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It was three in the morning when Izzy woke up with a dry mouth and a metallic taste on his tongue that wasn't just from the tour, it was an ancient, visceral thirst that started in his throat and spread through his chest like slow fire. The bed was empty on Axl's side, the sheet cold and smooth, without even the ghost of the body that should have been there. Which meant he was on the roof, or hunting, or simply watching the city as if it were an aquarium and he was a god too bored to care about what happened inside. Izzy didn't judge, he had learned, in recent months, that loving a vampire also meant loving his absences, his silences, his nocturnal disappearances that had nothing to do with abandonment and everything to do with hunger.
But his belly was heavy. Six months of pregnancy were no joke, and every movement he made to settle in bed was a delicate negotiation between will and discomfort. His body changed every day, stretched, ached, pulsed with a life that wasn't only his, and now, in the silence of the early morning, that life wanted something.
Coca-Cola. Not cold, not with lemon, not diet. Warm. The kind that had been forgotten in the back seat of the car for an entire day under the Los Angeles sun, slowly cooking inside the can until the taste resembled melted plastic, childhood in Indiana, afternoons when the world hadn't yet discovered he existed. Izzy sat up in bed with difficulty, his worn-out Aerosmith t-shirt, the same one he'd been wearing since the beginning of his pregnancy because it was the only one that didn't feel tight, stretched over his belly, and stared at the bedroom door as if it held all the answers he didn't have.
Axl appeared two minutes later. Not because Izzy had called, not because he had made any noise, but because Axl always appeared when Izzy woke up in the middle of the night. It was a sixth sense, an invisible antenna that vibrated in the air between them, a connection that didn't need words. The vampire stopped at the bedroom door, his eyes darker than usual, his pupils dilated from having just fed, his human body processed the blood with silent chemistry, but Izzy had learned to read the signs: the extra gleam in his gaze, the more fluid movement of his fingers, the red trace at the corner of his mouth that Axl wiped with the back of his hand when he saw him awake.
"Are you feeling something?" Axl's voice came out rougher than usual, his drawled Indiana accent rising to the surface as it always did when he was tired or worried, probably both at the same time. He didn't approach immediately, his eyes scanning Izzy's body in a quick sweep that assessed everything: posture, temperature, heartbeats he could hear even from a distance. "You woke up suddenly. You haven't moved for over two hours."
Izzy ran his hand over his belly, feeling the familiar weight, the tense curve beneath his palm. His eyes were still fixed on nothing, a habit he'd had since childhood, looking at nothing while his brain organized thoughts he still couldn't put into words. "I want Coca-Cola," he said, and his voice came out more drawled than he intended, thick with sleep and that strange fog that pregnancy cast over his senses.
Axl blinked slowly, processing. He had learned, in recent months, that Izzy's cravings were never simple. It was never just Coca-Cola. It was a specific Coca-Cola, at a specific temperature, from a specific place, delivered in a specific way, and getting any detail wrong was like hitting the wrong note in a song that only Izzy could hear. "Okay, but how do you want it? Cold, with ice, without ice, canned, bottled, from the machine, from the gas station, from the grocery store—"
"Warm." Izzy turned his face slowly, meeting Axl's eyes for the first time since he'd woken up. "The kind that sits in the car all day. You know."
"Warm." Axl repeated the word as if it were a concept that needed to be chewed, understood, accepted. One corner of his mouth went up, not exactly a smile, but almost. "You want a Coca-Cola that was tortured by the Los Angeles sun for ten hours."
"It's the baby," Izzy murmured, looking back at his belly, his fingers tracing distracted circles over the fabric of his t-shirt. "She asked for it. I'm just translating."
"She." Axl approached, the mattress sinking under his weight that shouldn't exist, he was too light for his size, too thin for the presence he occupied, but the bed always surrendered to him as if it knew something physics didn't explain. "You still think it's a girl?"
"You're the one who thinks that. Since the first ultrasound. I just accepted it." Izzy closed his eyes for a moment, letting his body sink into the mattress, and Axl's hand found his forehead, cold, his long fingers pressing lightly on his temples, as if reading his temperature through touch.
"You're warm," Axl stated, his voice low but loaded with a concern he tried to disguise with practicality. "Is that normal?"
"I don't know. I've never been pregnant before." Izzy opened his eyes again, met Axl's, and there was an exhaustion so deep there it hurt to see. "You must have seen a hundred pregnant women in your two hundred years. You tell me."
Axl looked away for a second, a minimal gesture, almost invisible, but Izzy had learned to read every movement of his. "I didn't pay attention to people before you," he said, and it wasn't a declaration of love, it was just the truth. "I passed by them. I didn't stay. You're the first person who makes me stand still long enough to notice anything."
The silence that followed was soft, filled only by the distant hum of Los Angeles's nocturnal traffic, that metallic breathing that never stopped, the heart of a city that didn't sleep. Izzy let his head fall to the side, resting his forehead on Axl's cold shoulder, and smelled him, night, leather, blood, and something deeper that he never knew how to name.
"Go get my Coca-Cola," he asked, his voice muffled against the fabric of Axl's jacket. "Please. With the money you never spend because you steal everything."
Axl snorted a short laugh, and the sound vibrated against Izzy's face. "You're lucky, Jeffrey Isbell." He was already getting up, grabbing his leather jacket from the chair, the same jacket he'd worn since 1985, that had seen three world tours and countless dirty nights. "Lucky that I love you more than anything in this filthy city. More than the stage. More than blood. More than fucking eternity, if you want to know."
"I know," Izzy murmured, his eyes already closed again, his hand resting on his belly like someone protecting a flame from the wind. "You tell me every day. Take your time, but come back soon."
"I will."
---
When Axl returned twenty minutes later, twenty-three minutes and forty seconds to be exact, because Izzy counted on the clock on the nightstand that blinked red numbers like an electronic heart, he didn't bring just the Coca-Cola. He brought the warm Coca-Cola bought at the corner market that was still open at that hour, a bag of blood stolen from the local hospital (because he still needed to feed, even though he hated admitting it in front of Izzy), and a bag of Cheetos that swung in his hand like an improvised flag.
"You don't eat properly," Axl announced even before reaching the bed, his voice now more alive, more awake, the night hunt always left him like this, his senses sharpened, his energy pulsing beneath his cold skin. "Look at this thinness, Izzy. You're carrying a life and you still forget to eat. That's not sustainable. I read about it in chapter four: 'Nutrition and Meal Frequency During the Gestational Period.' You need at least five small meals a day, and so far you've only had coffee and half a sandwich."
Izzy received the Coca-Cola with both hands, his fingers wrapping around the can as if it were a sacred chalice, and took the first sip with his eyes closed. The liquid went down his throat warm, sweet, with that metallic tang that reminded him of the inside of an old car, and for a moment, just a moment, everything in the world made sense.
"You read chapter four," Izzy said when he finally opened his eyes, his voice still drawled but with a glint of amusement at the corner of his mouth. "About meal frequency. You, who spent a hundred and forty years drinking blood and eating nothing."
"Almost two hundred." Axl sat on the bed, his knees touching, and began to prepare the blood in a glass with ice because that was how Izzy liked to see it, the ritual, the domestic strangeness of a predator putting ice in his own food as if it were any cocktail. "And I'm learning. You can't throw in my face that I'm trying to learn."
"I'm not throwing it in your face." Izzy took another sip of the Coca-Cola, smaller now, savoring it. "I'm impressed. You memorized the chapters."
"I memorized all of them. Even the appendix." Axl stared at the glass of blood with ice as if it were a personal insult, but he took a sip anyway, and made a face that was almost theatrical. "This is disgusting. Blood wasn't meant to be drunk with ice. That's humans trying to be cool, that's what it is."
"You're disgusting," Izzy retorted, but it was a comment without venom, automatic, part of a verbal choreography they'd been dancing since they met. "Predators don't drink blood with ice. Predators drink warm blood, straight from the jugular, like civilized people."
"Exactly." Axl tipped the glass into his mouth with the expression of a martyr, the ice clinking against the glass. "Thank you. Someone in this house understands me."
Izzy took the glass from his hand and took a sip. The gesture was so natural now, drinking Axl's blood, tasting the metallic and sweet flavor go down his throat, that he no longer thought about the absurdity. The baby liked it. He could feel the little life inside him respond to the taste, a subtle vibration like the purring of a cat. "It's good," he said, simply, licking his lips. "The baby approves."
Axl was silent for a long time. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, it was the kind of silence that existed between people who didn't need to fill space with words all the time. He watched Izzy drink blood with ice as if watching a miracle happen in slow motion: his mouth closing around the glass, his throat moving, his tired but attentive eyes.
"You're my sweetest addiction," Axl said finally, his voice low as if speaking more to himself than to Izzy. He leaned his body forward, licked the corner of Izzy's lips where a red drop stubbornly remained, and rested his forehead against his. "Do you understand that, Jeffrey? In almost two hundred years I've been addicted to power, to blood, to music, to anger, and now I'm here, addicted to you. To your taste. To your smell. To the way you frown when you're about to disagree with me and then say nothing because you know I'll disagree back."
Izzy set the glass aside and buried his fingers in Axl's red hair, pulling gently at the strands that escaped his loose ponytail. "And now you're creating another one," he finished the sentence Axl had started earlier, and there was a tired tenderness in his voice, something bordering on wonder. "You're going to have two addictions. We're not easy, Axl."
"Do you think I want easy?" Axl laughed against Izzy's mouth, a short, warm laugh. "I want you. Easy or hard, healthy or sick, pregnant or not, now or a hundred years from now. That's what marriage means, you idiot. It's what you told me and I recorded it here—" He touched his own forehead with two fingers. "—in a part that doesn't forget."
"Good." Izzy closed his eyes, his hand still in Axl's hair. "That way you're not going anywhere."
"As if I could." Axl's hand slid to Izzy's belly, feeling the heat through the thin fabric of his t-shirt, his fingers spreading like someone touching a delicate instrument. "You trapped me on the first day, Jeffrey. The first time you looked at me and weren't afraid."
"Don't call me that. Only when I'm asleep."
"You're almost there."
"I am."
Axl laid him down slowly, pulling the worn blanket up to Izzy's chin, and then stayed there, sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, his hand still resting on his belly. The moon came through the window, pale, indifferent, eternal, and outside Los Angeles continued burning in neon and sin. But inside that apartment, inside that frail body carrying the impossible, there was only silence, warmth, and the sound of two breaths, one human, one dead, learning to exist together in the same rhythm.
"Does it hurt?" Axl asked minutes later, when he thought Izzy was already asleep.
"Yes," Izzy answered, his voice thick and distant. "But it's good. It's like rehearsing until your fingers bleed. It hurts, but you know music will come out in the end."
Axl laughed low, without humor, a laugh that was more of a breath than a sound. "You're so strange, Jeff. So strange and so beautiful that sometimes I can't believe you exist."
"I married a vampire. The strangeness came as a bonus."
"Fair."
The silence returned, softer now, like an extra blanket. When Izzy finally fell asleep, his breathing becoming slow, his fingers relaxing over his chest, Axl pressed his lips to his belly and whispered something only the baby could hear. A promise, a secret, a song he hadn't yet composed, whose melody existed only in his head, waiting for the right moment to be born.
Outside, the night was eternal. But inside, for the first time in centuries, Axl felt that time was not his enemy, it was just a space where love could grow.
---
Two days later, Izzy woke up with another craving. Not Coca-Cola, not Cheetos, nothing that could be bought at the corner market.
"Dirt," he announced, sitting on the bed with his legs crossed and his belly resting on them like a beach ball. "Wet garden dirt after the rain. I want to taste it."
Axl was in the kitchen trying to make pancakes, the fourth attempt of the week, because the first three had burned, and the fifth probably would too, and it took him a moment to process the information. He lowered the spatula, turned off the stove, and walked to the bedroom door slowly, like someone approaching an animal that could run away at any moment. "You want to eat dirt? From the ground?"
"You asked what I wanted." Izzy didn't look away, but there was something in his expression, a vulnerability hidden beneath his stubborn surface, that made Axl want to break things. "I told you. Now you decide if you're going to help me or if you're going to stand there looking at me like I'm a lost cause."
"I don't think you're a lost cause." Axl approached, sat on the edge of the bed, and his cold hand found Izzy's knee automatically. It was a gesture that had become a habit, touching, keeping contact, remembering the other was there. "I think you're pregnant with a half-vampire, half-human creature that's growing inside you and messing up all your senses. And I think that's the scariest and most wonderful thing that's ever happened in my life, and I don't know what to do half the time."
"Half?"
"Ninety percent." Axl attempted a crooked smile. "The other ten percent I spend reading books that don't prepare me for reality."
Izzy held his gaze for a moment and then, slowly, a tired smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. "Do you want to know what I feel? Really?"
"Always."
"It's as if the baby knows things I don't know. As if she has memories that aren't mine. The smell of wet dirt reminds me of Indiana. Reminds me of running barefoot in the yard after the rain, before my mother yelled at me to come inside. Reminds me of something I didn't even know I had forgotten." Izzy ran his hand over his belly, his fingers tracing slow circles. "I'm not going crazy, Axl. I'm feeling the world for the first time. In a new way. Through her."
Axl was silent for a long time, and when he spoke, his voice came out different, lower, deeper, closer to who he really was beneath all the layers of performance. "I spent a hundred and forty years feeling nothing. No smell, no taste, no good memory, just hunger and anger and loneliness. And then you showed up and made me feel everything again. The smell of your cigarette, the taste of your sweat after a show, the sound of your voice saying my name. And now you're feeling the world for the first time too, through her." He rested his forehead against Izzy's. "We're the same, Jeff. On different lines. But the same."
"Are you going to take me to the garden or are you going to be philosophical all night?"
Axl laughed, a genuine, open laugh that echoed through the apartment. "Both. Garden first, philosophy second. Put on a coat."
---
The abandoned garden was two blocks from the apartment, a forgotten lot between two buildings, where someone had once planted flowers and then given up on them. The afternoon rain had just passed, and the dirt was still dark, soft, smelling of living things. Izzy knelt with difficulty, his belly heavy, his back complaining, but there was a determination on his face that Axl recognized from the stage, the same expression of someone who was going to do something and no one in the world could stop him.
He buried his fingers in the dirt. Closed his eyes. Brought a little to his mouth.
Axl watched from standing, his hands in his pockets, his body tense as a guitar string about to snap. Every fiber of his being screamed to intervene, to protect, to take Izzy away from there and back to the safe, sterile apartment. But he did nothing. Because Izzy had asked, and Axl was learning that love sometimes was this: standing still while the person you love does something you don't understand.
"It's good," Izzy murmured, his eyes still closed. "It's so good I can't explain it. It's as if I'm remembering something I never lived. It tastes like childhood and future at the same time. Do you think that's crazy?"
"I think," Axl answered, kneeling in the wet dirt beside him, "that if you asked me for the moon, I'd spend the rest of eternity trying to tear it out of the sky. Wet dirt is easy."
Izzy opened his eyes, met Axl's, and there was a gleam there, not of tears, but of recognition. Of seeing someone who sees you back. "You're an idiot."
"I know."
"My idiot."
"Since the first day."
---
The following week, the craving that came was gasoline.
Izzy was sitting on the couch, his swollen feet propped up on a pillow, the Aerosmith t-shirt now competing for space with a belly that seemed bigger every morning. He was quiet, too quiet, and Axl, who was reading for the third time the chapter on complications in the third trimester, noticed immediately.
"What's wrong?" he asked, closing the book with a dry snap. "You have the same face you had when you asked for dirt."
"Gasoline." Izzy didn't even open his eyes. "The smell of gasoline. From a gas station, from the road, from a tour. The baby wants it."
"The baby wants it or you want it?"
"I don't know what's mine and what's hers anymore, Axl." Now he opened his eyes, and there was a frustration there that wasn't anger, it was tiredness, it was confusion, it was the weight of carrying two souls in one body. "Everything is mixed up. My cravings, hers, my memories, the things she makes me remember. It's as if I'm a house where two people live, and sometimes I don't know who's talking."
Axl processed that in silence for a moment, and then stood up, setting the book aside. "Inhaling gasoline is harmful. The book has an entire chapter on inhalants, chapter seven, and it says it can cause dizziness, nausea, neurological damage, and I'm not going to let you sniff gasoline, Izzy. Not for you, not for the baby, not for anyone."
"So you're not going to help." Izzy's voice was flat, but not accusatory. It was just stating a fact.
"I didn't say that." Axl knelt in front of him, his cold hands landing on Izzy's knees. "I said I'm not going to let you inhale gasoline. But I can bring the car close to the window. Open the tank. Let the smell come in from a distance, ventilated. You'll smell it, but you won't actually inhale it. It's the most I can do without putting you at risk."
Izzy looked at him for a long time. Then, one of his hands went up to touch Axl's face, his pale cheekbone, his always tense jaw, the mouth that had already said and done so many things. "You would do that?"
"I would do anything. Literally anything, Izzy." Axl turned his face to kiss the palm of his hand. "I've already told you that. I kill, I steal, I bring gasoline to the window at two in the morning. Just don't ask me to see you in danger. That I can't handle."
"What are you afraid of? Specifically?" The question came low, direct, without preamble, the way Izzy always asked important things.
Axl closed his eyes. "Of losing you. Of losing you two. Of watching everything fall apart and not being able to do anything. I've lived too long, Jeff. I've seen people die, disappear, leave me. I can't see that happen to you. I wouldn't survive."
"You would survive. You always survive." Izzy leaned his body forward, resting his forehead against Axl's. "But you won't have to. I'm here. We're here. And I'm not going anywhere. That's what marriage means."
"You using my own words against me."
"Someone has to."
An hour later, Izzy was sitting on the couch with the window open, smelling the faint smell of gasoline coming from the car parked downstairs. Axl stayed by his side the whole time, one hand resting on his belly, ready to close the window at the slightest sign of a cough.
"Is it good?" Axl asked.
"It is," Izzy answered, his eyes closed, an almost imperceptible smile on his lips. "Smell of the road. Of the future. Of all the tours we did and all the ones we'll still do. Do you smell it?"
"I smell exhaust and pollution."
"You have no soul."
"Literally. I'm undead."
Izzy laughed, and the sound of his laugh filled the apartment like a song they hadn't yet composed. Axl kept that sound somewhere inside himself, in his chest where a heart once beat, in the memory that spanned centuries, and knew he would remember it forever.
---
The following week was a parade of small hells and great learnings.
Izzy woke up on Tuesday wanting the taste of blood, not real blood, he wasn't a vampire, but the taste, the texture, the metallic memory that danced on his tongue since the baby had begun to manifest. Axl prepared a glass of water with a tiny drop of his own blood and stirred it with a spoon until it was almost invisible, a ghost of a taste, a suggestion, nothing more. Izzy drank it with his eyes closed and thanked him with a nod, and neither of them said anything because they didn't need to.
On Wednesday, Izzy wanted to drive without a destination, just to feel the movement, the wind, the illusion that he could still go anywhere. Axl drove for two hours along the empty roads around Los Angeles, one hand on the wheel and the other on Izzy's knee, while the radio played songs neither of them recognized.
On Thursday, Izzy didn't want anything. He just lay in bed, his hand on his belly, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Axl lay down beside him and was silent too. Sometimes, love was just presence. Sometimes, it was just being there, asking for nothing in return.
---
On Friday night, or perhaps it was already early Saturday, time was slippery in that apartment, Izzy woke up with his body aching and a certainty: he wanted Axl. Not the caretaker, not the provider of impossible cravings, not the vampire worried about nutritional charts and book chapters. He wanted the man. The partner. The love he had chosen among all possible loves.
Axl was sitting in the armchair by the window, his eyes fixed on the night, his face lit only by the moon. He looked like a statue from an old cathedral, beautiful, still, eternal, carrying on his shoulders the weight of nearly two centuries. But when Izzy stirred in bed and murmured his name, he turned immediately, and the statue dissolved into flesh, into presence, into concern.
"Did I wake you? Sorry." Axl was already getting up, crossing the room in three long strides. "I was going to come back. I was just thinking."
"Thinking about what?" Izzy made room on the bed, a silent invitation.
"About the future." Axl lay down beside him carefully, his arm wrapping around Izzy's shoulders, his hand landing on his belly automatically. "About the birth. About what can go wrong. About all the things I can't control."
"You control everything," Izzy murmured against Axl's cold chest. "Too much."
"Not you. Not this." Axl's voice was different, lower, rawer, as if he had taken off all the layers of performance and only the essential remained. "I can steal blood from a hospital, bring warm Coca-Cola, open the window to the smell of gasoline. But I can't give birth for you. I can't feel your pain. I can't guarantee that everything will be okay. And that terrifies me in a way you can't imagine."
Izzy lifted his head, met Axl's eyes in the dim light. "You spent two hundred years being the predator. The hunter. The one no one could touch or hurt. And now you're terrified because you love me and you can't control the universe for me." He touched Axl's face, his fingers tracing the line of his jaw. "That's being human, Axl. That's what we feel all the time. Fear of losing the ones we love. You're being human."
"I don't want to be human. Humans die."
"Humans also live. And love. And have children. And feel fear and move forward anyway." Izzy rested his forehead against his. "You show me what it's like to be eternal. I show you what it's like to be human. That was the deal, wasn't it?"
Axl closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, there was something different, something softer, more surrendered. "I love you in a way that doesn't fit in words. That doesn't fit in centuries. That doesn't fit in anything."
"Then it doesn't fit," Izzy answered, his lips brushing his. "We let it overflow."
The kiss started slowly, a light touch, a silent question. But the answer came quickly, Izzy's hands going up to Axl's hair, pulling with the intimacy of someone who knows exactly where to touch. Axl moaned against his mouth, a low, surprised sound, and let his body respond to the call.
"Are you sure?" Axl asked, his voice rough, his fingers already sliding down the side of Izzy's body. "The pregnancy... the doctor..."
"The doctor said it's fine until the eighth month, you read chapter eleven." Izzy bit Axl's lower lip, pulling gently. "Stop treating me like I'm going to break. I can take more than you think."
"You're the most fragile and strongest creature I've ever known," Axl whispered, and there was reverence in every syllable. "You carry a life inside you. You carry me inside you. You carry the whole world on those thin shoulders and you never ask for help."
"Then help me now." Izzy pulled him closer, their bodies fitting together as they always did. "Get inside me. Show me this body is still mine. Show me you still want me even with this belly, even swollen, even strange."
Axl pulled back just enough to look into his eyes, and what Izzy saw there melted any insecurity. "You're the most beautiful thing that ever existed, Jeffrey Isbell. Before the belly, during the belly, after the belly. If I had another two hundred years, I'd still spend all of them looking at you the same way."
"You talk too much," Izzy murmured, pulling him back.
"You love me for it."
"Unfortunately."
What followed was slow and deep, a ritual of touches and kisses and whispers that didn't need an audience. Axl prepared him with infinite patience, his cold hand contrasting with the heat of Izzy's body, his mouth tracing maps on his skin. When he finally entered, they both let out their breath together, a double moan that filled the room.
"Does it hurt?" Axl asked, completely still, his eyes fixed on Izzy's face.
"It's perfect." Izzy moved his hips, asking for more. "Move. Don't stop. Take me somewhere that isn't inside my own head."
Axl obeyed. The rhythm was dictated by Izzy's body, his belly prevented certain angles, certain speeds, but what they lacked in acrobatics they made up for in intimacy. They moved together like people playing a song they already knew by heart, each moan a note, each scratch an improvisation.
"Deeper," Izzy begged, his nails digging into Axl's back.
"Can you take it?"
"I survived Indiana, survived fame, survived you. This is easy."
Axl laughed against his neck, a trembling laugh that turned into a moan when Izzy squeezed him from the inside. And then there were no more words, just the sound of their bodies, the discreet creak of the old mattress, Izzy's breathing becoming more and more irregular. When the orgasm came, it was like a warm wave that started at the base of his spine and spread everywhere, pulling a muffled scream that Axl swallowed with a kiss.
"Don't pull out," Izzy asked, his voice trembling, his legs still around Axl's waist. "Stay. Just a little longer."
"As long as you want." Axl rested his forehead against his, their bodies still joined, the sweat cooling. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise?"
"Promise." Axl kissed the tip of his nose. "I've already promised you that about a hundred times."
"Then promise again tomorrow. I like hearing it."
Axl smiled, an open, youthful smile that made him look less like a vampire of nearly two hundred years and more like a lovesick boy from Indiana. "Tomorrow I'll do better. I'll write it on paper. Buy a ring. Tattoo your name somewhere I haven't tattooed yet."
"You already have my name tattooed."
"I have room for more."
Izzy rolled his eyes, but he was smiling, that tired, crooked smile that Axl loved more than anything in the universe. "You're ridiculous. Are you going to let me sleep now or are you going to stay there planning tattoos?"
"Both." Axl settled beside him, pulling the blanket over both of them. "First you sleep, then I plan."
Izzy's belly moved, a kick, a nudge, the little life inside demanding attention. Axl placed his hand on the spot and felt the movement against his palm, and for a moment couldn't say anything.
"She's saying goodnight," Izzy murmured, his eyes already closing.
"Goodnight, little one." Axl kissed Izzy's belly, his cold lips against the warm skin. "Daddy loves you both. More than anything. More than the stage. More than eternity. More than anything I've ever felt in nearly two hundred years in this stupid world."
"Exaggerator," Izzy whispered, already half asleep.
"Truthful," Axl corrected softly, his hand still on the belly. "Just truthful."
The silence returned, but now it was a different silence, full of everything they no longer needed to say. Outside, Los Angeles continued burning in neon and sin, the distant sirens, the traffic that never stopped, the city that never slept. But inside that room, under the pale light of the moon coming through the window, a vampire, a human, and a baby yet to be born found something none of them expected: peace.
And when Izzy finally slept, Axl stayed awake, as he always did, listening to the two breaths, feeling the two pulses, saving every second like someone saving a rare treasure. He didn't know what the future would bring. He didn't know if the birth would be safe, if the baby would be born healthy, if Izzy would remain strong. But for the first time in nearly two hundred years, he didn't want to know. He just wanted to be there, in that moment, with his hand on the belly of the man he loved, feeling life pulse beneath his fingers.
Outside, the night was eternal. But inside, Axl finally understood what it meant to have time, not the infinite time of immortality, but the precious, finite, irreplaceable time that existed between two people who loved each other.
And it was enough.
End.💫