"I believe in everything until it's disproved.

So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons.

It all exists, even if it's in your mind.

Who's to say that dreams and nightmares

aren't as real as the here and now?"

-John Lennon

-Ӝ-

It's all fun and games until one of your roommates obliterates you from existence.

Wylan was not surprised to say the least to hear quite the cacophony drifting to his ears as he power-walked toward the building, his green and gold uniform certainly unfit for the mid-December weather, the logo of the university emblazoned across the back of his coat. He began to jog as a large crash echoed through the dark, lantern-lit streets, spooking a big black horse and nearly causing the cart loaded with goods to topple over. Wylan skirted around the grumbling driver and towards his building which, surprise!, was the one where all the racket was coming from. Neighbors had long since obtained sound-proof shutters and windows rather than try to futilely complain, and Wylan could see shapes and silhouettes moving this way and that as the select few who were up at this hour prepared for bed.

"MATTHIAS YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT YOU FUCKING FUCK!" was the first complete sentence that Wylan could hear when he was in range, and it just so happened to have come from the dirty mouth of the one and only Kaz Brekker. How come he wasn't even the slightest bit shocked? He groped around for his key, which was lost in the depths of the satchel full to bursting with papers, and when he found it, he inserted it into the lock. The door had a habit of sticking, so Wylan leaned back and kicked it open, after making well sure it was actually unlocked; Jesper had once believed the door to be stuck and had kicked it open when in reality he hadn't turned the key properly. They'd had to replace the door frame, and Kaz had sure ripped Jesper a new one, condemning him to chamber pot duty for the rest of the month.

Wylan didn't even bother to announce his coming home; all of his friends had incredibly keen ears and sense of smell, and they had told him during the first few weeks of him announcing his arrival back at the house that it was incredibly redundant, since they could already detect him. Even over this cacophony, Jesper still looked over and grinned at him as he reclined back in his seat and watched Kaz and Matthias tear each other's throats out. They weren't trying to do it with their hands, which meant that today was a good day, but the insults they were hurling at one another were venomous to say the least, and to Wylan and probably everyone else, it was actually kind of funny.

"Oh yeah? I'll shove a stake in you, you no-good, bloodsucking, pale-faced, son of a bitch!" Matthias roared, baring his incredibly sharp, animal-like teeth, and Wylan masked his laugh with a cough as he skirted around the two warring men and took a seat next to Jesper on the couch

"My mother's the bitch? What about yours, fur-face! I bet her favorite position was doggy style!" Kaz bellowed in return, his eyes flashing and his wickedly long incisors, which had slid out of his gums as he prepared to defend himself, looking menacing to say the least. Wild hand gestures were made, people's mothers and their mother's mothers were insulted, and everyone else just exchanged a tired, fed-up look. It went on and on and on, for what felt like hours, and they still hadn't run out of steam. Wylan was already dressed and ready for bed, and yet there they were, fighting like cats and dogs, still having refused to move from their spots.

"Alright, guys, enough!" Inej barked, and the two immediately went silent, twin looks of horror spreading over their faces as they just realized what they'd done.

"How many minutes over the limit?" Kaz croaked, his eyes suddenly wide and fearful.

"You don't want to know," Inej scoffed, and Kaz and Matthias exchanged a terrified look. "Alright, guys, get over here." The two balked, their hands wringing together, but Nina raised her hand from where she was reading her book and, like the conductor of an orchestra, marched them over to where Inej was leaned against the counter. The Valkyrie's glowing blue eyes were only made ten times more creepy by the wicked grin on her face, and Kaz and Matthias swallowed hard, eying one another. Everyone rose and gathered around, enjoying the dark flush on both of their faces (or as close to a flush as a vampire could get in Kaz's case).

"Do we have to?" he whimpered, seeming much smaller and more frightened than the uptight leader with the crow's head cane that had been at Matthias's throat only a few minutes ago.

"You know the rules," Inej chided, but her voice was firm. Businesslike. Everyone knew that Kaz was the leader of the Dregs, which only consisted of the small band of people struggling to pay the rent of this two-story little nook that they dubbed the Slat, however everyone also knew that Inej was the boss of Kaz, which technically meant that Inej was the true head of the Dregs. "And if I let you off the hook, you'll start to unconsciously think that you can get away with these things."

"But we won't!" Matthias insisted, his voice quivering a little. "We're sorry! We won't do it again!" Kaz nodded vigorously in agreement, to which Inej rolled her eyes, shaking her head in her obvious disbelief.

"Rules are rules," Inej stated, and the two boys groaned, beginning to shake in their boots as Inej reached into the drawer that was used specifically for this purpose. She produced the two items that every vampire and every werewolf feared; a loaf of garlic bread and a plastic cone.

"Please, no," Kaz begged, backing up, but Inej just cast a look at Nina and the witch waved her hand and forced him over to the table. With an incredibly heartbroken look, Kaz took a seat and stared dejectedly at the loaf of garlic bread that was placed in front of him.

"A slice for every minute you go over the limit of ten minutes of arguing," Inej announced, placing a bread knife down on the table for Kaz to cut the bread, and the vampire seemed to be considering cutting his own head off with it. "You argued so much over the limit that I just gave you the whole loaf. Jesus Christ, Kaz we've been going through garlic bread like wildfire. Why can't you just control yourself?"

Kaz didn't reply as he began to choke down the first slice.

"And as for you, Matthias!" Inej barked, and the werewolf became impossibly tenser. "You know what you have to do." Matthias whimpered, and Jesper snickered a bit, making the Fjerdan flush even a brighter shade of red. Everyone blinked and in the hulking man's place was a giant white wolf, one that was trembling at that. "I present to you, the cone of shame." Matthias whined as Inej strapped the plastic cone around is head, and immediately everyone was up in laughter. Except for Kaz, though, as he managed to stuff a third slice of garlic bread down his throat, his eyes watering. Matthias tucked his tail in between his legs and slunk off to his room. "If you take it off before the day is up you get another day on top of that!" Inej called after him.

"This is pretty fucking funny," Nina guffawed as Kaz let out a tortured sound, motioning desperately for water, which Inej allowed. "I wish we could save this moment forever."

"Well, I'm going to bed," Jesper announced, stretching languidly and trotting off to his room. He turned, "You coming, Wylan?" The human nodded vigorously and hung his satchel on its respective hook, hustling over to follow him. The two disappeared down the hall. Inej and Nina remained awake, neither needing even a drop of sleep, and watched on in amusement as Kaz made his way through the fifth slice of garlic bread, gagging and choking it down.

"So, how's work?" Inej asked nonchalantly, taking a seat on one of the puffy armchairs. Her Norse-looking armor gleamed in the dim light of the candles, and her glowing eyes were critical as they regarded Nina, who'd long since gotten used to their heavy weight.

"Awful," Nina sighed, "Ever since those stupid Grisha went extinct, people have been desperate to try and get someone to replicate their magic. Now I have to wear this monstrous red kefta and claim to be the only Grisha left in existence to bring in some money for this hell of a gambling den, and the problem is that it works! Just because I dabble in merzost doesn't mean that I am suddenly an expert at the small science, or can even be a part of the small science, for that matter, but people completely disregard that. I swear I've nearly been captured by Shu at least five times."

"I can only agree," Inej groaned, rubbing her forehead in her mental exhaustion. "Try being in a circus. At least I could be doing something challenging and exciting for me, but no. All I have to do is fly a few laps around the ring on Sankta Alina and people are weeping and throwing flowers." Sankta Alina was the Valkyrie's shining white mare with a mane of fire, who she could summon at will. Every battle that was ever fought had mounted Valkyries descending to collect the souls of the dead, and for many, many centuries Inej and Sankta Alina had rode together to bring souls to the next life. After a little mishap involving bringing an incredibly important soul to Hell for personal grudges, Inej was (dis)honorably discharged from the force, sentenced to banishment. Sankta Alina had stayed, but whenever Inej called, the mare would come.

"I'm done!" Kaz gagged and immediately chucked his guts into the garbage can, his stomach only really meant for human blood and small amounts of solid food. He wiped his mouth and stumbled to the icebox, where he grabbed his flask of blood and downed it all in one gulp. His deathly pallor became only slightly healthier, and Nina was constantly reminded of the fact that Kaz was technically dead. His heart didn't beat. He didn't need to go to the bathroom or sleep. He was just another victim of the Queen Lady's plague all those centuries ago, and had somehow emerged as a vampire, unlike is more unfortunate brother.

"My bet's on them getting into another fight tomorrow," Nina stage-whispered, and Kaz whirled around to glare at her, his dark eyes holding an eerie reddish tinge to them as his body was filled with the blood of humans. "What? It's true."

"No, they'll fight right after the cone of shame comes off," Inej corrected, and Kaz slunk off to his room, muttering some very profound things under his breath. He was probably going to hang from the ceiling and brood like his normal vampire self, when suddenly he emerged from the hallway again, something akin to disgust plaguing his features.

"Jesper and Wylan are fucking," he sighed, taking a seat next to Inej, and the Valkyrie snuggled up next to him. His skin was cold to the touch, like Inej had just burrowed under blankets in the middle of winter and needed to warm them up, but she didn't mind as he wrapped an arm around her waist.

"You guys are so lucky," Nina groaned, frowning, "My boyfriend is currently wearing a cone." Everyone laughed, but Kaz winced as he recalled his run-in with the garlic bread only a few minutes prior.

"I can't sleep in my room anymore because their room is right next to mine," Kaz continued, his brows knitting. "They fuck like bunnies. Every. Single. Night. My…" he paused, searching for the word.

"Brooding? Lurking?" Nina suggested, and he bared his fangs at her, which she waved off with a roll of her eyes.

"…is always interrupted by an erotic moan and the headboard hitting the wall."

"Try being next to Nina and Matthias," Inej prompted, and Kaz cast Nina a disgusted look. She couldn't really argue, so she just shrugged innocently.

"This place is a fucking train wreck," Kaz muttered.

-Ӝ-

Jesper was spooned around Wylan, their legs tangled together, and the sheets were pulled over them to keep the cold at bay. Wylan was half-asleep and exhausted, and Jesper was very much infatuated with the red-haired boy's neck, sucking dark bruises that stood out against the paleness of his skin. Wylan, of course, was too drowsy to realize that these marks would be very much prominent the next day, and he reached his arm around Jesper's head to make sure that the Zemeni boy kept doing what he was doing. Jesper smiled against his skin and while he peppered Wylan's neck with kisses, his hands roamed all over his lover's body, which was bare. The pads of his fingers ate up miles of pale pink skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

"Stopit m'tired," Wylan complained softly after a while, shying away in a halfhearted attempt to evade the next kiss, and Jesper chuckled and withdrew, instead opting to rest his head on Wylan's neck, listening to his pulse fluttering. Almost immediately, the redhead's breathing evened out as he slipped off into sleep. Judging from the pounding Jesper did to him beforehand, he was going to need it. Jesper needed to sleep, but not as much as humans, and he was wide awake as he listened to Wylan's beating heart against his neck.

He was reminded of the fact that that beating heart, that ba-boom, ba-boom, was Wylan's life clock ticking. Jesper wasn't immortal, shapeshifters never were, but they lived a very, very long time as long as they kept shifting back and forth between forms; Jesper needed to have blood-to-blood contact with something in order to shift into them, but he would never, ever shift into one of his friends. The longer and the more frequently he used a certain form, the more life essence that he leeched off of the original person. The unfortunate Zemeni fellow that Jesper was currently using the shape of had to be long dead, and for a few weeks the guilt of knowing that had plagued him, but he'd shrugged it off; once the original person was dead, he could switch back and forth from their shape without needing blood-to-blood contact. The life force that shapeshifters inhabited fueled their incredibly long life, and as long as they kept shifting into new things and new people, they would continue living for eons, but if that wasn't the case they had the life span of about the same as a human's.

Jesper shifted into the form of a huge timber wolf, one that he'd hunted for food during the Dregs's raid on the Ice Court, and felt a huge surge of protectiveness as he watched Wylan's chest rise and fall. Humans were so fragile. So weak. Unlike Jesper, who was only affected by silver, Wylan could be hurt by a rainbow of things. He could catch his death, could trip and fall and drown in one of the canals, and a number of other horrors that Jesper couldn't even dream of. He growled a bit, his hackles raising, and snuggled more closely against Wylan's side, glaring at the darkness as if daring the monsters that lurked within it to attack Jesper's lover.

He tried not to think about the fact that in the future, Wylan will be old and grey and Jesper will still be as young as the Zemeni man was when he shifted into his form. In the future, Jesper will have to sit at Wylan's bedside, watching him hacking on coughs. In the future, one fateful day, Wylan will slip through Jesper's fingers like water, and Jesper will be able to do nothing but mourn. He brushed those thoughts away, but he always returned to them. Over and over and over again.

By the time you finally die, Wylan will have long since been in the ground.

Wylan will die before you.

Wylan will die before you.

Wylan will die before you.

It was that night that the shapeshifter decided that he already had enough animal and human forms at his disposal, and that he wasn't going to shift into something new ever again. Hopefully, that meant he wouldn't have to suffer for centuries after Wylan's passing.

"I love you," he whispered in Wolf into the human's curly red locks. He returned to guarding the human from the dark.

-Ӝ-

Inej and Kaz were on the roof, and that night Sankta Alina had decided to join them. Kaz eyed the glowing white horse with its fiery mane and tail and eyes that smoldered like burning coals, a bit wary of the steed, but Inej seemed to trust it so he did as well. They'd been sitting in silence for a while, their legs dangling over the edge as they watched the moon and the stars and the bustle of the city that never seemed to go to sleep, when Kaz decided that he would like to break the quiet.

"You know, ordering me around like that was pretty hot," he remarked, and smirked as he saw Inej's startled expression out of the corner of his eye. "I mean, why else would I choke down a whole loaf of garlic bread without a fight."

"You know the rules," Inej snorted, lacing her fingers through his and with the other hand stroking Alina's neck absently, "I was just making sure they were followed."

"Your rule-following is even worse than Matthias's. I mean, you'd think that with his wolf pack-ish instincts that he'd be able to know who the Alpha is around here," Kaz scoffed, the distain clear in his voice. "Honestly, everything about him annoys me. He was breathing too loudly and I just sort of snapped."

"Kaz!" Inej cried, startling Alina a bit, "Everyone breathes too loud to you because you don't have to breathe!" Kaz noted the fact that no, he was not breathing, and just gave a quite innocent shrug.

"I never truly considered that, to be honest," he admitted, and Inej rolled her eyes and leaned against Kaz's side in her exasperation. "What? I just assume that everyone is a vampire."

"You shouldn't do that because then you'll let it slip to someone and you'll be staked in no time." Inej's tone was joking, but her eyes were serious, and Kaz realized that she was actually warning him. He gave her a reassuring half-smile and she kissed his cheek, concern still pinching her brow. They returned to watching the black smudges of birds occasionally blot out the stars and outline themselves against the full moon, lapsing into a comfortable silence that was only interrupted by Sankta Alina's occasional snorting or shifting. The December night was a bit on the frigid side, and even though he knew that neither of them were in danger of catching colds, he wrapped his arm tighter around her as if to shield her from the chilly wind. She smiled softly at this.

"Do you ever tire of being a creature of the night?" she prompted, and Kaz had to admit that he was caught off guard.

"I never knew you thought of me as a prostitute, Inej," the vampire scoffed, trying to keep his voice even and his expression schooled, but the corners of his lips tugged up at the corners as he saw Inej grinning at him from out of the corner of his eye.

"You know what I mean," she sighed, suddenly looking thousands of years older. "I know I certainly tire of being somewhat divine. It keeps me up at night knowing that one day the sky will fade to black, the crops will wilt, the buildings will crumble, the stars will fall like rain, and the world will burn beneath my feet and yet I will not die. I will live to see the end of all things, Kaz. It scares me."

"Well, when you put it like that…" Kaz trailed off, shaking his head. "You'll have me. And Jesper and Nina and Matthias and even Sankta Alina here." Kaz was careful to make sure that he didn't mention Wylan. He carefully skirted around the subject of the human's mortality, and for a while he'd been on the brink of asking Wylan if he would be liked to turn into a vampire as not to be taken by his fragile human weakness. Perhaps it was time to pop the question.

"See, that's the problem, Kaz. I won't have you or anyone else," she whispered softly. "Wylan will be long dead," Kaz flinched a little at the harsh truth, "Nina and Jesper can live for an extensive amount of time, what with Nina's magic keeping her young and Jesper's constant shifting giving him the life essence of others, but they will not be able to live forever. Matthias will go first, when the moon dies, and then it will just be you and me. Alina would've been called back into service of the Valkyries to collect the souls of the droves of humans dying, and I'll be feeding you my blood to keep you alive because there are no humans to speak of. But then you'll be gone. And it will just be me. Alone on this world with the rest of those condemned from the order of the Valkyries. It's…heavy on the conscience."

"You're not wrong," Kaz remarked, absently picking at the shingles beneath them. "But if it truly comes to it, I will kill you and then starve to death if it means that you wouldn't have to live the rest of your days alone."

"That's a very noble thing for the bastard of the Barrel to say," Inej chided, but he could see just how much his words meant to her. "Hopefully everyone goes to the same Heaven."

"Me? A vampire in the same Heaven as a beautiful Valkyrie? I think not." He loved the way Inej blushed hard whenever he complimented her, and that was the reason why he'd long since made it his mission to make her blush as much as possible. She returned to her watching the skyline, her hair moving hypnotically, caught in the throes of the wind.

"Beginnings are usually scary and chaotic, and endings are usually filled with sorrow, however what counts is everything in the middle. It's what makes us…us. And who knows? Perhaps we pathetic dogs will all manage to share a Heaven."

"It is far too late in the night for your Suli proverb bullshit."