☕️ @summerfeelng - Tumblr Blog

"Don’t be,” Niall is at her other side, casual in his strides, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, “They’ve got special drinks here so you can get fucked up. Your body metabolizes it too fast to stay drunk for long but it’s nice for a little while at least.”

Harry waves his hand at Niall like he’s batting him away, “You’re a bad influence,” he grumbled, “The last thing she needs is to be drunk and grinding on some random vampire stuck in his frat boy douche days like you guys are.”

“Oh I’m sure you would hate that, wouldn’t you?” Theodore was behind them, Y/N guesses he'd been pretending he was invested in the conversation he’d been having with Marcus but he very easily strays away to invade theirs, “Y/N, don’t let him deter you, vampire dick is crazy with one night stands if you’re interested.”

“Or girls, if that’s what you’re into,” Saskia adds in, “Or both.”

Harry lets out a sigh beside her, breath puffing out in a plume of smoke, “Just stick beside me tonight.”

or

Harry is possessive, Y/N gets answers, and wait, who changed her?

part 1

part 2

23k+ words

[Warning: blood play in the smut, because they're vampires, so of course!!]

iii.

Things are. . .different.

Not drastically, but enough for Y/N to notice; she expected nothing less, after what they had done with each other. Of course, their dynamic would shift, she just didn’t know if the shift would be slight and gradual or notable and sudden. With Harry, it could be either, as wishy-washy as he is with her sometimes. However, for whatever reason she thought maybe being nose-deep between her thighs might have halfway connected a thing or two in his brain and what he wanted his disposition toward her to be. Was he the dutiful mentor, ready to guide her through life and aid her at any moment? Or the begrudging adviser, perturbed by her presence and put out when she needed help?

Depending on the day, she could get either, and that was before the additional camber in their already convoluted dynamic. So she was hardly surprised when he was all over the place after too like he wasn’t even sure what to make of what happened between them. Surely, in all his years on this planet, and all his years mentoring other vampires, he must have run into something like this, right? It couldn’t just be her who felt a tickle down her spine and the vessel-consuming ache of wanting to be filled when she sank her teeth into someone’s body.

She would ask around but she’s kind of embarrassed to even look at anybody right now. They were in a household of vampires, with hearing that could only be rivaled by a greater wax moth and they weren’t necessarily being quiet about it either. Everyone heard her, everyone could probably smell her too, and if she hadn’t already kept herself up half the night thinking about it, Niall only confirmed her suspicions the following morning.

“He’s a prat, but he walks around like he’s got a horse cock, so I can’t say I blame you.”

He’d moved on from it generally fast, but that didn’t stop the consumption of her whole body in shame-driven flames. And when Christopher’s cheeks went a bright, rosy pink when he saw her next, Y/N wanted the whole ground to open up and swallow her whole. She’d only finally gotten comfortable enough to participate in movie nights routinely, and now she wanted to gnaw through her leg more than sit beside any of them on the couch and pretend they didn’t know. That they didn’t hear her, or the absolute filth that left Harry’s mouth, no matter how it might have been muffled against her body.

Y/N’s sure they all fuck around – there’s no way Delphine and Saskia haven’t slept with each other at least once, with how they’re always clinging onto the other – but still, she can’t fight the embarrassment. She didn’t even talk about sex that much with her old human friends, and these new vampire acquaintances had practically a front-row seat to hear her get eaten out. . .on her period. . .

God, she’s mortified.

Harry doesn’t seem concerned about it in that regard. He doesn’t seem ashamed of it in the slightest and that might make her feel a little better in different circumstances if he wasn’t being weird otherwise. It’d been three weeks since it’d happened: some days Harry was around her all day and was no more than an arm’s length away the entire time. He’s on her cat paw chair, in her bed, helping her hang up lights, moving dressers where she wants them, theorizing if she should get a telly in here as the others have in their rooms. If they aren’t in her room, then they’re outside practicing, playing games to help her strengthen her senses when she needs them, and dull them when she doesn’t. Or she’s in the kitchen with him. Christopher is warming her blood again because Harry thinks they should take a break until they can figure out exactly what’s going on. Still, Harry is on the stool directly beside her and his knee is nudging hers, and his arm is pressed against her forearm, and he’s crowding her space, so even if she wanted to ignore him she couldn’t.

And then some days she doesn’t see him at all; Christopher comes to her door throughout the day to bring her blood, Niall stops by to complain about the others, and Naomi pops in (she’s finally stopped giving Y/N that I know you fucked our century-old vampire mentor look) for face masks that they don’t need because their skin is smooth as whipping cream and pimples are a thing of the past (but it’s fun to do them still, and they smell nice).

But Harry never shows. Doesn’t message, doesn’t call, doesn’t even bother to tell her if he’s working or not like he’d taken to doing. The silence is such an unforgiving static, she briefly questions if he’d ever existed at all, but then she looks to the right and sees a dumb pair of sunglasses or his forgotten 500-quid sweater that is thrown over her dresser. Still, it’s eerie, and Y/N wonders for three seconds if he’s okay then remembers he’s a fucking vampire and one who’d been around long enough to evade several wars.

Then, as soon as she’s getting used to the quiet and relative peace of Harry doing his own thing – she can smell him before he even steps through the door like her nose was hard-wired to detect him. He’s at her door, no matter the time of day, and he’s invading her space again.

It doesn’t make much sense, but nothing does anymore, since she was bitten and turned into a vampire. She’s still having nightmares, and she wants blood so badly sometimes she could tear through her mattress, and she misses biting into his wrist, and his throat. Her gums are sensitive and sore, Christopher says from being used more frequently, and then not used at all – these teeth were still new enough that abrupt changes like that were distressing and she starts to wonder if they were sentient. Then she considers practicing biting into the blood baggies, how Harry said she would have started learning if he weren’t her mentor, and Christopher smiled apologetically at her before replying.

“I reckon Harry probably wouldn’t like you drinking from baggies,” he explained, “He, in his own way, forbade it. And I’m not keen on getting on his bad side.”

“Well then let me bite you.” She says it only halfway joking and halfway feeling maybe a little too needy to dig her teeth into someone’s skin.

Christopher shakes his head adamantly, “That would surely put me on his shit list. Who would feed you so often if I wasn’t around?”

It’s annoying. All of it is annoying, and she still doesn’t understand why she couldn’t bite someone else. Theoretically, wouldn’t it clear up more questions if she saw how her body reacted to them feeding? How would they react to her feeding? That would at least give them somewhat of a better foundation for what was going on, and maybe a better idea of how to deal with it.

But Harry seemed adamant that this wasn’t the way to go. He shuts it down every time she brings it up, so Y/N just stopped bringing it up.

She was getting antsy inside of the house. Y/N wasn’t sure how much of it had contributed to what was going on between her and Harry, and how much of it contributed to being stuck inside a house for two months, but she didn’t think it mattered. Especially when she started working again, Y/N was twitchy and annoyed, and she had a phantom ache in her fingers from scrolling and rewriting programs and codes because that’s all she could do from home. They didn’t hurt, her joints well-oiled machinery now opposed to the knobby knuckles that had been her human hands – but she still stopped every twenty or so minutes to fan her fingers in and out like she was kneading the air.

At least when Harry was in the mood to smother her she had some form of distraction, but when he goes MIA, she has nothing to do. Niall will do whatever he does when he’s disappearing, and Christopher will pop in to give her blood but never stays too much longer than necessary. Naomi might stop in to watch a show on Y/N’s laptop screen (or watch her program for about three minutes before getting bored and getting on her phone) – but if they’re all busy, then Y/N is just alone. And if she isn’t asleep, then she’s tossing and turning, ready to crawl out of her skin, missing the feeling of the wind and the warmth of the sun.

Y/N was just going to stay on their deck. They had a nice overhang that shadowed any light they would consider too much, but normally that wasn’t a problem, for how dreary this winter had been. However, the weather didn’t certainly play fair with her, because the moment she decided she was ready to pop outside for fresh air was the moment that the clouds unfurled, exposing its underbelly. The sun shot early morning beams across the sky in some spots, in a hazy turnaround from the rainy day they’d been having before, lighting up certain spots of the backyard.

It wasn’t going out how she wanted; Y/N was worried about being surrounded by humans, but she missed being around more than the same couple of people all of the time. And Y/N didn’t even fucking like crowded spaces, or fighting for her life in the grocery, or nearly being body checked in the mall line during Christmas season shopping – but it made her feel more alive. At the very least, she didn’t feel like she was wasting away in a room, trying not to chew through her hand because she couldn’t drink from Harry or she’ll get horny, and god what the fuck is even going on anymore?

The fact of it is, that Y/N was feeling weird, and upset, and she went from feeling better and stronger drinking from Harry to this irritated, general disgruntled feeling. That she does open up about to Christopher, who had been trying to satiate her with the sweeter blood (all the positives - A+, O+, etc – are much sweeter, for whatever reason). He regarded her with a knowing look, soft and kind, and Y/N just wondered how he got stuck here doing this, but she still didn’t ask – it still felt rude to ask.

“Yeah, it’s difficult switching from a vein to a bag. Mitch explained it to me once, the chemicals and endorphins released for us when we get to bite – it’s a lot, and confusing for the body when we start doing it and then stop. I know you hate hearing this, but it’s just something that gets better with time.”

Yeah, Y/N did hate hearing that answer but she accepted it because she’d finally seen it to some extent. Existing is easier than it had been a month ago, using her nose to differentiate scents is easier, hearing is easier, and she isn’t as overstimulated from just sitting in her room with people walking around outside the door. Even the hunger is a little better, not as overwhelming and preoccupying as it had been. At least, not in the same way it was now. Before she felt like an insatiable little monster, drinking and drinking and never being full, her stomach feeling hollow, empty, always mere moments from devouring itself.

The hunger now is. . .pressing, but not dominating. It’s more annoying than it is dire. She just wants to bite into Harry again, she was willing to ignore the reaction her body had if it meant getting to eat and feel as satiated as she does when it’s from him.

So she was outside, sitting on the deck, taking in lungfuls of breath that she didn’t necessarily need but it felt good to let her chest fill up with the cold air. She had planned to just stay out for a little bit, the cushioned seat beneath her bum, and listen to the still, early morning world around her. She wasn’t even going to go into the yard, she didn’t need to.

And then she heard something.

Y/N liked to try at least to practice without Harry sometimes to improve, and maybe please him a little bit when he finds that she’s gotten better at controlling her senses than she had been the last time they met. Praise from Harry is something that never fails to make her bristle, even though she hates it, if she had a tail it’d be wagging and thudding every time he told her she did something well. Maybe that’s why he is so sparing with his compliments because it certainly does make her try harder.

She has her eyes closed, just listening, seeing how far she can hear, and what she can hear. Most of the time it’s just little animals, eating, their footsteps, them crying. . .

. . .them crying?

Her brows furrowed, and she leaned forward, and then she kept hearing the crying and. . .it was an animal, surely. It sounded like a small animal, a baby animal, and when she focused in, she could smell them too. Smell the blood of them. Was that what drew her forward? Off the deck, across the yard, beyond the trees? Or was it the remaining bits of empathy in her human heart for another living creature suffering?

She didn’t know exactly what it was that compelled her but she knew she couldn’t ignore it. Would it have been smarter to take Christopher with her? Sure it would have been, but Y/N was driven by pure instinct right then. There was no time to stop and consider anything, not how this could be some weird trap, or it could be too far from the house, or how humans could be hiking in the woods and she’d be near enough for it to be a problem.

Or even how the patches of sunlight aren’t so sparse anymore, how they grow, connect, and make bigger spots of sun that Y/N has to avoid. She would just be quick about it – she doesn’t have the speed down yet, anytime she tries to go something quicker than a fast jog she usually slams into something or trips, but she’s still quicker than she was as a human. Y/N would go investigate, figure out what was happening, do whatever it was that she apparently was going to do, and then head back to the safety of the shadows.

But again, she can’t think about that right now when she keeps listening and sniffing, and then she’s seeing a kitten six meters in the distance. Fur matted and dingy, nose pale, its tiny little body pinned beneath a branch. Y/N wondered if the branch had fallen on it, or if it had tried to squeeze between it and the soil beneath it but couldn’t. It didn’t matter how it got there, Y/N decided, because it was too cold, and this tiny ball of fur shouldn’t be out in it, much less injured in it.

Y/N crouched down to her knees – she didn’t have animals growing up, but she did have friends who had them. Dogs and cats alike, so Y/N knew it was important to get down on their level, to not appear as domineering looming over them. She clicked her tongue in a manner she hoped was soothing, “Hi baby,” she cooed, then held out her fingers beneath its nose to let it sniff her, “You’re stuck, huh? How’d you get like this?” Y/N cautiously picked the branch up and felt how heavy it was for its size. Most likely weighed down by all the rain they’d had in the last few days, she wondered if that finally made it snap.

Part of her thought the kitten might hiss at her and scurry off, but it made no move. It held its paw up as it hurt, and Y/N found the blood on the fur was dried, old, and crusted into grey hairs. When Y/N chanced petting the top of its head, a loud, rumbling purr left its throat, high pitched and clunky in the way it would be a baby. Y/N’s heart yanked in her chest, and she carefully plucked the kitten up by her belly and cradled her to Y/N’s chest.

“Poor thing,” she held it tightly, “I’ll have someone take you to the vet, okay? They’ll fix you right up.”

The trill is still loud, combatting with all the other sounds of the woods and when she finally looks up from the kitten she realizes the predicament she’s in. Because now, she’s in one of the few spots where there is shade, the clouds in the sky almost having entirely broken up. She looked around, panicked at the sight of the blue sky, and how the grass glittered off the sunlight. Things that would typically bring her peace now flood her with immense dread.

She hadn’t been out in the sun before, but Harry had made her stick a finger out into the unshaded portion of the deck once. He’d told her that she wouldn’t understand why she shouldn’t just go out in it until she had some form of pain to associate with it. And it hurt, badly, burned like someone had stuck her finger into an open flame but not without giving her a papercut and rubbing huge grains of sea salt into it. She snatched her finger back quickly, held it to her body, and frowned at him for making her do it.

“Now you won’t make any stupid decisions.” Harry had seemed all too pleased with himself at the time, smug that he was such a good mentor. . .she wondered what face he would be making now. Probably glaring at her. He’d probably call her an idiot too.

“Fuck,” she murmured to herself (and the still purring kitten in her arms, very unaware of the predicament they face. It was either sit here and wait until the clouds completely break away to be burned, or to run back to the house and be burned – there was no getting out of it, and she’s regretting not wearing a sweatshirt or a jacket how she usually would. She’s in a tank top of all things, showing probably the most skin she has had this entire time she’d been here. Of course today would be the day that she ran out into the woods for a crying kitten, and not when she’s covered head-to-toe in a sweatsuit, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

The sun expands its hold on the soil before them, slowly spreading out, getting closer, the shade waning. Her heart was hammering; she needed to move. She needed to move, and also not hurt the little kitten in her arms either. And while she’s at it, she needs to beat Harry’s ass later, for messing with her head so much that she went outside in the first place to try and clear it.

Y/N swallows thickly, all of her muscles tense taut as a bow like she was in a relay and impatiently waiting for the start signal. She gives herself a countdown, braces herself, then makes a run for it.

It burns – like fire, running through it covered in open wounds then dropping into seawater, even going as fast as she possibly could. The scorching feeling transmits inside of her body too, taking hold of her like she’d swallowed metal right off a blacksmith’s tongs. It’s horrible, she wondered if she’d melt, and if she could survive that as a vampire or if that’d do her in. Distantly she remembered Harry shrugging off her being left in the sun – the whole reason Adam had brought her into his home and stuffed her into his closet – he made it sound like she could get past this. But could she? She’s never felt pain this immense before, not since. . .

. . .not since she was turned that night. Writhing on the ground, screaming, begging them to make it stop as her body seared away any chance for her staying human.

When Y/N makes it to the deck, she is just barely able to set the kitten down on the cushioned seat, before her vision becomes spotted and blotchy.

Vampires can still pass out? Weird.

. . .

Y/N wakes up in water, with a disapproving Harry glaring at her from his spot beside the tub.

“You’re an idiot.” Is how he greets her.

The water sloshes against the side of the ceramic when she tries to move, but the way her muscles scream and her skin aches, the agony of moving is too much to bear. She’s forced to stay still as Harry looms over her, the sleeves of his linen button-up pushed toward his elbow, his pale arms crossed over his chest, “Don’t move, dummy.”

“You could have opened with that,” Y/N replied, though her throat felt sandpaper dry, her mind slowly caught up with the situation at hand. She vaguely remembered making it to the deck, the burn of the sun still hot on her sizzling skin, like grease popping on a skillet, the little kitten in her arms. Then nothing – now she’s here. If she digs through her memories she could recall Mitch bringing something like this up, if she were to go into the sun; unforgiving blisters and a horrible, painful bath would follow it.

When she looks down she’s covered in something thick and slimy, with the color and consistency of mud you might find at the bottom of a river. The water around her miraculously stays relatively clear, despite what she’s coated in, and she’s sure it’s due to some vampire magic she hadn’t learned yet, or maybe never would learn. She stays still – it’s much easier to do so now than it was when she was human. Telling her body what to do and it listening to her for a change.

“How many times have I emphasized not going outside in the sun?” Harry chastised her, “We only go out on cloudy days, I had you feel the pain that comes from just a fingertip, I don’t even stay out in it for suspended amounts of time and you think you can just what? Sunbathe for a couple of hours? Did Niall talk you into that stupid shit?”

She frowned at him, “Stop yelling at me,” she grumbled, weighing if she should bring up how when he initially spoke about her going out in the sun, he’d described it as a “little rash” that she would get, “I was getting stir crazy in there, okay?”

“So you go out in daylight? How could you be stir-crazy when I take you to the backyard routinely?”

“Am I a dog?” She retorted, and Harry’s brows furrowed deeper, “I just wanted to get out of my room, because I’m all twitchy and jump, and it feels like I’m starving sometimes, even when I’ve been eating from the bag. Then you’ve been acting so weird, and you won’t let me bite anymore, so I just –”

“So it’s my fault that you got burned?”

“No, just,” she said, her eyes closed, “I was just going to stay on the deck, but then I heard crying and I smelled blood. I just moved without thinking.”

Harry still seems displeased, huffing an irritated breath, “Yeah, you weren’t thinking. You’re lucky that Christopher came out to find you or your burns would have been way worse. You’re still a newbie, you aren’t ready for shit like that yet.”

Y/N wants to rub at her eyes, but if she moves she thinks she’ll melt away, so she stays put. Part of her just wants to keep her eyes closed, so she doesn’t have to visualize the disappointment swallowing Harry’s features. Admittedly, it was stupid what she did, but she still didn’t appreciate being scolded like an honorary child. Plus, she’d been doing it to save something, doesn’t that count for anything?

“The kitten,” she started, “Is it okay?”

Harry looks like he wants to withhold information from her as a punishment, but even he isn’t that cruel. He finally stops looming and moves toward the sink, “She was taken to a vet to get looked over,” Harry replied, shaking his curls out with his hand, “She’s malnourished and wounded, so she couldn’t just stay here. What does that pitiful little thing matter, even?” He motioned toward her, “You’re in much worse shape than some feral kitten.”

She frowned again (or had she ever stopped frowning? She wasn’t sure). It wasn’t like she’d expected to be able to keep that cat, but she would have at least liked to see it off; sweet as it was, the way it purred in her arms made her feel something she hadn’t felt since she’d been changed. She hadn’t gotten to touch or hold any animals actually, now that she thinks about it. There was no drive to eat them like she feared to have, just the same yearning and longing in her chest at the sight of it, and the way cuteness and aggression threatened to suffocate her. It would have been nice to have it around, slinking through the halls, tail undulating behind itself. To wake up with it purring in the crook of her neck, or to see it sitting on her dresser when she came back to her room – it would have been nice.

“The solvent coating you has to stay on for ten minutes,” Harry continued unprompted, tugging the sleeves of his shirt further up roughly, his irritation clear as he turned away from her and began to organize the bottles on the sink, “I already did the first couple of steps with Naomi while you were asleep, so the worst of it is over. This will still hurt like a bitch, but I think you deserve it at this point.”

“What else do you have to do?” She ignored him, and Harry exhaled through his nose in a sharp breath.

“I have to coat you in three different oils. The first burns, the second cools to the point of pain, and the third is meant to moisturize the skin. It’s thick and feels horrible when you’re in bed, but again, you –”

“I deserve it, yeah,” she sighed, “I got it.”

Harry is moving about quietly, angrily, popping open the caps and filling up three separate bowls. Y/N decided it was probably in her best interest to stay silent and let Harry work, though she was curious about the whole process. She wanted to know what her skin looked like when they found her, and if this had ever happened to Harry before. When she’s able to forget about the pain slithering its way through every nerve in her body, she has half the mind to feel embarrassed that she’s just in this tub naked beside Harry. There were no bubbles to obscure the view, just her naked body covered in something gooey in the water, seeming too clear for what was submerged beneath it.

There’s no words for a while. Not as Harry brings the bowls over to the bath or lowers down to his knees beside it. He has a sponge resting on the edge of the tub that he dunks into the water, plucks her arm up by her wrist, and then squeezes the sponge over it. The substance, whatever it might have been, slides off her body easier than she had imagined it would and reveals Y/N’s skin underneath, looking rubbed raw and irritated.

Why was Harry doing this? Y/N wanted to ask but she figured the response she received would probably be snarky, so she kept her mouth closed. She just wondered why it wasn’t Mitch, Naomi, or some random vampire healer they invited from a cave in the Alps. Did it have to be her mentor who partook in this whole process while she was stark naked in a tub? Or had Harry just wanted to scold her freely as soon as possible?

Y/N knows when it’s time for her to get on her knees in the water so he can reach her torso and he hands her the sponge and shifts his gaze politely when she fusses about him seeing too much when she has to get between her thighs and her bum.

“I had my face stuffed in your bleeding pussy, but seeing your ass is too much?”

“Shut up.”

The oil Harry drips on her does burn as promised, and he starts from her neck and drips it down her body, using his hands to slick her skin up with it. She bites back on a hiss at the pain, but she knows he can tell it hurts from the way her face contorts. An antiseptic smell fills the bathroom, the sensation of it on her is equivalent to continuously spraying peroxide on an open wound. It stings, it burns, it fizzles and sizzles through her cells in a way that brings tears to her eyes. With the oil, he focuses on only the spots that were exposed to the sunlight – what was covered by her tank top and sweatpants was only treated with the thick slimy stuff as a preventative measure, Harry had explained to her (sometimes the blisters that erupt on the skin from the light can spread out like an infection if not dealt with correctly, so the first few steps focus on stopping the spread – he’d completed that by the time she came to).

Still, it burns what skin it does touch, and Harry – for once – shows even the slightest bit of sympathy for her.

“I know,” he murmured, avoiding her gaze, but his tone was as gentle as it’s been the entire time. “Just a couple more things.”

He pulls the plug in the tub and starts with the second oil, which feels like rubbing a block of dry ice against her skin. Her fingers grip the edge of the ceramic tub and he reminds her to be careful not to crack it, which she guesses is something she can do now. So Y/N is mindful not to squeeze too tightly, biting so hard on her bottom lip that she tastes the metallic of blood on her tongue. The entire surface of her body feels rubbed open and raw and sore. She’s struggling to focus on anything but the pain occupying her, even the soft way Harry starts to hum, or the calming, gentle coo of his words when he promises that they are almost finished.

The third oil is thicker; it drips down her skin slowly as molasses and Harry’s palms guide it over her arms, her shoulders, her upper chest, and back. He pets carefully at her neck and smears it over her face. She feels hot from the discomfort, the embarrassment, and the sudden overwhelming hunger that smothers her just as soon as she isn’t focusing on how sore she is all over.

Harry removes a towel from the warming rack, instructs her to stand, and wraps the bath sheet around her body. It doesn’t hurt as horribly to move but it certainly doesn’t feel great either; she slides her hands into Harry’s awaiting ones when he helps her step out of the tub, “Christopher will add a pain reliever to your blood,” he told her, “It’ll make this a little more bearable.”

“Do you think the kitten will be okay?” Y/N inquired, now that Harry was being even the slightest bit more tender.

It seemed to be the wrong thing to ask because Harry made a noise that sounded less than pleased as he kicked her out of her bathroom and into her main room, “Be worried about yourself,” he grumbled, “Things could have been way worse for you, you’re lucky to have gotten away with what you did.” Harry ushered her into her room where there were already clothes laid out for her on the bed – if she allowed him to dress her, he found great joy in it, even if it was just picking out regular, comfortable clothes for her to lounge in. Y/N wondered if it was something from his past that brought him comfort, or if he was just a control freak, or maybe both.

He’s getting worked up in a way that she’s never seen before. The kind of worked up you get when your friend does something stupid, when your partner does something dangerous, when you’re – “You wouldn’t have puffed into a cloud of dust but depending on the severity of the sun and how fresh you are as a vampire, you could have been out of commission for weeks to months. If it were summer, if it were noon, if Christopher hadn’t found you when he did –”

“You were worried?” Y/N filled in the gaps herself.

Harry was a dick most of the time. He teases her relentlessly, scolds her for little things, loses his patience quickly, and acts like he’s obsessed with her one minute, and like he wants nothing to do with her the next – it’s confusing and distressing. Their relationship is all over the place and has split away from the normal mentor and mentored dynamic that they might have possessed had things been different. Honestly, Y/N had wondered if he was even capable of feeling worry when it came to her – even though she was still a fresh, baby vampire, it would take a lot to kill her. Maybe when they had gone to her flat, he had felt worried she would eat her neighbor and he’d have to clean it up, but she hadn’t thought he would ever worry because of her.

But the look in his eyes today, every time he opens his mouth he sounds so mad that he could spend hours upbraiding her and still have more to say come tomorrow. A couple of months ago, she would have thought Harry was angry that she made more work for him, but Y/N feels like she has just a slightly better understanding of him now.

Harry was angry because she put herself in danger. He was angry because he cared.

A couple of emotions trickle over his face; typically, he’s good at schooling them if he doesn’t want Y/N to know what he is thinking. But right now, he doesn’t hide anything. Not the narrowed eyes, the clench in his jaw like he’s going to berate her for even thinking he would worry – and then the way his gaze softens, how his eyelashes flutter when he closes them, gathering his thoughts, collecting his rampant emotions, organizing the way he feels. There are moments like these where Harry is so unbelievably vulnerable with her, matching the openness of her heart and her feelings. They are few and far between but they are there, and they are real, and they make Y/N feel more human than she has for months.

“Of course I worry,” he settled on, his arms still hanging at his sides rather than crossing over his chest like he does when he’s getting defensive, “I always worry.”

He turned away, stalking toward the bathroom. Y/N listens to him clean up while she gets dressed, cringing at the way the oil sits on top of her skin and how it feels against the cotton fabric of her shirt. Harry was right, it is a miserable feeling, but it isn’t the most intolerable thing in the world and the coolness feels good on her skin that simmers beneath a boil. It doesn’t hurt to move but it doesn’t necessarily feel good either; her skin is already rapidly recovering even from the couple of minutes she’d been out of the bath so she could only hope for a speedy recovery.

“I’m sorry,” Y/N apologized when he finally came out, and Y/N noticed that he changed his clothes – now that she was looking, he seemed to be in one of her shirts so she guessed he got messed up during the bath, “I should have thought through what I was going to do before I did it. I was feeling jumpy, like. . .like I needed to crawl out of my skin and Christopher said that it was because I went from a vein to a bag so I’m still just getting used to that. That isn’t an excuse though, I should’ve – I should’ve asked for help. So I apologize.”

Harry looked cute in her shirt – it was an older one she had, a band she followed closely before all of this happened printed on the front all big and bubbly. It was cutesy and pink and flounced over his frame. She thought it was criminal to look so good in an oversized shirt when she felt like a toddler playing in adult clothes if it was too big on her (though that didn’t stop her from wearing them). But he was a model, so it makes sense – it was his job to make outfits look good.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he replied, his hands full with the dishes he’d used and the bottles of oil tucked beneath his arm. Harry is careful as he places them on the top of her dresser, next to a picture frame she’d brought back from her flat, a photo of her and her friends the last year of UNI. That seemed so long ago now – Y/N could barely remember how she felt in the photo. She was probably all torn up over her pitiful unrequited love – she thinks that’s why they took her out that night, to try and make her feel better, and it ended up being really fun.

“It was unfair of me to yell at you. I haven’t been making this transition the easiest, I know, I – was at a loss on what to do if I’m telling the truth,” he grimaced when the glasses clink together, echoing through both of their sensitive ears, “I switched Niall from bag to practicing from my vein and the reaction was never as visceral as what I have to your teeth. It felt smart to just stop it entirely so I could figure out what was happening but I didn’t consider how that might make you feel, both physically and emotionally. Of course you would run out into the woods after smelling blood, it only makes sense. At least you did it to save a kitten, I’ve done much worse.” Harry digs his nails into his wrist without hesitation, and Y/N’s eyes widen into saucers, scooting up closer to her bed, “You’re hungry, baby, I know you are. You can have a little taste and Christopher will bring you more.”

There he goes, calling her baby again, and Y/N’s whole body thrums to life with it. The smell of his blood sends her mind into fuzzy flashes of light, like pressing into her closed eyelids too hard and being dazzled by the universe and constellations made by the consistent rub into them. A confused sound stirs from her throat, brows knitted as she looked between him and the red droplet that welts up toward the surface of skin, “But you said –”

“I’ve been reading a lot about it,” he cut her off, “There are a dozen different interpretations of what's happening and unless we get a healer involved then we won’t know for sure. Getting a healer involved means telling Mitch that I’ve been keeping something from him and I just don’t know if I’m ready for the theatrics that will bring from the old man. But what I’ve learned for sure is that it doesn’t hurt us in any way, it just makes us horny, and that’s something we can ignore if we want to.”

Y/N swallows thickly, her throat feeling dry all over again. It’s a battle of self-restraint, not jumping him immediately but she thinks her body has already decided for her as she crawled closer. Her tongue moves wet and warm over the cooled skin of his forearm, licking up the blood that had trickled and tasting saltiness and copper and good, good, good. She missed him so much, sliding her teeth inside, holding onto him tightly – this was as close as they could get with each other, his blood running down her tongue and into her belly. It makes her feel warm, and the itch in her brain is scratched.

Was it the blood that she missed? Was it the need to satiate the need her teeth felt to bite down? Or was it the desire to be this close to Harry? Was Harry what she missed? Him being inside of her, feeding her, completing her –

Embarrassing enough, Y/N’s hips twitch forward but Harry uses his other hand to hold her still. He’s so strong that he keeps her there, clicking his tongue, “Not today,” she wasn’t looking at him but she could tell he shook his head to punctuate it, “Your body needs rest.”

She murmurs a sound against his skin, like an agreement she thinks, but her brain has gone cotton so isn’t sure what she means.

Harry doesn’t let her go for as long as he usually does, and surprisingly Y/N is easy to detach from his wrist, “We should do it in small doses.”

Y/N hums another sound that might be an agreement but now she’s confused because she doesn’t remember when Harry had sat down, or when she had mindlessly crawled into his lap. She’s here now though, staring between them at the heavy bulge in his trousers. Her hands move before her brain can, hovering over his cock but Harry’s fingers wrap around her wrists – his hold is gentle as he guides them up and away from him, “Your body needs rest,” he repeats, “Lay down and try to sleep.”

Sleep doesn’t come as easily as it used to for her when her belly was warm and full of Harry’s blood, so now that it has been reintroduced even in a minute amount, Y/N thinks she could close her eyes and fall asleep instantly. But she’s feeling uncharacteristically needy, with everything that has transpired, and she wants to melt over his body like a second skin. Y/N doesn’t want to look for the reasoning, she just wants him to stay with her.

But it seems she doesn’t even need to ask. Y/N crawls into the bed and Harry lies down beside her, in his self-proclaimed spot on the left, her shirt pooling around his body, “I’ll stay with you,” he told her, “Protect you from any wandering Nialls and Naomis so that you can sleep.”

It was unnecessary; Niall and Naomi wouldn’t bother her if she was asleep, but if that was the excuse Harry wanted to use then she didn’t mind. As long as he stayed there with her.

. . .

Y/N hasn’t been surrounded by this many people in months.

Even before she was changed, the last time Y/N had been at a bar or club of any kind was in UNI and even then she had to be drunk to enjoy herself. Otherwise, it was just an overpopulated room, with music too loud for normal conversation, and the suffocating need to look good. In her early UNI days, she liked that sort of atmosphere, and it gave her an excuse to grind on whoever she wanted without many repercussions. At the time, validation from someone pretty at the bar had meant a lot to her, no matter who was giving it to her.

Now, Y/N was experiencing mixed emotions. When Harry had suggested taking her out with the others, Y/N’s first worry had been that instead of slowly integrating her with humans, he was about to drop her into a cesspool of them. Sweaty and drunk, touchy and feely, completely impervious to fear that should arouse from creatures like Y/N and Harry. What if a well-meaning human accidentally brushed up against her and she turned around and sunk her teeth into their throat? Then what? Wasn’t this a little irresponsible?

Harry seemed unimpressed by her concerns, “Do you think I’d really just drop you in a room of humans?” He dropped a parcel on her mattress that he’d been holding since the conversation started, “Do I look like an imbecile to you?”

She frowned at him, looking down at the box and pulling it into her lap. Y/N wedged her thumbnail beneath the tape on one side and began to peel it open, “That’s what you made it sound like.”

There are exclusive sections in certain clubs downtown reserved for vampires, Harry explained. They look like uppity, VIP sections for smarmy, wealthy individuals but it wasn’t someplace you could buy yourself into. You had to know someone, who knew someone, and that was the ticket inside. This is where they could congregate in larger groups and it’s also where the human feeders are.

“I looked through all of your things,” he’d continued to explain when she finally peeled the box open, revealing shimmery, navy-colored fabric that twinkled when it hit the lights in her room, “And none of them spoke to me, so I just brought this from work. It’s part of a winter collection spread for a company I model for.”

Y/N was hesitant to pull the dress from the box, because if Harry brought it from work then that meant the price tag was easily a year’s worth of rent for her. She had to stand from the bed so she could hold it out and up against herself. Y/N wondered how Harry would know her size but she guessed with how much time he spends going through and critiquing her outfit choices, he was bound to figure it out sooner or later.

“This will compliment you nicely,” Harry nodded, pulling the fabric flush to her skin, showing that it would come down about mid-thigh for her, “I think you’ve been doing well to mingle with everyone in the house, but I think it’d be good to get more stimulation. It’ll make you feel less. . claustrophobic and jumpy and willing to run out in daylight to save a kitten.” Harry makes light of it now that he isn’t upset anymore, and weakly dodges her reaching out to hit him in retaliation for it, “We’ll go tonight.”

“I wish you would give me more time before dropping things on me.” She groused and Harry made a miffed sound in his throat.

“Because you’re so busy?” He scoffed with a roll of his eyes, “If I gave you too much time in advance, you’d ruminate over it for hours until you tried hiding in the woods from me to avoid it.”

Harry wasn’t wrong. She was surprised he’d gathered that in his short time knowing her while it took most of her closest friends years before they realized the best way to make her do something out of her comfort zone was to give her little choice but to do it. Y/N didn’t necessarily mind that, as long as in the end, it was for her benefit and not something that would harm her. And she thinks this would be beneficial, maybe, and at least getting out of the house without the fear of eating someone would soothe her a bit.

“I’ll make sure you’re well-fed before we go,” Harry promised her, “A few of the others wanted to come too, to experience this with you.”

“What if something happens?” Y/N fretted her bottom lip between her teeth, the sharpened canine just narrowly avoiding piercing the flesh, “If I – what if one of the feeders walks out or –”

“That’s not going to happen. The feeders are separated and heavily protected by security, so there’s no need to worry about them. And the building itself is very protected as well, from hunters, from other humans – plus if anything did happen, I would be there,” he reminded her, “I’ll scruff you like a naughty cat before I let you do anything stupid.”

Despite it sounding like a threat, the notion does pacify her mounting worries.

Being packed in the car with the others makes her feel very human. Christopher was driving, Harry sat in the front seat, Niall and Marcus in the middle, and Y/N was pressed close to Naoimi and Vivianna in the very back. Delphine and Saskia were driving with Theodore and Samuel in a separate car because they typically like to stay out later than everyone else.

They’re stuffed close together, Y/N’s thighs pressed tight between the wall of the car and Naomi’s thigh. Her dress has ridden up a considerable amount just from sitting, so if there were any room to move she was just one wiggle away from her underwear showing. It was something she’d need to be mindful of tonight, for sure. Y/N is trying her best to be in a good mood, but she’s nervous, and she’s feeling a little slighted because Harry’s promise to keep her fed was just multiple bags of blood given to her at the rate they had been when she was first starting to eat. She’d thought maybe he’d feed her from his neck or something but she guesses that was too much of a risk before they went out, or maybe he hadn’t eaten enough to share yet.

Y/N isn’t sure. She’s full, but unsatisfied in the way she knew she could be.

It isn’t as simple as just stepping through the doors of a club. It’s underground, they have to enter through an abandoned building a few blocks away from a busier area downtown, but they park their car in a lot behind an office. The concrete is uneven and cracked, so when Christopher turns into a space they have all been boggled and jostled around. Y/N had only narrowly avoided slamming her head into the window, but Naomi had slid her hand between the cold glass and Y/N’s head before she could.

“I swear he hits the potholes on purpose,” she’d whispered to her, “As payback for all the hard labor.”

They file out of the car like cold-to-the-touch clowns (only darker clothes), and the wind doesn’t bite her skin the way it used to but she can still feel that she should be. The others make a show of crossing their arms around their body in place of acting too content; Y/N replicated them, though nobody was looking at them. They talk and chatter normally, nobody seems tense or nervous about being out in public which makes Y/N feel both better and worse. Better because if they’re calm then she should be calm right?

But she’ll feel worse if she’s the only one who feels like she’s about to have a panic attack. Her heart thuds hard against her sternum, curling her arms tighter around her body. She can hear shit she knew she wasn’t supposed to, from kilometers away downtown, to deep in the bed of the forest. Y/N is trying to focus on selectively hearing how they’ve been practicing, but it’s harder than at home. The scents, the smells, the blood that is thrumming through the veins of people mucking around the city. Was it really safe for them to have her out like this? Even if she’s going to a place primarily with vampires, getting there is a difficult step, is it not? Y/N’s worried that she’s out of her depth, even if she’s full right now, she doesn’t know if she should be trusted anywhere near humans without –

“You think too much,” Harry’s voice appears out of nowhere to her left and she nearly screams, “Calm down. I would know if you were planning on doing anything crazy before you even did,” the soft skin at the pads of his fingers strokes across her nape, “Didn’t I tell you I would stop it? You don’t trust me?”

His words are rough and accusatory, but he speaks to her gently, just above a whisper like that would keep it between them even though everyone around them had great hearing. Though he has no natural heat in his body, a pseudo-warmth fills her when he stands close, up until the point his hand falls away from her neck.

“Sorry,” she swallowed thickly, “I’m just nervous.”

“Don’t be,” Niall is at her other side, casual in his strides, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, “They’ve got special drinks here so you can get fucked up. Your body metabolizes it too fast to stay drunk for long but it’s nice for a little while at least.”

Harry waves his hand at Niall like he’s batting him away, “You’re a bad influence,” he grumbled, “The last thing she needs is to be drunk and grinding on some random vampire stuck in his frat boy douche days like you guys are.”

“Oh I’m sure you would hate that, wouldn’t you?” Theodore was behind them, Y/N guesses pretending he was invested in the conversation he’d been having with Marcus but he very easily strays away to invade theirs, “Y/N, don’t let him deter you, vampire dick is crazy with one night stands if you’re interested.”

“Or girls, if that’s what you’re into,” Saskia adds in, “Or both.”

Harry lets out a sigh beside her, breath puffing out in a plume of smoke, “Just stick beside me tonight.”

Y/N could barely imagine being in a room full of more than eight people, let alone considering the possibility of hooking up with anyone. Why would anyone even be after her when she was with the people she was with right now? She’s surrounded by people who could be models and someone who is a model, nobody would be sparing her a second glance. Maybe they would be wondering why her entire ass was out when this dress rolled up over her cheeks. If someone did approach her, there’s no fucking way she’d even know what to say – she’d probably mess up and say something stupid, like ask them how long they’ve been a vampire, and when did the hunger pains stop, and do their mentors also spread their thighs when they’re on their period?

The walk isn’t too far, and they seem to be steering clear of big crowds. Y/N wondered if that was for her benefit or everyone’s benefit – she didn't ask. They pass a couple of humans and Y/N tenses but Harry and Niall bracket her sides whenever they do, but she doesn’t feel the knee-jerk reaction to tear through them like she thought. She doesn’t feel hungry, but still, she’s wracked with nerves. Christopher once told her that her disgust and sheer fear of doing it was proof enough that she wouldn’t lash out in normal circumstances. Still, she was worried.

They come up to a large building, with cement walls with most of the windows covered up by slats of plywood nailed into each other. It’s the type of place she would avoid at all costs, but they walk into it casually. The smell is musty and stale; with exposed insulation and mildew. Y/N can tell the walls and floors have been weathered by humidity, rain, snow, excruciating heat, and the bitter cold. If they were still human she would be concerned with what they might be breathing in as they were led across what must have used to be an office floor, full of cubicles, and chairs, and bored workers with sore necks and achy eyes from staring at a screen all day. She can hear music, in the distance beneath them, coming from the depths of the building.

There’s another door, this one leads to a stairwell, and she follows them all down, deeper and deeper toward the basement. The further they get, the louder the music becomes. The stairs are winding, so when they wrap around the last set of steps Y/N is startled to see a man sitting in front of another door, on a stool, scrolling through his phone. He’s not the burly, beefcake she would expect guarding the outside of a club full of immortals but she guesses there were a lot of surprises.

This man looks up from his phone, his eyes are an intense blue that is ridiculously disconcerting. They settle on her immediately, slicing through her like tiny knives, “She’s new,” he stated, not as a question, just a statement because he can look at her and tell, or smell it on her, or both – she curls her arms around her body tighter, even though she didn’t have to pretend to be cold anymore, “Is she gonna cause problems?”

“Don’t be a dick, just let us in,” Niall grumbled and Harry exhaled loudly.

“Listen, mate, she’s much better than this creature,” he motioned toward Niall, “A far better temperament, no crazy bar fights, yeah? Scouts honor.”

The doorman narrowed his eyes at them both, flickering between all of them with a pursed mouth before he stepped to the side, his palm touching the knob and twisting the door open, “I’ve heard that before,” he murmured, “Have fun.”

Just as Y/N is wondering what the point of that man is at all (because if a vampire wanted to get into a club, couldn’t they just muscle their way in?), Harry explained as they were entering through a long hallway, with black tile floors and a burgundy runner rug down the center, “He’s one of the only people who can open the door. It’s charmed.” And while it doesn’t make a lot of sense to Y/N, she nods her head and accepts it, like she’s been doing with just about everything.

The atmosphere is much like human clubs, where the music is thudding, and the songs are a mix between Billboard’s Top 100, EDM remixes, and Y2K throwbacks. A few major differences Y/N notices right off the bat are that the air around them doesn’t feel sticky or too warm, and Y/N isn’t suffocating beneath manufactured fragrances poorly covering the scent of body odor and sweat. There are still people grinding on each other, and kissing, some even stumble a little but it all seems more. . .tasteful, somehow. Maybe it was the fact everyone was dressed like they were prepared for a photo shoot at a moment's notice.

Their group thins out almost immediately, everyone going in several different directions and Y/N loses track of them all almost immediately. Harry stayed beside her and guided her to a table, “They’ll come back soon,” he told her, “Most of them are going to get something to drink. Marcus and Saskia need to eat though, so they might be a while.”

She nodded, happy to slide into a blue velvet booth across from Harry. Y/N is marveling at the interior design of the place, the glossy walls that sparkle, decorated with several different lights, abstract art, and other weird shit Y/N thinks you could probably only find in a place like this. Y/N vaguely recognized the song booming through the speakers – it had just started gaining popularity before she was changed, so it pulled a weird longing in her chest. Just as she’s wishing for the song to end, Harry grabs her attention again, rapping his knuckles on the table, “Christ, it’s like I brought an alien out of their spaceship,” he murmured, “You’re looking around like you’ve never seen people before.”

A pout decorates her mouth, which is feeling underdressed without lipgloss or lipstick but she hadn’t been in the mood to do any sort of makeup (The entire prelude to them going out, Y/N was stuck wondering if vampires could still have panic attacks, she didn’t have time to try and color match or ask Naomi for a glossy tint she could borrow), “Don’t be mean,” she replied, “I’m – there’s a lot to see. You would be amazed too if you were stuck in a house constantly.”

Christopher and Niall return first, and Christopher slides a fruity-looking cocktail in front of her on the table, “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to,” he told her, “I didn’t have to pay for it, so don’t feel obligated.”

“If you tell them it’s for a new vampire, then they’re usually pretty sweet. The bartenders are very kind.” Harry is surprisingly handed a drink by Niall, who looks more or less distraught that he was made to give Harry anything. Even more so when he realizes the best place to sit is probably beside Harry, across from Y/N and Christopher who had just slid in beside her, but Niall makes Christopher scoot over so he can squirm in the space next to them, “Ah, what am I going to do with you? You’re rotten,” Harry complained but wasn’t concerned with Niall’s choice for very long. He pulls the glass to his mouth and takes a small sip of a darker liquid – was it whiskey? Or was it like whiskey? For some reason, Harry being a guy who was drawn toward brow liquor didn’t surprise her.

Y/N’s hands grip the sweating glass, the ice clinking against the sides when she rests the edge of the glass against her bottom lip, tipping it carefully until she feels the taste of it splash on her tongue. It’s. . .sharp? Is that a way to describe it? Y/N doesn’t drink many liquids apart from blood now, so she is taken aback by how sweet and poignant the juice is. Then there is something beneath it all the sweet, both tangy and bitter, but she isn’t overwhelmed by that. She wondered if that was what would make her drunk.

The others do come to enjoy their first drink at the table, but by the second round, some have gotten up and have been moving around. Y/N is finally settling some; the jitters she’d been experiencing before dissipating the longer she sits there, and the longer she speaks to Christopher who is (by no choice of his own but is being a great sport about it) pressed up tight against her. The drink was leaving her loose-limbed and relaxed, speaking to him freely – probably more freely than she’d ever spoken to him by the time she was on her second, slightly stronger drink.

Christopher doesn’t seem to mind being surrounded by a ton of inebriated vampires, so he entertains her as she muses about his life. She asks him things about his past, cautiously dancing around the million-dollar question. Honestly, she’d thought she’d been doing pretty good at seeming inconspicuous about it but Christopher can sniff her out from a light year away.

“You want to ask, don’t you?” He pressed, “You’re the only one who hasn’t asked why I’m only half.”

Y/N’s face feels warm and she doesn’t know if she’s flushed from the alcohol or if she’s embarrassed from being called out. She wanted to know but she was also a firm believer that it wasn’t a lick of her business. Christopher wasn’t used to that, in a house full of nosy vampires, so she guessed he’d just been waiting and waiting for her to inquire – until he realized he was going to have to offer up that information himself.

“Yeah,” she nodded, a sheepish smile on her mouth, “I’d – if you’re comfortable.”

Christopher snorted, “Of course, babe, it’s really not that interesting of a story. I grew up in a cult.”

“What?”

Christopher was born into a cult; it was a small one, not something published on the news or in the papers because it was in a remote spot in the mountains. He said his childhood was fairly normal, all things considered, that he woke up, ate breakfast, and went to play like any other kid would be doing. It wasn’t until he turned 16 that he realized there was something more to his family than just a lot of people, living peacefully in the forest, among the trees, living off the land and game, and sleeping in huts and caves.

They took him to the mouth of a cave, a fire burning and crackling bright with two people sitting beside it. His eyes were still sleep blurry, and the soles of his feet ached from the stones and sticks that he’d stepped on as they took him through the trees to this spot.

“I remember thinking they were pretty,” he told her, scratching the side of his jaw, “It was rare we saw anyone outside of our tiny village, and everyone looked. . .well, as good as they could having grown up in the forest, cleaning up in creeks, and running around in barely any clothes. This was about. . .90 years ago? So I had no concept of models, actors, singers, celebrities, or that kind of star power where you look at someone and you just know they’re probably important but these two looked important and gorgeous.” He scrunched his nose up, “I’d grown up being told my duty was to marry and bed who I’m pretty sure was a cousin of mine or something – have more kids, grow our colony, something like that. I thought maybe that’s what this was – I was going to get married to the girl, and the man was just making sure I was good for his daughter or summat.”

But that’s not what it was. The cult he was in believed these two to be gods because they never aged, and they came with jewels and gold that they could sell down in the main town and taught them how to cultivate and harvest different forms of food on the terrain they lived on. They would give them anything they desired, so long as they provided them with something to eat.

Someone to eat.

And it was Christopher’s turn.

Before they ate him, there was a ritual performed – only the elders knew it, Christopher was confused and scared, tied up to a post so that he couldn’t run off and some incantations were murmured while they covered him in blood – whose it was, he wasn’t sure, but he was begging and pleading with them to let him go and they weren’t listening. The vampires bit him, one on his wrist and the other on his throat, so he got lightheaded fast, and had they not been stopped he probably would have gone quickly.

But they were stopped; hunters had been spying on this cult for a couple of months, and this was finally their chance to put a stop to it. They killed the vampires, killed the elders, took Christopher off the post, and collected him all boneless, barely alive.

“And then I woke up,” he shrugged, “Kind of anti-climactic, really, but I woke up without memory of anything. Where I was from, what had happened, why my body felt like it was on fire, and why I felt like I was starving. I don’t know if the hunters thought I was too far gone to be saved, or if they didn’t understand that if they didn’t kill me then I would turn, but they just dropped me off in a leaf pit. I didn’t have the drive you guys do to drink blood or the need, but I knew something was wrong with me, and that the foods I used to survive off of didn’t do it for me anymore. I wandered around for a while, found a village, and told them I didn’t remember anything or where I was from so they took me in.”

“Mitch found me years later, drawn by my odd smell. He offered me to come with him, for safety, so he could study me – he was so intrigued by the fact that he knew I was a vampire but I smelled like a human as well. He spent decades trying to figure out what it was, and the only thing either of us could come up with was that whatever ritual they performed kind of screwed something up. When Mitch did more research, he found in some texts there were rituals and spells people performed at sacrificial vampiric ceremonies to stop them from coming back as vampires themselves. I don’t know if the cult knew or not, but I guess it doesn’t matter much. For some reason, I’m this way, and that’s life now, whether it was the ritual or not.”

Y/N was blinking at him, all wide-eyed and shocked, and it took a couple of seconds of silence before she could muster a response, “Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” her hand found his, slotting their fingers together, she’d been fed a third drink at this point so she was feeling tipsy, and it turned out human her and vampire her were the same in their tolerance, their emotions – her eyes bead up with tears, “That’s – that’s horrible. I’m sorry.”

He laughed and patted her thigh, her dress had rolled up quite far and he fixed it for her, “That’s okay, babe, it was years ago. I barely think about it now.”

“Is she crying?” Harry’s voice rings out, and Y/N only notices that he’s been staring the entire time Christopher explains the story, “What the hell – I told you guys not to let her drink too much.”

Christopher doesn’t want her to dwell on it – he sends her off with Naomi and Vivianna to dance, much to Harry’s irritation, who is convinced that she needs to stay near him. Y/N lets herself be dragged off to the dance floor, immersed in the music, the bodies, and the dancing. It feels nice to move around freely, even more so when Christopher comes with them and she slings her arms around his neck and holds him tight, “Let’s have fun, okay? Do you want to have fun with me?”

“Do you want Harry to beat my ass?” He took her by the hips, displacing her gently and pressing her toward Naomi who collected her easily, “I’ll dance too, hm? But Harry is watching us like a hawk.”

Her gaze moves, slipping over to Harry who is glaring daggers across the room at them. Y/N frowned, “Why is he angry?”

“Because he’s obsessed with you,” Naomi replied, pulling her vodka cranberry to her mouth, and putting the straw between the corner of her lips, “Haven’t you guessed that? He’s so possessive of you, you would’ve thought you two have been together for years. He all but bit Christopher’s head off when he offered to call the healer to do your bath.”

Y/N tried to crane her neck to look at Naomi, who looped an arm around Y/N’s shoulder, over her neck, holding her close. Naomi is always pretty touchy-feely, so Y/N’s used to this by now, her hands coming to hold her forearm, the skin soft, smooth, and cool, “Healer? You mean he didn’t have to do the bath for me? It wasn’t like a mentor’s job?”

“He wouldn’t let anybody else do it,” Vivianna answered, “The oils and scrubs during the bath are irritants to skin that hasn’t been damaged by the sun. When Naomi was with him during the first part of the bath, his skin was so red and inflamed, you would’ve thought he was the one with the burn.”

Y/N’s brain is kind of fuzzy from the alcohol, so she’s a little slow on the uptake but it’s piecing together – what was that about? Did he not believe anyone else could do it? Did he not want someone else to see her naked? What was his hang-up?

Christopher has his arms slung around Samuel who had slithered his way in front of him, grinding up on him with a big, dopey smile, “He hated the thought of you being hurt – blamed himself for it, so he wanted to fix it, no matter it hurting him. And a part of it is because he’s a possessive bastard but that’s neither here nor there.”

Y/N melted into Naomi, swaying back and forth with her as she moved them, “Oh,” she blinked at them, “Do you think that has something to do with me drinking his blood?”

“Oh, that’s because –”

“Harry should explain that to her,” Christopher butted in before Naomi could tell her, “Hm? He’s just too dumb with his emotions Y/N, he hasn’t had feelings in so long, don’t blame him for it.”

“Feelings?” Y/N repeated.

They could go no further, however, because Harry’s scent comes close first and then she blinks and he’s right in front of her, in place of Christopher and Samuel who had been there prior. Harry’s top matched hers, now that she really looked at it, a dark blue that glimmered under the shimmery lights above them. The buttons were undone so most of his chest was showing, pale and soft – she’d never felt it before, but she could only imagine the skin was smooth and unblemished. His pants were dark and wide-legged; the outfit should make him look like a 70’s pornstar douchebag, but he looks good in it. Did he want to match her? Was that on purpose? “Don’t let them corrupt you,” he frowned, reaching forward and gripping the hem of her dress, pulling it back down her thighs where it had ridden up, “Come with me.”

Y/N pouted, “I wanna dance though.”

“I’ll dance with you,” he slid his hand around her waist, pulling her closer, “Dance with me instead.”

Naomi loosened her arm around Y/N’s throat, “He’s never a good sharer,” she sighed, then gave her a small nudge toward him, “Go on then, you can have your time with her too. Bring her back though.”

Harry pulls her close to him, slips his arms around her body, and pulls her from the group so they are dancing alone (or as alone as they could be with other people crowding them), “Harry? You don’t want to stay with the group?”

The tip of Harry’s nose is cold dipping into her neck, hands on her hips, “They’re annoying,” he murmured, “Why do you even want to spend time with them, just spend it with me.”

“You begged me to spend time with them before.” Y/N countered.

“Well, that was stupid of me,” he replied.

She twisted around in his hold so that she could face him, peering up at him. Y/N opened her mouth to speak but thought against it – anything she would ask Harry, she was sure he would vehemently deny it. So instead, she found his hands where they sat on her hips and took one of them, taking it to her face. She inspects his knuckles, the smooth, faultless skin. Y/N tries to imagine it reddened, and sore, him ignoring the pain of it to finish her bath. How he carefully and gently smoothed the oils over her skin so tenderly and took care of her; he was so weird. So mean, and so angry with her but was still so attentive to her, and fed her afterward. He makes no sense, and no matter how gruff and rude he can be, she’s never felt uncared for by him.

Does Harry like her? And why does his blood make her feel the way it does? Why does it make him feel the way he does when she eats? What do the others know about it?

All these questions are way too annoying.

“Oh Christ,” he murmured, “You’re more of a lightweight than I thought, aren’t you?” At some point, she uncurled his fingers and laid her cheek in his palm, like a cat requesting to be pet, “Should I take you home, baby?”

Y/N is going to tell him sure, she doesn’t care to be here too long anyway, maybe just a drink more or a dance but she’s got no need to stay out very late. She never has.

But something stops her. A voice. An all too familiar voice, that makes her blood run cold.

Y/N pauses, no longer moving with the music, or rubbing her cheek against Harry’s palm. She’s still, unmoving, every cell in her body is still, “What’s wrong?” Harry inquired but he sounded far away, like her head was in an echo chamber.

I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I –

He was here. The man who changed her was here – Y/N turned on her heel, eyes scanning the room until they settled on him, with blond hair down his neck. She remembered him, how she met him on a dating app, how he’d asked for her number, how Y/N was trying to finally get out of her shell again after everything that happened with Daniel – her friend and the situation that drove her to this city in the first place. She remembered eating with him, they. . .they saw a movie? And he said he would walk her home. Y/N was reaching into her purse to put her movie ticket in her wallet, but a hangnail on her thumb snagged against her wallet. She hissed and snatched her hand out of her purse, a droplet of blood welting up on her skin.

“Are you okay?” Y/N inquired when he stopped moving beside her, and she hadn’t noticed for a few steps until she turned to look behind her. His face was dipped down toward the ground, he took a deep, trembling breath, “Quentin?” That was his name, Y/N remembered now, and how she couldn’t imagine moaning it in bed if that’s where the night had ended.

He swallowed thickly, and refused to look at her, “Shit,” his voice shook, “I – I really wish you’d just –”

It happened so fast, how she was brought close to him, how he grabbed her hand and pulled her thumb into his mouth. Y/N gasped and tried to yank away, but he moved so fast – one minute he was at her thumb, the next he was at her neck, his teeth pierced her skin, and now. . .and now. . .

Y/n didn’t think she was mad at first when this had all started. Honestly, she still doesn’t know how to feel about the whole situation, but to be faced with the man who had done it. The man who bit her, then left her passed out, left her in an alleyway – she’s angry. It was easy to say she forgave the person who did it when she wasn’t looking at them – when they were just a formless, remorseful shadow in her dreams.

But right now she was so angry.

She’s gonna kill him. He ruined her life, didn’t he? She’s going to fucking kill him.

Y/N broke away from Harry; she moved briskly in a blind rage, straight toward him with a single goal in mind. Distantly she hears Harry call for her, but she keeps moving, pushing past bodies, and when Quentin turns his head, he sees her. If there were blood to run from his face, then it would have at that moment. His eyes go wide, his mouth falls open, Y/N reaches out her hand because she is going to fucking kill him but something stopped her. Someone stopped her.

“Y/N, no,” Niall’s voice is gentle, but his grip around her wrist is firm, “It isn’t worth it.”

“I can’t just –” she feels breathless, her mind swimming – any good, drunk feeling that she’d felt before had completely evaporated. She’s more sober than she’s ever been in her life, “He’s the reason – he’s the reason I’m like this. I’m going to kill him.”

“It wasn’t just him.” Niall answered urgently, tugging at her when she tried to go toward him, “It – it wasn’t just him, Y/N.”

“What?” She finally looked at his face, the distress written over his features, weighed his face down. Y/N seldom saw any emotion on Niall’s features that wasn’t indifference, annoyance, or anger, but this one was new to her. This look of solemn, constraining guilt made her stop movement entirely. She didn’t fight to get to the man anymore, the taste in her mouth turned bitter and vile, and her heart worked itself in an impossible knot. A cold feeling trickles down her spine.

It wasn’t just him. . .it wasn’t just him?

The memories hit her like a rock careening down the side of a mountain. This man – her date had taken her, bit into her neck, and fed from her but if there was one thing she’d learned in her books and all the studies she’d read and what Harry had explained to her – people don’t just turn because they were bitten. If that was how it happened, then every feeder would have become a vampire by now.

Stories were true, in some ways, about vampires. Venom did exist – it’s what makes the bite sear through the skin at first, pain crackling through the body as it burns through cells and rewrites the data. But it could be controlled when it was released and when it wasn’t, and some methods and medicines suppress the secretion of it. A vampire blinded by hunger, enough that they would bite someone on a street because they smelled their blood, was not secreting venom – they were focused on satiating their desire for a full belly. The bite didn’t burn from this man – it hurt, but it wasn’t piercing.

He was stopped in the middle of it. An Irish voice, one steady and disgusted, “Enough, you fucking dick,” and Y/N remembered crumpling to the ground, her vision splotchy, her fingertips cold, her hearing buzzing in and out, “Are you an idiot? You were going to kill her?”

“No!” Quentin had taken a shuddering breath, his mouth sounding wet from her blood, “No, no, I didn’t mean to! I’m so sorry, I – I –” he sounded panicked, worried, “She cut her hand and just – it smelled so – it smelled so good. I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I –

“You said you were ready to leave,” Niall sounded angry, even over Y/N’s own, raggedy, thin breaths, as she struggled to stay conscious, “Fucking idiot! You said you were ready!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m – please don’t tell. Please don’t tell them.”

“Fuck off, I’ll tell them if I want to.” There's a gust of wind, the sound of someone getting hit, the scuffle of shoes against the concrete trying to gain traction to take off, the pad of feet against pavement, “Shit. What should I do?”

“If I’d left you, you wouldn’t have made it,” Niall explained, his grip on her wrist almost bone-crushingly tight, it isn’t a conversation that should be happening in a club, but it is. Harry is beside her now – she could smell him, and feel him, where he was pressed up against her, “By the time I called Harry or Mitch and they’d come to see what happened, you wouldn’t have survived. I didn’t – I’d never been faced with a choice like that before,” he shook his head, “Either let them find your body in the alleyway that next morning or. . .or condemn you to a life like this one. Neither choice seemed good, but it would have – it would have eaten me alive if I’d left you there. It was selfish of me to change you for my own conscience but I – I did. And I didn’t tell anyone because it’s not permitted in the house, to change someone like that – to do it without asking Mitch. So I called Adam, I told him where to find you – I lied about how I had found you, and. . .and yeah.” His hand fell away from her, “I’m sorry.”

Y/N doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know what to say.

Niall? It was Niall? She feels like her heart is cracking, for some reason. It wasn’t the kind of portrayal she might feel if it was a best friend of years who had done it, but it was still Niall – still someone she was close to. . .at least Y/N thought they were. Someone who always felt like he was advocating for her, offering to be there for her, she just – she felt comfortable with him, in a way that she hadn’t felt with anyone else – not even with Harry.

And he was the one who made her like this?

Would it have been better to wilt away in an alley in a puddle of her blood rather than be made something like this? Would it have been better for Niall to lay awake at night with a guilty conscience, than for her to wake up with an unquenchable thirst, and a desperate need to be filled with the very thing that flowed through her veins? That kept her alive?

Would it have been better for her to have not woken up a monster? Someone who couldn’t even manage to be around humans too long without being a threat?

Y/N doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing. With his hand away from her arm and at his side, she turns on her heel, and blindly makes her way out of the club, paying no mind to where she was going, or who she was running into. It was all too suffocating now, the eyes of a dozen people boring into her as she learned something she didn’t want to. She thinks it would have been better to live in ignorance and never remember. To not know that Niall was as kind as he was to her, despite being distant and cruel with everyone else, because he was culpable of giving her this life.

This life. . .this miserable twist in her future.

Or she would have been killed.

It was a shitty decision to make.

Harry catches up to her after she’d stepped out of the stairwell, into the empty office floor that echoed her footsteps. He’d probably been calling her name for a while but it only registers now, in the silence surrounding them, “Y/N, wait –” he is a few steps behind her, she thinks, but she doesn’t turn around to look at him.

“Did you know?” She bit at him, “You knew, didn’t you? That’s – he probably told you, and you knew.”

“No, I didn’t know,” he sounded more flustered than she’s ever heard him before like he was at a complete loss, “I had no fucking clue, I’m just as shocked as you are.”

A frown yanks her mouth down, her face feeling heavy, just like her bones, and her muscles, and it feels like maybe she’s using every ounce of her strength to keep from melting to the ground in a pool of flesh and tendons, “Do you promise me?”

Harry’s tender when his hand touches her shoulder, turning her to face him. There’s a look in his gaze that Y/N’s similar to the one he’d given her in her flat when she’d started to cry, longing for a life she was no longer a part of. It was only then that she felt the scorching hot tears that burned her eyes, scalded her cheeks, and dripped down off her chin. Why did it even matter? Could she trust a word that any of them said? If Niall could lie to her so plainly for months, then what was stopping Harry?

He uses his knuckles to wipe her face, carefully and quietly, “I promise you,” he looks into her eyes, deep like he’s staring into the bed of her soul, “I wouldn’t lie to you about something like that, Sweetheart.”

As much as Y/N would like to be tough as nails – to rip herself from Harry and storm off into the night to collect her thoughts and sort through her emotions alone – she isn’t. She doesn’t feel tough, and she doesn’t want to be alone; she feels flayed open like a fish laid out on ice.

So she tips her face into Harry’s chest and the skin there is just as soft as it looks, but she can’t even enjoy that. His arms wrap around her – Y/N can’t think if they’ve ever hugged before or if this was the first time. She shivers in his hold and then liquefies, molding into the shape of his body. “I’ll take you home.” He offered but Y/N shook her head adamantly.

“No, I don’t – I can’t –” Not with Niall as her next-door neighbor. Y/N didn't want to be around him right now, or the others, because she likes them but they’re nosy and this is probably the best gossip they’ve had in a while. They’d want to talk about it, to talk to her about it, to poke and prod at her brain and she just isn’t ready for that yet.

“I know, dummy,” he chided, but there was no fire behind it, and he traced his left hand down her forearm, to her fingers, slipping his fingers into the gaps between hers and holding tightly, “I’m taking you to my home.”

. . .

Harry’s flat is precisely what Y/N would have expected out of him.

He scoffed and turned up his nose when he’d first seen how she decorated, or when she’d complained about the barren walls of her room at Mitch’s. Always spoke highly of minimalism, how overconsumption feeds capitalism, and how having too many things on the wall is hectic and clutters the brain. So for the walls of his flat to be a cool-toned grey with wall art intricately spaced and placed through it, made a lot of sense.

The door opened up to his kitchen, much like her flat, but unlike her flat, the kitchen looked like it was made within the last year with how pristine and clean it appeared. A vampire has no use for a kitchen, so she guesses it made sense for the black, marble countertop to be spotless, and the stainless silver sink to be without blemish or crumb. He didn’t even have a sponge out to fake like he did dishes.

The dark tile floor clicked beneath the heels she wore until she immediately leaned against the counter and began to unstrap them, yanking them off her feet. She inspects the living room that’s positioned before her; there’s a stretch of hall with grey, wooden floors and a single stair down that separates the kitchen from his sofas, like a small den. He has two couches that look surprisingly comfortable for how cool, crisp, and unlived everything else appeared. A large black rug sat beneath the coffee table in the middle. Adjacent to the side Y/N stood on near the kitchen, there were windows from floor to ceiling, and since Harry was twelve stories up she didn’t have to worry about people peering inside from the street below (he lived in the nicer part of the city anyway but even wealthy areas had creeps that looked through windows).

Once Y/N saw the fake fireplace and the huge flat screen fixed to the wall above it, she understood why Harry acted like her flat was a drug den (and he probably wasn’t even that far off).

Before she could continue looking around, something small and furry caught her eye, sitting and waiting patiently, staring up at her from her feet. A brown little kitten that sticks out in Harry’s dark mode flat like a bright red crayon. A familiar little meep and look in its eye tells Y/N that she’d met this kitten before, and she’s only more positive of the fact when she sees how it leans the weight off of its wrapped paw.

“Oh, look at you,” Y/N murmured, and she knew it was bad practice to just scoop a kitten up but she couldn’t help it – if it scratched her, it scratched her, but she needed something small and warm in her arms, “You look so good, don’t you? Not all covered in dirt and blood?” She turned to Harry, who was walking down the hall with clothes in his arms, “Why didn’t you tell me you kept her?”

He sighed, “Well, she was going to be a surprise,” the kitten purrs, nuzzling into Y/N’s chest where she pressed the little girl close, “Once she was healthy. She still had a week of antibiotics left and two weeks of treating her paw with some medicinal ointment and keeping it wrapped. Then I was going to hand her over in a nice little tidy bow, but I guess now is as good a time as any to give her to you.”

“I thought you said I had no business having a kitten?”

Harry’s gaze darted away, “You seemed so sad about it,” he uttered, “All mopey over a damn ball of fur, so I thought keeping her would make you happy.”

Her heart swells in her chest, pushing other organs out of the way, pressing up against ribs and making them shift so there’s more space for it. Harry acts so mean all the time like he’s a tough-love kind of mentor, but he’s nothing but a hard shell with a soft, gooey middle. Thoughtful and sweet, he surprises her more and more every day, “Does she have a name yet?” Y/N held her up to her face to get a good look at her, and she continued to vibrate with purrs as she looked at her, her tiny features, and her rounded little kitten belly like she’d just eaten recently.

“I was going to wait for you to name her,” he told her, “But. . .well, I’ve been calling her Leaf.”

“Leaf?”

If Harry had fed at the club tonight, his cheeks would have been a pink, rosy hue with the way his gaze darted from her again, and he busied himself ripping open the freezer to show it was full of blood baggies like the one at the house is. Harry grabs a mug for her from the cabinet, sets it down on the counter with a clatter, and leans down to another cabinet where he plucks up a blood (bottle) warmer.

“I tracked in a leaf with my shoe a couple of days ago, and she really liked it,” he explained quickly, “And meowed like I’d stolen her heart when it crumbled and I swept it up and threw it away, so it kind of just. . .I don’t know, it stuck with her. You can change the name if you want.”

Y/N shook her head, “No, I don’t think so,” she ran her thumb over the short, tufts of fur around her ears, “Leaf suits her.”

Harry instructed her to take the bundle of clothes he’d left for her on the counter and go have a shower, so she did. It took her a little while to figure out the knobs in his bathroom before she realized there was something built into the wall she could use for settings like temperature, water pressure, and the way it falls out of the showerhead. It was the most relaxing shower she’d had in a while, all things considered, as she scrubbed her skin raw with the soaps and scrubs that Harry had lined up inside of it. She’s thankful that he’s a man with a taste for sweet smells rather than “manly musks” and “deep forest mahogany pine” or whatever, so she was happy smelling like strawberries and cream all over.

And this is what Harry uses, which brings her more comfort than she had thought it would. Filled in a room that smells like him, in a flat that smells like him, drying off and getting into clothes that smell like him. It’s what her brain needs right now to quiet itself. Y/N has gotten relatively pretty proficient in disregarding her feelings. Running away from them in a new city instead of facing them head-on and dealing with them. It had worked for her this far. . .except for the whole turning into a vampire thing once she’d moved her, but hey, she didn’t think about Daniel a lot not, considering the circumstances. It was kind of an extreme route for the universe to take for her, but. . .well, what could she do now?

Y/N wore Harry’s clothes – or at least the top was definitely Harry’s, soft, worn, and loved shirt with threads coming loose at the collar and the words on the front weathered away from multiple machine washes. The bottoms fit her too well to belong to him. She shuffled out of his bathroom back to the living room, where Harry had a mug warm in front of the couch, and the most recent drama she’s always watching when he comes over on the telly. She didn’t even know he’d kept track of what she was watching, because he was too busy criticizing her taste for only watching romantic shows that were too lovey-dovey, with unrealistic leads.

Harry is on the phone, his face set in a hard frown before he looks up and sees her standing there. He jumped, hand to his chest – she still did startle him by accident, with how light she was on her feet – before he muttered, “I’ll talk to you later,” through the receiver and hung up the phone, “You look much cozier in this rather than that filthy little dress.”

“Filthy?” She tilted her head, brows knitted, “I didn’t think it was filthy.”

“You didn’t think the tiny little fuck me dress was filthy?” He looked surprised, “It was riding up your thighs all night! One wrong move and both your holes would’ve been on display.”

Y/N drops down on the bigger sofa, catching the blanket that Harry throws at her in a massive bundle, “You’re the one who gave me the dress!”

Always so difficult, he rolled his eyes, “Ugh, who cares about who gave who what,” he waved his hand back and forth, “Christopher and Naomi looked like they were going to eat you alive. I was starting to get annoyed.”

“Annoyed?”

“Watch the show.” Harry shut the conversation off there, though he was the one who’d opened it and Y/N puffs a laugh through her nose.

She doesn’t know if Harry neglects bringing up Niall because he knew she didn’t want to talk about it, or because he didn’t want to talk about it. As hard as it is for her, she imagined some parts of this are hard for Harry too – the person he mentored is who did it to her. Broke some rules that they had established for themselves; she wondered what Harry’s opinion was on the situation. If he would have saved her too or left her to rot on the concrete. If he would have taken the choice from her. . .if he would have made her this.

Because, from what she’s gathered, none of them chose this life. It fell onto them unwillingly and they’ve just learned to adapt and accept it. It faces Y/N with the question, and discovering her morals: if she saw someone was about to die and knew she could save them, would she do it? Could she turn away? Or would she bite them, even knowing what life may bring them if she did?

A body is beside her, the cushion next to her dips in and Y/N’s body sinks into it, now pressed against Harry’s side, “Don’t think about it for the night.” He ordered, and his fingers trailed lightly over her forearm, in small, delicate circles, “Just watch the show and pretend none of it happened.”

Y/N listens.

. . .

It’s been two weeks since everything happened.

Harry doesn’t rush her to sort through her emotions; he tells her to take her time and promises she can stay at his flat as long as she likes. Even told her he prefers to just keep her under his watchful eye here rather than having to stay at the house with her because he pays rent for a reason and this place is too nice to be uninhabited (his words). Once he’d told her that, she’d decided she’d milk it until she couldn’t anymore – until her brain started protesting leaving a conflict unresolved. She’d done that too many times in her life, and she was starting to get tired of the way it ate at her in the time following.

Y/N took his guest room and lived in his clothes for the first couple of days until Christopher made his way over with some of Y/N’s things. Her computer to work, some of her clothes, a few toiletries – Y/N doesn’t care about all of that though, because she sees him, and her eyes water for some reason, and Christopher collects her in his arms in a big, warm hug. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured low, and unlike everyone else, Christopher was always so warm – the tip of his nose didn’t scent goosebumps where it dipped into her neck – it was like being hugged by a hot pack, in comparison to the rest of them. “Ah, I miss you pet. It’s weird not having my newest little pup around to feed.”

Harry shut the PDA down relatively fast and Christopher gave her a knowing look. He stayed for a little while, they all narrowly avoided the elephant in the room, and then they had a slightly tearful goodbye, “He’s not going off to war,” Harry grumbled, frowning, “You never get all teary when I leave.”

“Cos I know you’re coming back.”

“I need to stop making you feel secure, so I get more emotion from you.”

They fall into a pattern. Y/N wakes up midday (or leaves her room midday), right around the time the sun has begun to set, early now in the middle of winter. Harry is usually home but if he isn’t, he’s shown her how to use his warmer at home to make the blood herself while he finishes up at work or appears at some smarmy event to show his face. She drinks it down, warm in her belly, feeds Leaf her dinner (vampire-owned kitties still eat kibble, not blood), and has a hot shower before going to the living room. Harry always leaves the area low-lit and somehow inviting despite the cooled color choices of his furniture and walls. Y/N enjoys the synthetic heat of the fire and tidies up the room if she left it cluttered the night before (and cluttered without food wrappers, is leaving the blanket unfolded on the couch or having her computer sitting on the coffee table). She opens the windows and stares down at the city streets below before she gets some work done.

Harry comes home with a sigh every day – Y/N wondered if it was hard being surrounded by humans 24/7 without eating them, but he never expressed that it was. He flopped down on the couch beside her, recounting the events of work, telling her stories with names of people she doesn’t know (she’s starting to learn who is who though). Then Harry either showers and they’re in for the night, or he tells her to put on real clothes because they are going to train.

“Just because things are a little fucked right now, doesn’t mean there’s any excuse not to use this time to improve your abilities and skills,” he told her, and when she groaned, he clicked his tongue, “I’m a diligent mentor, you know that.”

Harry switches focus now that they’re in the city, to being around people – humans, namely. It’d been months since she was consistently around them, and Harry told her it was time to start reintegrating back into society. She could never feed from a human if she couldn’t stand to be around them. The more desensitized she gets, the better.

So they start by going out late at night, in areas that Y/N would have avoided like the plague when she was human. It’s because there are people around, but the action is sparse – there are a couple of stragglers who have stayed out too late. Harry tells her to breathe through her mouth and they focus on how to ignore them at first; to continue a task or walk by them without feeling like she should stop, and sniff their throat, and see if they’re something good she could eat.

Then they switch gears from ignoring to having to interact with them. He takes her to a grocery store at 10 PM, Y/N has a shopping list to get through, and Harry purposefully puts something on it that she would have to speak to the worker for. When she expressed her concern, he batted it away, “You know I won’t let you kill anyone,” he told her, in a tone far too soft for the suggestion of his words, “I’m way stronger than you, little thing, even if you’re all blood lust driven.”

At first, it’s miserable, and Y/N has trouble not staring directly at the store clerk’s thrumming carotid when she speaks to them – but she doesn’t eat him. She grounds herself, calms down, cools the rapid desire to drink straight from the source. He always made sure she was fed beforehand, but it was still hard not to let her mouth water. It was like eating a small meal, then being tempted with dessert; a pie warm from an oven, the apple-filled insides sticky, warm, and promising.

But she does better than she expected and Harry praises her like she really is a puppy. Y/N thinks he’s seconds from scratching behind her ear and calling her a good girl, which. . .as degrading as it is, she isn’t necessarily opposed to it.

Things are easy with Harry. Easy as breathing used to be, and she thinks she doesn’t give him enough credit for how adaptable he is, and how tender he could be with her. There was a reason he was a mentor – he was so good at it, even if he was sort of dumb about things sometimes.

There was something special though, between the both of them. Something that Harry doesn’t have with the others, and that they haven’t expanded on, or gone into. Normally Y/N is content with just leaving things as they are, but the last time she did that, it blew up in her face. The last time she did that, she fell in love with her friend after sleeping with him, and instead of stopping it there, she let her feelings get too big. Expected a fairytale and got a poorly scripted Hallmark movie instead, which got trashed in the writing room for the sudden shift from small-town romance, to adjusting in the world as a vampire. She hadn’t defined her relationship back then and now she couldn’t even look at him.

She didn’t want that with Harry. Christopher and Naomi’s words at the club come to her just before she goes to sleep most days, loud and clear as if they’d only just spoken them in her ear moments prior. It forced her to consider what Harry was to her – what he meant to her. Y/N likes him. . through all his teasing, and all the push and pull, she likes those moments where he’s vulnerable with her. Where she could tell he cared more than he let on.

It felt like there was never really time to explore her emotions for him, always concerned about being a vampire, and how she got to this point in her life, but now while she was trying to focus on anything but all of that – she had more than enough time.

Y/N likes being around Harry in a different way than she likes being around the others, and not because Harry feeds her from his veins. If that were the case, wouldn’t she want to be around Christopher all of the time too? Honestly, most of the time she’s with Harry is usually scolding her like she’s a naughty cat, but she still feels so at ease being with him. When he’s close to her, her mind settles down, and when she smells him, she almost instantaneously feels calm. If things were different – if circumstances were altered, and they were just humans, Y/N would probably have been neck-deep in a crush so intensive that her friends and family would be concerned.

She is someone who relishes her time alone, but she doesn’t mind spending it with Harry. When they are merely quiet, existing together in her room, or on the sofa, or in the kitchen she has the same level of comfort she does when she’s by herself. Y/N doesn’t feel like she has to put on a show for him, to be something that she’s not, and he’s seen her at her most cracked open and vulnerable and he doesn’t treat her any differently because of it. Doesn’t see her as weak, or pathetic. He encourages her to feel things, to lament her old life, to stray away from the cold archetype vampires are supposed to be.

When Y/N looks at him, she doesn’t see a monster.

“Harry,” she inquired one day, sitting on the barstool at his counter, swiveling back and forth. He’s on his phone so he hums to let her know he’s listening, even as his fingers type away, “Did you ever find the reason why we feel the way we do? When I drink your blood?” He stops, the pads of his fingers hovering over the screen like he hadn’t expected her to ever follow up on that, “Christopher and the others – that night, they kind of alluded to you knowing something.”

He exhaled, slow and thready, “Of course they did,” he uttered, “Fucking thorns in my side.” Harry set his phone down, chewing on his bottom lip like he was going to eat it right off of his face. It was seldom that Y/N witnessed him nervous, but it was clear on his features, that there was something he’d probably been intent on keeping to himself. It took him a little while to gather his thoughts before he spoke again.

“There are. . .a lot of reasons it could be,” he told her, “I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of pages and texts, and they all have slightly different variations of explanations why it’s happening. Because for me, at least, it wasn’t just getting hard,” he cleared his throat, “There’s no, non-corny way to say this, but after you feed from me, I feel. . .whole? I’m unsure if that’s the right word. I didn’t know for sure how I felt though until we went so long without it, and then when you bit into me again after your bath, it felt like a space had been filled.” Harry’s eyes find hers again, and Y/N realizes she's not pulled her stare from him the entire time he spoke, “I’d never felt that with any of the people I’d mentored.”

Y/N blinks at him, letting his words melt over her brain.

“Me too,” she finally admits, “When I drink from you, it feels like a part of me is. . .complete? Like a missing spot had finally been plugged. It’s nice.” Y/N swallowed thickly, pushing past every bit of nerves she felt to keep going, “But why – if it felt good for both of us, then why can’t we do it?”

Harry chuckled gently, “Beside the fear of me rubbing my dick raw to the thought of it? I don’t have a great reason, other than it was freaking me out. I was – it was hard not to be completely overcome by you. I wanted to let you feed from me every day when you woke up and when you went to sleep – having you in my lap with your teeth in my body was something so gratifying for me, it drove me crazy. And the thought of. . .fuck, the thought of you drinking from anyone else pissed me off. But if I couldn’t let you learn to feed from a human it would stunt your development as a vampire, if you ever needed to eat and I wasn’t there. So I thought it would be better to go back to the baggies until you learned how to properly feed on a human.” He worries his lip between his teeth while he watches her, trying to gauge her reaction.

“Do you want to drink from me?”

Y/N feels just as surprised as Harry looks about the offer. She didn’t mean to say it, she doesn’t think, but it slipped out before her brain-to-mouth filter could kick into gear, “I mean, I think it would be. . .I think we could just see what happens. Right? We can see if it’s the same.”

“That. . .doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he called her out, clicking his tongue, “But I’m not. . .opposed to it. I’ve actually been wondering about it for a while. Do you want to feel my teeth in you?”

She nodded, already feeling a little overwhelmed. Y/N had thought about it briefly before, in passing, but now that the option has been presented to her, she can feel her cells humming to life at the prospect. The last time Y/N was on the receiving end of a bite, it ended quite disastrously, so she was eager to erase that memory. She’d drunk enough today that she thought she could share and not feel like she was missing anything. Maybe not as much as Harry was able to give her sometimes, but she thinks it will still be okay. It would still be nice for him.

They moved to the couch and sat facing each other. Y/N was always wearing shirts that slung low around her collarbones, so there was no need to move much around. Her heart is racing, thudding hard in her chest, a bunny-like thump. Leaf leaps off the back of the couch where she had been sleeping, toddling back toward Harry’s room where she kept most of her toys hidden beneath his bed.

Harry swipes his thumb over a tender spot on her throat with one hand, and a tender spot on her wrist with the other, “Where do you want me to bite?”

“Where – where do you think would be best?”

He contemplates this quietly, mulling it over in his brain as he considers each option. Y/N’s pulse feels like it’s bounding in both spots, as tantalizing as it could be, promising a gushing mouthful no matter where he chooses. He swallows thickly, humming low, “Ah, puppy,” the nickname makes her feel fuzzy all over like her body is thrumming with static, “Part of me wants to drink from your sweet little throat so badly, but that might be too much for your first time. I’ll stick to your wrist for now, okay?”

Y/N nodded, raising her wrist to his mouth before she could second guess it. This feels imperative now like she needs it to happen, and after weeks of feeling weirdly hollow about the whole mess of a situation she’s in, she thinks this will feel good. Being completed by Harry will feel good. Y/N tongues at the back of her teeth, which throb in jealousy watching Harry prepare to bite.

Harry is quick about it, with the precision and practiced ease of someone who has done this for centuries. A little gasp slips from her mouth when his teeth slide into her, but she barely feels the pain that she’d expected. She didn’t even have time to tense up, Harry bit before she could realize what he was doing, and she only had a fraction of a second to register it before she was flooded with a load of endorphins. They rush through her, something hot and fuzzy zipping through her vessels, across her body, encompassing her in something unlike anything she’s felt before. Is this what it was like for Harry each time? And she had thought she couldn’t get any hornier, than when she bit him, but her lower belly twists and burns with arousal. She nearly moans just from this feeling.

He drinks, slow and easy, but his eyes have fluttered closed and he does moan against her, vibrating up her arm. Harry can’t speak to her but she knew what was going on in his head – it’s good, it’s good, it’s good. He shifts, spreading out his legs a bit, giving his cock room to grow if that’s where this was headed.

Underlying all the desire that swims is the thing they’d both been talking about. The feeling of being complete; slotted together like a missing gear in a clock tower. Something that you might not notice – the clock worked alright without it, but with the gear, it flourishes, it chimes brightly, and moves smoothly. It’s nice, this feeling, and compared to the murk that had been looming in her head, this was good.

Harry doesn’t take too much. He stops just before she gets lightheaded, but he parts from her wrist and immediately his lips press to her mouth. The kiss is sticky with her blood, the taste metallic when his hot tongue slides into her mouth with a groan. Harry kisses like he’ll evaporate if he doesn’t; like he could get his fill from licking into her, not bothering to be clean or proper about it. It’s messy and wet, and Y/N thinks she drools a little which should be disgusting but Harry only moves closer to her, merging.

When he draws back from her, the green of his irises is almost completely erased by his pupil. He really is a sight to see – probably something that would have scared her before, her blood all over his mouth, but she’s sure she makes a similar, horrifying eyeful. Harry doesn’t look at her like that though – he looks at her like he wants to devour her. Like he could sink his teeth into her neck and drink and drink and drink until he’s had his fill.

He guides her back onto the couch, pushing the sweater she wore (it was his) up beneath her breasts, fitting his cold palms on her hips. His cheeks are a healthy flush since he’d just eaten, the tip of his nose warm when he nuzzles into her throat and teases the tip of his canine across her pulse, “Fuck,” he breathes out against her skin, shuddery and light, “You taste good, Puppy.” He licks over her neck and sucks a kiss there, but the pattern he moves his mouth is similar to how he would drink from her. Y/N’s hands curl around his biceps that cage her in, she squeezes him and digs her fingers in deep.

If this is how keyed up Harry felt every time she fed from him, then she understood why he needed breaks in between. Y/N doesn’t think she’s ever been so wet before, with so little stimulation leading up to that point. She soaks through her underwear like she’d already cum, and when it is pulled away from her body it feels sticky and cooled. Harry fits himself between her thighs, not shy of the bulge in his pants tucking against her cunt, and he laughs breathlessly when she rocks her hips into him, “Harry,” she mewled, rolling her hips again, and again, mustering all the strength she could in her legs as she looped them around his waist and pulled him closer, “Harry.”

“What is it, Puppy?” He teased, finally moving the sweater over her breasts, revealing them soft and supple as his breath ghosted over with each word, “Are you feeling needy? You just love it when we share blood, don’t you? Filthy fucking thing,” Harry, again, is acting off innate instinct and something that resides deep in his loins – just as he was when he’d tasted between her thighs, he is driven by desire with a tongue that speaks nothing but brazen filth, “G’na fuck you full,” he promises, hand sliding from his hip, between the waistband of her pants and underwear. His fingers slide into the mess of her juices, running a big circle over her clit before pinching it between two fingers squeezing in pulsing motions.

Y/N bucks into his hand, her knuckle fitting its way between her teeth as she moans around it. Harry notices her muffled sound and hums disapprovingly, “I hope you aren’t trying to hide your noises from me.” She shakes her head, quickly, because why would she hide them now when she didn’t even bother trying to hide them when they were in a house full of people? It just felt good to have something in her mouth, to nibble at it while Harry worked two fingers inside of her, the glide of it easy from how turned on she was. Y/N doesn’t even have to explain herself, because Harry figures it out quickly, “Oh, okay, I see,” he murmured, understanding and sweet, “You just like having something in that mouth still, don’t you?”

Harry pulls at her wrist, ignoring her whine in favor of replacing her fingers with his own. Harry’s are bigger, his knuckles are nicer to chew on, honestly, and she really isn’t defeating the puppy allegations when she accommodates this new intrusion readily. Y/N squeezes around the fingers inside of her, sucking him deeper in, and her canine knicks the pad of his finger. His blood splashes on her tongue, and the sound that leaves her is so wanton and obscene, she feels embarrassed by it immediately.

But it only encourages Harry to fuck her harder with his fingers, spreading her out, finding the swollen, needy bump inside of her. “Have a little taste, baby,” he eggs her on, “So greedy, such a greedy thing. Want my teeth in you and your teeth in me, huh? So fucking naughty.” Y/N tries to stretch her thighs further for him, rocking her hips down into his hand. A pea-sized pit begins to grow in the center of her, spreading out, stretching tendrils of heat to lick her insides as it grows and grows. Y/N was cumming before she could warn him, and she was cumming hard. sucking on his fingers, tasting his blood, and feeling stretched open, full, and overstimulated, especially when his thumb found her clit to loop tight circles onto it.

She manages to get even wetter. When Harry slips his hand out of her pants, her slick clings between his fingers in sticky webs. Y/N tries to hide her face in her hands, finally feeling some shame, but Harry chuckles as he removes his hand from her teeth, “Don’t be shy,” he murmured before he smearing his fingers over her mouth, getting her mess all over them before pressing their lips together again. It’s filthier than the first, as he licks over her mouth, her chin, everywhere he has stroked it over her face. Was it centuries on this earth that made him so filthy? Or had he always been destined to be salacious and foul-tongued?

Harry helps her wiggle out of her bottoms, leaning back so that he can look at her as he spreads her thighs. She can tell she’s as wet as she feels by the way his eyes drink her in, and he lulls his tongue over his mouth. Y/N’s certain he’s about to dive in again but Y/N whines, pawing at the waistband of trousers, “Please,” she begged, fumbling with the button, “I want to see.”

“You wanna see my cock?” He finds her hands where they’re at his waist, pulling them down so that she cupped him over the fabric, the tent in his pants more than indecent, “Wanna see how big it gets for you? How wet?” Y/N nodded, not above begging again but Harry is either finding it in his heart to be kind, or he’s seconds from busting at the seams. He undoes his button at a leisurely pace, collecting both his trousers and his briefs at once and pressing them down his thighs.

Y/N almost gasps at the sight of him; Harry’s cock is pretty. She could tell he was heavy, by the way it bowed and bobbed when he moved, and he was so big – something she’d only ever seen in porn and was certain didn’t exist in real life. Y/N swallows the spit gathering in her mouth so she doesn’t dribble down her already messy chin. It’s flushed pink, the tip ruddy and he drools precum from the tip in a thick line, sliding down to land on her hip bone. She wondered if her heart could beat faster than a hummingbird’s.

With careful, nimble fingers, she reaches out to touch him. Her fingers lace around his dick so she could feel the heavy weight of it in her hand, touch feathery light, barely even squeezing him but he still moans softly and closes his eyes like she’d tucked him in her mouth. She wanted him in her mouth, to taste the liquid his prick offered so willingly on her tongue, but she wanted him inside of her more. Still, she strokes him, makes him leak more, collects some of it on her fingertips, and pulls it to her mouth.

The sight must work him up pretty badly because he has to grab her wrist, “If you want me to fuck you, then you need to stop before I bust,” he ordered and Y/N nodded. She’s splayed out for him, open and needy, the picture of pure desperation. She wondered if she ever needed something so badly in her life. The blood, definitely, but this is an extremely close second.

His silken cockhead nudges at her folds, adding to the mess when he paints it up and down, rubbing against her swollen clit, watching her lips separate around the tip that he teases at her hole. Y/N holds the sweater she wore up and out of her way so she can watch, her fingers clutching the knitted fabric tightly, “Will it fit?”

Harry groans like she’d punched him, face drawing up in something like pain while he squeezed the base of his cock, “God, are you trying to make me cum before I get inside of you?” He resumed stroking against her, slow and steady, “Don’t worry about that, puppy, I’ll make it fit.”

As if to punctuate, Harry steadies himself at her drippy hole and pushes in. The tip already feels like a lot, stretching her out wide as he bullies his way inside of her, slowly, but steadily, until Y/N feels like he’s in her stomach, “Will it fit,” Harry repeated, stroking the bottom of her tummy, his thumb swiping over the hair over her mound, “Course it will, with your little pussy sucking me in like this.”

“Want it hard,” Y/N requested, “Please, need to feel you, wanna feel you everywhere.”

In her mouth, in her veins, on her tongue, down to her marrow, deep inside of her – Y/N wants him so bad she could scream. Was this blood lust? Was this something she could feel with another person? Or was it something reserved only for Harry? She didn’t even want to sleep with anyone else to figure it out, she just wants to stay plugged up with Harry’s cock forever. They wouldn’t have to leave even, just feeding off each other’s blood in a constant rotation.

“So fucking good,” Harry sucks his bottom lip into his mouth as he starts to roll his hips, hard, as she’d asked. Harry fucks like he’s being paid to, with deep, intense strokes that fill her up so fucking full she can barely breathe. She doesn’t think she’s stopped pulsing around him, squeezing him, pulling him deeper and deeper. Y/N would wrap her legs around him if not for how he holds her open with his broad palms spanned out over her thighs, keeping her spread and still for him. Harry’s eyes are all over, like he’s stuck between wanting to watch his cock spear her open, and her face, and looking at the rest of her body, “You’re so wet, baby, there’s little trails of your cum clinging to me. Sweet little webs from you, hm?” He pinches her clit between two fingers, then smacks it with three and grins when she cries out, bucking toward him.

“You’re mean,” she whined, but quickly follows it up with, “M’g’na cum, please don’t stop.”

“Am I mean, or am I g’na make you cum, which one is it?” Y/N pouted at him, which only made him laugh more. There’s a loud squelch each time Harry bottoms out, and of course he couldn’t just leave it be, “Oh, listen to that! Your pussy loves me, doesn’t it, puppy? Listen to how loud she’s being.”

Harry uses the pad of his thumb to flick her clit back and forth, then takes his other wrist and bites into it. Y/N’s confused, she makes a sound in her throat, but she doesn’t get what he’s doing until he leans back down, presses their lips together and more of his blood rushes onto her tongue. The swell that had been burgeoning through Y/N’s body overcomes her entirely, she whines pitifully against his mouth, her eyes beaded with tears as she cums harder than she thinks she ever has in her life. The force of it pushes Harry out, she squirts over his thighs and cock, and Harry cusses before he’s cumming too. He cups his hand over his shaft and presses the other side against her twitching, oversensitive pussy, rocking his hips to work himself through it and feeling her twitch against him.

They part with a wet gasp, Harry kisses away whatever was on her bottom lip but Y/N’s mouth just hangs open dumbly. Y/N shivers, her body a livewire, like any touch would zip through her in electricity so intense it makes her buckle. Harry presses his head to her shoulder, like he’s catching his breath but she knows he doesn’t have to – he laces kisses where his mouth lies, until he’s had his fill. Then he maneuvers them both, despite Y/N being all weak-limbed and floppy. He scoots higher on the couch, so she could lie her head on his chest, and pulls the throw blanket over their bodies to shield them somewhat. From what, she doesn’t know, but she’s thankful to be covered a bit.

“Wow,” Harry laughs a little, pulling her arm more across his chest so that he could start to trace circles and design into the skin, “You’re cute. Did you know that?”

Y/N didn’t know what he found cute about that entire situation, but she doesn’t question it. Instead, she nuzzles into him closer and says, “You can drink from me now too, when you want.”

“We might never leave the bed, if that’s the case.”

. . .

Harry gets her cleaned up. Y/N probably could have been more helpful during the process but he goes on about how he’s a gentleman, and after cumming as hard as she did she deserved to be pampered. So he drew her a bath in his insanely large tub, and unlike the first time they did this, he isn’t scolding her and she isn’t in pain. Harry drags the soapy cloth over her body and washes her off, encouraging her to close her eyes and enjoy it. He gives her a warm towel when it’s time to get out, does a face mask with her, nips at the tip of her nose when she pouts at whatever he said (she doesn’t even remember, he makes her pout so much, she thinks her face is going to get stuck like that). Y/N dresses in another one of his sweaters and he shows her to his room – she’d been in it a couple of times at that point, mostly to ogle the floor to ceiling windows in there that match the living room, mesmerized by the city lights, especially with the time of year it was – everything all strung and lit up for the holidays.

Now she crawls into his bed, the black sheets spotless, the duvet downy soft and plushy. Her head sinks into the pillows, her body sinks into the mattress, and Leaf uses the ramp that Harry had bought her to toddle her way up onto the bed (“She’ll hurt her leg if she jumps,” he’d reasoned). She purrs and curls up between Y/N’s thighs, and Harry snuggles up on her left. Y/N isn’t sure what time it is, but there is no hazy glow that would suggest dawn was soon. Just the dark sky, and the stars smathered like freckles over it.

Y/N’s mind is clear, she feels relaxed, and whole, and nice. Now was as good a time as any to really think everything through – to decide how exactly she was going to feel, besides hurt.

“What would you do?” Y/N inquired, and once again, Harry is looping and tracing delicate designs onto her skin. She doesn’t have to specify what she’s talking about, because he already knows, but she continued anyway, “Do I forgive him?” She asks, “Does he even care if I do?”

Harry murmurs, “He cares,” almost immediately, “Niall is. . .he puts on a tough front. I think he’s been hurt a lot in the past so he acts all hard and rigid, but he really isn’t. He’s so doughy and squidgy in the center, he’d just never admit it. But he cares, probably more than anyone else would.” He sighed quietly, “I can’t tell you what I would do. It’s been so long since I was changed, I’m not mad anymore, but I used to be.” His fingers trail up her arm, toward her neck, and he traces along her jawline, “It just went away with time.”

“I just wish he would have told me.” Y/N continued, “I hate that – I hate that he kept it a secret. If he would have explained it right off the bat maybe I wouldn’t have – maybe I wouldn’t feel so hurt. Then there was no false pretext. He’s been so nice to be this whole time because he felt guilty.” Her fingers curled up in Harry’s sweater, “I want to hate him for it, for turning me into this, but he – he saved my life. And this isn’t. . .being this, and meeting you doesn’t feel like a bad thing really. It’s scary, sometimes I want blood so badly I feel like a monster, but you’ve all been so supportive and kind and if you’re like me. . .if you’re like me, then I couldn’t be a monster, because you guys aren’t. And I feel like I’m taking too long to decide, I’m – I don’t want to put you out, I know I should go back to the house. But I’m so angry,” she huffs, frustrated, shaking her head, “The situation is shit.”

“It is shit,” he agreed, “He should have told you, or at least told me or Mitch and we could have told you but he was scared. Still, it doesn’t negate the fact that he stole a decision from you.” He threads his fingers through her hair, “Whatever you want to do, I’ll support you, yeah? I’ll always stay by your side. Take all the time you need to decide.”

Y/N closes her eyes, she nuzzles closer to Harry’s chest and presses her face into the fabric. She lets herself be comforted by his scent and the warmth of Leaf purring against her legs.

She falls into a dreamless sleep.

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