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Flames danced a pattern across the floor. Above him the ceiling had blackened, and there were places which had crumbled into ash, revealing that the building he was in was ablaze from the top down. Wallpaper had begun to char and flake away. Azraeth sat in the midst of it, strangely calm, his aura neither strained nor fluctuating but as steady as his lack of pulse. The fire got to him, little darting streams of it that ate up along the lines of his slacks and along his back, like serpents slithering over the body of someone who had fallen into a snake pit. He did not feel the burning of it. In fact, the conflagration itself was strangely cool and tingly against his flesh, even as he was totally engulfed. His skin did not bubble or blister, nor did it darken. The fat did not boil and spit. The muscle did not wither. His hair was untouched as his clothing turned to dust and slipped from his body as if centuries had passed in seconds. Still he breathed slowly in and out, as if the heat did not sear his lungs and the smoke did not choke him. He was at peace.

This was a dream he’d had numerous times in the past.

Kill him!

His eyes popped open and his head turned. He glanced across the room he was in, and past a wide doorway into a foyer. The previous few seconds replayed, as they only seemed to do in dreams, or perhaps the information related to those moments just instinctively snapped into the vampire’s brain. There was Flynn, smiling at him. Not that smirk (hot at it was), the Paladin wore so often, but a more real expression of content that was almost exclusively reserved for the Mystic. Of course, Az couldn’t help but smile right back. And then the human opened up the door. The expression on his partner’s face changed to one of surprise. And then pain as he stepped back. There was a knife sticking out of Flynn’s chest, and some unseen figure was shouting to kill him. The words kept repeating over and over again, as if this mysterious demon were the commander of some untold legion of followers.

Az was on his feet a second later, stumbling towards his partner. And that was when the pain hit him. It was as if the flames had finally come to life. And they were all over him. It was not just one source of pain - it was every single nerve ending. His eyes were boiling, and they melted out of his head to reveal empty sockets as gore dripped over his cheeks. He still moved though. As his lungs burned in his chest. As parts of him began to crumble away. As the intensity of the pain itself should have paralyzed him. And yet did not. He moved until he was nothing but a flaming skeleton, his flesh having melted away. The pain, he knew, should have disappeared with his nerve endings, but it was still there. Still enough to leave him howling even without vocal cords. His bones became bleached by the fire, and all he was, was a little spirit caught behind the jagged teeth of a ribcage, watching ineffectively as the man he love was destroyed by shadows.

Flynn’s eyes were glossy and vacant as he bled out on the floor.

When had his vision returned? Why had it? It was a taunting and cruel thing.

He sat up straight in his bed. The scent of his partner was there, but it was ironically of little comfort to him. He hurt all over. It was not so severe as it had been inside the demenses of Morpheus, but his lungs felt like they were failing. As if they had been filled with fire. Which was insane, because he was a vampire and he did not need to breathe. HIs eyes were tearing up, big clear droplets that welled and poured over his cheeks - which tingle and burned. There were lesser sensations, but only ‘lesser’ in the sense that they were not as prominent as everything else. Like his ribs ached. His knuckles. The desire to feed was stronger in Azraeth than it had been in months, and his fangs had already made an appearance, his mouth watering. The worst part was this feeling of longing for something which had disappeared abruptly. Like part of his body had been cut off. Like he had lost something vital to him.

He screamed. It happened without his realizing. His lips just parted and the shriek ripped through the air as a wail of mourning. It was like going from 0 to 100 in a second flat. He was trembling with fear and rage, and pain as he moved to stand. His hands lifted to push across his features, trying to wipe away the tears as fingers stabbed into his hairline. He was breathing heavily, and he had trouble focusing on any one thing for more than a moment at a time. He was trying to center himself, but he knew cognitively and immediately that it wasn’t working. His eyes kept darting everywhere. He felt like a cornered animal, like prey found by predator. It was not something he was used to, nor something that he liked.

He reached his palms out, to try and cast a spell. To bring Flynn to him. Nothing. Nothing at all. He screamed again, as his knees buckled and hit the ground. He was sobbing by that point, his arms folding over his head as his forehead hit the ground. His fingers were twisted like claws. He was smarter than this. He knew that. He knew there were things he could be doing. Should be doing. But the power of the grief hit him so hard that it was paralyzing. His mind was racing. It couldn’t be true. “Nonononononono.” The lone word chanted like his desire could make it real. He needed to move. He needed to…

Locate.

He pulled himself up to stand once more as he rushed towards the closet so he could begin pulling on clothing. He didn’t even look at what he put on. Everything was a jumble inside of his panic stricken brain. “Focusfocusfocusfocus.” He whispered to himself as he tried to figure out exactly where Flynn was. If he couldn’t pick up even a trace of him that meant...well it didn’t mean anything good. But he couldn’t think about that. He knew if he went down the avenue of what ifs, he was going to end up unable to perform any magic at all. The pain at least was beginning to recede as adrenaline dumped itself into his blood stream by the bucket load.

Hospital. Flynn was at the hospital. He realized this as he honed in on the other man, followed his mind and scent and soul all of the way back to the source. Faint. HIs mate was a flicker, a smoldering ember. What had happened to him? The vampire set off.

“Sir, I’m sorry, but we can’t let you back there. Open visitation is between 10 AM and 4 PM. At this point, only family are permitted into the ICU.” Something about the way the woman in the mint green scrubs said that felt like a slap to the face. Family. Like Flynn’s criminal father, or his mother, who Az wasn’t entirely convinced would have shown up, even if she had known what was happening. It spoke volumes that in the months the two men had been together, the vampire had never met his lover’s mother. He had certainly met Liam, had spent tons of time with the Paladin’s younger brother, but the Connors matriarch and the Mystic had never shared so much as a few words in passing. He didn’t even have her number. He didn’t have access to Flynn’s phone either. And how odd would it have been for him to call from that number, only to try and explain...what? The vampire had no clue what had happened.

And visiting hours for anyone other than family only happened when the sun was up.

“Please. He’s my boyfriend. I need to see him. I need to know that he’s okay.” His eyes were bloodshot, which looked odd considering there were no whites to his eyes. It was like there were veins of green running through that deep ocean. There had been one point when mortals had been afraid of the serpentine pupils. These days, people did not recoil, but instead just sneered, or ignored them outright. There were mirrors angled all over the waiting room. He appeared in none of them. Had the situation been any different, Az probably would have been bothered by them, but he was too focused on his task. He didn’t have time nor mental energy enough to deal with the phantoms of his past. So he boxed them away.

“Again, I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t allow that. You’re going to have to come back du--”

“I can’t. You know I can’t. You’re not blind, you can see what I am. Please! I need to-”

“Sir, I’m not trying to be cruel here, but I think we both know there’s no way you’re getting back there. Not with the blood supply and not with patients struggling to survive.” There was a shadow of an expression on her features. Az believed she was being sincere. That she wasn’t trying to be cruel. He was, after all, the blood sucking monster. And this woman’s first priority had to be to her patients. The pain though, at her answer, must have been written on Azraeth’s features, because she leaned a little closer after those words had left her lips. “Look, maybe you can get someone related to him to come in and sit with him for you. That’s better than nothing, yeah?”

Except it wasn’t. For the first time in a very long time, Az felt helpless. One of the perks of being a vampire was that you couldn’t be cornered anymore. Not really. And yet that was exactly the position he was in. He stepped back and away with a disgusted shake of his head. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even know if Flynn had been in an accident. If he had done something to himself. If some vampire had attacked him because of what he was.

He felt like nothing, because there was nothing he could do except wallow in his uncertainty and grief. And in feeling like nothing, he became one with the darkness. He wasn’t even sure how much later it was that someone else approached the woman behind the computer. But the moment he heard the door lock click, and open, he was moving. He was very careful not to draw any attention to himself at all. He knew if he was discovered, he was probably looking at trouble. And once he was past the door, he was paralyzed once more. She hadn’t even told him what room Flynn was in. That wasn’t the problem though. The problem was that he knew exactly where his partner was, because there was this thick scent of his mate’s blood in the air. The smell of death in this place was overwhelming, and wetness filled his eyes once more in preparation as he slowly approached.

He moved like silence, not just because he did not want to be discovered, but also because he was afraid of what he was going to find. At the end of the hall was a large room. Beds were evenly spaced, with dividers filled with medical equipment between them, as well as curtain material to create the illusion of privacy. From the look of things, most of the beds were empty. There was at least one doctor watching over the entire room, but Az suspected that there were several more, along with a fleet of nurses who would show up under the right circumstances. It struck him as oddly like a game. He had to be careful and stealthy, otherwise he might be discovered. Flynn would have loved that observation. Or if not loved, he would have found it endearing.

Az drew closer to the source of that scent. The curtain was already drawn, so all he had to do was slip past it. What he was greeted by was an image of his partner seemingly asleep. There were all manner of tubes and wires connecting him to machines. There was a ventilator keeping the man breathing, and a tube running right into the chest. The sight almost made the vampire’s knees give out again. He stood there like a phantom as if he expected for the spirit of his partner to rise out of his physical form and greet him as a spectral figure. He lifted his wrist to his mouth and bit down firmly. He was bleeding. He stepped closer. He could fix this. He had it in his power to save the other man.

Except he wasn’t sure if that was what Flynn really wanted. It hadn’t been a conversation they’d ever had. Why would they have? Flynn was a paladin. He was supposed to be as immortal as Az. Not really. But that had been what Azraeth let himself believe. The wound on his wrist began to stitch together as he leaned over his partner’s form. He wanted desperately to climb into that bed with him, to just lay there close and listen to his heartbeat. Make sure it never stopped. Because the human had never told him if he would rather die a human than be cursed for eternity. It wasn’t Az’s choice to make. Even though he wanted to. But just as he could not turn his lover, he also could not get close to him. Not really. Because it was entirely possible he could have jostled things in just the right way and tanked any chance the Paladin had at survival.

And Flynn looked so serene like that. A bloodied angel with a split lip and so many bruises. So much injury. It hurt Az on every level to see the man he loved like that. It felt as if there were cold fingers slowly squeezing around his chest. He didn’t want to stare, but he couldn’t stop himself. He reached to gently caress over a chin and jaw. He looked so helpless as well. Every fiber of the vampire’s being wanted to stay there and protect him, but he knew his time was brief. So he reached for his phone. The first thing he did was take a picture of Flynn’s chart. There was also an order to have the police called if he came to. The contact number for a detective was there, and Az got a picture of that too. There was a lot of information, and the vampire knew he was in no mind to do anything with it.

Next, he called Flynn’s phone, hoping that it had been put on ‘vibrate’ and was reasonably close. Thankfully, that was exactly the case, and moments later, he had the phone in hand, and was scrolling through the contacts. He smiled very briefly, a flash of an expression, when he passed his own. HIs hand descended so he could weave his digits together with Flynn’s, as the cell rang on the other end. When it picked up, Az squeezed his partner’s hand. He spoke quietly. “Hey Madelyn? Yeah, it’s Az. Yep, Flynn’s boyfriend. Ha - Liam was just talking about me over dinner? I. Look. I need to tell you something. I hate to be so abrupt, but something has happened…”

He had to rely on Madelyn for information, and she was probably frankly annoyed with him, but that didn’t really matter to Az. He’d stayed with Flynn for as long as he safely could, holding his hand and watching him with those eyes closed as if in slumber temporary or eternal. It had not lasted nearly long enough for his liking, and from there, the vampire had been forced to flee the hospital for fear of being caught. Despite every fiber of his being wanting to be close to his paladin, he knew on some level that he would be no good to the man if he ended up behind bars (which were infamous for allowing sunlight through), or worse. So instead, he had returned home to begin planning his next set of moves. All too soon, before he even really had a chance to put anything into action, the daylight had come to give him deep sleep filled with nightmares he did not recall when he awoke.

Immediately after getting up, he’d called Flynn’s mother, who had been able to get a few details about the human’s condition. He hadn’t woken from his coma, and was suffering from numerous wounds which were apparently consistent with an attack. Apparently there had been a witness, who had been the one to bring him in, but the hospital obviously couldn’t release any details about this person. Azraeth suspected that was what the police number from the night before had been about. Evidence was stacking up to not only suggest, but confirm Flynn had been attacked by someone. Of course there were still way too many details up in the air for the Mystic’s liking. It made sense though. Harper Rock had a huge number of vampires and Flynn was...well. He was a Paladin.

Of course, Az had faced this fact numerous times. People loved to bring it up. It was practically a given that someone was going to give them a look and offer up some variety of questions concerning their sanity levels. But the Mystic hadn’t, up until the point when he saw Flynn lying there on the medical bed, been forced to really take a good hard look at the relationship he’d gotten himself into. Or the dangers it posed to his partner. There was a very real part of him that thought it might be better to just leave Harper Rock if his lover managed to recover. Not if. When. Even though there was this constantly negative set of voices whispering into the vampire’s ear that the loss of his boyfriend was punishment. That he was getting karmic retribution for all of the lives he’d taken. That not being allowed to be in love was exactly what he deserved for who and what he was. Normally, Azraeth was excellent at flooding those defeatist words and thoughts out. But they were hitting him in a particularly vulnerable spot.

Which meant the best way he had to combat them was to totally distract himself. He did that by unravelling the mystery.

He began to rifle through his lover’s memories, to try and pick apart who might have made the attack. Unfortunately, for some reason, he wasn’t able to pick up anything at all. He suspected it must have been some sort of sucker punch type situation. Unexpected. Which perhaps left Flynn unable to determine who had assaulted him. Which meant Az had a limited number of leads he could follow up on. His next move was to find Oakley and ask her to hack into the police database to see if they had electronically stored information related to the case. As it turned out, they had, which was a bit of a lucky break. He was able to get a name and address for the only witness to the crime - which Az thanked Oakley for with a firm squeeze before having to dart off. From there, it was just a matter of turning up unannounced for a little Q&A sessh. As soon as the lady who had seen everything (A miss Clarice Marlen), heard that Az was Flynn’s boyfriend, she was more than happy to tell him absolutely everything. She didn’t even seem terribly bothered that the vampire was there in no official capacity, which probably meant she was a little too on the trusting side. But Azraeth was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

From the brief investigation, Az put together exactly two things of importance. The ones who had attacked Flynn did so during the daylight hours. Additionally, the ones who made the assault had odd tattoos which Clarice had gotten a look at briefly, peeking out barely from under clothing. Which meant that Az was either dealing with vampire hunters or some kind of weird gang-related turf warfare gone very wrong.

Of course, through the entire late evening, he’d made a point to call Madelyn every ten or so minutes to ask if there had been any change in things with Flynn. He desperately wanted to be near his mate, but he also knew that he had to be careful not to push his luck too much with the hospital. There was absolutely no change at all, every time he called, and the vampire was pretty certain Flynn’s mother was ready to chuck her phone out of a window, but Az really couldn’t control himself. He told himself, as much as possible, that he needed to stay focused on the task at hand.

Which meant returning to the scene of the crime. It had been some time since the attack, which meant that there likely wasn’t much in the way of a trail to follow, and Clarice had been very clear that the attackers had taken measures to obscure who they were, which meant he was getting no assistance in determining really anything about them. Which meant that he was looking for clues - really any indication as to who had laid his lover low. The problem there was that he might as well have been looking for a needle in a haystack. So, with the dawn quickly approaching, he put on some gloves, so he could begin to tear the alleyway apart, possibly brick by brick.

He woke in the total darkness of his home to two things. One was a message from someone inside of the Harper Rock police department. After his investigation had turned up nothing, Az had gotten the idea that there might be something left behind that was picked up by a detective - maybe in a station’s evidence locker. Finding a corrupt man with a badge wasn’t all that hard in Harper Rock, sadly. With the crime rate being what it was, and especially after vampires had ‘come out’, there were plenty of men in blue who were more than happy to overlook someone’s crimes for a little extra cash lining their pockets. Getting one little thing from evidence? All that cost Azraeth was a gold bar. The call was just a confirmation of the public location the mystic could find his ill-gained goods. However, it was the other thing he woke up with which told him he wasn’t going to be able to check it out immediately. Dread. It twisted in his gut like a cold and coiling serpent. He could sense that something was wrong with his partner, and his desire to be at Flynn’s side was like this compulsion. It was almost as strong as his need to feed when starved. Like he was hungry. Like it was all he could think about. Like he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get the throbbing need out of his skull.

He was thankful he had fallen asleep fully clothed at that point, phone in hand. Because it was almost as soon as his eyes popped open that he twisted up. He was seated, and then he was standing, and then he was stumbling through the door leading into the ICU, where he knew Flynn was hooked up to any number of machines, with little more than a sheet used as a partition to keep the rest of the world at bay. He knew that he wasn’t supposed to be there, that any doctors who spotted him and his lack of reflection in any of the hospital mirrors would see to it that he was booted out of the building. But he had this nagging feeling in his chest that something was wrong. It felt like he was trying to swallow a block of ice the size of a bowling ball. It was this sinking that moved from his chest down to his gut. What was wrong? He got closer, and immediately got this image in his brain. Of that bed emptied. Of things having taken a turn for the worse. He would get to the medical bed, and Flynn was going to be dead. Some other patient was going to turn to him and say ‘Oh, he’s in the morgue kid.’ Or some equally terrible line right out of a dark humored dramedy. And suddenly Az didn’t want to approach more. Did he really have a choice?

So he got closer, every step feeling like someone had strapped cinderblocks to his legs. He pulled the curtain aside to look down. There he was. Still alive, according to the heart monitor. Still safe. A damaged angel maybe. Relief was a soothing tide in the troubled heat of Az’s mind. And then eyes popped open. That wonderful wilderness in which Az desired to lose himself. He stared down into them, his own appearance far cleaner than the tempest inside of him. He didn’t have the heavy bags under his eyes which said he hadn’t gotten sleep. He didn’t have the wrinkles of worry on his forehead. He didn’t have the red circles and jagged bolts around and in his eyes which said he was either exhausted or devastated. The only true betrayal of what the vampire was feeling in that moment was the way that he stepped back, his eyes immediately glossing with unshed tears. Flynn was struggling with the tubes stuffed into his mouth, and the machines reflected this alarm.

Almost immediately, a few nurses and a doctor flooded into the room so that they could investigate what was wrong. The next few moments were surreal. They didn’t even seem to notice Az, probably because they were dealing with a patient. They were able to remove the breathing apparatus, which kept Flynn’s lungs inflating and deflating regularly - the one which had been collapsed apparently nearly healed. In fact, the Paladin was healing at what some of the medical professionals thought was an uncanny or alarming rate. The doctor seemed to think that Azraeth was there legitimately even. Of course, the Mystic just found himself watching Flynn, peering into his eyes, reaching for his hand when he could. The trauma surgeon rambled on for nearly twenty minutes, but the vampire heard almost none of it. In fact, it wasn’t until there was one nurse left, making sure that Flynn was comfortable that Azraeth finally came fully back to himself, and stepped out of the realm of ‘is this really happening?’ and into the world of ‘he’s okay’.

He almost couldn’t believe it. There had been part of him that was ready to accept that he would never see the man he loved again. That was one of the problems with being a vampire. Well not even that. With living in general. Azraeth had seen so many people enter and exit his life, that there was always part of him that expected to lose them. Maybe that was part of what defined his ‘clingy’ nature. He had been, for days, preparing himself for the worst possible outcome. That Flynn would never wake up. That the Paladin was going to die.

He had been distracting himself for nights, trying to think about anything and everything else.

And yet Flynn was awake. By the time the last nurse left (apparently they were keeping him in the ICU until a change of rooms could be authorized), Az had both of his hands curled around one of his partner’s. He had been silent for what felt like hours. He pressed a kiss against the human’s jaw. One arm of the bed had been lowered, and Azraeth perched there. “I love you. I’m so sorry this happened. I think I found them. The assholes who did this to you. I…” He wanted to say that he was going to hunt them down, gut them, feast on them like a gluttonous monster, torture them. Instead, he leaned closer, twisting onto his side so that he could snuggle against Flynn’s form. He was careful, of course. Careful not to dislodge any wires, not to touch any badly injured area. “I love you.” He repeated. Though it sounded more like ‘I need you. I missed you.’.

Azraeth was a creature of indefinite layers. He had kept his composure in the face of certain death. He had trained himself to watch people upon meeting them, to observe not only how they acted when they realized they were being watched, but when faced with different levels of adversity. He had a reputation for being one of those social butterflies, but he also had a reputation for being cold and calculating, a set of traits which, when juxtaposed, seemed as if they could not belong to the same person. In truth, he was just a very simple man who cared deeply for those who wormed their way into his heart (or whose hearts he wormed his way into, much like an overripe apple). When he set his mind to something, there was very little that could get in his way. But the impetus, the rolling stone, the thing which made him move was always related to the ones he loved. And over the months they had been together, Flynn had become the person that Az loved the most. He had said it before. Prematurely perhaps. And yet with shocking clarity of vision, and perhaps prophetic intuition. The Paladin was the one. His one.

So it was absolutely no shock when, the moment Flynn said that he loved Az more, the vampire lost his mind.

Every single emotion the Mystic had been struggling to suppress, every feeling he had bubbled to the surface all at once. There was the fear that he would never see his partner again. That he would never hear his laugh, or feel the warmth of his hands. There was rage that he had only had the Paladin for a few months, that some people were blessed to love their partners, and soul mates for decades and he got only a handful of months. He had been sure the man would not survive, would not pull through. There was the anticipation. The painful anticipation that he would be alone. And of course, there was the agony, which was one part physical and one part mental. He could feel the things going on inside of Flynn and every part of him wanted to take that edge off, to make it a little better. He had been struggling to distract himself. So he laid on his back. The two of them in the bed were pressed shoulder to shoulder and Az impulsively kicked his shoes off onto the floor so that he could wriggle and twist (so that Flynn didn’t have to). Moments later, his leg was tucked against his partner’s, their feet touching. His own were, for once, surprisingly warm.

He could feel the hand gripping his, the movement of a digit across his ring finger. And Az was just sobbing. The tears came out enormous, and seemed to be unending. He didn’t look even a little bit attractive right then, fangs having grown, lips twisted. At the very least, he didn’t have anything trickling from his nose. There were, it seemed, a few positives to the whole ‘being dead’ thing. He squeezed his human’s hand, he pressed closer and he let all of that emotion flow out of him. And maybe that was selfish of him. He wasn’t the one laid up in a hospital bed (figuratively). He wasn’t the one badly injured, or who had been comatose for days. But just knowing that Flynn was awake, that he was okay, that he could pull through? There was no greater relief in the world. It was so powerful that it rippled through every single fiber of his being, like a tapestry beaten until the threads gleamed.

He was a mess. He sucked in unneeded breath. He sniffed. He made unpleasant sounds. “No you don’t!” He said with entirely too much enthusiasm. And then he turned his head to peer into Flynn’s eyes. His own were red rimmed and the tears made them seem so deeply blue that it was like wading towards the ocean floor. He smiled then, or tried to. His voice trembled. “I love you more than anything or anyone. I love you and I missed you, and I need you.” He said, swallowing repeatedly to try and make his facial features sit in the right place and to get a hold of that sob in his throat that wouldn’t go away. He tipped his head closer and their foreheads touched. His lips were so near to Flynn’s, that he could taste the labored breath.

“You’ve been like this for three days. I contacted your mother, and at first the doctors wouldn’t let me in, but I needed to see you.” He was babbling, and he totally knew it. He could tell that it hurt when Flynn tried to speak, so maybe he was attempting to fill that silence between them. To give the other man something to listen to, so he didn’t have to talk. Maybe, on some level, he just wanted to talk so that his mate could hear his voice and know that things were going to turn out for the better, that they would inevitably be okay. Or it could just have been that Az himself needed to think that, and by creating that comforting distraction for Flynn, he was really doing himself a favor. In either case, his eyes never moved from the other man’s. There was a certain sacredness to that space between where their gazes met. But then, Az had always been fond of losing himself in the wilderness.

“Your lung collapsed. As soon as you get the sign off, I want to take you home, tend to you.”