Pairing: Vampire x f!reader
You saw him in a brightly lit bistro, staring with palpable despair at a paper cup of broccoli cheddar soup. He was too beautiful for the setting. His skin had that translucent, backlit-by-moonlight quality that made the fluorescent overheads seem like a personal insult to his existence. His suit was a deep, liquid black that seemed to swallow the light around the seams.
You had your laptop open. You were on your second cup of coffee. He was on his first emotional breakdown of the evening.
"Jessica?" he had whispered to the woman across from him, her hand frozen halfway to a bread bowl. "I apologise. I should have mentioned that I do not require sustenance of the...bread variety. And if we are to cohabitate, the windows must be bricked over. Immediately. For the sun. I have a severe sun allergy."
The woman, Jessica, had stared at him. Then she had said, very slowly, "I think you're a weirdo."
She left. He didn't chase her. He just sat there, looking at the soup as if it had personally betrayed his entire bloodline.
You felt a tug of pity. And, if you were being honest with yourself, a thrill of utter curiosity. You closed your laptop.
"That bad, huh?" you asked, sliding into now vacant chair.
He looked up. His eyes were the color of old garnets, and they widened with the panic of a deer who had just walked into a sliding glass door. He had obviously not planned for a contingency plan.
"It's the sun allergy," he admitted, his voice a lovely, sad baritone. "It’s a common dealbreaker. Also, I mentioned the average lifespan of my previous spouses as a matter of fiscal transparency, and she took it as a threat."
"How many previous spouses?"
"Fourteen," he said. "But in fairness, that's over four hundred years. The mortality rate is perfectly average for the era. Two fell off horses. One was eaten by a bear. It was a different time."
You should have run. You really should have. But he looked so genuinely confused, so utterly lost, that you found yourself leaning forward.
"What's your name?" you asked.
"Alistair Ravencroft," he said, and for a second, the air got cold and the lights flickered, and you felt the weight of centuries in the name. And then the lights came back on and he sneezed because someone dropped a cinnamon crunch bagel in the toaster oven behind the counter. "There's cinnamon in the air," he whined, rubbing his nose. "Cinnamon is for the dead. It's an embalming spice. It's rude."
You gave him a chance. He took it with both trembling, impossibly strong hands.
Two weeks later, you were in a car that smelled like old leather and cold stone, driving up a winding road that didn't appear on any GPS. Alistair was driving with the cautious, terrified focus of a sixteen-year-old taking their driver's test, despite the fact he’d been driving since before cars were invented. He kept glancing at you in the passenger seat, then back at the road, then back at you.
"I have to warn you," he said, his voice small. "The decor is a bit...me. I haven't updated since the Hapsburgs were relevant. And I have a collection. I need you to understand, I am not showing you these things to boast. I am showing you because I don't know how else to say: I have nothing else to offer but this."
He took you through the giant oak doors and into a cavern of gothic splendor. The floors were polished obsidian. The walls were lined with oil paintings of people who looked suspiciously like him wearing various historical hats. There was a sarcophagus in the foyer. He used it as an umbrella stand.
"This is the treasury," he mumbled, leading you into a room that made Scrooge McDuck's vault look like a piggy bank.
Mountains of gold coins spilled out of chests. Rubies the size of your fist were piled in corners like forgotten laundry. He picked up a diamond tiara that had probably belonged to a princess and placed it on your head without asking. It fit perfectly.
"I had it resized," he said. "Just in case. I know it's presumptuous."
He then reached into a nearby stone basin filled with ice and pulled out a medical blood bag. He pierced it with a crazy straw, a pink, curly one, and began to suckle on it sadly, his cheeks hollowing. He looked like a tragic, beautiful child who had been told he couldn't have dessert.
"I know," he said around the straw, his voice muffled. "I know this is too much."
"It's a lot of money, Alistair."
"It's not the money," he said, pulling the straw out with a wet pop. He gestured around at the glittering hoard. "This is just shiny dirt. What I want...what I need...is you. Here. Forever. Starting tomorrow. I want to wake up and see your face and know that you are legally bound to share this shiny dirt with me. I want a marriage. Right now. I'm not good at waiting. I've been alive for four hundred and sixty-two years and I'm very tired of waiting."
He pulled a scroll of parchment from his jacket, actual parchment, tied with a black ribbon.
"I had my lawyer draw this up. If you sign, half of everything in this room is yours. Not in the event of my death. Right now. This instant. You can fill the moat with gold coins and swim in them like a nouveau riche dolphin. I don't care. I just want you to stay."
You looked at the contract. You looked at the pile of flawless emeralds. You looked at the vampire, six-foot-four of ancient power and boundless wealth, sucking on a blood bag with a bendy straw, his garnet eyes welling up with the certainty of rejection.
You signed the parchment.
He sobbed. Right there in the treasury. He dropped the blood bag and it splattered on a pile of Spanish doubloons. He didn't care.
The wedding was three days later, officiated by a hooded figure in a ruined chapel on the cliffside. It was very Addams Family.
Then came the consummation. You’d expected it to be cold, clinical. Maybe even a little violent given the whole immortal predator thing.
It was not. He was tender to the point of absurdity. He kissed your shoulder blades like they were holy relics. He whispered your name into the curve of your neck with the reverence of a man praying for rain in a drought. And when he finally entered you, moving with that deep, rhythmic precision that came from centuries of practice, he started to cry.
Not sobbing, ugly crying. Just a steady, silent leak of red-tinged tears down his marble cheekbones.
"Alistair," you breathed, cupping his face. "Are you okay?"
"I'm just so happy," he choked out, his hips never faltering. "I didn't think anyone would ever want the sun allergy."
That was the first time. It happened every time after that. The crying was a feature, not a bug. And honestly? Who cares?
Because the man, the creature, did not get tired. His body didn't understand lactic acid or muscle fatigue. He could go for hours. Hours. You’d come three times before he even got misty-eyed, and then you’d just hold on while he chased his own release with the desperate, awe-struck stamina of an immortal who had finally found a reason to stop counting the centuries.
You’d intended to take the money and run. Maybe buy a yacht. Maybe open a studio in Milan and buy a villa in the south of Italy.
But then you’d wake up to find him standing by the window, holding a cup of perfectly steeped Earl Grey tea (he couldn't drink it, but he researched the optimal temperature for you), looking at you like you'd hung the moon and the stars and also fixed the draft in the east wing.
"Good morning, my darling," he'd whisper. "I watched you sleep for the last four hours. I hope that's not creepy. I think it's probably creepy. I'm sorry."
You stayed for the tea. You stayed for the way he’d carefully dusted the suit of armor in the hallway so it didn't scare you. You stayed for the way he'd apologize to the blood bags before drinking them.
And you definitely stayed for the way he’d weep into your hair at three in the morning, his body still moving inside you with the relentless, loving precision of a Swiss watch, whispering, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
It turned out hundreds of years of loneliness made a man very, very grateful. And very, very rich. And very, very good at making sure you didn't get much sleep.
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