“You look like Rudolph the red nose reindeer.”
In the end, Lexi had done them both a far greater favour than they’d ever done her. It’d only taken them this long to see it clearly. An evening that had begun with the promise of a fight to the death had ended in an endless drinking round between - dare he say it - friends.
Only because they’d been wise enough, ultimately, to decide that they both stood to gain far more in friendship, than in love with a capricious newborn. Two ancient evils united under one alliance… No wonder fate had attempted to keep them on opposite sides for so long. As for Lexi, they had yet to decide whether to spare her life or toss it away as ruthlessly as all the other they’d taken before her. It wasn’t exactly the highest entry on their current list of (misguided) priorities.
It was the sixteenth drink, or maybe the twenty-sixth between them when Jacob offered that ever so enlightening observation. It was delivered in a slur, and with the sort of wobbly smile that looked entirely out of place on either of their lips.
Nicolas stared at him. For a few moments, there was nothing but silence.
Jacob’s smile began to waver slightly, the amusement tugging at his eyes beginning to fade as he wondered whether he’d gone too far. He knew Nicolas didn’t take comparisons very lightly - let alone those to cartoon creatures. He wondered what the hell had possessed him to say it aloud, and decided that was the last drink he’d be having tonight. “I didn’t mean-”
But then the Original erupted into laughter. The deep, booming kind that filled the bar around them and captured more than one bystander’s attention. “Well, I’ll say…” He replied, downing the alcohol from the shot glass in his hand before setting it on the counter decisively. “There’s proof enough for you that I’ll need a proper meal if I’m to avoid drowning internally from liquor. What do you say? Are you in?” But he didn’t have to ask twice as Jacob’s mouth parted into a feral grin. Nicolas barely gave him the time to stand up before - in one swift movement - he’d yanked him off the stool and towards the bar’s exit.