Work Text:
“I love you. I want us both to eat well.”— Christopher Citro
Anne is not Virginia.
Alex should have known this from the moment he met her. They may share the same fair face, but there is something different about Anne. She is angular, arch, sharp. Intelligent. Wise where Virginia would have been sweet and naive. Self-determined, where Virginia bent with the blowing of the wind. Practical, where Virginia was playful.
And where he had patiently waited for Virginia to grow; had coaxed Virginia into every kiss, every caress she had given him, Anne gave freely of the same. She was also a sensualist in a way Virginia had not been, which was why she is the one biting down on the side of his neck, trying to bait him into sucking the life out of her.
She has come to this place to kill him, only to throw her iron fork down and demand he make her a vampire. Anne isn’t taking no for an answer. She has thrown him onto the bed and is kissing him, is crawling all over him, and he’s trying to be noble, damn it. Heroic.
”I want to be with you!” she had begged him.
“I can’t. I’ve made this mistake before,” he’d said.
That didn’t seem to matter anymore. “I will kill you,” he mutters into her shoulder. Isn’t it odd that he’s the one surrendering to her? He ought to be the aggressor; the one claiming her flesh, showing her the world that had been tormenting him for centuries. But he has done nothing. They have been kissing passionately on his bed for minutes and his willpower is strained to the maximum by the scent of her, the feel of her. That she had come here to kill him didn’t matter – the connection bubbling under the surface does.
“Then kill me,” she says, passion-drunk. “It would be better than to live this half-life, without you.”
“Anne,” he mutters. Because he knows who he’s with, tonight. It had been centuries since he’d allowed a woman this close to him, centuries since he’d felt the urge to clamp his teeth down on bare, innocent flesh this way. “I can’t…”
“Virginia wouldn’t want you to be alone, damn it!” she snaps. He hates himself for allowing Anne to say her name. Yet he hears the sense in her words.
“To put another woman through…that…please don’t do that with your tongue, I’m trying to think,” he begs. She has his shirt open and is circling a nipple, has thrown aside his dark jacket. This is going further and further, it is spinning away from his control. When her palm presses over the growing bulge in his pants, he curses and pulls her head to the side.
If she wants to join him in damnation, so be it.
Alex’s teeth sink into her neck without any intent – just pure, animal bloodlust. She gasps – struggles, for just a moment. Then she twitches and grunts and – just before she expires – he swears he can hear her laugh.
She tastes divine, of course. The preview he’d gotten when she cut her hand on that glass was nothing but the sweetest hint. Nothing like anyone else or anything else he’s ever tried; heady and complex, sweet like the wine he sometimes still sipped when he was human. No bright copper scream and no innocent, cloying flavor. Just Anne, breaking through his senses, washing everything clean like an ocean wave. He almost gets too caught up in the moment; he almost fails to pull back in time.
But he doesn’t. Alex sheds the shirt and waistcoat entirely before grabbing the back of her head and spitting a mouthful between her lips. He drips blood from his fangs, down across the sheets, a thin but bright arterial spray with the gesture but doesn’t notice. He mustn’t be too late this time. A gaping wheeze escapes Anne’s mouth, filling him with relief.
“Drink,” he demands, breathless.
Anne latches on as if she’s been born supping from his neck. She pulls and pulls and pulls and he hisses, his spine bowing, thrills running through his body. When at last it’s over, she flops back into his arms, into the small puddles of gore on the bed.
For a moment Alex worries he’s drunk too deeply. Then Anne’s eyes open. She reconsiders what she’s seen, where she’s been. Her arms spread out across the bed.
“Oh,” she says. She blinks up at him, licks the corner of her mouth like a kitten. Then she furrows her brow. “I thought I would feel different. Colder. I should’ve known- you feel warm, when I touch you.”
He nods. “There are things to learn. I’ll teach you.” He gives her a mirthless smile. “We have time.”
“Well,” she says, hand slipping lower. “Suppose we have time for this, too.”
Her hand slips down his blood-streaked chest, pressing flat and bold against the front of his trousers. Alex’s eyes close tightly; he takes a long, deep, steadying breath. He’s forgotten the magical power of arousal, the promise of desire and the joy of being wanted.
“It won’t be like it was when you were with him,” Alex warns.
“I don’t want to think of the past,” she says. “I want to think of right now. Of you.”
He grunts, swallows, as she unzips him. He gets to work unbuttoning her, and there are soft curves hiding under those severe mourning clothes. Ahh, he should have known. They kiss desperately before Alex slips southward, kissing along her ribcage, making her groan and squeal at every sensitive point he hits. Alex mentally maps her out – he’ll be touching her this way for all time, he’d best figure out what she likes. His tongue licks her nipple, and he sucks upon her gently. Each part of her body is given favor, given love.
His hand slides between her legs and he strokes her lovingly, and ahh, he has not misremembered the way this feels with the turned, the way this works – she is dewy, not with blood, but wet for him. He wonders why he’s denied himself this moment. It feels predestined, as if he’s just been spinning his wheels.
Anne is bemused. “It doesn’t feel much different from when I did when I was a human,” she says. Her breath catches as he brushes her nipple with the pad of his thumb; she doesn’t sound disappointed.
He shrugs. “Same nerve endings,” he says. Then Alex lowers his face to her left breast and begins to suckle.
He loses his mind in the ensuing glide to happiness. Her flesh is soft and sweet-scented; like powder and roses, not perfume. He can dig his teeth, if not his fangs, into her without hurting her. She can take more sexual anguish than Virginia could, but her orgasms roll over her and unstring her in a different way. He keeps two fingers inside of her and slides down until his mouth can taste her. Alex is proud that his skills haven’t deserted him; his tongue, pressing deep within, drawing nectar out. She tastes fine and sweet; more delicious even than her blood had been. As he stokes her, presses another finger into her, he begins to lose his sophisticated technique. He pulls his fingers free. He knows how to tease her clitoris; he knows how to kiss just above and below it, then how to swirl his tongue until her fingers lock in his hair and tug. He looks up, her pubic hair tickling his nose, and her mouth is wide open, her head falling back. He plunges two fingers back into her, twists them, and is inundated.
When she seizes him, it’s with strength that would have crushed a mere mortal. Alex licks his way free, until her belly ripples and rolls and her quim contracts and throbs for him, pulling silently against his fingers, making Alex grunt. Anne herself is groaning, sounding pained, miles away from him.
Alex licks his way northward, pushes his tongue into her mouth. She sucks him, aggressive, almost biting him. The gesture seems to make her think of other parts of him she wants to suck, because her hand brushes its way down his skin.
Anne breaks the kiss and tugs at his waistband. “Take your pants off, mister,” she demands. He actually laughs at the order.
With a push and a squirm, Alex is nude. Anne she looks him up and down, appraising in silence. She seems surprised by his erection and he knows he’s going to give her a crash course in what little he understands of their shared new biology. He does feel a bit self-conscious before she runs a palm over his body. Then they kiss, and she rolls him away from the blood, deeper into the white sheets.
Anne licks her palm before taking hold of his cock. She slides down and he pushes her head toward it, his blood afire, too overheated to put on a pretense of gentlemanliness. There’s warmth, then wetness, then bliss. Her mouth worships at his skin and Alex moans. He knows he won’t last for long; Anne understands what she’s doing, and it’s a welcome change from the past. It’s been centuries since he’s had an orgasm. He’s not entirely sure if he still can, so lost has he been in his misplaced love. He arches his back and she pulls off of him; crawling up his body she presses him flat to her. Her hips weave back and forth, grinding against blood-scented heat.
Anne reaches behind her, between them. It takes some effort and then he feels her – strong and tight around him, wet and hot. He remembers what this is, being inside of a woman – a splash of life in the death march that has eaten him alive. There had been women before Virginia. None of them had meant a thing. Since then it had been a long march for Alex, but now he was home, at last.
“You really are so warm,” she murmurs, sounding surprised. “And you fill me – how well you fill me!”
“I love you,” Alex blurts out.
She smiles, leans over him. “High time you said so.”
Now his head falls back. Now she strokes him, the rhythm precise, the grip of her strong and slippery. She adjusts to his movements and Alex bites down on his lip, trying not to whimper. He does whimper when she begins to ride him, moving at a steady pace that finally increases into a mad frenzy.
His body operates as it always has, even before Virginia. He wants to make some kind of witty joke about all the blood she’d given him pooling in his hard-on but it felt too juvenile a jibe for such a holy moment. Just before he’s set to come, she leans over him.
“Stay with me,” Anne demands.
“Oh God, yes,” he says. “Forever.”
Clearly pleased, Anne grinds herself against him. She reaches down to touch herself with bloody fingertips. Alex is dimly aware of her tightening, her gasp. He doesn’t last long at all. Later he’ll feel shame about that.
Heat envelops him; at last, he is home. At last, he is free. The orgasm seems to last a century or more, and it wrings him dry and makes him jerk and cry out and say insensible, ridiculous, wonderful things.
When it’s over, she rests against him. Alex tries to turn his head away from the moment. But there’s Anne, cupping his cheek and staring down into his eyes. It’s enough to make Alex tear up, and look away, feeling unmanned. She won’t let him.
“I love you, Alex. I’ll hunt for you,” she says.
He throws his arms around her and cries. Here is where the gloominess ends; here is where death segues into life.
He should have never turned Virginia.
He knows that now. Though he had loved her deeply, obsessively, for a decade; though she said she loved him, she didn’t have the stuff to be a vampire. She couldn’t kill when she was hungry; she didn’t have a vicious bone in her body.
Standing in a bloody heap that was once Edgar, Alex knows he won’t have that problem with Anne.
She licks her lips and wipes her fingers against her upper thigh. “I wonder what we should do with the leftovers,” she says, gesturing to the drained corpse, the bits of shredded meat that remain upon him. Alex isn't repulsed by his actions, for once. The man deserves it – for what he had done to Virginia alone, he deserves it.
“I’ve…never had to deal with leftovers,” Alex says. "Normally, I don't bring home dinner." The cats and rats had not counted.
She shrugs. “It won’t matter. I have a refrigerator. Would you like to move into my place?”
The suggestion takes him aback. “That would be…” different, he thinks. He looks at his bed and wonders if it will fit.
She gestures dismissively. “We can talk about it later. First, we should shower….water doesn’t kill us, right?”
“Not unless it’s the holy sort,” he says.
She nods. “There’s a convenience store a couple of blocks up the road, and we can buy supplies. I don’t suppose you know of any discreet dry cleaners?”
“There’s an all-night laundromat in Brixton where people prefer to look the other way,” he says.
“You’ll have to introduce me,” she says, sauntering through the gore and kissing his earlobe. Alex is…sated. Content. For the first time in years, he feels happy.
“Do you think what he said was true?” Anne asks suddenly. “About where Virginia is?”
“I don’t know,” Alex says. And then, to his shock, he adds, “I don’t care - I think he was lying.” He’ll do his best to find the burial ground, to save her – if only out of common courtesy. But he doesn’t want to go back to the life they might have had. Does not want to be with her. How can she forgive him for leaving her there for centuries, if what Edgar said is true?
He loves Virginia, of course – but he’s not in love with her. The revelation breaks the clouds swarming his head. What he has with Anne is deeper, richer – it’s more honest. Not a fairytale dream, acted out by two children who should know better.
“Come take a shower with me, Alex,” she sings, walking into his makeshift bathroom. Alex scrambles to join her.
No, Anne is not Virginia.
And for the first time in his unyielding, unceasing, everlong life, he’s glad of it.