Chapter 1: I'll always look out for you
Chapter Text
The castle was always drafty. In the summer, this meant sitting in the library in a specific corner offered you both warm sunlight and a cool breeze. In the winter, this meant Amelia Watson faced the constant threat of hypothermia.
Bundled up in at least two sweaters and an extra layer of socks, along with a hat and thick, woolen pants more suited towards blizzards, she deemed herself protected enough to escape the warm confines of her room.
The rug that covered the cool floorboards of the hallway was a blessing. It offered a modicum of warmth that the aged wood boards probably taken from a historically significant tree did not have. Ame did admit, she found a childish glee in sliding across the hall in her socks.
Turning corners and pushing off walls, she reached the main staircase and headed on down. Her bag already prepared by the front door, she slung it over her shoulder.
The weight of her belongings settled into her along with a curious sort of sadness that she had come to expect on her departures. But she was sure her partner had it worse.
“Already?”
She turned. Looking suitably damp and dramatic, wrapped up in an impressively thick coat that dwarfed her form, was the owner of the castle.
Ame shifted her weight from one foot to the other, fingers tightening on the strap of her bag. “Already.” She didn’t take a step forward. “I’ll be back soon.”
Their eyes were like uncut rubies that swallowed sunlight and suffocated it, dark and heady aged wines. He ducked his head in a bow, always the penitent dog. Pot spies kettle, Ame figured. “I never know if that’s true.”
“It always is.” Ame meant it. The candles flickered, wax pooling atop expensive tables, leaving a mess that would surely be even worse by the time she returned. The owner was always morose when she wasn’t around.
They took a step forward, brushed a cold hand down her cheek. She leaned into it, their touch, imagined a heartbeat under the skin.
“I’ll be back soon,” She whispered. Her lips brushed against her wrist and Gigi almost crumpled.
When Ame closed the door behind her, Gigi breathed the words she couldn’t say aloud into the now dead air of the castle. When she left the room, she left it dark and silent.
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As stereotypical as it sounded, they met when Ame was trying to kill him.
It was a summer evening with the kind of heat that saturated into bones and left one miserable. The cicadas roared their glee at the conditions. The birds were restless in the trees, aware of the predator in their midst.
She didn’t really seem like one though.
For all Ame’s expectations, vampires never really lived up to their presumed hype, courtesy of a mid 2000’s boom of excessive pop culture romanticization. They held a timelessness, yes, and always carried an aesthetic brought from the time they were turned, but they were more like photographs. There was a falseness to their elegance, a frantic clinging to what they once knew as everything around them changed.
She found him at a coffee shop.
He was sitting in the corner, dark sunglasses on, sipping on a cold latte with what seemed to be a caramel drizzle. When his mouth moved, throat bobbing elegantly with every sip, and why did her eyes go there she could only attribute to vampiric charm, she could see the milk pearl hint of fang.
It was a jolt to the system. A reminder that even for all his endearing style, oversized coat and polo shirt with a lopsided collar, this was a monster whose very nature depended on the blood of mortals. Those Ame had sworn to protect, hand upon musty, slightly damp and unnervingly green book that carried all their codes and rituals and rules and techniques.
She carried the scars of her job. The fish men she had to relocate and the local kraken that disliked its food source moving away. The werewolf pack diplomacy meetings she had to mediate and not get eaten in. The bitter realization that the one and only, Ouro Kronii, was in fact the one to solve a time dyad in England instead of her.
This mission at least seemed simple. A recently turned vampire, as recent as two centuries was, living in a large estate out of town. Some people turned up after a party, mysteriously missing a gallon of blood, a health condition that typically leads to death. With a few bloodless bodies and a nearby recluse, Amelia could get a new job as a detective if she ever wanted to get out of the living on the edge of death business.
Tempting.
He was leaving and she was following, her own cup of hot chocolate growing cold in her hand. The setting sun left ghosts of them trailing behind, dark but fuzzy on the sidewalk. Its heat pressed oil out of the asphalt and into the air, dark and cloying. It made Ame’s nose wrinkle.
It made the vampire sneeze. Non-stop.
They’d pass by a car idling and his body would heave with the force of his lungs trying to escape the job they didn’t even have to do anymore. A dog too close and his nose would water as he petted it with a bright grin, chatting with its owner.
Ame followed and hoped she did not look like a weirdo for trailing after what seemed to be the town saint. They even helped an old lady cross the street, smiling so gently and with such a carefully offered arm that when all she had to give them was an apple from her groceries, they ate it right then and there!
Regular food tasted like ash to vampires, and here she was munching into it like it was the femoral artery of a particularly blood filled human.
For a moment, Ame thought she had the wrong guy. They were walking in the sun, and while the coat was a shield from its rays, her head was still uncovered. Her short, choppy hair had the consistency of electrocuted cat fur; consistently surprised and floating around her chin.
But then a ball rolling past him was nudged into his palm by a dextrous tail, slipping out from under the coat and back inside whisper quick. The flipped up coat collar revealed a line of intricate markings. Sun walker script, older, far older than something he should have or could be capable of making.
And with that, the clues lined back up and Ame was back in the running for the most reluctant detective of all time.
Would it be so bad if I left him alone? She thought a bit desperately. Maybe the dead people were, like, terrible? Maybe he’s supported by a cult, it’s the cult’s fault, alright let’s find the imaginary cult….. Pack it up Amelia Watson, you gotta kill the nicest guy you’ve ever met.
This was when she accidentally stabbed him.
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“I’m still sorry.”
Gigi’s nose wrinkled adorably, curled up on top of the covers. His body toed the line between malnourished and muscular, vampiric nature meaning that he could pull the look off but his dorkish grin meaning he just looked a little stupid. Good thing Ame liked him like that. “What for?”
Ame reached out. His skin was smooth and cold, almost like the covers they lay upon. They were both naked, curtains drawn tight and leaving them both as outlines in the dark. Ame knew they could see her just fine, their gaze trained on her face. Ever the gentleman. To her though, they were an outline of a hip, the soft jut of a chin and the brush of soft tummy hair on her fingers.
The scar was a little divot. She pressed her warm palm into it and felt Gigi draw the heat out. Their mouth was a white gash in the dark.
“Sorry.” Ame mouthed, so Gigi couldn’t hear.
But when a hand fixed itself on her waist and pulled her in. When another tucked her hair behind her ear and then her head under Gigi’s chin. When a leg slung itself over her hip and pressed them into each other like they were dead and dying, one coffin, Pompeii ash monument.
She knew he heard.
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She was still bleeding when Ame tugged her into her car. Night had fallen and left the scene more than a little ambiguous. She hoped nobody saw and said something later. The way the gossip pipeline at her job worked meant that Gura would declare she’d be holding this over her head for the next year by the next morning.
His eyes were wide under the dim light of her car lamps. Ame’s backseat revealed ancient fast food wrappers and her bundled sleeping bag atop her gear, thankfully packed away in a duffel. The crossbow incident with Kiara taught her as much.
“Do you live in here?” There was a tinge of an accent to their dulcet tone. The way their mouth moved was pleasant, how they formed their words very carefully. Ame stopped thinking about their mouth and decided to think more about the hole in their side.
“Sometimes.” Ame kept it simple. Thumb pressed into the wound while her other hand felt around the glove compartment. Thankfully, the flow was sluggish, rather cold. Like dipping her hand into not-quite-yet-set Jello. Strawberry flavor.
Ame was going insane.
“Do you need a place to stay?” He helped press the gauze that she finally managed to paw out of her first aid kit into his side. With that done, she wiped her hands with a wet wipe and collapsed into the driver’s seat. She hoped her neck didn’t look like an easy target with the way she was slumped over the door.
The words finally registered by the second repeat of his question. By then, Ame was sure she was about to be the next victim on his painfully obvious trail of killings. Kronii was going to have a field day with this one.
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“I think they’d like me.” When Ame shot a withering look at him, he merely tucked his tail between his legs as he spun his chair side to side. “I’m likable?”
“Very much so,” Ame begrudgingly gave. “That doesn’t stop hunters from killing vampires though, my dear.”
“You didn’t.”
“I’m special.”
Gigi’s simper would have looked horrible on anyone else. Shamefully, it made Ame’s stomach go into cardiac arrest as her heart retched sideways into her appendix, if that was where it was, if that was how it worked.
“You are,” he sighed, a bit too dreamily for Ame’s taste. So she plopped herself down on his lap to hear his squeak as she groaned into his ear.
“They’re sending me a letter a week.” She complained, feeling their arms wrap around her waist and hold her securely. It made her smile into their neck, even as she said, “Then they’re going to send my whole team and they’re going to have to meet you-”
“Your beloved?” Gigi nosed into the crook of her neck. His breath was oddly warm, even though his lips were temperate. His fangs at such an intimate point no longer made her fear, rather she wondered what it would be like to bite him back. “Your sweetheart? Darling? Utterly yours in devotion-”
Amelia made a noise of faux disgust, pushing her face away with a hand and leaning back even as Gigi tried to reel her in more. Undead strength was hugely held back, hands that could crush boulders to dust holding her as tides did to moonlight.
“You love me,” she sang, like an oversized cat lazing in the sun with the way her mouth opened with glee to reveal fang and sly tongue. “I love youuu. I’m going to meet your friends-”
“Stop manifesting this!” Amelia tried to seem defiant still, tried to hold onto that iron core she once had, maybe, when the rain cut too deep on a stakeout and the siren sang a song that knew her too well.
Gigi kissed her, and that iron core was a memory. Gigi kissed her, and Ame found she didn’t mind the softness.
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The awkward cough Ame gave rang out through the large entrance room. Imagine that, having an entire room dedicated to entering your house. All Amelia had was a box to throw her boots into, and that was next to the couch that was next to the front door that was next to the bathroom entrance that was next to the television that was next to the kitchen that was next to the bedroom housing three bunk beds. Her living situation was obvious; built for two, housing five.
And perhaps she’d been working her job too long to get impressed by a walk in closet, but she could let her jaw drop a little at the sight of a full fledged game room.
The rec room at her work’s headquarters held the spirit of the few who tried to keep it going, but it wasn’t enough to render the knock off dart board and the singular pinball machine as alluring to those on a five hour shift searching for the next cult focused on exploding the moon.
The way her two bags took up only a corner of the bed made the back of her neck prickle in an emotion that she had no name for. The look Gigi, as they had introduced themselves as, gave her only made that feeling worse.
“So why’dja choose here?” Gigi perched on an outrageously fluffy looking armchair in the corner, coat having been taken off at the front leaving them looking rather small. Her slippers were a bright orange, luminescent almost in the low light streaming through the crack in the curtains. “You enjoy the occasional cold snap followed by surface-of-the-sun heat wave? Was it our football tea- no, no, we haven’t won a single game since they were formed.”
He looked so deep in thought it made Amelia smile without thinking. There was a handsome scruffiness to him. Like a particularly endearing dog.
Gigi grinned like he’d gotten the answer, leaning in with his eyes twinkling so bright Ame had to lean in to meet him. “Was it the food?” He whispered, tongue slipping over his teeth. “We have a killer chili scene.”
“You’ll have to show me.” Ame whispered back.
An owl hooted outside the window. The candle Gigi had been carrying around for her was sitting atop a nightstand and her bags were pushed off the bed. The covers turned into a tangle and Ame’s eyes were on the verge of closing even as Gigi murmured something quiet and sweet about the local poetry scene. Something about the color of her eyes and birds. She thought it was sweet, though that was a half-formed thought as she fell asleep. They went to bed when the sun rose, and Ame thought it was a bit fun to act like a vampire.
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Gigi’s tail had a mind of its own. The closest that Ame could describe it to would be the equivalent of those weird telepathic hands that one cult could make when they focused hard enough to burst a blood vessel (unfortunately, how they were caught). Slick and smooth and not-quite-there but weighty when it wanted to be, it could hand her a drink or pet her wrist, and then wind its way up her knee like it was going to flip her skirt up.
“Gigi!” She hissed by the second time, smacking it away as it tickled her upper thigh. “Get him under control!”
“I don’t control the tail!” Gigi looked positively mortified, tugging his baseball cap even further down to cover his face. Thankfully, nobody looked at them. “I have the tail, we live together, I don’t control the tail.”
Under her breath, Ame said, “I will cut it off, Gigi.” She smiled pleasantly as the waiter walked by, hoping that his odd expression was more of the typical ‘I dread my next customer interaction’ look and not ‘am I going to witness a murder when getting paid minimum wage?’ look. Unfortunately, there was not much difference.
Mournfully, Gigi rested his leg atop his tail, letting it squirm on the inside of the booth where hopefully no more miserable waiters would notice. “It’s uncomfortable,” he complained.
“I like having my skirt where it is when I’m in public,” Amelia responded, taking a quick sip of her milkshake. She still couldn’t figure out how a vampire like Gigi could enjoy human food, when all of her previous knowledge told her that it was like having the option to eat a four course meal and choosing sandpaper to suckle on instead. “You can take it off later.”
Some milkshake ended up dripping out of Gigi’s nose at her choked off cough, leaving her fumbling for the napkins Ame pushed over to her.
“You cannot,” her accent slipped out more when she was embarrassed or stressed or angry, and Ame still couldn’t tell what it was, “say that in public to me, my pearl.”
“My pearl ends up in your mouth for at least an hour every time we do it, I can complain!”
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“I knew you liked it,” Gigi murmured into the meat of Ame’s tummy, where the skin rolled a little and had some give. She nipped at it, gentle gentle gentle not too much don’t pierce puncture perforate-
“I like it when you aren’t trying to vacuum it off.” Ame had caught her breath after three minutes of extended panting, arm slung over her eyes finally moving to catch Gigi’s smug expression.
His lower jaw was shiny with her slick. Ame imagined his ears would be red if he still had blood flow, and thought it would be a rather adorable sight, a terrible thought to have when his irritatingly handsome mug was right next to her cunt. Her thigh was twitching from aftershocks against his cheek. He looked so pleased, cat with the cream, head already leaning down and tongue already out to lap over her clit again. Her legs jackknifed shut, a little yelp escaping her.
“Three times,” She whisper-screamed, aware of how sensitive Gigi’s senses got when he was riled up. “Cool your jets!”
“I like how you taste.” He whined. He bit at Ame’s tummy again, pressed his nose into just below her navel, where her happy trail went down into her bush and took a deep inhale.
Ame laugh-groaned, pushing them away before they muscled their way back up, climbing over her to press their jaw against her cheek, cat-like, tail winding its way around her thigh tenderly before they kissed her. Amelia’s eyes fluttered shut, humming sweetly into it before she felt fingers thrum her clit.
“Insatiable!” She said, scandalized. Her eyes were still closed, chin still tilted up so sweetly as if expecting another kiss.
“You like it,” Gigi murmured, voice at that specific pitch that meant he was pleased, about to purr with how proud he was to be making her feel good. It added a tremble to his hand as he thumbed over her nipple, over where a bite mark was darkening into a bruise. It made him rut into her leg a little, still so single mindedly focused on her pleasure that it made Ame a bit dizzy.
Amelia kissed her to shut her up, bit at her lip and heard her squeak. She did not say she liked it, but she really didn’t need to say anything aloud for Gigi to know. It was a bit terrifying to realize; the vampire in her bed loved her too much to want her to leave and still let her crawl out when the sun came up rather than eating her alive to keep her.
She'll make him breakfast to repay him. That was always a good place to start. Then her thoughts flew away when his mouth met her breast, and she was left with little air, the still image of his eyes, and the ghost of a phrase she knew he heard in her heartbeat.
Chapter 2: you're the closest to heaven i'll ever be
Summary:
“How do you do it?” Her eyes were a piercing blue. Corn silk hair with a neat trim, hands professionally folded on the table. Gigi was in the middle of an interrogation held on a Formica table with Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ playing in the background.
“I try my best.” Gigi repeated. For whatever reason, vampires salivated to a degree. Probably something to reduce blood clotting, but if Gigi thought too much about blood in Amelia’s presence, he would lose his already tenuous grasp on civility.
“No temptation?” Amelia pushed. “No, ‘That person over there looks pretty tasty, lemme go take a bite?”
“Sometimes.” His smile felt tight. He was staring too much at the pout of her lip. “I try to stay under control.”
“Control.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Ame’s experience with vampire feedings extended as far as someone trying to rip her throat open. It wasn’t even a true vampire, which stung a little, but this still led to a natural aversion towards too long teeth next to her neck. And unfortunately, a rather embarrassing story that Gura loved to tell at hunter meetups.
It was her third mission, two away from being allowed to go solo, and this pumped self-confidence as potent as venom into her veins. Her team was a mix of rookies and veterans, though they were all people she knew well. Calli as their coordinator and Ina as their charms, hexes, and ciphers specialist. Kiara and Gura for combat focuses and Ame as the team’s Almanac, knowledgeable in all varieties of creatures and important events in the supernatural world.
Kiara was passed out in the front seat while Ina scribbled something down in her journal. Gura, cramped in the center, jabbed an elbow into her side every time Amelia made a bad joke. The eight pun and the eighth ‘ow!’ had Calli threatening to pull off the road if they kept it up. That she’d ”Turn this bucket of idiots around and make one of you explain to the bosses why we didn’t even make it halfway there”.
This cowed them, and left the tinny radio blaring as the only remnant of sound in the car. At least until Kiara woke up, and starting making jokes too, till Gura and Ame were roaring with laughter. Calli hadn’t the heart to make the threat again.
The casual air died a swift and merciless death the minute they arrived. They had an hour of prep and then they were in. A mission meant to be quick and simple with the amount of hunters assigned.
Amelia walked into that warehouse with an unearned swagger that had Ina tugging her aside.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she said, with eyes that shone in the dim light of Ame’s flashlight that she’d fastened onto her vest. Ina slipped a protection charm into a pocket with fingers that didn’t tremble, all stoicism contained in the set of her jaw and the searching look she shot Ame under her eyelashes.
“‘Careful’s my middle name,” Ame had grinned. Her cheeks warmed at the attention though, and she quickly marched away after the others.
The vampire had converted the warehouse into a maze of crates, pallets, and storage containers. Iron clung to the air, bitter on the roof of Amelia’s mouth. Her lips tightened into a line as she adjusted her glove. She triple checked the bottle of holy water that was fastened tightly to her waist.
Fear creeped in with an insidiousness that rendered every shadow and echo of a footstep into a threat. The confidence was wearing off and was replaced with a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead. The mission briefing warned of a possible great vampire, older than a millenia, part of an old-blood clan with sun walker capabilities.
‘Possible’ was a key word that was pulling a lot of weight.
Then she’d heard Kiara’s yell. Calli’s shout. A low, menacing concert of growls and snarls as crates and containers all around them creaked open.
“Thrall nest,” Amelia breathed, and then tried very hard not to die.
She was sprinting around cool, rot-scented bodies, vaulting over pallets and trying not to slip on decomposing flesh. There were at least a hundred thralls around her, at least a hundred civilians siphoned off one by one from either the city nearby or being travelers that never made their way home.
This soured something in Ame. Scratched a bit more at the veneer she’d set over her job. Even if they got the vampire responsible, even if they administered some old fashioned hunter justice; this was still a failure of epic proportions.
Already, Amelia could see the charms Ina had scrawled over the walls, gibberish to her and probably messier than Ina had ever done them. They’d do the job, Amelia was sure. At blowing this warehouse and all the poor souls inside it up to kingdom come.
Chest heaving, legs pumping, one more leap over a snarling thrall and she had the door in her sights. She let herself smile a crazed smile.
For a moment there was darkness. Like her sight had been knocked out of her as her feet left the floor. Then when Amelia registered the tackle, the impact sparked up through her shoulder as she slammed into the ground. Her breath retched out of her, her hands were already scrabbling for contact, for something to help her regain her balance.
Teeth ground down onto her shoulder with a starving hunger, a dog looking for scraps on a bone. The world ran red as Amelia howled her throat raw.
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“You’re dreaming of something.”
Ame slipped out of sleep like it was a door hastily shut. Her eyes fluttered open to the low light of the room. The curtains weren’t drawn, letting in the weak sunlight. It was early afternoon, cool and clean air wafting through the opened window.
“Mmm.” Was the sound she let out. Her shirt, Gigi’s shirt, tickled her thighs as she stretched. She looked to the side.
Gigi was watching her. They always dressed with an odd sort of style, even to sleep. Tonight was a probably defunct bowling alley t-shirt and a pair of shorts that went down to the knee. The pinpricks on their neck, their Turning mark, were paler than the rest of them.
There was an eerie stillness to every muscle as they watched her. It was isolation of every joint and movement that suggested total control. Still as death as their eyes lazily trailed up the curve of her hip and shoulder to her eyes.
“Your heart,” he observed. He reached out, thumbed at the hollow of her jaw where the heartbeat raced. Where it fluttered, butterfly loose, at his careful touch. “It’s going quite fast.”
“Bad dream.” Amelia’s voice was a bit rough at the edges. She sat up slowly, letting her shoulders roll as she stood up and padded over to the bathroom.
“How bad?” She could hear Gigi as she drank from the tap, deep and surprisingly cold. The mirror revealed the blood in her cheeks and the darkness under her eyes.
“The chili spot on Main.” Ame wandered back, wiping her chin as she did. She crawled back onto the bed, curling up against Gigi’s side. They were a cool mass against her, all soft and sinew.
Gigi sucked in air through her teeth, nuzzled into Ame’s hair with a sigh. “How horrible,” she murmured into her hair. “Anything I can do?”
Ame found herself enamored with the elegance of his spine. Wanted a pin board, scalpel, something to take him apart other than just her hands. She made do anyway, thumbing at the base of his tail where the skin turned into inky silk and cartilage. It wound around her wrist as Gigi managed a shaky breath.
“Having fun?”
Humming, Ame pressed her thumb into the base of it, experimental.
He mewled. He squirmed under her touch and Amelia’s lungs collapsed. She felt gutted by her want. She felt violent with it, like her skin was too thin and about to tear to reveal something dark and horrible.
Gigi’s eyes were glassy, her hair a little bit mussed. Her mouth was open, fangs a suggestion in a dark, wet mouth. “You’ve got me,” she murmured. Her nails felt sharp as she pushed Ame’s shirt up with her hand. “How do you want me?”
’Always’, Ame did not say. ‘In the meat of me. In between my teeth. Parasitical in my synapses.’
“Your face,” was all she managed, and Gigi’s hands were already clawing at her thighs for the meal.
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Gigi’s Turning was an undramatic affair. Too much beer, not enough light, wrong turn. An alleyway and a swift bite later, the sun became her nemesis.
Her early years were rough. Always starving. Rats were never enough. She couldn’t bear to touch a dog or a cat, no matter how much they hissed or barked at her. She ate vermin. She slept in the refuse and slinked around in the dark like something forsaken by god.
Human contact was few and far between, she made sure of it. The occasional creature of folklore and myth that she ran into fed her meager knowledge of the world she now inhabited. The hierarchies, customs. What places were werewolf territory and what places were vampire. Hunter hotspots, growing in size and number.
He always ran. A glimpse of carved wood or the burning scent of holy water and he left nothing behind. They always smelled sweeter than the normal human. Either a hybrid of creature and man or merely having enveloped themselves in magic to a degree. It sweetened the meat, one vampire told Gigi. Added a zing to the flavor that one couldn’t find anywhere else. A dangerous meal, however.
Gigi never indulged.
He settled, instead, in a nowhere town. A mansion with a man that, for the first time, he felt no qualms about killing. At first. The rage that had suffused her after learning about what he had done, left her trembling in a corner like a beaten dog after realizing what she’d done under its influence. Blood was a phantom on his fangs, soaked into every crease of him.
For a few weeks after that, Gigi bathed daily. They chewed on wood chips and charcoal. They stared at the sun whispering through the windows till their eyes burned and they had to turn away.
Loneliness became a second skin. They wore it tight and their shame tighter. They dreamed of the taste of the man’s flesh and upon awakening, bit their arms till they cried.
The first time they went out was from desperation. A feeble prayer that there was already a hunter in the area, waiting and ready for them. There was an ache in their breast for the stake and forgiveness, and they did not find it where the living were.
Instead, Gigi found the streets had changed in the time they were away. In shape, in style, in the number and types of people that wandered them. There was a new type of transportation, one that could get you wherever you wanted in half the time. There was new industry and development, there was a new kind of life that haloed every rooftop.
In the smiles of the people who did not know what they were, Gigi found hope.
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Amelia Watson, Gigi found, was a mystery. Vampiric want met human need. Someone accidentally stabbed her with one of the few things that could truly harm her, then stared at her with a look of utter fear. Fear for her, for Gigi. She trembled under the weight of her regard.
It healed slowly, one of the few scars Gigi bore now. The rest were all from a childhood long since passed.
Amelia bore many too, from the inane and mundane to the near life-ending.
“Basilisk,” she said, with maybe too much pride. She presented a patch of skin on her arm that was shiny and tight like a burn, but tough to the touch. “Almost petrified.”
“A basilisk,” Gigi said, with maybe not enough concern. But Amelia treated her so, so kindly, and was so confident in every story she told that it didn’t seem like as big of a deal as it was. “Incredible.”
“Mhmm.” Amelia spooned another bit of chili into her mouth. Her phone buzzed determinedly on the table. She ignored it. “You’re pretty incredible too, though.”
If Gigi could still blush, he would have. “Excuse me?”
Casually, Amelia took a sip of her soda, leaning back into the booth of the dingy diner they were sitting in. “There’s a lot of vampires that try to play it cool.” Another spoonful of chili and another appreciative hum. “It never works out.”
“Oh.” The dregs in Gigi’s bowl were stubbornly avoiding her spoon. Gigi was stubbornly avoiding Amelia’s eyes.
“You’re doing a really good job.” Amelia leaned in, with an odd lilt in her voice that Gigi already learned meant questions. (Gigi also learned that Amelia’s nose wrinkling was a sign of suppressed laughter. Adjusting her jacket meant awkwardness. If her heartbeat rose rapidly it was embarrassment.)
“I try my best.” Gigi’s bowl was empty and he had no more excuses.
“How do you do it?” Her eyes were a piercing blue. Corn silk hair with a neat trim, hands professionally folded on the table. Gigi was in the middle of an interrogation held on a Formica table with Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ playing in the background.
“I try my best.” Gigi repeated. For whatever reason, vampires salivated to a degree. Probably something to reduce blood clotting, but if Gigi thought too much about blood in Amelia’s presence, he would lose his already tenuous grasp on civility.
“No temptation?” Amelia pushed. “No, ‘That person over there looks pretty tasty, lemme go take a bite?”
“Sometimes.” His smile felt tight. He was staring too much at the pout of her lip. “I try to stay under control.”
“Control.”
Michael Jackson’s crooning came to a stop. A car rushed by and someone mumbled on their phone. It was getting late. Amelia’s stare took the line between interest and judgment and watered it down till Gigi didn’t know what she wanted from him anymore.
Outside, the neon sign of the diner buzzed a low hum in tune with the crickets.
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He hated how it felt sometimes. How beholden he was to instinct. There she was, beauty in his bed, moaning under the press of his fingers. He didn’t need to breathe and yet he was gasping, crooking his fingers till she writhed in his arms.
“Gigi,” she stuttered. She wetted her lips with a careful tongue. There were tears in her lashes. “More?”
“Yes,” They murmured, sped up their movements till there was a ghost of an ache in their arm. As if their body still remembered what it was like to be human, weak and fallible. But Amelia was wild and resplendent, and even as his heartbeat was still as her breasts pushed into his chest, he felt as close to being human as he had ever been.
There were blemishes all over her, a blush that ran down her neck. Her eyes were half closed, pupils following the determined set of their face. Two long scars, ragged and roughly healed, curled around Amelia’s shoulder. Gigi pressed their mouth to them, long and sweet, eyes screwing shut as they tasted sweat and pressed their palm against her clit.
“Gigi,” she breathed. One leg hooked over the small of her back to pull her in, an arm around her shoulders. “Fuck, Gigi-”
“‘m here,” Gigi kissed her, swift and honest. Kissed her again when she whimpered at his leaving mouth. “Got you, got you, come f’r’me? All over me sweetheart, wanna feel it happen, wanna taste you after-”
It hit him then, like lightning. The scars, so awkwardly placed and not claw marks, must have been caused by teeth. By a bite. By another vampire.
Amelia left somewhat often. Handled other missions while messaging back that the vampire in her area was still unfound. Every time, Gigi was left to wander the halls of her home, wondering if Amelia would be okay. Her imagination would jump from sweet thoughts of what she would greet her with on her return to what could happen to cause her to never return.
Jealousy held no place in Gigi’s heart, no space for it between adoration and devotion, nor in between desire and fondness. But right then, it was all Gigi was.
He was already growling, already spitting and hissing like a territorial tomcat. His tail pressed into Ame’s lower stomach, his fingers hooking up as if to meet it until Amelia keened, gushed onto his wrist. He was already sinking his teeth into her shoulder before he heard her shriek.
Gigi felt dazed. Like an earthquake had happened in the core of him. Something fractured, something formed a faultline in his lines. She was iron and bitterness, it was blood after all. Vampire nature merely made it meatier, added a weight to it that betrayed its importance in their diet. Like liquid gold she made her way into him.
“Gigi,” she was saying her name as she always did when she was inside her. “Gigi please-”
Flash freeze behind her sternum. She felt all jagged and monstrous, curled over her with her fangs lodged inside her. She was adding to the scarring already there, making it worse, making it hers. It was her mark on Amelia, her teeth and touch in her skin. She was purring into the tear in Amelia’s skin and it made Gigi want to cry from shame and giggle with joy.
There was a flare of pain on the side of her neck, and Gigi grunted. It sharpened, focused, blunt canines pressing in to make a vicious hickey that they knew from experience wouldn’t last. Their hips rutted forward, they moaned into Ame’s shoulder.
“Knew that would get you.” Amelia sounded breathless. Pleased. Like she wasn’t bleeding into Gigi’s mouth. She nipped at them again, and they would never admit that they squealed at the sensation. “I let you fuck me, Gigi, I let you. You’d let me fuck you one time, right? Wanna be all up in you, wanna mess you up a lil bit, more than once, yeah, just a lil-”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gigi panted, hips rocking and fucking their hand forward as if it was their cock. Their mouth was slick and warm but their eyes stayed shut tight. They didn’t want to see what they’d done, not while there was still heat simmering in their belly from desire, not while Ame still wanted something from them.
She could feel herself losing it a bit, pleasure a hook in the back of her skull that was pulling her back, open mouthed and rhythm unsteady. “Gonna come,” she choked out, clumsily working her thumb, not able to get all the pleas she was thinking out of her clumsy mouth. “You - ah - first, c’mon-”
Almost deranged, running on the look in Amelia’s eyes, Gigi pushed themself down her body. They scattered kisses, the distances between them few and far between as they wrenched their fingers out and replaced them with their wicked and wanting tongue.
Hands already wound into his hair as he worked. Her blood mixed with her slick till he felt dizzy off the combined flavor.
“However you want,” Gigi groaned into her cunt, pressing into their own hand to take the edge off, “Let you fuck me however you wan’, jus’ c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, Ame, Ame-”
She came into their mouth, thighs tight around their head and Gigi was so glad they didn’t need to breathe. They could embed themselves there as long as they wanted, working through their own aftershocks of a soft orgasm, kissing her thighs and taking in the smell of her pleasure, lapping her up till she was whimpering and pushing them away.
“Will you always end up there?” Ame managed, thumbing their hair back from their forehead. She looked like a wreck; all pink cheeks and swollen lips, bleeding on the sheets. “Fuckin’- fuckin trying to kill me with that mouth of yours.”
“Never.” Gigi said so honestly. She propped herself up on her elbows. The heat of her breath was stolen from Amelia’s cunt. There was a streak of light pink on her cheek, and she thumbed it off and licked it clean, missing Ame’s shiver. “Love you too much.”
The words landed in the air much heavier than Gigi wanted. The words shouldn’t even have exited her mouth in the first place. They should have been said over a nice dinner, candle light, something rustic, something that soothed the romantic in Gigi. Not this. Not with Amelia’s blood still under her tongue.
“Oh.” Amelia looked shocked in a way that rattled Gigi. Her shoulder caught his eye again, as if he had been seeing it through blurry vision and now finally seeing the ravaged flesh, somehow bleeding lightly for how deep the wound was. He curled up on himself a little, feeling like shit.
“You don’t have to say it back,” He mumbled. He wiped his face off with his arm, feeling like a chastised child. “I’ll go and. Uh. Get the bath running for you.”
He stumbled out of the room on shaky legs, and the weight of the emptiness of the mansion hit him hard even as a soft and stunned gaze followed him all the way to where he could not be seen.
Notes:
this is kinda embarrassing not going to lie. I don't know how to end this fic. guess I'll go on forever o(-<
comments and kudos are greatly appreciated, I need to know if the eight other amurin likers out there are being fed and surviving.
Chapter Text
Amelia slunk out of the room carefully, still hazy from sleep. She didn’t know when she’d drifted off, only that when she awoke the vampire still lay next to her. He was surprisingly dainty, in his coma-like state of rest. His eyelashes were delicate on his cheekbones, and his chest rose and fell slowly as if he were continuing the illusion of life even now.
She closed the bedroom door behind her slowly, and tried not to think about how undeniably sad his small form was, drowning in a too empty bed.
-
-
In the confines of a hotel room, much smaller and less grand than the vampire’s bedroom, Amelia got to work. She was thrown off, yes, by his kindness and the wrinkles at the edges of his eyes when he smiled, but a vampire was a vampire. She’d seen his teeth, wicked and sharp. For all his focus on control, a single nosebleed might be enough to shatter it.
Ame wasn’t the one with the focus on ciphers, but she knew the hunter standard. She set to work on a letter, “explaining” the situation with as little information as she could. Big city, tiny vampire. Needle in a haystack.
She removed her flask of holy water, pouring it into a cup and placing a roughly hewn stake into it to soak. A protection charm went into her pocket with a vial of salt. She smoothed out her shirt and dusted off her shorts.
“God, I look terrible.” The Ame in the mirror that stared back had dark eyebags and ruffled hair. The faded edges of scars peeked out from underneath her shirt collar. There was a flush to her cheeks though, and for all their bruise-like appearance, her eyebags had once been worse. She’d slept better than she’d ever had in a vampire’s home.
Ame muttered to herself, “Let’s not think about that,” and headed out the door.
-
-
The streets were different at night. It was quieter, less cars out. The scent of the surrounding forests leaked into the air, drowning out the smell of smoke and grease from nearby restaurants. It was a decent size city, with all the trappings of one. Amelia could convince herself for a second, if she stood on a street corner and closed her eyes with the traffic lights a blur behind her lids, that this was merely a night out on the town. She lived here, a normal person, whose biggest preoccupation was if her heater was going to get fixed in time for winter.
The dream dispersed with a soft cough behind her.
“Why hello there.” His suit seemed to rival the night with its inky color, and his eyes shone like he’d placed stars in his skull. With his hair slicked back and his skin pale enough that Ame could see his veins, she’d think he was a vampire if it weren’t for his stubby, very human canines. His smile was tight, so very obviously put on. “Do you mind if I ask a question or two?”
“Who’s asking?” Amelia’s hand went in her pocket, thumbing over the mechanism of her pocket knife.
“A concerned citizen.” His smile stretched to an almost painful degree. His eyes were wide with a kind of madness shimmered deep within. “Looking for a toothsome sort of quarry, if you will.”
“Oh.” A fellow hunter. “Uh,” Ame’s grip loosened on her knife. She was about to tell him of the mansion at the outskirts of the city. But the protection charm in her pocket began to burn, a warbly feeling running through her that she recognized as Ina’s charm doing its work.
His gloved hand, down at its side, was wiggling in a repeated, circular motion. Behind his teeth, his tongue was working, murmuring something under his breath. Coercion hex.
Amelia tried to get a grip on herself, focusing on the pain of the immolating charm as well as the stark realization that this guy had no qualms about hexing a fellow hunter. “I think it’s one of the- the hotels-”
“Hotels?” He stepped forward. The charm was being reduced to ashes in Ame’s pocket. “No, no, much too embedded for that. Somewhere, hmm, permanent.” His hand was a vice on Amelia’s shoulder. “We should go somewhere else, discuss this like civilized people.” His breath was of poppy and tobacco. “It would be terrible news for the hunter community to know that one of their own was a thrall of a vampire.”
“Excuse me.”
Amelia stiffened. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to tell them to run or to stay. She wasn’t sure if she could look them in the eyes.
Gigi was drowning in their coat, the one that squared their shoulders and broadened their form. Her eyes were embers, untouched by her close lipped smile. “My friend and I were going out for dinner. It would be appreciated if you would let her go.”
The threat went unsaid. The man leered at the two of them.
“But we were having such a nice conversatio-”
Deftly, with her thumb, Ame uncorked the vial of salt. This guy may not have been a supernatural creature, but salt straight to the eyes was a universal irritant. This was proven when he yelped and stumbled back, pressing his gloved hands into his face.
Before Amelia could do anything else, Gigi’s arm hooked around hers, and they were running down the dark streets. It was more stumbling on Amelia’s end, as Gigi’s stride was faster than her own, and more sure from knowing the streets.
“Uh, I hope this is alright-” Gigi stopped and scooped Ame up in his arms in a bridal carry. His smile was awkward. “Is this alright?”
Amelia’s mouth was open. Her cheeks felt warm as her hair whipped into her eyes. Something wrapped around her waist to loop up and smooth her bangs back.
Gigi’s eyes narrowed, and they turned on a dime to veer down a different path than the one they were on. The sidewalk that they were about to step on burst into flames as an inky form slithered out of the gutter.
“Found you!” An echoing voice rumbled, like there was a reverb in Amelia’s ribs.
“Amelia,” Gigi’s smile was soft as she put her down. “You’re going to need to go.”
Ame blinked, her stare hardening. “What do you-”
“You’re a hunter, sweetling. He is one too. And I am a vampire.” They were saying this like it was the grocery list. “I don’t want you to see this. Not until it’s your turn to try.”
“I-” Amelia felt sweaty, off balance. Gigi looked at her like he understood, like she was a kid lost in a supermarket who needed the right aisle for cookies. “What if I don’t want to try?”
Gigi blinked, tail betraying his confusion. “Amelia-”
The brick walls of the alleyway turned dark with ichor. The streetlamps went out and the floor behind them curved till they were in a dead end.
“What a young one you are.” The mass creeped forward, grasping arms and legs and mouths solidifying into a coat. The thin man smoothed his hair back, smiling like he hadn’t just reformed out of nightmare pudding. “I’m surprised you’ve made it this long.”
“Well, I am full of surprises.” Gigi winked at Ame, tail folding into a salute. And faded into mist.
Ame blinked. The man’s head whipped around.
“How interesting,” he breathed. His gaze landed on Ame. “Little hunter,” he stepped forward, all cracking bones and dripping ink. “You’re not in the right place.”
“So are you,” Amelia retorted, retreating until her back pressed against the warped floor that swallowed up the sky. “Cursed much?”
He snarled. “Fraternizing with a vampire is bounds for removal,” his hand peeled open, a rod of curling silver and harsh runes unwinding from the pearly white bones of his forearm. “And judgement.”
The rod whipped forward, sparking blue in the low light as Ame tried to dodge. It clipped her on the shoulder, like a taser turned scalpel it burnt all feeling away from her entire arm.
“Judgment, you see, always comes swiftly.” The hunter gloated.
“It is a shame, then,” a clawed hand around his throat, digging in and tearing through the ink that tried to protect him, “that I am faster.”
The man gurgled, coat dripping away till it was just him in a dirty hunter uniform. Ame could see the inner workings of his throat, the cords of muscle and the hint of vertebrae.
He slumped to the ground as Gigi licked her hand clean. She lost herself in it for a moment, tongue cleaning up every drop from every crease. Amelia watched and tried not to squeak, before her breath finally came back to her.
“I thought you left me,” Ame said, blinking rapidly.
“Why would I leave you?” Gigi asked. His smile was distorted a bit by his oversized teeth, but he just made it look endearing. He seemed to realize he’d just been licking his hand in front of her and hid it behind him. “That was only my second favorite chili spot I took you to.”
“Ah,” Amelia curled into his side as he heaved them both up. Her shoulder was tingly-numb. The alleyway was a mess. Ame determinedly kept her gaze away from the tattered corpse. “You were holding out on me.”
Gigi’s face was close to her neck. His mouth was still slick with blood, his pupils blown with the thrill of the hunt. She could feel him, warm for once, flush with stolen life. His hair was ruffled and she smoothed it down with an absentminded hand.
“Forgive me?” They murmured.
“Mmm,” Ame pretended to think. The stars were back, but they had competition for Ame’s attention with the constellations in Gigi’s eyes. “Forgiven.”
-
-
“You left me for this?” Gigi looked around Ame’s hotel room, trying not to seem too miffed. They were failing. “Amelia, there is mold right by the bed.”
Amelia looked. “Ah. So there is.”
Gigi looked very worried. “The mold has already affected you, you don’t seem to care that much.”
Waving them off, Amelia began packing up all her things. Weapons were tucked away and charms were tidied up in their cases. Ame thumbed over the one Ina had given her specifically, and hoped she could feel her thanks.
“More worried about that hunter.” Amelia had to sit on her bag to close it, hopefully not breaking any vials in the process. (There was a very ominous crunch that she chose to ignore.) “That was some… advanced stuff. Dark advanced stuff.”
“That much is obvious.” Gigi squinted at the wallpaper. “This might be older than me.”
Against all reason, Amelia barked a laugh. A bit of a deranged sound, as panic began to surge through her just as feeling fully returned to her fingertips. “What he did; it was a bit similar to what my friend does; hexes and curses.”
“Does your friend regularly turn into tar?” Gigi’s tail wagged a bit slower at the look Ame gave him. “Apologies. Continue.”
“This is most definitely going to get investigated.” Amelia went to the bathroom, remembering what she’d left in there. “And we need to have an alibi.”
“We-”
Gigi’s voice cut off with a hitch. The bathroom door creaked further open as Amelia wrapped the stake in a towel, tapping what little salt remained in the vial into the holy water before pouring it back into the flask. Gigi took a step back, shoulders hunching a bit.
“Gigi-” Amelia tried, but the vampire’s eyes were trained on the stake, the wood still glossy with potent holy magic.
“I must admit,” Gigi’s smile was a pathetic thing, “you got farther than most.”
“I’m not going to-” she stepped forward, hands outstretched in an attempt for understanding, but Gigi hissed as the weapon got closer to her.
“Control, you said.” Gigi pressed up against the door. She looked at Ame then, like a wounded animal. “Was what I showed you not enough?”
“It- it was!” Amelia didn’t know what to do with the weight in her hands except to drop it. It sizzled on the ground, wasted. Gigi seemed stunned by this. “I don’t- I don’t know-”
“Why have you not killed me yet?” Gigi demanded, switching tracks. “Pity? Curiosity? Oh my, the vampire that does not kill like it should, what an anomaly.”
“I don’t know.”
“Horrible answer, try again.”
Ame gritted her teeth, hand spasming as the muscles still refused to fully comply. “I can’t answer that.”
“Hunters.” This was the cruelest Ame had ever heard Gigi. It was almost unnatural, like this was a lilt that shouldn’t come from him, and he was forcing it like it hurt him too. “All the same. I pity you, for your inability to make sense of yourself.” His chin tilted upward, a facsimile of confidence even as his eyes glimmered. “We monsters know what we are; we are reminded every day.”
“You aren’t a monster.” She didn’t know what she was doing as she rushed him, pressing him further into the door even as he hissed and pushed her back.
She went down and he went with her, hard on her chest with a hand on her sternum. It felt like the world was atop her, Amelia’s breath did not come easy as Gigi watched her struggle.
“You aren’t,” she reached past him to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. He seemed unused to soft touch. Amelia remembered this from when they lay on that bed, side by side, giggling about nothing. Her hand on his was like a wound to him, he couldn’t stop staring at it. He did that now, flinching against her knuckles.
Amelia’s vision began to blur. “You are very kind,” she hiccuped for air, “and sweet. You can’t handle spice in your chili.” something wet dripped onto her chin. “And I think that’s embarrassingly cute. I- I wanted to go with you to your favorite place, and I want to know your favorite things. I don’t know why-” There was an animal keening by her ear, dying and crying out. “-I don’t know why but will you still take me? Can I still learn? Please?.”
Gigi curled into Ame, tail winding tight around her thigh. They heaved, lips on Ame’s neck, racked with tears. It smelt of iron.
“I’m sorry,” Gigi cried, holding Amelia so tightly she thought she was going to lose feeling in that arm again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean- I didn’t- I thought-”
Ame flipped them over till she was sitting on Gigi’s hips. Their face was smeared with red tears, but she didn’t care as she cupped their cheeks. Her eyes flicked down to Gigi’s mouth. Gigi seemed so small underneath her, their nails digging into her biceps as they sniffled.
“You are very weird.” They said.
“So I’ve been told.” Amelia responded, and kissed them.
Gigi squeaked into her mouth. They were adorably stiff, unsure of what to do at all. Their hands hovered at Ame’s sides, fingertips occasionally brushing against the fabric of Amelia’s shirt. When Ame scratched at the hairs at the nape of their neck, they melted. A soft, breathy ’oh!’ escaped as their eyes finally fluttered shut.
“Do you kiss all the monsters you’re trying to kill?” Gigi murmured into Ame’s mouth.
Amelia hummed. She felt a little bit insane, fingers curling around Gigi’s surprisingly broad shoulders (it wasn’t all the jacket, apparently). “I might change my policy.”
Gigi growled, honest to god. They immediately squirmed underneath Ame, trying to escape.
“Just you?” Amelia asked.
This seemed to cow Gigi a bit. They looked sullenly to the side. “Just me.” Then they squinted. “Is that more mold?”
Amelia looked. It was. “That’s fine.”
“It’s affecting me too now,” Gigi said. “I don’t seem to care.”
“Oh no!” Amelia grinned. “What’s on your mind?”
Gigi went shy, eyes fluttering and hands unsure of where to be on Ame’s shoulders. “Kiss me again?” Their voice cracked adorably at the end.
“Okay,” Amelia murmured. She kissed them again. She felt warm warm warm in his arms.
-
-
“Maybe you could meet my friends,” Gigi murmured, arm around Ame’s shoulders.
“Please don’t bring up your friends when I’m kissing you,” Ame complained. “Or mine, for that matter.”
“Apologies.” Pecking Ame one more time, Gigi leaned back into the couch, sated from leaching off Amelia’s warmth. “I will refrain from such topics.”
Amelia scratched at Gigi’s shoulders till they purred, rolling into the touch to get her questing fingers into the problem spots.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” They asked, eyes fluttering shut. “It looked bad.”
“It always looks bad.” The bandage peeked out from where her shirt had ridden up. The skin around it looked red and angry. “Kiara was with me to help. It could have been worse.”
That was not the right thing to say. Gigi’s expression closed off. They gently nudged Amelia off their lap.
“I don’t,” they tried to start. They bit their lip. “I don’t like how you put yourself in danger.”
Amelia blinked. “It’s my job?”
“It is an electrician’s job,” they said it as if it were an alien term, “to work with electricity. This does not mean, getting electrocuted every time they have a job.”
“That’s different.”
“How so?” Gigi’s head cocked to the side.
Amelia tried very hard to put the words in her head in the right order in her mouth. “It is very, very hard to not get hurt doing what I do. When I say it could’ve been worse, I mean that this was the best outcome.”
The fabric of Gigi’s pants seemed to be very interesting to them. “I understand that. I do not like it.”
Now Amelia felt a little bit angry. “Well, you don’t have to like it.”
Gigi seemed confused, like the bitterness in Ame’s tone was unearned. “I just don’t want to see you hurt.”
“And I’m telling you, I can’t do anything about it.”
“Then why do you do it?”
Amelia opened her mouth. Closed it. There was a scar that wound from her middle, left knuckle to her elbow. The hooked claw of a griffin wanted to make her into a DIY bag and was halfway to opening her up for it. There were countless other injuries, products of inexperience or clumsiness or confidence. Some, she was sure, were inescapable. Others could have been easily prevented.
“To protect people,” Amelia said lamely. “It’s cliche, but it’s true. My friends and I… we do it because nobody else will.”
Gigi looked at her. Her mouth was a tender line that worked like a knife, to Ame, with the way it made her want to cut the distance between them in two.
“That is,” Gigi searched for the word, “very noble.” She inclined her head to Ame, which only made her feel awkward. “Please, forgive my rudeness.”
“No, no,” Amelia traced the scar with a finger. Gigi’s hand joined her, lifting it up to kiss it gently with cold lips. “I- I shouldn’t have gotten angry. You just- you just cared.”
“I do.” Gigi huffed out a mirthless laugh and looked off to the side. There was a painting on the wall, of many flowers of different colors cluttered together to the point where you could barely see the blue sky. “I care about you very much.”
I love you.
Amelia flinched. “I care about you too.”
Gigi didn’t look at her. “Mm.”
“Gigi. Gigi.” Her vampire, feigning stoicism, finally looked at her. Amelia could lean in right then and kiss them. Just a little bit. Push this to another time. The rawness of her burn throbbed. “I love you.”
Her vampire, sitting on the couch in a silly shirt she had bought for them in another state where the chili did not hold a candle to this little nowhere city, blinked. Her vampire, all sly jokes and gentle touch that spoke of want want want and too much not yet not yet not yet, lunged at her.
They rolled off the couch, almost smacking into the coffee table. Gigi kissed Ame, hands sliding up her shirt while his tail worked at her belt. He worked her pants off down to mid thigh, before having his hands return to cup Amelia’s face. The slide of his tail against Amelia’s wet cunt was slick, a firm pressure that made her gasp.
“Calm- ah!- calm down boy!” Amelia still ground down into the touch, smiling into his clumsy kiss. “This is what it takes?”
“Do you mean it?” He was a feeble little thing, so uncertain. He ground down onto Ame’s thigh while he fucked her against his tail, his hands brushing through her hair, cupping her cheek, feeling the beat of her pulse at her neck. “Did you mean it?”
Amelia sank her teeth into his bottom lip and tugged. She reached down the neck of his shirt to touch his bare back, where every muscle moved to get closer to her. “Of course,” she breathed, “I don’t just throw ‘I love you’s around willy nilly.”
Gigi paused. “Do people truly still say ‘willy nilly’ nowadays?”
“If you stop fucking me,” Amelia said through gritted teeth, already pulling away from his touch, “I will make you sit in a chair and watch me make myself come, and then I will go to sleep and you won’t get anything.”
Gigi shuddered underneath her, as if he didn’t entirely mind the concept. But still, he pushed her panties to the side with a shaky hand and pressed two fingers into her, curving up and in just like she’d taught him. Her palm pressed against Amelia’s clit, a much needed pressure.
“I love you,” she said into Ame’s ear. It was like a dam had been released. “I love you.”
“I,” Amelia arched into Gigi’s touch, their come slick tail pushing her shirt up so that they could mouth at her tits. “I love you too,” she responded, albeit stiltedly.
They didn’t seem to care, grinning into her mouth as they kissed her again and again, always moving but always mindful of her injury. They were like a frantic puppy, trying to please her, murmuring and muttering a frantic chant that wound through Amelia’s bones and called for an answer.
“I love you,” she said. They crooned their adoration into the crook of her neck.
“I love you,” she said, working her fingers deeper into Ame, searching her face, memorizing every twitch and fluttering eyelash.
“Love you!” Ame mouthed as she came in her vampire’s arms, a warm thing, held close to her breast.
“You have yet to take me,” Amelia managed, once they’d calmed down and hobbled back onto the couch, “to your favorite place.”
“My favorite place is with you, dearheart.” Gigi nuzzled into Ame’s ear, nipping at it. His tail pulled Ame’s panties back into place, leaving faint white scratches on her thigh as it left. “But yes. I will.”
She curled up in Gigi’s arms, tired and honest for once. It felt less raw now anyways, when they held her close. The world felt softer, blunted at the edges.
“I still think,” Gigi said, “I should meet your friends.”
“Gigi,” Ame said. “You are ruining the moment.” But she smiled anyways.
Notes:
cranked this out, wrote some amurin mermaid au, some beat down, some spicy fruitpunch. feels nice! look forward to that! also pearl au ch 2 will come out soon I prommy I am just. fighting demons in an applebees parking lot.
Chapter 4: grabbed you, grind you, liked you, tried you
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
There’s a glass of water on the bedside table. This was the first thing Ame noticed. The second was the wallpaper, golden with curling flowers. There was the soft smell of cinnamon and clove, made stronger when Ame squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face into her pillow.
He had warmed after a while, sifting her body heat away and gaining an illusion of a flush on his cheeks. He hadn’t let her touch him, merely smiled and moved her hand away with a gentleness that made some part of Ame hurt. He had only kissed her once, and that was when she was hazy with sleep and he was cleaning them up with a warm towel.
“Was it nice?” He asked, voice quiet. He had brushed the hair back from her forehead, Ame mimicked this gesture now. She didn’t remember how she answered.
She sat up, sheets falling away from her body. Her clothes had been folded on a chair, but there was another set presented as an alternative option. They looked freshly pressed and semi-formal, like they’d come out of their closet. He seemed to like flowers; a daisy bloomed on the left breast pocket of the button up.
Ame pulled them on slowly. They smelled like him.
She padded out the door with a wariness that settled in her like animal fear. At every turn and cracked open door, Ame balked, only moving forward once she caught the smell of smoke. It strengthened as she turned, turned, turned again, getting dizzy with the scale of this place. Every hallway was another stretch of golden wallpaper and occasional painting.
To live in this sort of maze, alone, explained the keening, wanting touch he had when he held her. The space left a wound. Distance became immeasurable. He leaned into her and simultaneously pulled away. In his bed, Amelia felt as if he’d put up a wall between them that she could not traverse.
The water had been cold.
The door to the kitchen was a heavy thing when Amelia finally found it, three more hallways and a staircase later. It looked like it was never used, every countertop dusty and every cupboard pristine.
Gigi stood there, tail swaying by his ankles. He was draped in clothes that made him look like nothing, like he was fabric and air, slight and seconds away from gone.
Amelia cleared her throat and he jumped, turning away from the stove top where he was staring quite determinedly at a pan of presumably eggs.
“Oh,” they said. They tried for a smile. “Are you hungry?”
His teeth were sharp. Ame stepped forward. The eggs looked watery, clumped together in odd establishments around the pan’s surface.
“You need to up the heat.” Ame’s voice was weak, raspy. She blushed as she adjusted the knob for the stove. Her hand fluttered around the various drawer handles, as if trying to go by context clues to find out which one held the spatulas.
“Here,” he said, handing her one with his tail. She remembered it; it had been on her bare upper thigh as he nosed into her neck, lips soft but cold. Ame figured it would be embarrassing to try and knock herself out with a pan still full of eggs, so she devoted herself to the task of trying to redeem them.
Gigi puttered around behind her, uncertain of what to do. His shirt was loose and half unbuttoned, falling in almost a v-neck to just below his sternum. His collarbones were delicate, birdlike and protruding through his skin. Everything in him was trying to leave. His mouth was sour, and betrayed his awareness of this.
“Were you trying to make me breakfast?” Amelia asked. She looked at the eggs, now slightly more appetizing. “Do you have salt?”
There was a clatter on the counter to her left; Gigi had dropped an armful of several spices and seasonings, some of which looked as if they had started growing in their containers. Ame just took the salt and pepper, clumsily adding it to her eggs. Gigi handed her a plate.
She ended up eating it at the counter, shoveling the eggs into her mouth with a hunger she had not realized she had. Gigi just watched, eyes, bright in the sharp lights of the kitchen. Every line of their face was knifelike, Ame thought she’d cut herself on their pronounced sadness.
“Are you planning to leave?” Gigi asked, taking the plate from Ame once she’d practically licked it clean. It went into a dishwasher by itself, the machine clicking on with a whirr as it tried to remember what it was meant to do after having never been used since being installed.
“Are you kicking me out?” Amelia tried to joke.
There was a rawness to him. She wouldn’t cut herself on him; he’d bruised himself on her. He’d lost all sense of bravado and confidence that he’d worn before. Now he stood there in a too big shirt embroidered with lilies.
“Never,” he said. “You can- can stay as long as you want.”
“As long as I want?” Her shirt was soft between her fingers as Ame played with it. She was fiddly, nervous, schoolyard crush excitement in her tummy as a vampire stared her down. “You shouldn’t say things like that, you’d end up with a lot of freeloaders.”
“I have the space for it.” Gigi shrugged, like it was meant to be a bigger gesture to mock the house that enclosed them so, aborted in its infancy. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Amelia studied him. There were the telltale canines, long and sharp. They ghosted behind his lips like they were too big for his mouth, which they were. His eyes reflected light when he stood at just the right angle. His tail betrayed his feelings, clinging to his ankle in a way that looked like it almost hurt.
“It’s a pity,” Amelia murmured. Gigi flinched. “That the vampire had gotten away. Knew I was coming, gosh I was so clumsy.” She injected levity into her frame, tried to carry humor in the curl of her lip. “Seems I’ll have to hang around if she ever comes back, take on a few jobs in the meantime? She left a nice house.” Gigi uncurled herself, her tail inched across the tile between them before it latched onto the fabric of Amelia’s pants. “I don’t think she’ll miss it.”
“She won’t.” Every empty space in the house quivered, a dead heart echoed its long lost beat through its foundation. Gigi let her tail wind around Amelia’s fingers. Everything in her was trying to leave, trying to move into Amelia’s gravity. Her mouth was quirked, like she was aware of this and allowing it. “She likes the company.”
-
-
Ame figured it had been months. By then, she’d completed at least half a dozen missions for the surrounding area, gained at least two more scars from those incidents, and received several times that amount in kisses. She’d also been learning how to bake.
“The book says,” Gigi worked her glasses up her nose, squinting at the too small text of the cook book, “three cups of flour.”
“We only did half a cup of oil and a single egg,” Amelia complained. “Do they want us to eat a log of burnt flour? Do you want us to eat a log of burnt flour; this is going to make my tummy hurt, you know?”
“I will kiss it better,” Gigi said solemnly, tail setting the book down. She looked like she meant it. “We got the gluten free flour anyway.”
“So the recipe is already fucked up anyways.” Amelia looked at the bowl, one cup of flour already dumped in there and making the whole thing look about as appetizing as a cup of flour barely mixed with oil and egg could be. “Goddammit Barbara from 1833, we’re dishonoring your legacy.”
“1833 was a good year,” Gigi said.
Amelia said, “My vampire has better hip joints than me and they remember 1833, should I divorce them?”
Gigi yowled their pleas against this while Ame laughed. They tried to latch onto her and she play-fought them off, meeting every one of their declarations of their everlasting love with her own laments over the state of her hips.
“I can barely pick things up,” Ame threw a hand over her forehead while Gigi nuzzled into the crook of her neck, kissing and laving affections there. “It sounds like fireworks when I bend over; everything pops.”
“You look fine to me!” Gigi said, trying very hard to kiss Ame on the mouth. She was a whimpering, whining thing, bereft of touch for only ten seconds and already losing cohesion because of it. She’d been a starving thing before, and became a glutton off of Amelia’s love to the point where being weaned off of it would not be an easy task.
“You watch when I bend over!?” Ame cried out with faux disappointment.
“No! Yes!” Gigi buried her head into Amelia’s shoulder. “Not like- like that!”
“Hmm,” Amelia ran her hands through Gigi’s hair. There was flour smudged on her cheek. She looked up to give Ame the wettest, most pathetic eyes she’d ever seen, and this was on a vampire with abilities beyond the norm.
“I love you?” Gigi warbled. Her tail wrapped around them and bound them together at the waist. Gigi’s tummy pressed into Ame’s, her chest into Ame’s breast. She looked as if she were seconds from grabbing the bread knife and sawing the appendage off.
“I love you too.” The back of Gigi’s neck was a weak spot, Ame had found over weeks of mapping their frame. She scratched at it now till they went almost limp in her arms. “I love you-”
“-wait,” Gigi said, starting to squirm, “hold on-”
“I love you,” Amelia sang. Their shoulders were broad in an odd way, as if it were a mix of their pre-existing bone structure and from better eating habits, a weight added to them with Amelia’s presence. Their musculature was now a minefield for Ame to think about, getting too close to it threatened to send all the blood to her brain.
“I hope your tummy does hurt,” Gigi threatened. “I won’t kiss it better.”
“Miserable!” Amelia declared. “Hopeless! Life without tummy kisses? How can I go on?”
“You’re terrible?” Tail undoing itself, Gigi stepped away from Ame and crossed their arms, doing a different approach. “You’re the worst? Perhaps we will get divorced.”
“How cruel of you to suggest such a thing, after our wonderful marriage-“
“We were never married?” The kitchen was quickly becoming privy to their most inane conversations. “How can we get divorced if-”
“We get married now and get divorced right after,” Ame took Gigi’s hands, looking deep into their eyes. “Are you ready to take this emotional journey with me?”
Gigi snorted. Their eyes sparkled. The line of flour was right on their cheek and they still hadn’t noticed. “Will I get anything in return?”
“A kiss?” Ame thumbed over Gigi’s chin, letting her eyes fall into salacious half moons.
Very carefully, Gigi drew her in. He kissed her with a happy little hum, tickling the underside of her jaw with his nails.
“A gift,” he said, and proceeded to smear a line of egg and flour over Amelia’s forehead, making her yelp, “for the bride-”
“Divorce for the groom,” Amelia said, and they were a little bit too in love for having not said it yet.
-
-
Gigi was a squirmy little thing like this, tail constantly moving and eyes shifting to every point in the room except for Ame. She pouted at this, trying to make her rather conservative underwear and bra come off as something more seductive. She was half a mind that it wouldn’t really matter what she wore, Gigi would be a blushing mess anyways, but it was about the vibe, if you will.
“You need to look at me, Gigi.” She was wet already, her cheeks burning and hair tickling her shoulders. She was due for a trim at some point.
Gigi cleared their throat, looking very awkward for being fully dressed and unexposed. “When you said you were going to sit me in a chair and make me watch,” they stumbled over their words a bit as their gaze floated over Ame’s breasts before promptly returning to the wall, “I did not realize you meant it.”
“I meant it,” Amelia said innocently. “But you’re not really watching.”
“I’m being chivalrous.” Gigi nodded firmly.
“You’re being annoying.” Settling in a kneeling position, Amelia pressed into her heel, letting out a shaky breath at the sensation. Gigi’s pupils blew open. The arms of their chair suddenly seemed to be in a lot of danger underneath their grip. “There it is.”
“What?” Gigi’s voice was a taut thing. He worried at his lip with his sharp teeth.
“If you’re a vampire of chivalry,” here, Amelia moaned openly, clit pressing oh so deliciously against her foot, and Gigi snarled. “You’d do as I say and watch.”
“I always listen to you, don’t I?” Gigi had a low rumble going on in their throat, a growl in all but name.
“My obedient boy,” Amelia crooned, and this was like taking a hammer to Gigi’s glass exterior; their want once opaque now fully shining through as they leaned forward. “Who’s going to stay and watch like they’re told.”
“Ame.” Inhaling deeply with his mouth open, as if he could taste her on the air, Gigi rolled his neck with his eyes never leaving Ame’s form. “You can’t stop me.”
“But I’ll be so disappointed.” The curls on her mound were already slick with her want, meeting her fingers as she explored her folds. She was hot and wet, on his bed making him watch her please herself. “You don’t want to disappoint me?”
Gigi snapped at empty air, jaws snicking over nothing as their fangs engorged. They looked wild, and for a moment Ame’s heart skipped a beat at remembering they were playing with a vampire. Until he started whining.
“Please?” His tail snuck forward like it could reach her. “Let me- let me touch you? I want to-” his voice broke, and Ame was slightly embarrassed to admit this display made her wetter. “-to touch you, please, c’n I make you come? Jus’ a little bit, I won’t take long-”
“Are you saying I’m easy, Gigi?” Deftly, Amelia unhooked her bra, quickly pinching and playing with one of her nipples while her other hand continued circling her clit. “I won’t take long?”
Gigi adjusted their sitting position; going criss cross, then kneeling on the cushion, then sitting on their hands. “I didn’t meant that,” they bit their lip again, every puncture and cut quickly healing before they nicked it open anew. “I just want to taste you, Ame.”
“I like it when you beg,” Ame breathed. There was an obscene noise coming from where her fingers worked messily at her cunt. Gigi could hear it, every muscle twitching as they tried to stop themselves from lunging forward. “You’re so pretty, handsome when you beg. My good boy, waiting and waiting-”
“I won’t wait that much longer,” Gigi growled. His lips were shiny; Ame realized he was drooling and the coil in her stomach tightened that much more.
“You get thirty seconds,” Ame said, and Gigi’s chair banged against the wall. His head dipped between her legs, mouth fluttering over her inner thighs before he promptly chewed her underwear to pieces. “Excuse me?”
“Thousand pardons,” Gigi panted, and ate her alive.
He humped at his hand while he fucked her messily, his cheeks doubtlessly getting stained with Amelia’s wetness. Ame’s fingers dug into his scalp, tugging him forward, her feet helplessly pressing against the bed as she tried to buck against him and the impossible strength of his hands against her hips.
Gigi’s tail scraped at her stomach, palmed her breasts with a tingling sensation that made her think of the feeling of touching ice, or getting too close to a live wire. Every nerve ending she had rebelled against it, the foul magic in it. But she bucked against that too, loving every part of him in a way she still couldn’t name.
“Coming!” She gasped, and he was scrambling, a weak thing trying to reach her mouth, trying to kiss her and swallow up her cries.
Ame worked his shirt off just so that she could touch him; the hard planes of his chest, the fuzz of his tummy. His hip bones were no longer as prominent as they used to be, and this made her happy. He was cold atop her, but quickly leached the heat from her as they continued to kiss.
“What would you do,” Amelia asked him, his mouth on her cheek, “if you met my friends?”
Gigi was quiet. They had no heartbeat, no breath, nothing to betray their feelings, save for the nervous wriggling of their tail on Ame’s stomach. “I’d get to know them,” they started slowly, “see how they are with you-”
“You want to shovel talk my friends?” Amelia grinned, shifting her head from where it rested on her arm to look at him. He was smaller like this, bare, bush tickling Amelia’s thigh from where he was firmly glued to her side.
“I don’t know what that means so I’m ignoring that.” He nuzzled into Amelia’s shoulder. She could see the place where the fuzz of his lower back turned into the cord of his tail. It was an intimate place, and he bared it to her like it was nothing.
Ame found it hard to swallow for a moment.
“Can I meet your friends?”
She could feel his smile. “I think you’d like them. You’ve probably met some of their kind.”
There was a question Amelia had been meaning to ask, and only just now found the space for it. “Why don’t they visit you?”
A deep sigh, tinged with the scent of iron. For a moment, curled up into Ame’s side was the lonely thing she’d first met, the vampire that stood there in a shirt with lilies on it while trying to not beg her to stay and failing.
“It is hard for them,” he murmured, his hair tickling her neck. “Clan politics, hunters, humans; many things stop them from traveling far.”
“But you keep in touch?” The skin of his back was soft under her hand, she could feel the dips and dimples of his spine.
“The occasional letter.”
His scent was muted, the distinct smell of a living, breathing, sweating human absent from him. It was mostly spices that Amelia got when she scratched at his scalp and nosed into his hair. “Why don’t you ask them to come over?” She kissed him on his forehead. “They can give me the shovel talk.”
“Still don’t know what that means.” Gigi’s eyes were closed. They were beautiful like this. “But maybe I will.”
“Whipped,” Amelia said.
“I take it back,” Gigi nipped at Amelia’s shoulders, bowling her over when she tried to escape and continued pressing kisses and bites to her neck. “You will not meet them.”
“I am an embarrassment to you, I see it,” Ame’s chest heaved for air, she grinned underneath his bulk. “God forbid they know the company you keep.”
“Because then they’ll want you,” Gigi said, and kissed her solidly. His tongue was greedy, not letting her get an upper hand at all as he maneuvered her, tilted her head to the side to better taste her. A string of spit connected them when he pulled away. His hair was ruffled from her hands. “And you’re mine.”
“Yours,” Amelia agreed, making Gigi’s jaw flex. “My pretty boy.”
“Baby,” Gigi sat solidly on her hips. She wasn’t really sure if she’d ever seen him with his hair like this, but she liked it a lot. His hands explored the front of her body, chastly, focusing more on the scars and marks of her work. His love was unsure of itself but steady otherwise; it waited to move forward before it plunged itself wholeheartedly into the work. “Can we try something?”
Ame found herself smiling, her hands on their waist. They slid up to brush over the scars on their chest, where someone had peeled them open and put them back together, where they were willing and let something restrain their regeneration. Ame had the inane wish that it had been her to rework them into their image, her holding the knife and holding them open while they let their flesh stay split just for her.
“Whatever you want,” she said. “My silly little vampire.”
He grinned goofily. “M’yeah, that’s me.” He then made the expression like he’d been hit over the head with something. “Oh, I can never let them see me like this.”
“You promised,” Amelia sang, trying to sit up before Gigi’s tail pushed her back down. “I want to meet them.”
“Then I get to meet your friends,” Gigi said, grinning as they began to trace over Amelia’s chest, ghosting over her nipples and making her bite her lip.
They both ignored the glaring truth that threatened to peel the veneer from the scene; if their friends were ever to come, someone would end up dead.
Notes:
pushed through a funky mood to get this done along with some prompts. please enjoy the them.
Chapter 5: I thought that love was a kind of emptiness
Summary:
“I like it when you call me handsome,” Gigi murmured, feeling shy like a bruise under a thumb, entirely too tender. “I want to be handsome for you.”
Chapter Text
It was always an unbearable thing, the hunger. Like this separate, snarling thing, sensing the heat of life and wanting to drain it dry. Gigi shoved it down, throttled it in the night so that she could wake up in the morning to Ame’s still warm body, blood firmly within her veins and not smeared over Gigi’s mouth like the monster in her so desperately wanted.
They would lie there, on occasion, unnecessary breath coming in slow and deep, watching the rise and fall of Ame’s chest. Her blonde hair on the pillow, the straps of her nightgown slung low on her shoulders. The scars and burns, the life she shed when she stepped over Gigi’s threshold.
Their eyes trained on the bite marks on her shoulder, another creature’s attempt on what was theirs-
Gigi slid out of bed carefully, padding barefooted to the bathroom. Their toes curled at the feeling of cold tile, seeking refuge on the plush rug by the sink. It was only when they turned to the mirror that they recognized their error.
“Ah,” she murmured to herself. Her fingers ghosted over the line of her jaw, the divot in her collarbones. She wondered what she looked like now, tried to muster up the last memory of herself in the mirror and could not find it in the haze of decades gone past.
“Gigi?” The voice was small, sleepy, the rustle of blankets accompanying it.
“You don’t need to get out of bed.” Gigi hurried back, turning off the bathroom light and plunging the room into semi darkness.
But his vision didn’t change, not even a dilution of contrast. Her hair, the pale of her skin, the strap that had been so tenuously holding on to broad shoulder having given up entirely, the dusky brown of her nipple peeking from above the neckline. He had to swallow down his thirst, then, as he crawled back into bed beside her, gently shushing her back to sleep.
“Where did you go?” Ame asked him when she’d laid back down with him, her eyes shut, her lips parted.
“Bathroom,” he said, reaching out to cup her cheek, brush back her hair.
“I thought you were a vampire.”
“I am.”
She frowned, eyes opening just so, and he mourned the easy openness of her face as much as he welcomed the feeling of her gaze on him.
“Then why did you go?”
“I forget, on occasion,” Gigi said smoothly, “that mirrors do not work for me anymore.”
Amelia’s blink was so slow it verged on the point of her merely falling asleep for a moment. “You’re handsome, if you were wondering,” she said finally. “I like the way your hair… is. And your mouth, your little teeth.”
“Poetic, my love,” he said, and words like that came so easily now. “My little teeth.”
“I am so sorry, dear, your very big, large, girthy-”
“Misery,” Gigi said, and Ame giggled in his bed, which was a beautiful, beautiful thing.
“I like your teeth,” she said softly, in the hiccuping rhythm of a laugh petering out, as she reached in between them to trace a fingertip over the point of one of Gigi’s fangs. “They are very handsome on you.”
“I like it when you call me handsome,” Gigi murmured, feeling shy like a bruise under a thumb, entirely too tender. “I want to be handsome for you.”
Ame was silent for a moment, eyes fully open by this point. “Gigi, would you bite me if I asked?”
Gigi froze, slowly turned her head towards the blankness of the ceiling. “I hope you never ask,” she said. “So that I never subject you to that.”
“Subject me?” Amelia sounded amused. “You make it sound as if it is a terrible thing.”
“Because it is.” Gigi’s jaw felt tightly wound. “To have a monster taking something from you, it is terrible.”
“Are you the monster?” She was too soft for him, and he wanted to yell that at her until she understood he was undeserving of it. “You are too loved to be a monster, I think.”
“And is that all it takes?” Gigi scoffed. “I won’t be hunted in the daylight, forsaken by the sun, slaughtered by people like you-”
“Like me?” Amelia’s voice was a sharp thing, Gigi couldn’t look at her in the moment. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing at all,” Gigi said, swallowing it down, swallowing it all down. “Nothing at all.”
-
-
She avoided them. Gigi cursed themself, balked at the spit of sun on their floors and was tempted with the fate of sweet absolution by its flame. But they didn’t, instead shook in the cold loneliness of their library like a beaten dog, unopened book on their lap that they’d read four times anyways. They imagined her on a mission, something incredible, strength and beauty and a really sharp knife. They imagined her with them, head pillowed on their chest, breathing steadily in their air.
“Fuck,” Gigi said into their echoing halls. “Fuck.”
They had more choice words to say, said them to every corner of the home they’d haunted for the majority of their vampiric life. They paced the halls, skulked through rooms, stood in the shadows of the yard during twilight and felt the grass under their feet. Hoped it would help, hoped they would feel less empty. Gigi stared at the empty space in their bed and felt so utterly alone, like they never had before, until all they had to fill that void was what they had turned to in previous moments of melancholy and desperation.
Ame found him in his favorite chili spot, the one he hadn’t taken her to yet. The formica shone with a mix of cleaning product and oil and the cushioning of the booth was torn in some places. His bowl was chipped and off white, but filled to the brim. Cheese was melted on top in a perfect layer of artificial dairy product, hot sauce separating in a dribble on top of that.
“Hi,” she said, sliding into the seat across from him. The restaurant was empty save for them, the cashier having retreated to the back.
Gigi’s eyes flicked up to meet her wan face, the red rim of her eyes. “How has the mold been treating you?” he asked.
“Different hotel.”
“Ah.” Gigi nodded, shoved their dripping spoon into their mouth. Chili was great because it cut through the ash that vampires were doomed to taste when they ate the food of the living; so many spices and opportunities for highly processed ingredients that a little bit of its spice and smoke came through. “You have learned.”
“Mold isn’t a good roommate.” Ame tapped her fingers on the tabletop before wrinkling her nose, inspecting the residue left behind on her skin. “I probably should have been more grateful to my, uh, previous roommate.”
“Your previous roommate,” Gigi echoed. “They sound fun.”
“Very fun.” Her hair was slightly curly, Gigi noticed, looped around her ears and lifted up at the edges. “Handsome too.”
“Are they partial to flattery?”
“You tell me.”
Gigi went silent, scraping their spoon along the bottom of the bowl. Grease puddled in the divots of the thick chili, reflecting the fluttering lights of the restaurant. She could hear Ame’s heartbeat, how it trembled, how she tried to keep it steady with deep breathing.
“Gigi?” Ame asked, her voice breaking imperceptibly. “Can we go home?”
-
-
It felt like a mirroring of how it had started. Gigi lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, Ame next to him. He could feel the heat of her hand against his, even with the slightest of spaces between them.
“Do you think I’m lying?” Ame started, and it was the smallest he’d ever heard her. “When I say I like you?”
Gigi turned his head towards her, fingers twitching as he caught himself trying to reach out, still unsure if she wanted the touch. “I don’t think you’re lying,” he said. “Not at all.”
Not when you kiss me like that, went unsaid.
“Then why do you act like I’m going to leave you?”
“Well, you do leave me-”
“Gigi,” her voice was sharp, she meant this, lay in his bed with only a loose shirt and thin shorts, not even a blade under her pillow. Her throat, pale and sweet, flexing as she sat up. “Do you really think that- that you’ll wake up one day with a stake in your heart and I’ve been gone for longer than you can bear?”
I can’t bear it when you’re gone anyways,” they found themselves saying, the words pouring out of them, a wound buried deep only just beginning to seep through their shell.
Gigi curled towards her, buried their face into her stomach, inhaling the scent of her detergent and the salt of her skin. Her hand rested atop of their head, gentle, not keeping them there but still holding them.
“I know, I know,” she shushed him, a broken sob tearing from his chest. “It’s scary, isn’t it?”
“I want- I want you to be happy,” Gigi sniffled into the fabric of her shirt. “For you to be happy with something normal that won't ruin your life-”
She shushed him again, hand lifting off his head and the rustling of fabric that left him mildly confused. He shook his head, nuzzling closer and feeling the damp patches his tears left behind on her shirt, shame blooming on his cheeks.
Then he smelt it; sweet, thick, warm. Iron, life in its purest form, freed from the heartbeat cycle. Immediately, Gigi’s mouth filled with drool, his fangs aching as they elongated in his gums.
“Ame, Ame, what-?” He tried to pull away, but her hand wound into his hair and turned his head, his face towards the ceiling, towards her. His mouth opened slightly from the sting in his scalp, saliva trickling down his chin from how it pooled on his tongue.
Her eyes were sharp and flinty, her palm smeared with blood. He could just see the glint of a knife on the nightstand, doubtlessly maintained to a whisper’s edge, and felt a thrill down their spine.
“Tongue out, sweetheart,” she said, clenching her hand until blood welled up in the seams. Gigi’s eyes were trained on it, pupils blown wide as he breathed heavily through his mouth. “Cmon now.”
Gigi’s eyes met hers, the blue darkened by her own want. Doubt flickered in his chest, terror tight around his guts at the idea of taking too much, being too much, hurting her. Then her hand gripped his chin, squeezed lightly to pout his mouth open wider. Slowly, eyes still fixed on hers, Gigi’s tongue lolled out, pink and wet. Ame’s breath hitched, an almost reverent look in her eyes, and she let her blood drip onto his tongue.
“Don’t swallow,” prompted Gigi to whine pathetically, eyes squeezing shut as every muscle in their body protested her orders. They could taste it already, smell it, it was so close. Her thumb and finger pinched their tongue, pushed it back into their mouth.
The taste of her bloomed, smeared over the roof of their mouth. It was rich and deep, like a fine wine but meatier. They moaned, hips rolling into nothing as want pulsed thick and hot in their gut.
Ame thumbed over his brow, his eyes fluttering pathetically as he savored her. When she pressed her palm to his mouth, he couldn’t stop himself this time, licking at the wound with an eager pressing tongue. Hungry little noises escaped him, and were his mind still with him, he’d probably be embarrassed.
They followed her hand, licking desperately at the wound until it finally clotted closed, a sound leaving them that made Ame flush from chin to chest. She guided them further, bloody palm pressing against the nape of her neck to rest the wet of their mouth on her throat.
“Gigi,” she said softly, and they shook their head gently, blinking their eyes at her. “Please?”
The moment stretched into a thousand, fear and elongated fangs clogging up Gigi’s mouth. They could hurt her, kill her. Drain her dry in their bed and nobody would know. Nobody would punish them. A broken sob choked out of them and Ame kissed their forehead, whispered something they couldn’t remember but calmed them anyway.
The marks left behind on her shoulder, from an old similarly vampiric foe. Distasteful, badly done, messy. He made his mark over the old one, in his opinion, much more elegantly. And drank so deep of her, he did. Felt his mind leave him, all he was became body and hunger. But when it mattered, when Ame tugged his hair gently and told him to let go, he obeyed. His mouth was smeared with her blood, his pupils were blown wide, his fangs made his lips pout open. But he had listened, and this elated him. He kissed her, messily, joyfully, he had not hurt her. He had not hurt her. He had not hurt her and she still loved him.
This was what mattered to Gigi, that the hunger softened in Ame’s wake, and he no longer felt like the animal he had become so many years ago.
Notes:
vamps your pire. anyway, i hope this was good!
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