The last day has been insane. Kane doesn't know how else he could describe the awful disaster in which he's been living. Reid woke up in that bathtub as a vampire in the early hours of the morning. Gabriel and his goons left before noon.

They'd tried to stay awake to not throw off their sleep, but they'd given up, and with sunlight spilling through a slit in the curtains, they'd gone to bed.

Kane kept vigilance, sleeping on and off downstairs, while wondering how Lucas has stayed alive for so long when he sleeps like the literal dead. Silent and not moving except for the rise and fall of his chest.

Kane had felt peaceful, knowing that Reid and Hannah were safe upstairs, and managed to snag a few hours of deep sleep with an arm bent under his head and his feet propped on the end of the loveseat.

Hannah had snuck downstairs sometime during the late evening. Kane had already been up, on and off, pacing, paranoid of attack with the wards down. He has a lot of enemies.

They took to Milton's office upstairs, looking through tomes for anything on the coin Azrael gave her in the motel.

They found nothing. But he did notice that she was acting off enough to pique his worry. He can't place why, just that she's guilty about something, not meeting his eyes for long and stiff when he tried to pull her close.

Lucas was on the phone between bouts of sleep, and forced Kane to relax long enough to close his eyes, knowing Lucas was guarding the farmhouse for a little while.

It's been fucking tiring.

Reid hadn't awoken once. Not for fourteen hours. Kane went in around two in the morning to check that the idiot was still alive when Hannah decided to go back to bed after yawning herself hoarse while slumped over a pile of books.

Reid almost gave Kane a heart attack when he'd touched his fingertips to Reid's pulse, felt the calm flutter of Reid's heartbeat hasten, and nearly had his hand ravaged by a fanged mouth that tried to clamp on, not vicious, instinctual, parted lips chasing his touch.

Exhausted blue eyes had flickered open, muttered for him not to go far in a sleepy, dark voice that had left Kane shivering, and then fell back to sleep like it never happened.

Hannah had looked just as unsettled. She'd risked poking Reid's cheek, rubbing at his hair, and speaking softly near his ear. But the idiot didn't stir once.

Kane had done the same, his fingertips grazing Reid's cheek. Reid had awoken instantly, blinking up at him tiredly and grumbling weird shit about being a bad boy—apparently, Reid's having lucid dreams that Kane will have to beat him for later.

The idiot fell back into a dead sleep the moment Kane's touch left.

Kane went to the office immediately. He'd found a tome that Milton had stuffed between two modern books on creatures and medieval weaponry. He'd had to dust off the cover, with a chalice of crimson overflowing.

Vampire basics.

He skimmed all the shit he already knew but then found a passage on those newly turned and was relieved to find that long sleep is a normal symptom.

He'd risked taking a look at the glossary and found the page for companions.

He'd sat then, knees wobbly. Gabriel had claimed they'd want each other's blood, which is true. He also said Azrael could use it to force Reid to give himself over because Kane would perish without Reid's blood.

But Gabriel didn't say the dying part was completely up to Kane's stupidity.

He'll get weaker gradually, becoming addicted to the vampire blood, but there's also a chance that his stupid body will just decide it's better off dying if it doesn't have the moron close.

A sorrowful death, they call it. Vampires see it as an honorable sacrifice. A human decides life isn't worth living without their vampire counterpart, like one of those bad soap operas Reid loves so much.

No way in hell is he biting the dust that pathetically.

The early morning is cold, with the drafty farmhouse doing little to abate the chill that seems to settle into every piece of wood, from the planked floor to the furniture. The moonlight that will be sunshine in the next few hours spills through the glass of the kitchen window.

Hope is a fickle thing, and the broken pieces that had become of Kane's last night are being slowly glued back together, askew, but nevertheless, he's whole.

Kane slams his empty mug, holding remnants of coffee, onto the counter. He's disgusted by this infection of mushiness that he can't seem to get rid of. There's no excuse for such sappiness. He needs to punch something.

And, when he turns around and Lucas is staring at him with a cocked eyebrow, well, isn't that just perfect?

Someone to punch.

Lucas frowns. "I warned you."

Shoving past the taller man, Kane grunts, "Fuck off." He's not going to admit that he messed up by not listening to Lucas's warning in that motel room, but shit, the asshole was terribly vague, and Kane has a tendency to do the exact opposite of what he's told, especially when it comes to fate.

In retrospect, it's Lucas's fault.

"Why didn't you listen?" Lucas asks angrily, breathy, like he can't hold it back and he's about to explode. He follows Kane because he's not a weak bastard and apparently has a death wish. "You've fuckin' messed up everything. Don't you see that? Some things were supposed to happen. And not taking Reid's blood was one of them." He curses. "Right idiot you are."

They make it into the parlor, and there's nowhere else for Kane to stomp off to, so he simply stands, fists clenched, and stares at the empty suede couch beneath the many ticking clocks that Milton used to collect so adamantly. If he looks at Lucas, he'll lose his head, and they'll end up fighting like idiots once again.

"You know what they call companions, mate?"

Kane's breath burns. "Lucas."

"Vampire slaves. You couldn't fight him off in the kitchen. Why fuck up everything for that loss of control? You had him. You didn't need this shit. Now, here you are, Kenneth Rainer, Reid Kimberk's mage pet, kept on a tight leash."

"Shut up," Kane growls, and he faces Lucas with a deep glare that has on occasion made weaker men run.

But Lucas isn't weak. He growls right back, "You've been spouting all this bullshit that he's incapable of understanding affection—fucking basic finances. How does it feel to know that man can control you with a mere word?"

Kane's so close to knocking Lucas in the jaw, but then, from his mouth, slips a breathy, "I...fucked up. Okay? I wasn't thinking."

Damn, that was hard. To admit he was wrong isn't natural to him. The urge to fight hasn't abated, and he's shaking with the need to kick someone's ass.

The near apology seems to take Lucas by surprise, and he frowns deeply. "Hell. We'll figure it out. There's got to be a loophole somewhere." His shoulders slump, and he lowers himself into the armchair with a defeated expression. "This fate shit, the timelines, bad, good, fucking terrible, what Asha saw...shit Kane. I don't know what will happen anymore."

"And?"

Lucas laughs bitterly. "And?"

"Yeah," Kane says, softer than he means, but he's a bit distracted by a shiver ascending his spine that he can't place. "We don't know what will happen anymore. So what? I've gone my whole life not knowing what would happen tomorrow or the next day; that's life. But we keep fighting, and then we fucking go to sleep and do it all again."

He looks to the corridor, past the parlor's doorway. The shadowed staircase leading upstairs is silent. But Kane knows, disturbingly, that Reid is awake.

"Kane?" Lucas whispers, worriedly.

Kane looks back, taking in Lucas's pinched brows and deep frown. "Fuck fate," Kane says. "We make our own, got it? Simple."

"Fuckin' hell..." Lucas runs his fingers through his hair. He hangs his head. "It's not that easy."

Because Kane's a sappy moron, he lays a hand on Lucas's shoulder, feeling the tense muscles there, and squeezes, probably hard enough to hurt, but Lucas doesn't react beyond looking up at Kane with a vulnerable expression on his battered face.

"It is." Kane snorts. "I've been doing it for years."