you're too young & eager to love

More Addison and Mischa. It was supposed to be short. It was supposed to be posted with two other shorts - one for Maharet and one for the hydra.

Italic font is from the past, when they were just getting into their strange relationship. The rest, the normal font, is more current them. I may have flubbed Mischa's vampiric abilities a bit. Also, I wanted to be really graphic with one particular point in this piece to show the detachment of a vampire, but I got uncomfortable by my own idea and backed out by using lots of vague details like a coward. Then it actually gets to the sexy-time and what should have been Addison contemplating on Mischa needing a victim's blood to have sex with her just turned into, you know, half-way erotica.

I feel like when I get length (I got to the 4 page mark, woo!) I end up sacrificing pretty words. For the record. Why can't I have both? -fist shake-






These are the young days.
They are fresh and foreign and terrifying.

“Can you levitate?” She asks this over hot chocolate. He only holds his, savoring the warmth and smell. She sprinkled tiny marshmallows over a topping of whipped cream and added a Christmas candy cane for stirring. She has the type of voice that, for all the strangeness of this conversation, is not unhinged.
“Possibly.”
“Would you show me?”
“Here?”
Addison looks around her apartment – the sparsely decorated walls, the comfortable over-sized furniture, the many vases of flowers. “Sure. Unless a cemetery would be more befitting.” She means it be funny, but Mischa stares at her so suddenly that she is uncomfortable. A creeping sensation along the back of her neck. He is unexpectedly beside her, impossibly close, and she gasps before she can help it. There had been a table between them only seconds ago, and now she thinks she can feel the coldness of his skin, but he offers her his hand like a Prince. She accepts, standing, and as she does his feet leave the ground. Her arm follows, pulled up, until he is only inches away from the ceiling and she has to roll up on the tips of her toes to keep a hold of his fingers.
There’s four feet between his shoes and her floor.
“Holy shit.”
Mischa chuckles sounding much younger than his years.




“Eat it.”
“Addison.”
Frustrated, she pivots her weight to one slender, dancer shoulder. She is small but her muscles are precise, her talent noticeable even in the way she points her toes under the table, rather than a finger, in his direction. “Do you know what Caroline did today?”
“… Who’s Caroline?”
“The dancer, with the tattoos? She and her boyfriend went to the movie theater. And tomorrow they’re vacationing to the Bahamas. Heather and Josh – no, you don’t know them, it doesn’t matter – went to the aquarium for the new exhibit. There are five hundred miraculous things to see in this city, but because it’s almost always in the daytime I’m stuck not seeing them. Unless I’d like to savor the experience with a pile of ashes.”
Mischa sighs, very softly, and there’s a weariness about his eyes. He presses his fingers to the side of his forehead, a deceivingly human gesture.
“So, the least you can do is take me out to dinner, like so, and try the steak you just ordered. That I have to pay for, since you’re supposedly too young for a credit card.”
“There is money in the account. I’ve handled that. You know I have.”
Addison’s hand comes down sharply, loudly, on top of the table. A couple nearby glances inquiringly in their direction. She clears her throat, takes a heavy swallow of wine, and fidgets with the silverware. “That’s not the point. I can’t … I won’t ever be able to share my life with you.” This time, her voice mingles sadness and anger, equal sides of both in one tone.
She is aware, as is he, what they seem like to all the others. A young woman that looks lovely in the restaurant’s dim lighting, wearing an expensive dress that cuts drastically across her thighs, her hair loose and diamonds in her ears. She is accompanying, perhaps, her visiting brother or a family friend that sits across from her, younger by a few years. The man-boy that cannot order alcohol and has yet to drink from his glass of water. Arguing over a family matter or impending college choices. Young but curiously well-mannered, because he helps her into her coat when they stand to leave, both their food untouched. What they don’t see is that only her appetite alone is spoiled by the conversation.


She smokes a cigarette with him during the walk home. Her heels are thin, making sharp noises on the treacherous ground. There is ice, and she hides behind her emotions, inside a coat and scarf. He says nothing, but when she slips, at once, he has already moved, catching her by the elbow and steadying her balance. Addison murmurs a thank you, but closes herself immediately afterward. He could pry her open, if he wanted. Search her mind and find the thoughts that she doesn’t wish to share – her mind that goes to dark places and deep fears.
Pulling her collar up, closer to her face, she keeps her gaze down. She is a dancer, accustomed to an audience and meeting the stares of a thousand nameless faces, but now she cannot meet just his eyes and his alone. There is a grief suffocating her, weighing down her hopes and making her dreams seem idle. Their differences are absurd, ridiculous. Even in the way they walk – Addison loud in her shoes, the whisper of her dress against her skin, the harshness of her breathing, while Mischa defines silence. His feet don’t even seem to be touching the street though surely they are, they must be.
There’s a warmth starting in her lower spine. It distracts her, briefly, barely. A fleeting awareness of the sensation.
She thinks of aging, how even now she is getting closer to dying while he remains the same. There could be an accident, some fall on the stage, or a car crash during a blistering summer day. She could die in the hospitable before he is able to reach her. She pushes her hands into her pockets and looks at him unwillingly. That warmth is creeping up her back now, almost reaching her neck. She notices the full weight of his mouth, the cut of his cheekbones. He meets her eyes, touches the sleeve of her coat. Addison wants to press herself against him, here, on this almost empty street, on a night as regular as any other. She has a distinct desire; she wants to rest her cheek against him and feel the silence of his chest, wants his arms to be like heavy steel around her waist, binding her to him. It would be easy to do, those two steps into his personal space, and the warmth sliding up and over her shoulders as she starts to lean towards him.
Why had she been angry, hurt? Fury gone cold, sitting heavy in her stomach. Ignored now as his fingers dip beneath the coat sleeve and touch, affectionately, her pulse. That rhythm that had, just minutes ago, been racing and now has slowed to thick molasses. Tired too, a sort of haze that is similar to waking from a dream. Doesn’t matter though, does it? Couldn’t matter.
She takes a step, and the flat front of her shoe slides on the ice. Only an inch. Only enough to give her a heartbeat’s second of panic. Mischa has her arm again, but it’s too late. Too sudden and she blinks, blindingly aware of the winter cold, of the darkness, and of his penetrating eyes.
Her anger, swift as a hurricane, returns. More abundant as she, aghast, pulls her arm back. This is not a quiet restaurant, this a street, so she raises her voice as loud as she pleases. “Don’t! Don’t do that!”
The vampire, frowning, puts his hands in front of him. Briefly elegant for a creature perpetually stuck in the body of a teenager.
“Are you just going to – what the fuck is it called – glamour every argument we have away? That’s not … you can’t do that … you can’t.” Tears now, heavy in her eyes and voice, but when he tries to comfort her she snarls like a beast, like his inner animal. “Go home, Mischa. Go into the ground for all I care. Go.”




She sits with him, almost every night. She perches on one of the chairs like it’s not quite solid, hands twisted, beautiful and crumpled like a caged bird.
“Why didn’t you … “ She has trouble forming the words. It’s an odd topic to broach. She’s learning to trust, and she feels silly, naïve, for that. She should be running, hiding beneath her blankets. He was supposed to be myth and legend, not tactile and charming.
“Your dancing.”
Addison laughs, a rippling waterfall noise. “That’s relatively creepy, not romantic.”
He laughs too, surprising himself. “Better than the alternative.”




It takes him a long time to start talking. In the beginning, he was interested in her. Everything, as though the tiny details made up a larger story, pieced together the whole of what he imagined she could be. Strange things too, like how she could enjoy the texture of a pear, or why she wasn’t afraid to go walking in the city at night. She was patient, enthralled, but now she asks him things softly, a sheep’s voice amongst wolves.
“What does it feel like to die?”
He shrugs, shoulders moving more backward than up. “I can’t really remember.” The break in his voice would make her smile if the subject wasn’t so serious. “Like a whirlwind, I guess. You feel less than you would think.”
Her and him talking about these things over 'The Price is Right', like it’s normal. Addison from in the kitchen where she’s making sandwiches, calling out that they were out of mayonnaise, never mind that he didn't really even need a sandwich or that he could have ripped her throat open. Sandwiches sitting on a tray all neat in a row. Two of them and his with a toothpick in it because he'd once told Addison that he hated tomatoes, and she didn't want to accidentally put them on his sandwich.



She answers the door in pink sweatpants, the modern kind that hang low on her hips. Her hair could be unbrushed. She has on one of those simple cotton t-shirts she often sleeps in, the kind that Mischa loves because the fabric is so easy to shred. It’s two in the morning; she wasn’t expecting him.
Addion’s eyes are tired and she’s sore, aching in all the feminine places.
He stares at her in the hallway, leaning his weight on the door to close it, heavily, once he has come inside. He may be smirking, may be amused. She knows the pace of his gaze, that predatory gleam. Indignant, she places her hands on her hips, arching an eyebrow. “What?”
When he doesn’t say anything she laughs, uneasy. He moves too quickly - in the way she has come to understand but still detests. It startles her, especially when she’s steeped in sleep. His fingers on her hips, moving away her own hands, are very, very cold. They make her flesh rise up to meet the touch but she turns a little, unwilling to play the game. He breathes near her ear, inhaling her smell of oranges and iron, the path his hands take dipping forward and below her stomach. Skirting the fabric of her pants, deftly undoing the knot at front.
“Mischa – what …?”
Then she realizes and grabs his wrists tightly, her skin burning hot with a blush. “No.”
He grins, not cruelly, and nips gently at her ear. Just enough for her to feel his teeth. “Why not?” Her mortal embarrassment, the peculiar ways of her vulnerability, baffle him. Entertain him. Amuse him.
“It’s gross, for one. For two, it’s … gross.”
“Less invasive. Less painful for you.”
She makes a noise, an uncomfortable, agonized type of sound. He lets go of her body but when Addison tries to step away, to dismiss the notion, he has her in his arms again. All her easy, light weight, and she squawks like a bird with surprise. He carries her into the bedroom and in an hour she has to change the sheets, still blushing.



Precious, this girl of his. And she is his, now more than any time before. His undead scent like a marking on her skin. His teeth on her body. The routine of their nights, this balance of strange and comfortable.
He wakes her; he is so warm that she is startled, confusing him for an enemy or a threat. Almost as warm as her own flesh, though still tougher, requiring more strength to break. It’s a pleasant surprise. He lifts her shirt from her skin, undoes her hair, follows the path of her trembling form and makes her undulate like a wave. Sweat’s not beading down his spine, his heart's not racing like hers because he's dead, a corpse with a hard-on, forcing air through his lips because the body remembers. It's a small bed and he holds himself up on his elbows, covering her. He's thin and strong, and she looks tanned next to his paleness.
Mischa smells of drying blood, sweat, dust, and the fading perfume of someone else’s decay. Addison breathes him in, opens her eyes, and thinks about dying. She isn’t sure if this does much for him (she assumes that his come is dead, like him), if this is a purely selfless act he does for her physical desires, or if he craves the closeness like she does.
It’s an intimacy dependent on a stranger’s life.
She tries not to think of it.


Mischa had been made too young; he lives more as a vampire than ever as a human. He loves violence, loves death, loves pain. Loves warmth, blood, and the sharp pull of a heart. He feels. He drinks and weeps and fights and fucks. Addison, for all her self-righteous moral glory, doesn't pretend that sex and death aren't lovers.