you're too young & eager to love

I wanted to explore the new Mischa-Addison-fledgling triangle. The usual pacing problems occur, but I'm trying to work on that, honest.

1125 words!




A woman with pale hair and similarly pale skin sits on the couch, trailing her nails across the tops of her breasts as though something has irritated her skin. In truth, it’s only a grazing gesture. She is still enamored by her body, still fascinated how it can be the same yet entirely different.

You come home to this. A woman in your small living room, a creature that you still classify as a stranger, occupying a space that does not belong to her. She shifts her dramatic eyes in a way that suggests you have disturbed her, interrupted her, and a warm heat of anger blossoms in your chest. You throw your purse on the nearest table, and it’s Mischa that retrieves your apartment keys when they slip out and clatter to the floor.

“I don’t want her here.” You say pointedly, looking past Mischa to stare at the undead female.

“Where should she go?”

“A cemetery. She smells like fucking rot.” You have a sharpness to your voice, a detail that only arrives in these moments, the rare occasions when your temper erases your logic and kindness. You are commonly a sensible woman, a graceful thing, almost otherworldly in your own right, but you are painfully human now.

On the couch, the vampire laughs. It echoes dry, like the husk of a sound, an imitation.

Mischa’s eyes are weary but further, deeper, there is still a simmering of rage - a reaction from your infidelity, proof that he has neither forgotten nor forgiven. He has been dead for too long; he does not remember how heavy a grudge can become. (Or perhaps he does, because the sound of the woman’s laughter strikes him in a place that no longer beats. The very proximity of her disturbs him. The simple pull of her blood, his blood, eternal and strong, animating her body, is a cruel reminder of what cannot be undone.)

“Addison.” He breathes out your name so beseechingly that you want to press yourself against his chest, take comfort in his carrion coldness.

Instead, you tell him that you do not care, cannot even fathom caring, and pretend not to notice how his reaction is to watch the raising pulse of your neck.

-

In your room, you pull your covers up to your chin and curl yourself into the fetal position. You are realizing how your home feels different. You think the silence is too heavy, and you wonder if they do not need to communicate with words anymore, if they speak to each other as equals in ways that you will never be able to comprehend. You feel unsure and so much sadder than you thought you would. There’s a minute part of you that feels envious, and you are sure you should be frightened by that.

You used to be proud of your heartbeat.

You used to bristle at how Mischa would watch you, the heavy bulk of his gaze, how he was able to lay claim to you without ever needing to place so much as a finger on you. You thought you could feel the drag of his eyes over your neck, or the soft tender paths of your wrists, or the sculpted inner curves of your thighs where the blood in your veins ran thickest and fastest. You would stretch yourself bare before him, hiding your laughter behind your hand, blushing with heat and nervousness, until your entire body started to tremble from the staggering weight of his eyes.

And then you would tremble more, trusting him and his strength, his body unusually warm and responsive from the kill (you knew, you always knew, that his intimacy came with a vicious price). He has the mouth of a woman, full and too soft, and he would press it to your calves, the backs of your knees, the insides of your arms as you shook and shook and shook. Sometimes, when you thought you might cry with the need for release, he would bring you to the edge swiftly and blessedly cruelly, sinking his fangs in your throat as you rolled your hips and scraped the skin from his back with your nails.

He would soothe you after, his body turning cold by the second with his skin already healed, and you were never sure if immortality would hold such allure. If in gaining an eternity with him you would lose the desire that was only made possible because of your differences, because of your heartbeat.

Eternity sounds different now. It tastes bitter. It is no longer you and him. It is you, him, and her.

When you were a child, your mother used to tell you that misery came in threes. You fall asleep thinking of that and have dreams that are too lightless and confined.

-

In the morning, you wake to the smell of burnt skin.

The woman has undone your blinds and is watching the sunlight filter in against her fingers. The tips have been burnt away to reveal the bone. Before you can respond (though you have surely gasped, made some noise of mounting disgust) Mischa is behind her, his hands on her shoulders, pulling her away and back into the safety of the shadows. By the time she moves aside his hands, her fingers have healed. You saw the skin reform and the white bone quickly disappear like a grotesque magic trick. Dumbly, you think of special effects and horror films.

Your mouth is dry. Your stomach flutters with nausea, and you close your eyes in the hope that everything will just stop.

-

Two days later, your African Grey parrot is dead, drained of all its blood, and you spend too much time cleaning its cage after placing the feathered body in a hatbox. You think about Paul while emptying birdseed into the trash, about his simple mouth and the bright quality of his eyes, how his normalcy is desirable, so why then isn’t it attractive? Your hands turn red from the hot water and bleach, and the smell of antiseptic fills the apartment. You break two nails and your palms turn dry, cracked, until you finally stop scrubbing the small bars, the cage an empty pristine stand in the corner.

The woman watches from the doorway, alive yet so lifeless, and still ravenous. Starving, she thinks, starving, with hunger just a purer form of desire – the world now flooded for her, saturated with color, sound, smell. So far away from sickness that she has almost forgotten the feel of a hospital gown or the pity-thick eyes of nurses.

Mischa’s handsome face is lined. You could have touched it right then. You could have smoothed the skin, but you don’t.

-