who wants to live forever?

The woods at night had become a new scenery that Jenny was starting to grow used to. Sometimes she tried to go out there to hunt, trying to mimic what Metzli had been trying to teach her. She was no good at it, at trying to be swift and quiet before striking. Her hunger often tended to strike first, making her an uncontrollable monster that sometimes did manage to kill an animal or two, but often just slammed her tongue at trees.

Tonight she was not out for a hunt. She was doing something more mundane: walking Edward. This too, she preferred to do in the woods. Neither of them had been the type to go on forest walks before she had transformed, as they were both former city dwellers. Jenny had found the woods too uneven, too dirty, too unpredictable. But now, the woods were very much preferred. Especially at night, they tended to be relatively deserted, leaving less chance for her to bump into other pedestrians that might entice her. Some of her late night walks had become rather close calls, after all. The memory of Emilio holding her down as she dreamed of killing that woman was still strong on her mind.

Edward was doing fine in the woods, though, and so was she. Now that she could no longer sleep, walking around in the dark was a good distraction. Jenny watched the shih tzu waggle around in front of her. When she halted suddenly, he kept walking. Something new had joined the scene. A human. She smelled and heard him, as well as his dog, before she saw him, appearing behind a bunch of trees. Remaining standing, she pulled Edward closer to her. “Good evening,” she said, eyeing the other with a small level of suspicion. “Don’t worry — he’s friendly.” She nodded at her dog. 

—

Tree loved going for walks late at night, giving her the opportunity to sniff out whatever animals skittered around in the woods. Daniel rarely used a leash on her during the day, which gave her the opportunity to run around and burn her energy. But at night? When she could easily disappear into the darkness or run into some sort of beast? Daniel kept her on her leash. She padded along slightly ahead of him with her nose to the ground as she sniffed out animals. He let her lead the way as he followed whatever animal she sniffed out. 

The redbone hound stopped in her tracks for a moment, lifted her head up in the air as she sniffed something in the breeze. Daniel paid her little mind, accustomed to her catching the scent of something new. Tree pulled him in a new direction as she hunted down whatever caught her nose now. The two wandered through the trees until Daniel heard something else not too far in the distance. Footsteps hit the ground, something that sounded human, and he heard what might be another dog. Tree continued on her path towards them, and he grumbled as he realized she was dragging them towards the random other person walking their dog at night in the woods. 

But the hound dog was on a mission as she dragged him towards a woman walking her dog. He stepped out from the trees with his dog leading the way. He didn’t want to seem weird or suspicious for walking around at night, but he looked down at the small shih tzu. Tree wagged her tail and let out a little bark in excitement. “She’s friendly too,” Daniel said. She tugged on her leash and he stepped forward a little bit, giving her enough leash to approach the other dog and sniff him. “She’s always gotta say hi to every dog she meets.” He shrugged. “And always gotta stretch her legs at this time of night.” 

—

The scent of the other human and their dog were strong, filling the air along with the smell of pine and other woodland creatures. Jenny had fed before she’d come here, but the bagged blood had been stale, even when warmed up by her microwave. She wasn’t prepared to be faced with another human, especially one whose heartbeat was slightly picked up due to the walking and who had a very cute dog with him. She watched her in stead of the guy, seeing her sniff Edward and trying not to think of the parallels between herself and the dogs. She too was picking up scents.

She stopped breathing altogether, hoping all breeze would end so she could simply stand there and not notice the richness streaming through the other’s veins. She just stared at the young dog, feeling an intense need to squeal and fawn over it. But squealing usually involved breathwork, her voice box tragically requiring a stream of air. And that kind of breathing could swiftly turn into more sniffing, by her. 

“She’s super cute,” she eventually said, her voice still having a bit of that excited quality that naturally came with seeing a puppy. “How old is she?” She watched Edward circle around the dog to sniff its butt, letting him do what he needed to. His tail was wagging, which was a good time. “We’re beholden to our dog’s schedules, aren’t we?” She smiled a little, looking up at the other finally. Jenny forced her eyes to stay at his eyes, not drifting lower than his mustache. Staring at the neck was a sure way to get on the wrong path. “They’re the real ones in charge.”

—

“So is he,” Daniel said, nodding at the smaller dog. He wanted to seem as casual as possible and not strange towards the woman alone with her dog. If it was up to him, he’d drag Tree away and be on their way, leave the two of them alone, but both dogs seemed excited to meet each other. He wanted Tree to get along with other dogs, so he felt stuck there for the moment. “Uh, not sure. I found her back in November. Tried finding the original owner but no one claimed her. Decided to keep her.” He never attempted to find the owner because he decided that if she was out that deep in the woods, she might as well be his dog. “She was just a tiny puppy when I found her though. Was probably two or so months old. How long have you had him?” 

He looked up from where he watched the two dogs, only to find that she was looking right towards his eye level. He found it a little strange, so he glanced back down to the dogs before looking back up towards her. “They really are,” he agreed. “I think she has control of just about everything I do. Can’t do anything without her permission.” He grinned softly at that, thinking about how comfortable she was with him—how she yapped at the cabin’s back door, demanding that he let her run around outside and roll around in the grass. 

Speaking of, she flopped over onto her back and rolled around on the grass. Daniel chuckled and shook his head. “Or she’s just gotta do stuff like that. At least she ain’t trying to hunt down a squirrel right now.” 

—

She smiled brightly at the other as he complimented her dog, glad that there was some sense left in the world. Edward was her pride and joy, the closest she would ever come to having a son of her own. But the smile turned into a frowning expression swiftly. “Nooo, did someone abandon her? That’s horrible.” She pouted a little. “But not horrible for you and her now, I guess? Sometimes the dog distribution system needs some cruel people for it to keep working. But gosh, I can’t imagine just doing that! Especially a doggie as cute as that. Look at her ears – they’re too big for her damn head.” She looked down at Edward, who was practicing a wide stance to initiate play times. “I’ve had him since he was a puppy. He’s four years old now.”

Jenny didn’t want to think too much about how much Edward had ruled her life when the two of them had still lived together. She had been trialing taking her dog home, letting him stay over some nights. She always ended up returning him to Baz and Joel, though, getting sick with the fantasy of eating her dog. He would probably not even taste good. “Well, that is their damned right! If they were any less cute, maybe we’d be able to have a say But Edward …” The way he looked at her when he wanted his greenie could move mountains.

“At least it’s just grass, and not something stinkier,” she said, “And her fur is not as white as Edward’s! You made a good call there. Does she wield any results with the squirrels? Edward likes to think he can eat them all, but he’s quite bad at hunting in reality. Not that she concerns herself with reality.”

—

“Ah, I guess? Probably,” Daniel replied. “But it worked out for me. I was wanting a dog.” Not really. He had been almost annoyed when he took the tiny puppy back to his camper knowing that he was suddenly in charge of another living thing. But he had secretly been missing having a dog. He had visited Molly often enough back then and gotten so used to seeing her cat, that he started imagining himself with a dog going on hikes with him. Then he happened upon a dog in the woods. It worked out just fine for him once he got over his initial qualms. “God, I’m sure he was absolutely tiny as a puppy. He’s still so small.” 

He grinned softly and nodded along with her. “Yeah, fair,” he said. “I’m pretty good at ignoring her big sad eyes when she wants to eat what I’m cooking. My girlfriend on the other hand? She folds instantly. I think Tree has figured out how to get all the snacks.” He paused for a moment. “We’ve also been making treats for her. Got a wide variety of them. There’s this frozen berry yogurt treat that she loves.” God, he was such a softy for this dog. He knew that he’d do anything for her. 

“Definitely a benefit of the dark red fur, yeah,” he agreed. “I’m sure he looks like a dirty mess whenever he rolls around.” He laughed as she talked about Edward’s lack of hunting skills. She had been awful at hunting just a few months ago, but at this point, she was getting better and faster at her little hunts. “I think she’s figured it out. She’s caught a few squirrels. I think she’s starting to think she’s top dog because of that.” 

—

“The pet distribution system works wonders once more!” Jenny craned her neck to look up at the sky, as if speaking to some kind of pet-delivery god. “I would be open to receiving a cat any time now!” The moment she said it, she knew it wasn’t quite true. While a cat would work well with her aesthetic of being a mostly homebound, reclusive woman with some kind of dark supernaturality running through her, she was not sure if she wanted another pet to worry about eating. She looked back at Daniel’s dog, and nodded. “And yet bigger than mine. Can you imagine how small he was? God. It was so cute, it’s a good thing he grew a little. I would have died otherwise.” 

Hearing the other speak about his dog, she was happy to hear the affection in his tone. Some dog owners were so neutral about their pet. As if their dog was forced upon them. Sure, sometimes going on walkies was frustrating (like when it rained, and she was having a good hair day), but that was the sacrifice one made! “Gosh, I totes get that. My friend loves to spoil my dog when they look after him.” Baz and Joel were pretty good dogsitters, though she was sure Joel was the more responsible one. “That’s amazing! I’ve never tried my hand at making my own. I’m a disaster in the kitchen. Edward deserves better.”

Jenny was suddenly struck by how lighthearted she felt. Having a chat with a fellow dog owner was so mundane and normal, and it almost felt like she was back to a normalcy she had lost. If she were to ignore the ‘walking in the woods in the dark’ of it all, of course. “He gets so dirty and hates baths. But he doesn’t roll around too much. He’s a proper city boy, after all.” She snorted softly. “I mean, compared to mine, she probably is top dog. Never mind seniority.” She looked down at the dogs, who had ceased their roughhousing to stare intensely at some bushes ahead. “Oh!”

—

Daniel would be lying if he said that he didn’t like having this simple conversation with a stranger. He tended to prefer keeping to himself these days, but there was always that thought in the back of his mind that he missed just chatting with people. His teens and early twenties were filled with talking to random strangers about whatever, that it almost felt normal again for him. He even felt like maybe this was that normalcy he often longed for throughout his life—to just exist as a regular human. No hunter or supernatural nonsense. Just small talk with someone who loved their dog. 

“Ah, luckily they’re easy to make. Some are easy to make. Just mixing plain yogurt and berries together. Or freezing peanut butter into balls as a treat,” he explained. Sometimes Daniel had to remember to explain the steps to cooking actual meals, but those treats? Just combine a few things and freeze it. As simple as this conversation. 

He grinned at her comment. “City boy going for a walk in the woods. Good for him. And I guess she does have that top dog position between these two. Just prepared to jump into a hunt.” He paused as he realized that Tree was suddenly taking that top dog role seriously, as she turned her attention away from playing with her new friend to staring at some bushes. “She probably sees a squirrel or a bunny or something. Always tries to chase on those.” He tugged lightly on her leash. “Come on, girl.” She ignored him, her focus still on the bushes. The bushes weren’t a bright green that Daniel expected for this time of year, and they all looked rather dead to him. He thought that odd, and as he looked around a bit more, he realized that a few other plants looked dead. His attention returned to Tree as she let out a low growl when a small bunny hopped out from the bushes. “Ain’t no need for that,” he chastised. The bunny hopped a little closer, as if unafraid of the two dogs.

—

The other made it sound easy, but as Jenny imagined rolling peanut butter into balls she could already imagine the mess. Never mind how sticky it would feel to her hands and how oily they would become, no matter how much she scrubbed. Her kitchen was mostly an aesthetic part of her home, where the most culinary things done by her were the drinks she mixed. Baz ate from there sometimes, but they weren’t quite the cook either. Still, she loved the green cabinets. 

“You underestimate how bad I am in the kitchen,” she said with a sense of foreboding. At least she no longer needed to cook to eat these days. It wasn’t like she preferred the alternative (ripping people apart) but she had to try to find the good where she could! “He’s really going out there, isn’t he? I could write a storybook about it. Preppy little city boy goes on a nighttime adventure in the woods.”

While Tree had been established to be the better hunter, Edward was definitely attempting to prove himself by honing all his attention onto the bush. Jenny inhaled, attempting to make it inconspicuous (as if breathing in and of itself was not normal behavior) to see if she could pick up any new scents. There was something there, though she could not quite place it. She tugged at Edward’s leash too, but he was unwavering in his stance just as Tree. When the bunny appeared, she resisted a squeal. “Oh but it’s so cute,” she said, watching as another bunny hopped from the bush. And then another followed, with two smaller ones in tow. “Babies!” Edward was no longer as unwavering in his stance, she noted. From deep in his throat a low rumble came. “I thought rabbits slept at night? Maybe they’re just having a party.” That last bit was more directed to her dog than the other person with her.

—

In Daniel’s mind, there was no way that someone could mess up the peanut butter treat. It was literally just peanut butter. But he wasn’t going to argue with a random stranger about that. Wasn’t going to point out how it was literally just peanut butter rolled into balls and frozen. Instead, he chuckled at her suggestion of a storybook about her adventurous dog. That was probably the better option right then. “He sure is. I’m sure he can have all sorts of future adventures too.” 

Soon enough, more bunnies appeared from the bush. Tree continued to growl at the bunnies, her focus entirely on them. She yanked on her leash as she tried to get at them, but Daniel kept his grip and held her to him. In another situation, he would probably just let her try to catch a bunny—though, probably not with the babies. He’d stop her from chasing after those. A single adult though? All just part of nature. “Yeah, I don’t think they usually do much at night,” he said. It was a little odd how these ones were out and about. It was way past dusk, but maybe something interrupted their sleep, had them moving around right then. 

“I should probably get going before she tries to eat one of them,” Daniel said, tugging on the leash once more. But Tree wouldn’t budge. He was tempted to just pick her up and carry her away. As he considered that, he realized that these bunnies were acting rather odd. They didn’t seem scared of the two dogs growling at them or the two humans with the dogs. They seemed kind of brave. Maybe curious. Like they had nothing to worry about from any of the larger threats. Daniel narrowed his eyes as he thought about what these bunnies might be. He didn’t sense anything, but that only got him so far. And maybe these bunnies were just really stupid and didn’t care about the two dogs growling at them from just a few feet away. He looked at the few dead plants around them again, trying to solve whatever mystery was happening here. 

One of the bunnies hopped closer to Tree. And closer. And closer, which led Tree to release a loud hound dog bark. “Stop,” he grumbled, as she howled into the night. He heard rustling from behind him and turned around to see a couple more bunnies, as if they were all surrounding them now. “Maybe … maybe we should both get outta here.” How could he begin to explain that he didn’t trust these random, innocent-looking bunnies?

—

Maybe they had manifested this adventure, she thought. The kind of small town adventure she had imagined for Edward certainly didn’t include encountering a bunch of bunnies post midnight, but here they were anyway. It wasn’t like she had anticipated walking her dog late at night in the woods anyway, at least not until she had died and come back a creature of the night. Jenny was not interested in reflecting on all the consequences of her actions, though, especially not now.

“Sounds like a solid plan,” she said determinedly, getting worried about the prospect of one of the dogs ripping up a bunny and filling the air with the scent of blood. If she had a heart that functioned, she imagined it would be picking up now with dread. In stead, she just felt herself grow tense at the prospect of bunny blood. She’d eaten a few before on a hunt, though not intentionally. They were more fluff than blood, after all — but there was little logic to the way she ripped living beings apart when lost in a frenzy. 

Tree wasn’t budging though. Edward wasn’t either, though Jenny heard the low growl coming from his threat change into something more close to a whine as more bunnies got close. So her dog was a coward compared to a puppy — but it didn’t matter. One less risk at a bunny being ripped apart and Jenny causing another massacre (potentially involving two dogs) was somewhat good news. With the way Tree was howling though, she wasn’t feeling super assured.

The bunnies that started circling them were even less assuring. Her eyes scanned around, finding the image one she could appreciate in a movie or illustration or even if she had been here all alone. Right now, though, it seemed like a disaster waiting to strike. She felt a phantom heart beat in her throat and bend over quickly to gather Edward in her arms, feeling all his muscle tense even as she pulled him close. His scent pricked at her nose and she tried to focus on the earthy smell of his fur rather than the blood underneath his veins. “Yep,” she said, “I’m out of here.” The bunnies were circling closer to them and Jenny did not want to deal with all the possible outcomes that were promised. And still, the bunnies did not smell like the rabbits she’d eaten before. They seemed to lack in any smell besides their fur, none of the sweetness that usually came with creatures joining a scene she was in.

—

Tree wouldn’t stop her howling, and the last thing Daniel wanted right then was for his dog to rip into a bunch of bunnies in front of a stranger. The woman grabbed her dog, who seemed more scared of the bunnies. Not exactly what he expected from a dog that seemed ready to growl at the bunnies just moments ago. Whatever was going on with these things, he didn’t like them. Neither did Tree. He had taken her hunting for wild animals, so he knew that she would chase down animals far larger than her—and he assumed that if he still patrolled and hunted supernatural beasts, she would probably chase down large terrifying creatures. 

The bunnies hopped in closer, surrounding them, seeming very interested in Daniel and Tree. He did the same as the young woman, and he picked up Tree. His dog growled at him at first, awkwardly kicking her legs in confusion—she wasn’t exactly a dog that he picked up and carried around—but she accepted her fate after a few seconds. “All right, well,” he paused briefly as another bunny hopped closer to him, “enjoy the rest of your night.” He stepped away from the bunnies, though a few hopped to face him, as if watching him. As if inspecting him. “I probably should be getting home soon anyway. It’s late.” He turned around, still holding his dog who seemed shocked by him holding her, and walked back off into the direction he came from, back towards his place away from these weird bunnies that just didn’t seem right. 

—

Jenny felt Edward tremble underneath her hands. Or maybe that was her, imagining all the disastrous scenes that could start playing out if something were to go wrong. The bunnies were closing in, their scents absent and something entirely wrong with them. When the other started to say goodbye, there was a part of her that wanted to protest. Why would he abandon her – a young woman with a dog that had all bark and no bite – when there were bunnies threatening them both? Should they not be getting out of here together? 

But then, Jenny wasn’t just a young woman alone in the woods any more. She was a serial killer, a ticking time bomb, already fretting about leaving another corpse in the woods surrounded by rabbits. (She might not have to call Eve for that one — maybe the bunnies could be blamed and this dog owner could turn into a local legend?) “Oh yes, yeah, it’s late, these bunnies are definitely going — God, they’re fucking creepy! Best be on our way.” Part of her wanted to follow him. To tie Edward to a tree and stalk him for a long while, until she was sure that her darling dog was at a safe distance. It had been so long since she had tasted human blood. But she ground her teeth and told herself that cravings were just mental urges she could suppress (it was really no different than trying to resist devouring a bag of M&M’s, except for the murder). 

They’d invited Jenny over. 

It wasn’t a rare occurrence. In fact, Baz had had Jenny over several times, and been to hers more than once, too. There was no reason for their heart to thrum nervously in their chest, no reason for them to feel jumpy. And yet… their gaze slid over to the door to the washroom, where they’d once locked Jenny to ride out her pre-upior bloodlust. They recalled the minigolf course, the way they’d run even as they’d felt a pit in their stomach at leaving her. 

Baz had never had any sort of genuine romance before. They’d deluded themself into thinking they had, of course; they’d imagined whole scenarios where they were loved and adored, even if they’d never quite managed to find the feeling naturally in the wild. It was only when they’d found whatever they had now with Jenny that they understood what they’d been missing. 

It was something worth preserving. That was why they’d invited her round, in spite of the pounding in their heart. While Baz was usually content to run away, they wanted to make this work. They wanted to find some way to… adjust, even if it wouldn’t be easy. This was a new feeling; Baz didn’t often find themselves willing to work for something. 

Her knock sounded at the door, and they moved to open it, offering her a smile. “I’ve got the kettle on,” they greeted her. “I thought… maybe we could just chat? Talk about… a bit of everything, I suppose. Find a — a solution, yeah? A way for us to be.” 

—

As she drove to Baz, she wondered if something would come over her and push her in the direction of a shadier area of town. Jenny knew there was a hunger lingering within her, dark and needy, and she knew it would rear its head in front of Baz. Ever since their first disastrous date she’d been thinking of them more, and not just in the obsessive way one did before a second date. She’d been thinking of their blood on their lip, of how close she had gotten to tearing them apart. She’d get lost in the fantasy of eating them whole and then in the horror of losing them completely.

Maybe it would be better if she took a detour. The weight of the couple she’d murdered pressed on her chest, but it would be preferable to satiate her hunger with a human over risking Baz.

But she resisted the urge. She’d had two bags of blood before getting in the car. She smelled distantly of the rose body wash she’d used during her shower. Her hair was still in the process of drying. She parked the car in front of the junkyard and sat there for a long while before getting out and walking to the door.

Baz opened and she felt both the urge to step forward and backward. She wanted to hold them in a swift embrace, a simple greeting they’d used so very often in times past. She wanted to step backwards so their scent was less likely to dizzy her. “Tea sounds nice,” she said, though her voice sounded choked, and she would really prefer a bag of Baz-blood over tea. Jenny inhaled, even if there was no need for it. It just seemed dramatically correct. Like a beat in a play. “Okay. I think … that would be good.” They had tried to tackle the topic online, but she knew this was one of those things where face to face conversation was necessary. She pressed her lips together and followed Baz inside the house. “Guess it’s time for that now.”

—

She looked lovely, of course. They’d always thought so, from the very first moment they’d seen her in a smoky bar riding the high of a successful poetry reading. They remembered so clearly the look in her eyes, frustrated and irritated that Baz had taken all the time for themself and left none for her. They remembered being struck by the insatiable need to draw her, to capture her likeness in their sketchbook just to get it out of their fingers. They’d drawn her a thousand times since, or at least it felt like it. It was funny, the way her outward appearance since her death. Her eyes were still the same; her skin was a bit paler, maybe, without the blood rushing through her veins, but she still seemed full of life the same way she had back then. Funny, almost, how even dead, Jenny seemed more alive than almost anyone Baz had ever met.

She didn’t move to embrace them, so they didn’t, either. They thought this was the sort of thing that needed to happen at her speed. It was her whose life had been turned upside down, her who was learning to cope with a new way of being. She ought to set the pace, even if Baz wanted something more defined. It was… new, this respectful distance. They’d never done this sort of thing before; they’d never even considered it. 

“Yeah,” they agreed, ushering her inside. “Yeah, talking’s great. Love talking. I’ve always been good at it, you know.” And they were, in a sense. They knew how to string words together in an attractive order, knew how to say things that were pretty enough to make other people stop in their tracks to listen. Baz was great at talking, even if they weren’t always good at saying anything worthwhile. 

Carefully, they led Jenny over to the sofa. They tried not to remember sitting here with her back in December, her heart still beating and her skin clammy with the upior venom’s effects. All evidence of that day — the broken mug, the small cut on Baz’s finger, the mess Jenny left in the bathroom when she’d hurled herself against the door — was long gone now, cleaned and healed as if nothing had ever happened at all. The memory had no business lingering, but wasn’t that all memories ever did? Baz settled onto the couch, knee brushing against hers. “Um… where should we start, then? I’ve not…” They trailed off, hesitating. “I’ve not done this sort of thing before.”

—

Talking was something Baz and Jenny both excelled at. She figured it was one of the reasons their friendship had developed as swiftly as it had — the way they were both able to keep a conversation going endlessly. She liked that about Baz, besides, the way that they were able to jump from topic to topic, weaving in their poetry and humor throughout it all. Even conversations about important topics, like art and philosophy, were easy to have. But this would not be one of them.

She did not like big talks. She did not like having to deal with the potential anger or sadness that she might have to face. She did not like the uncertainty that plagued her at the start, not knowing what the outcome would be after the fact. This was one of those talks, where she had no idea how things would look in the end. Where she was afraid of what laid ahead.

She had been thinking about it a lot. The Baz of it all. The Jenny of it all. The way she still had the same urges and desires she had had that Thanksgiving night, but she had new ones too. Ones that put Baz’ life at risk. Ones that she could try to push away with performance and pretense, but that would always come to the surface. She sat down on the sofa and thought of how close she had gotten to knocking down that door when Baz had still been on the other side of it. How she had ripped those two people apart, rather than them. How she hadn’t even felt satiated after all of that. 

They were back here, then. All those months ago when she had asked Baz for their help, when the ghost of their near-kiss was still stuck on her lips, and they had sat on this same couch. “I haven’t either,” she murmured. Jenny had a string of exes she’d had big talks with, but those did not compare to this. Things were different with Baz. Deeper, scarier, more precarious. There was more to lose here, because they had so much planned. “Just … maybe we should talk about what we want. And what is — well, okay, so I do want you. To do this thing with you. Us, together. You know?” She wondered why she didn’t have a mug of tea to fiddle with, but didn’t want to ask. In stead she went for a strand of hair. “Uhm. So what do you want?”

—

Baz was no stranger to wanting things. They had been wanting all their life, in an endless state of it. They wanted their father to be kinder than he was; they wanted their mother to step in and protect them; they wanted their brother as an ally instead of an indifferent third party; they wanted their life to be their own. They were very good at pretending not to want something until they got it, of course, very good at closing their eyes and holding their nose and acting as though the life they had was the life they desired, but it always fell away the moment they got a taste of whatever it was they truly yearned for. Their mother showed the slightest amount of disapproval at their father’s treatment of them, and they ached with how badly they wanted more. Their brother laughed at one of their jokes, and they longed to take him by the shoulders and beg for him to be on their side. They spent a year in a flat with a handsome artist, and the idea of going back to their father’s house felt like a death sentence. 

In a way, they supposed, getting a taste of what they wanted was worse than never getting close to it at all. It was easy to pretend something didn’t matter to you if you knew you could never have it. It was much harder to do so when you’d gotten very close to holding it only to see it slip through your open fingers.

This would have been easier without Thanksgiving. They knew that. If they’d never laid on the bed in Jenny’s parents’ spare bedroom, their face so close to hers that they could feel her breath tickling their lips, it wouldn’t hurt so bad now. They could have written the whole thing off as a loss, could have shaken their head and waved their hand and called it a wash. There was no use yearning for the impossible, was there? There was no sense in it. 

But that Thanksgiving — wonderful and terrible and treacherous — had turned impossible on its head. They’d almost had something then; Baz had been in someone else’s home with someone else’s family and had belonged all the same. They’d envisioned something for themself and Jenny that was still there, still lingering somewhere in the shadows. They never let themself want a thing until they had it, and they’d thought they had this. They’d thought it was possible, thought it was theirs. It ached, knowing how easily it had been shattered.

But maybe not entirely.

Their breath caught at how easily Jenny said she wanted them. Few people in their life had ever been able to form the words with such little hesitation. Wanting Baz was difficult, they knew; sometimes, they thought it took a martyr. As if sainthood could be achieved through the mere process of inviting them round for tea even when they were nothing more than themself. But Jenny had done it so effortlessly on that bed at Thanksgiving; she did it so effortlessly now, too. And Baz, in turn, wanted her. They wanted her as badly as they’d wanted their father’s kindness, their mother’s love, their brother’s companionship. They longed for her with the same intensity they’d once longed for a name, a face, an identity. 

When she asked what they wanted, they answered quickly, in a single breath: “You.” They reached a hand out uncertainly to take hers, giving it a squeeze. “I just — I just want you, J. The two of us, together. I know it’s not… I know it’s going to be harder than we thought it would be. I don’t mind it. I’ll put in the work. I’ve never wanted to work for anything, but I want to work for this. For us. If that’s — if you think that’d be all right.”

—

There was no significance in holding her breath any longer and yet she still waited with baited breath. It would not hurt her lungs, it would not make her exhale and inhale with relief once Baz answered her question but the habit remained. Jenny's lips were pressed close together in a thin line, her entire upper body in lockdown as she waited for Baz to answer her. 

She wondered if she should have phrased her own words differently, in that time where she held her mouth closed. If she should have been more poetic with her words, rather than flippantly saying that she wanted them. Baz and her were artists, both prone to embellishing reality so they could make it more exciting or digestible. There were poems to write about this yearning she felt, books and essays to produce, but she had spoken plainly, like some unrefined person. Straight from the nervous heart, which apparently was not as artistic as she wanted it to be. She did not sound like someone in a play, but rather like herself, which as always was disappointing to her.

But Baz spoke in the end, and Baz spoke with a plain ease as well. Quickly, even if it had felt like eons had passed between her proclamation and their own. She let them take her hand and squeezed it back, their warm skin comfortable in her. Baz wanted her, even if it would not be easy, even if there was work, even if she needed them to be patient if not fucking celibate with her.

“Okay,” she said, her words accompanied by an exhaled breath that had no function but still filled the room. Jenny looked at them. “Of course — of course that’s alright. I just don’t want to hurt you.” But she wasn’t the selfless kind of person to walk away from what she wanted, to abstain for a larger cause. If she was a better person, she thought, she might walk away from Baz and break this off, just so they could have a chance at something less dangerous. But she was not. “I don’t want to ever hurt you.” But part of her did. And that sentiment remained unspoken, even if the proof was between them.

Jenny sat up a little, taking Baz’ other hand and resting the four of them between them. “So … what does that mean, right? It was so good to be close to you the other day. I want …” Another sigh escaped her as she looked up at the ceiling. “God. I want to touch you all over. Be with you like that. But I don’t … I don’t …” She looked back at Baz. “I don’t know how to ensure I don’t become that other thing. And that’s not all this is, I figure. This isn’t just about sex, is it? But you know… It’s still this thing, that we now …” She chuckled. “Fuck, it’s never as easy as you think it is, right?”

—

They often thought themself a wordsmith. Some of it was arrogance, of course; Baz was confident in their ability to string words together in a way that made people feel exactly what they wanted them to feel, even if they weren’t always as confident in the other parts of themself as they pretended to be. They could shape sentences into sprawling cathedrals, could turn spoken words into shelter that anyone would be pleased to stand beneath. But often when they did this, they felt there was something lacking. Not with the words, but with them. Their father used to remind them, in no uncertain terms, that they were, on their own, not a person. They were unmolded clay, were a blank canvas, were a thing that was only something worth being when someone else’s hands made it so. They could speak pretty words, but only with someone else’s mouth. They could paint pretty pictures, but they couldn’t do it without borrowing hands from elsewhere. Baz didn’t feel quite as uncertain about their personhood now as they had under their father’s roof, but they never quite felt firm about it, either.

It was easier with Jenny, though. With Jenny, Baz felt like so much more of a person than they did on their own. Yes, they were wearing someone else’s face, still. Sebastian’s eyes shone out at her as she spoke, but hadn’t she seen them without that, too? In their house during one of those dreadful surges, when Joel was gone and Baz was alone and shape was a hard thing to cling to, hadn’t Jenny been there? Hadn’t she seen him in that state and treated him just the same? She had never asked them to wear another face for her, as Teagan had; she had never treated them like a party trick to offer some shortcut out of grief. Jenny wanted Baz to be Baz, and had never asked for anything more than that.

They wished they had better words to give her. They thought themself a wordsmith, but they couldn’t find a way to properly express what it meant to them to have her say she wanted them, wanted them to be just as they were. They wished they could write her a sonnet, wished they could sing her a tune, but nothing felt good enough. There were things too tender to be properly captured in any language. What they felt for her was chief among them.

She said she didn’t want to hurt them, not ever, and something in it made their chest feel warm. It was a small thing, they knew; it was expected, that want to avoid hurting the people you cared for. And yet, it was something of a novel concept to Baz. They had been loved by people who did not mind hurting them. Their mother had loved them (or they thought she had), and she’d still had no qualms in letting their father do the things he did. Their brother, too. They ached with the requests Teagan made of them, but they never doubted that she loved them still. To Baz, the two were not mutually exclusive. You could care for someone deeply and hurt them and be okay with doing it again, but Jenny was not. Jenny did not want to hurt them, and that meant something. In a way, that meant everything. “I know,” they said softly, and it didn’t burn their tongue or twist their gut so it must have been the truth. “I know you don’t.”

But it did leave them at an impasse, didn’t it? They’d gotten close, and it had been wonderful. It had been intoxicating, her skin on theirs, her mouth on theirs. But how had it ended? They could still feel their heart pounding in their chest, still hear their feet against the ground as they ran and she chased them. She’d killed two people that night, ripped them to shreds with her tongue. Was that what they could expect any time they tried this? “We could be careful,” they said. “If it’s the blood that does it, we could be careful. Make sure it never…” But how could they ensure that properly? “Or I could bathe in that bloody awful body spray, I suppose.” They offered her a small smile, brow raised. It faded quickly, though. The question was still there, and they did not know the answer. They knew only what they felt for her, not what to do with it. “I don’t mind it. If we never have sex, I mean. I don’t mind it. I want to, of course. You’re so bloody beautiful, how could I not? But if we can’t make that part work, that’d be all right. When I say I want you, that’s not what I mean. I don’t just want to sleep with you. I don’t just want your body, or the physicality. When I say I want you, I mean… I want you. The way you laugh, the way your voice goes up a pitch when you get excited about something, the way you point out all sorts of things I’d have never even noticed without you saying. That’s what I’m in it for, J. That’s the part I really want.”

—

Sex had been a recurring beat in the song of life before. Jenny slept around, ending up in the beds of people she met at the bars she went to or those she met on dating apps. She had friendships that had an extra function, enjoyed the journey of getting to know someone on that level and discovering more and more as they saw each other again. It was like any other thing in life, an indulgence she took part in whenever the opportunity arose and her heart yearned for it. Sometimes she needed it to feel whole or present, sometimes she just wanted to be a thing that could be desired and touched with want. It was a way to connect, with herself as well as with others. And now, for the past months, that had been cut from her life.

Celibacy was something easy to joke about, but in reality it made her feel strange. Not only had her body changed, its functions ceasing or changing, her tongue becoming like a meaty, murdering morningstar — she had also stopped being something desirable. Before her undead, she had imagined her life as a vampire as something inherently sensual. There was sensuality in some of her connections with vampires, after all. Philip had caressed her even when he’d drank her blood, had been a true romantic even if his commitment felt flimsy. But there was nothing about the potential bloodbaths she might cause that she found enticing at all. 

Besides, even when she had been alive, she had not just wanted to have sex. She had wanted to have sex with Baz, specifically, and every time she had slept with someone that wasn’t them, she had ended up thinking about him anyway. These days, a lot of time was spend thinking of Baz. Of the kisses they’d exchanged. That first real one, on the roof. Of the slight touches, the trepidation. Of the shed and their blood on her lips and how badly she wanted more, more of that making out but also more of that blood. She understood, on a narrative level, how her yearning being both sensual and nourishing was a trope inherent to her newfound vampirism, but she could not compare herself to the tortured vampires she’d seen in her media who struggled with their human counterparts. She was worse.

Jenny did want Baz, but she did not want to hold them back. She knew that they were much like her, when it came to sex. She could not ask them to want her, to be with her, and to subscribe to the same celibacy she had forced herself in. But she could not ask them to risk their life, either, just to get some with her. Their life was much too precious to her for that.

As Baz went over ways they could avoid disaster, she felt herself grow desperate. It was a losing cause. She could imagine it going right a couple of times, maybe even more, but it only had to go wrong once to be lethal. Last time had been a close call and the two bodies that had answered for her recklessness lived among all the death she was responsible for. It wasn’t exactly something that got her hot and bothered, the idea that any attempt at sex would end with dead bodies. She had not quite reached the level of comfortability with sexy murder that she enjoyed in media. She wanted to laugh at the body spray idea, but she felt her throat constrict with tears and so she remained quiet. 

I don’t mind it, they said. Baz went on to say that he wanted her for more than just her body and suddenly her throat was even more constricted. It was a good thing she didn’t need to breathe, that she could let her throat get lodged with emotions without choking on a sob. She hadn’t thought that Baz was simply in this for the sex or the bodily aspect, but she still imagined it would be an important facet moving forward. A must, rather than a want. A non-negotiable. All relationships she had ever been in had been built around the sex, some even built solely upon them. And while her want for Baz in that capacity would not disappear, she was still glad that it was not a prerequisite.

“Oh,” she said eventually, her voice cracking. “Oh.” She let out a watery laugh. Covering her face for a moment, she tried to gather herself. “That’s … if that’s okay with you, that’s also — I don’t just want you for that either, and even if I can’t right now, that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to go for this. Because your laugh and – well, you get it, you said it better than I ever could.” She looked at him, dropping her hands from her face, reaching for Baz in stead. Jenny smiled at them, her eyes watery. “So what does that mean? We do … we make this a relationship? Not just the dates, but something real?” Hadn’t they been acting like they were in one for a while now, celibacy aside? “What would that mean for you?”

—

One could not be loved unless they were useful first. This was something Baz had learned early on in their life, something that had been true for as long as they could remember. They did not think their father loved them, but they fooled themself into believing he felt something close, sometimes. They thought their mother might have, and their brother, too, but only when they made sure that they were offering something in return. They were to provide an alibi, an excuse, a get out of jail free card or a deterrent for any hunters that might have been lurking with thoughts and intentions that Baz’s family did not want to be any sort of part of. In return, they were treated as a member of the family despite the lack of biological connection there. Not on the same level as their brother, perhaps, but not as lowly as the staff, either. A step above human, even if only a step.

When they left that house, with its stifling rules and its tendency of asking too much of them, they’d found the world outside of it to be similar enough. They weren’t naive enough to think that the people they went home with from bars or solicited from dating apps loved them, of course, but they liked the way they all said their name. They liked the fact that they were memorable, that those people looked at them, that they were kind. They liked that they got to sleep in someone else’s bed, sometimes, even if others they found themself promptly ushered out the door. Being useful meant being loved or being cared for or being looked at and remembered, and Baz had always found their body to be the most useful thing they had. They could twist it into whatever shape their father needed it to be in order to get away with whatever terrible thing he’d done, or they could land it in between a stranger’s sheets and make them feel good for a period of time. Both things ended in Baz getting some version of what they wanted; both seemed to offer proof that what they wanted could not be given for free.

And so, it was scary to think that they could not offer their body to Jenny in the same way. They could not lay bare for her and show her the same pleasure they’d shown others without risking a repeat of what had happened in that shed; they were sick with the idea of twisting themself into different shapes for her, and so they would not offer if she did not ask. And she did not ask. She did not request it, did not expect them to be someone they weren’t. In fact, Jenny didn’t seem to expect anything at all from them. Jenny wanted them to be safe. That was all she wanted from them, all she asked. She didn’t want them in her bed because she worried about spilling their blood on the mattress, because she cared about whether or not they were hurt more than she cared for her own pleasure. How many people had treated them like something they didn’t want to lose? They only needed one hand to count them all.

They smiled as she reiterated as much, told them that their words had been better than what she could come up with. They still had that, then, the words. Even scrambling for something worthwhile to say, even unsteady and uncertain, they had that. Wasn’t it something of a miracle, if they were still going to cling to the idea of sainthood and martyrs? (They could make a church out of the small space that surrounded her body, they thought; that altar would be nicer than anything the Pope could ever hope to stand at.)

“We could do that,” they said, a little breathless. “Make it something solid, give it a definition.” They already had the outline, really; it was just a matter of filling things in. “I’m not sure what it means for me,” they admitted. “I’ve never actually… done this sort of thing before. Never had any strings attached. And I think this would be… different, yeah? Than what either of us might be used to.” Perhaps that was a bold assumption, considering they didn’t know much about Jenny’s romantic history, but Baz was certain this thing in their gut that they felt towards her was not one they’d felt for anyone before her. “Maybe we’d have to make it up as we went along. Decide on the rules together, figure out where the lines go. Would that be okay?”

— 

Jenny had been in relationships before. Back in the city, she was always dating to get into a new one, always aiming for that image of having a partner so she could show the world that she was wanted. With both her sisters in established and consistent relationships, there was an urge to prove herself. That she too could reach stability. That she was not destined to be the messy youngest sister, the one always flitting from one thing to another until she died lonely but experienced. So there had been array of them. A boyfriend whose art had been in the gallery she’d ran, and with whom the break up had seen some broken glass and canvases. A girlfriend who was both barista and DJ, who was like a wild adventure into the world of New York’s working class. She’d dumped Jenny for her ‘vapidness’ and for ‘not getting it’ in the end. There was the ex whose dad she’d slept with, which was really a story best not told. And then that dad, who had of course not been any kind of relationship material.

Like most relationships back in New York, her romantic ones had been built upon status and performance. Jenny had seen a story in each relationship, a potential arc that her life would take. She could be a power couple with the artist boyfriend. She could be the alternative and cool one in her friendship with the DJ/barista girlfriend. She could … well, there wasn’t much of a story with John, really. She really had liked his dad better than him. She would have divorced him, she figured, and gotten even richer afterwards.

None of it matched up with what she was doing with Baz. There was no audience in Wicked’s Rest, not really. No high society to prove something to. Her parents and sisters were out there, as was the rest of New York, and she had intended to come back with the perfectly finished play. But her ambitions had shifted towards immortality and now they were limited. She just wanted to get through each day without killing something. She just wanted to grow comfortable killing animals. She wanted to understand how she felt about the people she had killed. She wanted Baz. She ignored her parents’ calls, spoke in riddles and vagueties to her sisters, and tried to exist with the promise of forever. 

Forever did not feel so bad now. Baz was not like those she had left behind. They had the ability, like her, to grow old without aging. She wanted to treat this with care. To treat them with care. “A relationship then,” she said, her voice ticking up at the end of the sentence in half-question. “Baz, my partner. That sounds good.” Jenny smiled a little. There was no comparing Baz to anything she’d ever had. No one had seen her as ugly as they had. No one had stuck by her through what she’d been through and still thought her desirable. Even if that desirability could not be acted on the way they both yearned for, it existed. And a part of her still just wanted to be wanted. 

“It will be different,” she said, nodding. “But better, maybe. Or worse, in some areas.” She frowned, thinking of all her limitations. She felt relief, at all the time they had. “We can make it up as we go.” Jenny smiled at them, wanting to cup their cheeks and press her lips onto theirs. She fought the desire for a moment, feeling her insides stir. She felt strange and human again, so filled with nerves for something she had done before. She cupped Baz’ cheeks and leaned forwards to kiss them, swiftly and tenderly. 

—

There was a certain degree of giddiness floating somewhere in their chest. It was a helium balloon rising up slow and steady, and lifting the rest of them with it. It was a bird mid-flight, its wings spread wide and its head straight forward, not thinking at all about what it was doing because what it was doing was exactly what it was meant to do. It was a bumblebee, round and clumsy and bumping against everything in its path with a quiet buzz. It was a thousand things at once, some similes and some contradictory, because that was what Baz was, too. Never the same thing twice; never the same person from one moment to the next. 

They knew this was the kind of thing that could make someone difficult to know. They had often felt unknown because of it, surrounded by people who didn’t quite understand them even if they tried to. They had never attempted to properly explain themself to Sebastian because of it, had never opened up even about the things they might have been able to explain without opening the floodgates of the supernatural into his chest. They could have told him of their father, of the way they were raised. They could have mentioned their mother’s indifference, the way their brother was their ally only until it benefitted him more to be their adversary. They had told him none of it, and he had died without knowing what he was dying for at all. 

Perhaps that had inspired them to be a touch more honest with people in Wicked’s Rest, though this, too, was not something that had always worked out as they wanted it to. They thought of Teagan, in her grief, imploring them to be someone else despite knowing how hard they had worked to become themself. They thought of the way it was not right to blame her for this, of all the books and the poems and the movies that outlined the messiness of grief and the blamelessness of those stuck in its throes. But what of Baz, then? What of their grief? What of the identity they held onto by their fingernails, gripping it so tightly it hurt?

They had never been particularly good at knowing when to put their foot down. They wanted, so badly, to be loved, that they would accept crumbs and call it a meal. Jenny could have been less kind, and Baz would have been just as devoted to her. She could have treated them worse, and they would have cared with the same fire burning hot in their chest. Perhaps she even knew that, on some level, but it hadn’t mattered. Jenny treated them as a person, yes, but there was more to it than that, too. Jenny treated them as a person worth knowing. Jenny wanted Baz to be Baz, and never once expected them to be anyone else. They smiled as she said their name, tacked my partner onto the end of it like it was something she was proud of. That giddiness in their chest grew lighter, until no metaphor could properly capture the weightlessness of it. They could have floated off into space, they were sure of it. 

“It’ll be ours,” they added. “The parts that are better, the parts that are worse, all of it. It’ll be ours. That’s the thing that matters. It’s never going to be perfect; it doesn’t need to be. As long as it’s us, J, it’ll be exactly what I need.” What they both needed, Baz hoped, though it felt presumptuous to say. They leaned into the kiss, letting their fingers come up to tangle in her hair as they did so. They were careful, though; this couldn’t be the same hungry kiss they’d shared in the shed at the golf course, where a spot of blood on their lips had nearly ruined everything. It was a delicate thing, soft and gentle. They didn’t want this moment to get away from them; they wanted to live in it forever.

—

There had been the fantasy between them, started up months ago. When immortality had only been a dream (and a whole lot of trauma) away, and Baz and her had spoken of forever as a promise that the universe owed them. It had seemed so simple then, the idea of them together for an indeterminable and interminable time. When possibility had only been just that, Jenny had thought of it with ease. Baz would be on her side for centuries to come. They would reinvent themselves side by side, move through cities and countries with fervor. They’d create and delight.

She wondered what had added a more complicated layer to that. Had it been Thanksgiving? Or had been when she’d bitten down on their finger and died a few weeks later? All those events had occurred in such rapid succession that it was hard to put a finger on the exact source of conflict. Of course, the biggest trouble was her wanting to devour Baz fully and wholly (though not at this second), but was that trouble not only there because the two of them had laid in that bed and almost kissed in a way that meant something? 

She did not doubt that Baz would be on her side for the years to come. Sometimes, she did doubt if there would be many years to come. Slayers had spared her now, but there was a possibility where she would end like her sire. In an explosion of blood after a stake drilled through her heart. She was a serial killing monster at this point, even if she wasn’t one passionately. By all rules of fictional and perhaps even real hunters, she was a stain on humanity, a threat to the order of things. Jenny preferred not to think about how long she truly was for this world now that she had died and could not control the corpses created by her hands and tongue.

Baz would be there. Despite the bodies. For however long it lasted. And now it seemed, that Baz would not just be there as a friendly companion, as a best friend, but as a partner. They spoke in poetry again, putting flowers to the thing that they could be. Wasn’t it sweet, the idea that she could be part of something so beautiful? 

When they kissed, she did not pull back so swiftly. She let it linger, her thumb on their cheekbone. Her hunger was ravishing and fierce, lighting something in the pit of her that demanded she lean in further. She pulled back in stead, feeling something tug at her stomach for her self-denial. “You’re amazing,” she said, inhaling slowly so Baz’ scent would not overwhelm her. She needed the breath to speak, though. “And … we will figure it out.” She pressed down her teeth on her lips, glad that she was not blessed/cursed with sharp, vampiric canines unless ferocious. She kept her thumb on their cheekbone for a moment, before running it behind their ear and resting it in their neck. “I …” She had to speak clearly, stop using so much breath for empty sentences. “Do you want it to be exclusive? Or do you want … or need to see other people?” 

The use of need felt so ugly there and she resented herself, for how insecure she sounded when asking it. She had gone over this in her mind. The reality of being with Baz and potentially not being able to meet their needs. Jenny was not interested in anyone else at present, but she knew aplenty about ethical polyamory to consider it an option for the two of them. She wanted to raise it. She wondered if it was crude of her to do it now, but the words had been spilled. So she just looked at them, forcing her teeth to let go of her lip.

—

The future was not something Baz thought of often. They preferred to live in whatever moment was happening in front of them, preferred to focus only on what they could see. A thing wasn’t real unless you could touch it, after all, didn’t exist unless you could run your fingers gently over its surface and feel every small bump and indentation that existed there. Thinking of the future would only ever bring them back to thoughts of their own timeline stretching out indefinitely and the timelines of those they loved tapering off along the way. They knew, logically, that they would lose Joel one day. They knew that bugbears did not live forever (they’d asked him more than once if he was sure, as if they could change biology through pleading), and that there would come a day when old age would take him even if he managed to avoid everything else that might try. They’d heard that spellcasters could pull a few strings to lengthen their own lives, but they did not think Rosemary would coax her magic into keeping her alive indefinitely. She wasn’t the type. Molly and Luc and every silly human they’d befriended would die long before Baz did, and the thought of it made their stomach churn. Someday, even if not for decades still, they would begin to lose people.

But they would not lose Jenny. Her dream of immortality had felt like a crushing relief when she’d announced it to them, a hall pass from the anticipatory grief that they so often shut their eyes to. They’d always been certain she’d achieve her goal, though they hadn’t thought it would happen in the way it did. Even so, they could not mourn the way they probably should have. Jenny had had her humanity stolen from her. It had been violent, it had been terrifying, and she probably regretted ever feeling the desire, but Baz didn’t. Baz didn’t care if there was blood on her hands, didn’t mind if she tore people to shreds every now and again so long as they didn’t bear witness to the violence. Baz cared only that she was here, and she would remain. Baz cared only about the fact that, centuries from now, they would not be alone. And it was selfish, they knew. It was a terrible thing to feel. But they could not fathom losing her, and now they didn’t have to. They could be this, forever. Until the sun died out, until the oceans boiled into dirt, until the planet exploded and took everyone with it, it could be Baz and Jenny. How could they apologize for celebrating that fact?

Of course, it could have been easier. If she were the more traditional sort of vampire, they could have fucked on the floor of her living room free from the concern that she might accidentally turn into a beast that knew only hunger, that saw Baz only as meat and veins. But nothing was perfect, was it? They didn’t want Jenny for her body, even if they had always appreciated the shape of it. They didn’t fall for her because of some promise of the pair of them being together physically, even if they had often thought about that. The best part of Jenny, to Baz, was that she was Jenny. They cared more for the girl who forced them to sit and listen to her poetry after they’d hogged the open mic than they did for the mostly imagined feeling of her body against theirs. Her lips felt good when they met Baz’s, to be sure, but that was not all they thought about. It wasn’t the near kiss at Thanksgiving or the careful crashing of tongues at midnight on New Year’s Eve that made their heart stutter, it was the conversations that had led to both. That was why they wanted her. That was why they felt the way they felt.

They smiled into the kiss, reveling in the feeling of her hand on their face. How often had they dreamed of being touched like this, with so much gentleness? They wanted to shout it from the rooftops, point to it as proof that so many people had been wrong. There were people out there who were capable of caring for them, despite. And those people were wonderful. They imagined rubbing it in their father’s face, imagined showing him the life they’d built for themself here and earning something in return, some confession that he’d been wrong all those years. They knew they’d never get that, but the fantasy was a good one. “I am amazing,” they replied, and it didn’t burn their tongue the way it normally might have because she said it first. “And so are you.”

But of course, the conversation couldn’t be entirely kisses and compliments. There were logistics to figure out; things to settle on. If they wanted this to work, they needed to outline the expectations early on, needed to be honest with one another. Baz considered Jenny’s question and wondered, with a pang, if she wanted them to say no. Had she been someone else, they might have done it. They might have fed her the answer they thought she wanted to hear rather than telling her the truth and sat on the stomachache that followed just to make sure she’d stay. But Baz did not want to lie to Jenny. They didn’t want to start this off that way. “I’m not sure I’d say need,” they said thoughtfully. “But… I think it’d be easier for me if things were more open. Not for the romantic bits. That’s all yours. The sex, though…” They trailed off, letting it hang. They needed to be touched, needed to have people run their hands over the surface of their body, feel the bumps and crevices that made them real. And yet… “I’d give it up if you asked me to. But if it’s all right with you…”

—

The lines between all types of desire so easily blurred for Jenny from time to time. She had had one night stands where she had deluded herself into loving the person on top of her, where she imagined life and death with them only to forget about them within a month. She’d been in committed relationships where her affectations had been fleeting and unstable, but she had never wavered in her sexual attraction to her. Most of the time, it all came down to wanting to be desired. To be thought beautiful and attractive, someone worth going out of ones way for, someone worth loving. To be chosen, maybe, even if for a night. 

With Baz, she knew the desire was there. Even if she had doubted it from time to time, even if there were days where she was holed up in her house hiding from the sun without the ability to sleep, pondering how they could possibly still feel an interest for her. No longer was she the woman who could go out and steal holy water from a church with them, or even able to have a bottomless brunch at a reasonable hour. Never mind the burning hunger for their blood, the monstrosity she had become after her death, the bodies left to decay after their first date. It made no sense and though there were endless amounts of ways to wax poetic about attraction and desire not making sense, she found little interest in those right now. Her diary though, had been smeared with those kinds of platitudes.

Right now, she was touching Baz. He was underneath her fingertips, warm and alive but not in the way a mortal human was. Even though the conversation was steering into the more logistical, less dizzying subjects, she was glad to feel him there. Their heartbeat thrummed underneath their skin, but she was being good about it. The question of monogamy and the future of their relationship was distracting enough from the thoughts of delving into Baz deeper.

Because she knew that there was a form of desire that could not be met, not complete. There would be ways for them to discover a sexual life together, perhaps, but it would be slow and steady and awkward and fun. She had confirmation now that Baz’ desire for her was there and perhaps that could be enough, but she did not want them to go untouched as she did now. Their hands on her were intoxicating enough, considering that most other people she had touched as of late were the people she’d killed. Jenny waited for their answer, knowing that a part of her would envy Baz for the freedom they had, but trying to quell her resentment before it could even rise. “I wouldn’t ask that of you,” she said swiftly, and it wasn’t because she wanted to simply appease Baz now. She had raised the option because she had considered it already. “That’s why I’m … raising it. I’ve thought about it. I would be okay with it.” What she wanted, was what they had said just now — that the romantic bits were hers. That their future was etched not just in a deep friendship, but a romantic relationship too. “Guess Aunt Sheryl had it right all along, hm?” She grinned, a little dopey, hoping to release the tension that had entered her chest region.

—

There were few people Baz could be genuine with. Joel had always been one of them, was one of the few who knew the parts of Baz that others saw only the barest glimpses of. Sebastian had gotten it in halves, was fed lies of omission and allowed to assume things that Baz had known were false but had not wanted to correct him on. In Wicked’s Rest, the number had grown, but only partially. There were people who knew Baz was fae, but not what kind. There were people who knew they were a doppelganger, but not what it meant for him. There were so few who knew anything at all of their father and the situation they had come from, next to none who knew that they’d spent the first two and a half decades of their life nameless and without any permanent identity to call their own. 

This was an intentional thing, of course. Baz had learned that, sometimes, the best way to make someone love you was to show them a mirror. They’d learned that the path towards affection was often agreeing with everything a person said, letting yourself voice only the thoughts they wanted to hear. When they’d gone on a date with a man from Brighton who’d liked football, they had liked football, too. When they’d been trying to befriend a woman in their art class who’d enjoyed American soap operas, they’d binged thirty episodes of melodrama in a day, forgoing sleep in order to build enough of a foundation to build upon. No one wanted to hear about your tragedies; no one wanted to know the things you’d suffered. That made a conversation strained, made it harder for a stranger to relate to you. And Baz wanted, so badly, for people to relate to them. They wanted, more than anything, to belong.

And of course, things with Jenny had started just the same. She had wanted to be a vampire, and so they had encouraged her. She had wanted to steal holy water from a church, and so they had distracted a priest and filled small plastic bottles to the brim. But, as it had with Joel, something had shifted somewhere along the way. So many of the things Jenny enjoyed weren’t things Baz needed to pretend to enjoy alongside her, nor were they things that the doppelganger convinced themself were among their interests in order to maintain the relationship. Jenny liked poetry and art and most days, poetry and art were the realest thing Baz knew about themself. 

There was a time not long ago when they would have told Jenny what they thought she wanted to hear. They would have said sex was utterly unimportant to them and ignored the way the lie burned their tongue and tied knots in their stomach, would have swallowed whatever desire they felt until it made them burst. They would have accepted unhappiness because they would have thought it the only way to ensure that Jenny kept them around at all, would have been certain that that was how they belonged. Like learning the different positions on the football pitch, or consuming more cheesy soaps than they could rightly stomach, they would have molded parts of themself like clay to better reflect the person they thought Jenny might enjoy more. The fact that they weren’t doing that was a testament of how they felt, a show of trust. Baz could show Jenny something real, and she would not turn her head away in disgust. Baz could be a version of themself not easy to swallow, and Jenny would not leave. 

There was something undeniably exhilarating about it. They weren’t sure they’d ever felt it before. 

“Okay,” they breathed in quiet relief, feeling as though their heart might burst. Something warm was inside their chest, and it spread down to the tips of their toes and the ends of their fingers. They wanted to touch her again, to spread that warmth to her, too, and so they did. Their hand came to cup the side of her face, slid down so their fingers met the fine hair at the top of her neck. They smiled, letting out a small, delighted huff of air. “I always liked Aunt Sheryl,” they said. “Yeah, she’s a smart one. Very clever. I’ve always said, we should be listening to Aunt Sheryl.” Baz, of course, knew nothing about Aunt Sheryl beyond the fact that she’d mistaken the pair of them for a romantic item at Jenny’s family Thanksgiving but in the moment, with the giddiness of the conversation making everything light, they’d decided that was enough. 

—

Baz was cupping her face as if it was something precious and Jenny let herself believe that to be true. Through their eyes, she could be. Through their eyes, the deaths at her hands were only notes in the margins of her life, not the full and important story. She looked at Baz and wondered if there was something to be said about their acceptance of her, the fact that they could still want all this even if her desire for them already had a body count. The wrong kind.

But she was selfish and not that good at being a good person, so she let her face be cupped and she let herself feel precious in Baz’ hands. The months after the upior attack had left her feeling touch starved and lonely, even with the continuous presence of someone like Baz in her life. She had not been held as much, had not entertained herself with the usual spontaneity that ruled her life before. No sexual escapades, no booping and flicking people for the fun of it, a limited amount of hugs. She wanted to be held, to be looked at with desire, to relish in the comfort that came with Baz’ playing with her hair.

“I don’t like her one bit,” she said back, smiling still, “She’s a bitter old backwards lady, but she might be wise about some things…” She rolled her eyes playfully, resting her hand at the nape of Baz’ neck. “Totally don’t wanna think about her now though. Would much rather just look at you and call you my partner over and over again. Like, oh my God, I can totally introduce you as that now.” She changed the tone of her voice to something more mockingly formal, “Hello sir, I’m Jenny and this is my partner Baz, who is not just a looker, but an artistic talent you only see once every generation.” 

Her lips were spread widely and she giggled softly, though it wasn’t because she didn’t think any of the things she had said to be untrue. She was simply giddy with the prospect in front of her. Not only was there her play coming soon, which would fill her with enough amusement and inspiration for at least a few months — but now there was the promise of Baz on her side in a romantic manner as well. Exploration would continue to come, but at least there was something definitive about it now.

Jenny leaned forward and kissed them swiftly, not wanting to get lost in her giddiness the way she had at the minigolf court but still wanting some proximity. “Thank you for asking me over. I’m glad we … yeah, that we did the big adult talk. Very glad.”

—

“Oh, I always hated Aunt Sheryl,” Baz replied, changing their tune immediately so the chorus matched the one Jenny was singing. With most people, this was a defense mechanism. You agreed with them because agreeing with them made them more likely to appreciate you, more likely to love you. Baz had been doing it all their life — swallowing their tongue and letting someone else’s take its place, telling their father he was right even as he belittled them, fawning over their mother as she ignored them, nodding along with their brother as he spoke utter nonsense. It felt different with Jenny, though; less like a defense mechanism, more like a game. They weren’t agreeing with her so that she’d like them, they were doing it because they liked her. It was the sort of sensation they’d only ever felt towards Joel before, a deep devotion built not from the fear of being left behind but rather from the appreciation of being kept close. “She’s a nutter, that one. But you know what they say about broken clocks! I suppose her being right had to come eventually!”

Their grin — already splitting their face to the extent that it was almost painful — only widened as Jenny continued on. They were her partner now, and that was a sort of marvel, wasn’t it? Baz had been referred to in such terms before, but only ever fleetingly. They were a partner until a better one came along, a boyfriend or a girlfriend to someone who liked them in pieces but turned their nose up at the full picture. It was different, with Jenny. Never before had Baz had someone who wanted them after learning who they were. Never before had they been cared for in the romantic sense after they were known. “It’s grand, isn’t it?” They moved to stand beside her, slinging an arm around her shoulder and throwing their other arm forward, gesturing to the empty air in front of them as if painting a sign there. “My girlfriend, Jenny. My sugarplum. My sweatpea. Honeybun!” Excitement thrummed in their chest, their heart fluttering against their ribs. 

“Oh, I can’t wait to drop it into smalltalk. ‘She’s a playwright, my Jenny! You can catch her show at the theatre! I’ve a seat in the front row, of course, so I probably won’t see you there — only celebrities can afford those seats, they’re very sought after. Play of the century, and all. Maybe you’ll see us on the telly when the Tonys coverage starts. She’ll be wearing a lovely dress.’ A bit of an unrealistic fantasy, maybe, considering Jenny’s inability to feel comfortable in crowds these days. But in a few years, maybe, things would be different. She’d have better control, she’d be more established, and Baz would be there, still, at her side, as long as that was where she wanted them. They weren’t one to think to the future, hardly ever saw beyond whatever moment they were living in, but it was easier to do with Jenny. They could imagine it as vividly as a painting.

Her lips met theirs in a brief kiss, and Baz smiled against them. “Yeah,” they agreed. “Me, too.” There were other things they needed to speak about, of course. Sooner or later, they’d need to tell her about Sebastian, need to be more open about their father and what they had done for him, need to tell her every terrible thing that might make her hate them. But wasn’t it okay to bask in this moment for now? To kiss her and enjoy it, to think of nothing else? Baz nodded, tangling their fingers absently in her hair. “Yeah,” they agreed, “I am, too. We did a great job, didn’t we? We’re very mature.” They grinned, leaning in to steal another quick kiss.

—

As casual as the mention of Sheryl was – just a little callback to a time in another life – Jenny suddenly felt herself weighed down by it. Her aunt was a cranky, divorced bitch who didn’t understand the nuances of gender, sure, but she would probably never see her again. And though it was kind of funny, that the last time she had seen her would be the time where she had mistaken Baz for her boyfriend, it also kind of stung. She had known, when she’d been chasing vampirism, that she’d have to turn her back on her family. But she had imagined a gradual process, rather than the situation she was in now. Ever doubting if she should orchestrate some kind of last time where she could ensure she would not devour a sister, parent or worse come to worse, a nibling.

“Mostly right. Not quite my boyfriend. Or not just my boyfriend,” she said, testing out what terms would fit Baz best. Partner sounded so mature, so definitive, and yet she liked the feel of that. The lighter and more youthful ease of boyfriend (or even girlfriend) also seemed right, though. It was hard for something to feel wrong, now that they had decided to make their relationship an official one. 

The sting of her family – growing older, veins pumping with delicious and desirable blood, a few states away – was softened swiftly. Jenny had no time to unpack what it actually entailed, her would-be abandonment, especially considering the absence of her parents in her childhood (and adult life). But she knew this: there was something here now, in front of her, that would fill whatever hole might follow immortality. She had some people here that she could call family, even if she found the whole concept of found family rather unbecoming. Family disappointed and agitated — the friends and partner she had in town now, might be better than that.

Words of affection left Baz’ mouth, and though there had never been a shortage of nicknames between them, these made her smile even more. “Those are some mighty titles,” she said, beaming with excitement. Her face cracked into some laughter as Baz pretended to brag about her, and she pulled them to her so she could look at them better. “You can’t wait? I can’t wait! My Baz, the painter, whose works are so coveted that people keep an empty space on their walls for years, just waiting for their chance at an original Baz on their wall!” Jenny foresaw a future that might be filled with success and creativity. For a moment, it seemed like the only future there could ever be, rather than the ones she pictured when she was alone in the bath or her bedroom.