AJ could feel Brian trembling against him. He still had his hand laced with Brian’s, and his lover hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to let go yet, but AJ didn’t know if that was more due to him wanting to hold on, or that he hadn’t realized it in his shock. What he sensed, though, was that Brian needed a few minutes to gather his thoughts. So AJ leaned forward, propping one arm up on the headrest of the passenger seat. “Where you taking us?”
“For the moment, far away from here.” Howie zipped into the passing lane and sped past two cars, ignoring their honking. “Lord knows where he’s holed up at, and I don’t want to be anywhere he’d expect us to be.”
“We won’t be able to hide from him forever, Howi.”
“We don’t need to go blindly in, either. How the fuck did he get to your house and you not realize it, Alyck?”
On a sigh of frustration, AJ rocked back in his seat. “I was telling Bri about my childhood, and my rebirth.” He knew that would be enough of an explanation. Howie understood how much grief AJ still held over that. The car stayed silent until after Howie had taken the next exit, and had them speeding down a deserted road.
Brian was the one to break the silence. “We’re running away, but what about Nick and Kevin. What are they going to think when we disappear? Will they even be safe? Will my family be safe?”
“There’s not much we can do for them.” Howie piped up, taking yet another exit. In the distance, the sun was starting to come up. “I plan on calling Kevin soon.”
Worry created a crease between Brian’s eyebrows. Out of habit, AJ reached up and ran his thumb over the lines, smoothing them out. “He won’t touch them, baby. Roth doesn’t think like you or I would. Mortals aren’t worth his time to deal with, not on a small scale. He wouldn’t think of taking a few hostages, when his plan is so much grander than that. For that alone, he knows I’ll find him eventually.”
Morning sunlight filled the car, casting a faint glow on everything. There was still worry on Brian’s face, but it wasn’t as deeply etched. “Thank you, for saving me back there.” He whispered, trying to keep his voice low so that Howie wouldn’t hear. AJ knew how futile that was, so he raised a hand and created a wall of air, blocking the front seat from the back. “There, he can’t hear us.” He said, nodding at it. Then he turned his attention back to Brian. “You wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for me.”
With a small chuckle, Brian nodded. He sobered back up quickly. “It’s hard for me to take this all in. It’s all surreal. I feel like I’m going to wake up any minute now, and find out that it was a crazy dream. I’ll roll over, and you’ll grumble at me in your sleep, and everything will be normal again.”
“I wish it could be. But it isn’t. I’m sorry, so extremely sorry, that I didn’t tell you sooner, Bri.” He took the hand that was already holding Brian’s and raised it up, wrapping his other hand around them. “If anything at all, I want you to know that. It wasn’t done to hurt you.”
Brian’s next words were slow in coming. “I can understand at first, when we were new. But once we became close, were living together, why? Why not then?”
This was the question that AJ had known would come. It was also the one that was hardest to answer. He stopped paying attention at all to where they were going, trusting in Howie to take them, and focused his attention solely on Brian. “Because I fell in love. In all my years, Bri, no one has made me feel the way you do. No one. I was so scared of losing it.”
“But eventually you would have had to leave. When I saw you weren’t aging weren’t sick or hurt or anything like that. Or if this crazy dude came for you. That would have hurt me more than knowing the truth.”
“I know. I kept telling myself I’d say something, but then I’d put it off for another day. After a lifetime as long as mine, you learn to embrace something this good when you find it. There’s a connection between us. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. I have never felt so tied to anyone, ever.”
A small blush stained Brian’s cheeks. That told AJ that, even if he didn’t realize it, Brian was softening toward him.
“Alex...Alyck...I don’t even know what to call you.”
“Alex is fine. It’s just the modernized version of my name. For the past four hundred years it’s what I’ve gone by, in one form or another. I think of myself as Alex or AJ more often than I do Alyck anymore.”
“Ok, Alex. What’s going to happen now, though? That man wants to kill you, and you said he’s the only one who can. He wants to kill you and the rest of the world, and bring us all back again to start over. What the hell happens now?”
AJ brought his hand up, pressing his face against Brian’s hand, needing the touch. A small smile curved Brian’s lips at the familiar gesture, and he opened his hand, cupping AJ’s cheek. He could tell that AJ had understood the unspoken part of his sentence. Underneath everything, Brian knew that he loved AJ, and nothing was going to change that. So the person he loved had more of a past than he’d known. There was no denying that the person he’d come to know and love was still the same AJ. His feelings and thoughts were still the same.
“We’ll go somewhere to rest and relax. Then, Howi and I need to make a plan. We won’t let him succeed at this. For millennia we’ve been fighting.” A fierce look came into AJ’s eyes. In that expression, Brian could see the warrior from AJ’s youth. “We will stop him, Bri. The time for hiding is almost done. Soon, we’ll face one another. The fate of the world depends on it.”
A shiver ran through Brian at that remark. He took his hand back and leaned in towards AJ instead. His body felt suddenly cold, so that when he came in contact with AJ’s small frame, he almost felt like he was blazing. Brian soaked the warmth up. He felt AJ’s arm come around his shoulders to cradle him there.
Bone tired, Brian closed his eyes. At that moment, he knew he was safe in AJ’s arms. Everything from the evening was catching up on him, and he found himself sinking down into sleep. The last thing he heard before he drifted off was AJ whispering in his ear. “Sleep, baby. You’re safe with me, I swear it. Just sleep.” Then AJ was humming Brian’s favorite song, and Brian fell asleep smiling.