you're too young & eager to love

I’ve been working on this for the past four days or so, roughly. Tweaking stuff and adding details. I wanted to explore possible troubles and trials that Addison and Mischa would have to deal with throughout their relationship. Though it turned more into one specific trouble. Hm.

Anyway, I suppose you could say that this was my attempt to work on my storytelling, pacing, various character points of views, and length. Because I’m ambitious like that. I will warn my reader(s) ahead of time – there is way too much figurative language in this thing. What can I say? Vampires bring out my melodramatic side.

Word count: 2,174






-


You love her. You love her.

You were not expecting to. You had only wanted to taste her, before, only wanted to rip her throat and relish in a heart that could fuel such power and dancing. But the emotion had crept upon you like a thief, warping your senses. You feel it like nothing else, a pressure inside of your chest that you cannot shake.

Sometimes, it makes you desperate. A sense of lack of control that you wrestle with containing.

You would blame yourself, but you think blaming her is more honest. You are at ease out here, in this city, in her arched arms, in a way that you never were before. It is not only the skyscrapers of Manhattan that suit you (you do not believe in God, but there is an image to these monstrous monuments that you like – you like how small it makes you feel, minute compared to the vast columns of metal) but the insufferable persistence of her heart.

You are not naïve; you know you will have to take her heart, one day. You will silence her the way you have been silenced.

But not yet.

Addison had introduced herself to you with a smile, one long-fingered hand pushing aside her bangs. You remember thinking that she was too composed for the city, for her dancing, for the night. The slim line of her, faint against the New York skyline. But you watched her for many evenings afterward, unseen and elusive – watched her blonde hair turn in the winter, raking breeze, watched the sweat gather at the dip of her collarbone when she practiced routines, and you found yourself touching that hollow spot on your own body.

You touch the same spot now, your eyes sharp, refusing to leave her face. She’s biting her lip, and you can smell her nervousness. If you drank from her now, she would taste like cloves and despair. Still, when she looks at you, you cannot help but appreciate the compactness of her, of her body and what she does with her face, those small sharp expressions that slide into a smile even when she’s troubled.

Addison stands up quickly, easily, and lights a cigarette. “I … I may not be able to do this anymore, Mischa.”

You are impassive but slowly the monster inside of you raises its brutal head. You feel your fangs extend.

“What life is this? Really?” She asks, imploring but rhetorical, the tears darkening her eyes. Sticking to her eyelashes and wetting her cheeks until she hurriedly brushes them away. “I can’t … We live in our own world. I’m living two lives, you know. I come home to you, and it can be suffocating. Then I leave, and I can’t remember how to function sometimes. It’s like you’re all around me, still. But I’ll get old, or I’ll be hit by a car, or I’ll be dropped by a partner and my leg will be broken beyond repair and then what? Then what?”

You run your hand through your hair. It is a deceivingly human gesture – one of the many you have learned to adopt. Your voice shakes, irritating you. “… You’re mine.”

Addison laughs, short, humorless. “No, no I’m not. You can’t own people.”

“I could have killed you.” You don’t mean it as a threat; at least, you don’t think you do.

Snubbing her cigarette out, you watch as she smiles, slow and a little leisurely. “You still could, Mischa. But I don’t think you will.”

You close your eyes, and you do not want to open them. But you do, and there she is, in front of you. She’s still smiling, and she reaches out to brush her warm fingers across your hairline, presses a kiss to the corner of your jaw. “I need time.”

Time, for you, is infinite. But so is your greed.


-


With your cheek against his, you try to memorize his coldness. When you turn to look at Mischa, he’s coiled almost like a predator, a great cat lying in wait. He gazes at you for another moment before leaning forward with a swift efficiency, pushing effortlessly into your space, although you have not given him permission to do so. With a kind of growl in the back of his throat, he wraps his white fingers around the stretch of your neck and kisses you, fierce and unbounded, nose dragging through the tracks of tears on your cheek, tongue slick and bearing a kind of heat that is in no way like a corpse. Something that burns.

You put your hands on as much of his slender hips as you can reach, pulling him close. As close to you as you can get him until, his arctic hand moving down your stomach, you make a strangled kind of sound. You are the one that sounds catlike now, the vision of your world narrowing down to Mischa against you, focusing on the shadow of him against your wallpaper. When his fingers press and curl up inside of you, you press yourself down onto him in the darkness of your apartment. It has blinded you, but you know that he can still see.

When you wake in the morning, he has been gone for some time.

For a moment, you do not know what to do.

-


Three weeks later, you see Addison entering a swank, new restaurant. You are not surprised – you have been looking for her, in the sense that you have been following her, and you do not try to deny it. She is on the arm of a tall, broad, bearded man.

You are embarrassed by what the sight of her with him does to you, (because it matters that she smiles so prettily and laughs heartily, her arm looped around his) the way it seems to rob you of the use of your legs for a moment, and you can sense how his pulse is dry – from his heart to his throat. You resent her for making you feel like this, for taking control of your own body away from you and into her own delicate, deliberate hands. She does not look up, does not see you.

You follow them inside, and the restaurant is dark, intimate, and full of shadows. When she heads for the bathroom, you corner her against a discreet wall, half-hidden by kitchen curtains and angles. Addison looks at you like you are a puzzle she has not been able to solve yet, and you want her like you have never wanted anyone, want her to want you. She smells like him, this new man of hers. A partner of heat and warm blood and breakable skin.

Her eyes are bright. Her face is the same.

When you take her into a blocked-off alcove deeper in the restaurant, she does not complain. Just looks at you before, finally, she leans against the wall, her violet dress smoothing against her thighs. “I really don’t know what to do about you, you know.” She says, bemused, not quite to you, exactly. She’s not looking you in the eyes anymore; she seems to be fixed a little below them, at your lips.

“I’m sorry.” You murmur, unrepentant. Addison gets a red flush on her cheeks, down her neck, and you think: that is because of me. I put that there.

What you cannot tell, however, is that Addison feels her spine trembling, her soul shaking. You think only that she is yours, she is yours, she is yours, and she reaches forward for you. It’s the smallest act, but it’s all you need for you to take her curved hips between your hands, and she is kissing you, kissing you, and you nudge her thighs apart, forcing them around you. She sighs into your mouth, one of her hands grabbing at the shoulder of your jacket with her tiny fist, and then you sink your fangs into her throat. Addison groans, and she’s not looking at anything anymore, not really, her hands shaking.

Something inside of you roars when her fingers slip into your hair and press you closer. Sparks behind your eyes, and you have not known such brightness in years. She is wincing a little, but you don’t think you’ve ever seen anything as beautiful as her open pink mouth, the way her hair falls into her eyes, and you push your palm against her lips to keep her from crying out.

You want nothing but this, forever, need nothing but her, around you, pulsing, her heart like a hot, terrible thing you cannot conquer.

“Mischa,” she says when it’s over, fumbling to smooth her dress, running her fingers through her hair and looking a little pale. She doesn’t look at you when she pulls herself together, straightening, and leaving the alcove. You lean back against the wall, feeling broken, feeling numbed despite the heat reigniting your veins.

That old fear, coming back to you, as she disappears from your sight.

-


His name is Paul, and he does not ask why you are quiet for the remainder of the meal.

He comes back with you to your apartment, even though it’s almost midnight. It’s dark, and you don’t switch on the lights for a few minutes, and you don’t check the messages on your phone or sit down or offer him a drink. You can’t really gather yourself enough to sit.

You laugh with nervousness, and your fingers flex against your palms, and you jostle his elbow to cover the embarrassment of being so awkward. It’s partially a lie; you’re not really thinking of Paul, not much, even though he’s kind and helps you out of your coat.

He stands over six feet tall. He’s not ordinary, but you’re hard pressed to find something extraordinary about him too. You like that. Or you thought you did.

“I’m not really looking for anything serious.” You blurt out as he drapes his coat, and yours, over the back of a chair.

“I’d never assume you were,” he promises.

He makes a joke but something about his face registers a kind of relief, which is probably a terrible thing in a man, really, but it comforts you.

You grin. It’s the kind of grin that sets off bushfires. Standing in front of him, you take your dress off right there, by the entrance of your home, undoing the back and stepping lightly out of it. The moonlight is thin and harsh, but it gathers around the soft curves of your waist, your legs, and Paul stops breathing a little when your long arms reach around for the clasp on your bra. You’re used to that, the silence of his throat.

His palms swallow your hips. That is strange to you, as is the warmth of his hands. He tightens his touch, tugging you up a bit, and he laughs a little, a full whiskeyed sound that shudders against you when he kisses you. Paul bites your mouth, gently, teeth sinking into the full flesh of your lower lip. His fingers dig deep into your sides, thumbs pressing into the cave of your waist, just past the bone – firm and almost painful.

You sleep with him, but you’re not entirely sure why. You couldn’t explain it if someone asked you.


-


It is four nights later when Addison sees you, sitting next to her kitchen table and flipping through a magazine.

She doesn’t ask how you were able to get in. Criminals can pick locks in this city, so she suspects it’s much easier for a vampire. Her hair is pulled back in a bun, and there’s still a light sheen of sweat on her from dance rehearsal.

“Hey,” she says before unzipping her jacket and heading to the wine rack propped near the table. She pours herself a glass of merlot, and you one too – for good measure. Taking a sip, her mouth is darkened. She does not sit beside you but across from you, tracing designs on the table with her shell colored nails.

When you reach over to tuck a stray piece of her hair behind her ear, she does not turn away. She smiles instead, rolling her shoulders in a sigh. “I won’t stop asking things from you, you know.”

You do.

You will fall more desperately in love with her, clinging to her mortality, the parts that you crave most – the dip in her throat, the soft point of skin there, the place where she could so easily be killed, the wings of her scapula, furling out from the long curve of her spine, the juncture of her thigh and pelvis, and the hot sweat that accumulates there when you fuck, the lines etched around the corners of her eyes that appear so suddenly when she smiles.

And Addison will not ask much; she will stretch out beneath you, instead, sweat-shining and raw, and call out your name. She will tempt you with her heart, always.