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.
-
-
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.