed the back of his head, chuckling nervously. “There’s really no need to get it, that’s taken care of.”

Azrael looked down at Jacob’s pockets in alarm, “Please tell me you aren’t holding every piece of information you gathered in a flash drive or something?”

Jacob snorted. “What, do I look stupid? Like I’d carry a flash drive with vital information around with me. There’s always a chance a vampire might get the best of me, and I’m not going to let the information I worked my ass off for, and nearly died for, fall back into their hands. No, it’s all in online storage.”

Azrael stared at him. “You’re telling me the information I was sent to steal from you after I was supposed to kill you is in the cloud?”

Jacob gave him a helpless gesture. “It was the easiest way for me to keep the information in a safe place, and to make it easy for my sept to access it. I mean, easy for them to access after I explained how to use it.”

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Azrael said with a bark of laughter.

“No. C’mon man, it’s the twenty-first century. What was I supposed to use, coded messages delivered by pigeons?” Jacob asked.

“What the hell was that super-secret, locked up room for then?” Azrael asked.

Jacob shrugged. “Somewhere for someone who was snooping around to waste their time on. I literally only had a desk with a laptop in it and some papers. The papers were random notes I’d jotted down about humans I’d watched and what they did in a day. The laptop I just screwed around on, but had it locked up.”

“Of course the room and everything in it was a decoy meant to waste my time,” Azrael said with another laugh.

“I’m not an idiot!” Jacob protested.

“No, you’re a genius. But you wanna know the best part?” Azrael asked with a quirked brow.

Jacob cocked his head. “What’s that?”

Azrael kissed him again. “You’re my genius. Now let’s get out of here, I don’t want to watch this fire anymore.”