How the fuck am I the only Ericka/Dracula person to not break them up. These two make a solid couple.

I decided that instead of doing that, I'd have them make out on a lobby desk. I think its a suitable trade.

enjoy

-gal

Ericka stood at the desk, alone. Unless one considered the piles of folders she'd obsessively piled around her as companions of their own kind. Each of them filled with receipts and notes and menus and itineraries and adorned with neat, archaic, graceful text. It was a quirk she soon learned about Dracula; that he refused to use anything less than gold-tipped fountain pens, claiming something of nostalgia. It was his way of dealing with the modern changes of the world, she decided. If he should be made to carry a cellphone and log guests in by means of a computer, then he'd at least find the time to dip pen to ink.

She flipped through them. It was a slow night. Monsters filing in and out lazily, asking for little more than direction or spare towels. He'd long gone to deal with a mess on the third floor (apologizing for having to scuttle away, pressing a kiss to her cheek before leaving her to her own devices).

It was an honor in itself that he trusted her alone with something as important as his hotel. The way he'd said "I'm refiling the finances for the next quarter- files are in the top drawer" without any hint of question fumbling his words, which were (as they always were in the way he commented, the way he spoke, the way he watched and smiled and loved) brewing in respect, were evidence enough that her abilities were unquestioned and clear.

She was familiar with the processes of finance, as she was in most things in the hospitality industry, and so she'd drawn out the files and riled through them, searching out the logs from the past months.

What she'd found was a certain amount of organized chaos. "Whooo boy…" To a degree, they were understandable. Notes with notes. Finances with finances.

And yet…

Ericka rolled her shoulders before grabbing a pen and one of the many markers she kept on hand in the little drawers under the desk. One of the zombie bellhops -Carl was his name? Or maybe Callum?- wandered over and groaned something.

"How did you deal with this?" she asks, patting the piles of folders.

"Auuuuurgurarg" said Clyde/Callum.

"Was there any rhyme or reason?" She picked one up and waved it. "Look at this! No color? No alphabetizing?" Ericka picked open one of them with two pinched fingers like she was dealing with a dead rat and not months worth of massage receipts and pool-related accident reports. "And look at this! Did he date three months out? Did he prioritize dates? Did he converge files? No! Of course not!"

"Auuuugragagalll" sympathized Clyde/Callum.

Ericka slapped down the files. She scrubbed her forehead, pinched the space between her brows, and rubbed her eyes. "How has this Hotel not collapsed yet…" she muttered. "How has this hotel not gone up in flames. Because I can assure you- obsessive color coding is totally integral to the success of any business."

"Aghhhhhhphhhh" agreed Clyde/Callum.

Ericka took a deep breath in, and let it out slowly. "Right," she said, giving the colored markers a determined, long look. "I'll need a coffee, a new box of staples, and a whole lot of hope. Think you can do that?"

"Pfffff" said Clyde/Callum, hobbling off.

Ericka flipped through the folders. There were at least twelve out. All of them, as he'd directed, taken from the top drawer of a blue filing cabinet. But there were three filing cabinets behind her (one blue, two gray), not mentioning the manilla folders and the cheap fold-out capped boxes left along the back wall.

Fixing her hands on her waist, mumbling an old captains sailing prayer, Ericka drew forth whatever strength years battling the high-end luxury seas had bestowed her before throwing herself to task.

Dracula eased through the slim crowd that perused about his hotel, greeting them all with gracious smiles and sharp, stately nods. He hoped the slow gait and hunched shoulders wouldn't give away his exhaustion. It had been a leak in one of the vacant rooms. A burst pipe that needed attending to. And so he'd taken down the serial numbers, talked to the on-site handymen (zombies), and managed to get some sort of estimate on timeframe and payment.

He's grateful to return to the relative safety behind his desk. The lobby was empty by the time he returned, nearly silent except for the telltale sound of paper scraping against paper and the scrape of a pen writing.

The sounds, once he follows them, come from Ericka and a desk hidden beneath folders.

He stepped closer. Cocked his head. "Um…?"

She looked up. "Oh!" Ericka grinned. "Hey there, you! How'd the repairs go?"

"They're going. What are you doing?"

She shrugged. "Light work. Nothing too drastic. Just keeping busy, you know." Pointing across the mounds of folders she'd stripped from the filing cabinets behind the desk (all of them he saw open and empty behind her) she said "I finished the quarterly report, by the way."

"Uh?"

"Don't worry. Ran the numbers three times. We should probably think about cutting buffet expenses. I think we'd be able to pull through next quarter with extra money for pool repairs if we cut back."

"Um?" He blinked. Sliding cautiously into the space behind her, careful not to disrupt the Whatever that was going on in front of her, he nudged open the folder she'd pointed to.

Her own steady handwriting had joined his. Red circles around certain numbers and blue underlines pointing to mistakes he'd made with past calculations.

"Oh, and I also organized your notes. You should really think about donating to an archive or something? These are from… what? 1847?" She poked a set of folders farthest to the left. She'd colored in the tabs on top with blue and wrote dates in on black.

The set beside those had been colored orange. And the ones beside those, red.

"Um…" he said again. There was a tiny fire building in his chest.

"Oh, and look." She put down the pen she'd been using to meticulously mark dates on each colored tab to grab the Yellow stack (sitting between the now green and fuscia folders), fanning it in front of her with the grace of a dancer. She gave them a flutter, and then did the same with her lashes. "Alphabatized," she purred. "You like it?"

He blinked. He couldn't seem to find a way to shut his mouth, his jaw weighed down by invisible pullies.

Dracula's silence must have lasted too long, because her delighted expression turned into something of disappointment, and she was soon fussing with the closest stack of folders despairing; "You hate it. Oh- god. I knew I shouldn't have touched anything but your system wasn't updated and… and I'd like to remind you just like I did Clyde or Callum or whatever his name is that obsessive color coding is integral to the success- MMPH."

His mouth against hers effectively cut off whatever she was about to say.

He was glad there was no one in the lobby. Especially when he flicked a hand, blue energy leaping out to push folders to the side to make space when he lifted her up and sat her down at a level height.

"I was working on those! Dracu-mmm!" He moved his mouth from hers down to her jaw. Her throat. The dip between her neck and shoulder. "Honey, we're in the lobby."

He nipped her neck and she gasped. "No one here," he said against her skin.

"Not yet, but anyone could- oh my god do that again." He dragged his teeth down the line of her artery a second time. She huffed, crossing her legs. Chiding herself for a fuzzy mind, she reminded herself about the task at hand. A voice in her brain chanted; color coding! color coding! color coding! "Someone could check in! Any second! And I have to finish!"

He kissed her again anyway, harder. "You color coded my papers."

"I did."

"That is… so incredible."

Her laugh tapered off into a gasp when he paid special attention to her jaw. "I'm loving this praise. I really am. But Dracula- someone could check in."

"Good."

"No! Not good! Not good! They could see a Vamp-mmmm-a Vampire going to town on a -aughhh- humans neck!"

"It's a lovely neck," he reasoned between kisses. "Absolutely delectable. A world class, delicious neck. Have I ever told you I love this shirt?" She'd swapped out her higher collared wear for a white button up that she'd only found reason to keep buttoned to mid chest.

"Yes," she said, watching him reach a hand up to move the collar of the shirt away. "Many, many times."

"You should wear it more, you absolutely organized minx, you."

"Dracula," she snapped.

"Ericka," he crooned back.

"Dracula I'm busy."

"So am I," he argued. To prove his point he bit down lightly on her clavicle. "Very, very busy."

She groaned. He laughed, reaching behind her to get a firmer grasp on her back with every intention of hoisting her higher to see just how far he could get his teeth down her shirt before having to start the unbuttoning process. His fingers pushed back on the folders. Three of them slipped to the floor.

With a righteous gasp and a frustrated exclamation of "oh come on" Ericka was pushing him back, turning around to growl frustratedly at the fallen soldiers of scattered papers on the lobby floor, and then turning back to fix Dracula with a steel and stone glare. He did his best to make his eyes look as I-Am-A-Victim-of-Circumstance as possible. "Do you know how long it took me to organize these!" Her fingers flew up to assault her blouse, securing a button that had begun to undo itself with more force than necessary. Dracula watched forlornly.

"Oh- Whoops." She glared harder. His smile was all fangs and guilt. "Sorry, honey… Would you believe it if I said I was distracted?"

"No."

"Well I was!" Dracula waggled his brows."You're very distracting when you talk about bureaucracy!"

She huffed, flapping her arms up, letting her hands slap defeatedly down against her thighs. "I'll have to go back and reorganize them all, now!"

To his credit, he did actually look guilty, grimacing down at the mess behind her. "It's only a few. I can help-"

She breathed, heavy and slow, anger dissipating into something fond. Who was she to pass up affection from time to time? And… it really hadn't taken her that long. "No- no it's fine. It's faster if I do them alone. Maybe you can help after I laminate them?"

Dracula's head snapped back. He blinked. Blinked again. The feeling of holy fire in his chest returned. "Laminate?" he peeped.

"Mmhm. I was going to staple together the financial reviews from the last few years, too, and compound and color code them. Maybe we can draw up some sort of two-year plan-"

The rest of the folders flew neatly to the floor, caught by a blue light, and settled into piles around the lobby. Dracula's arms linked around her, his mouth back to work tracing patterns up and down from her neck to her mouth.

Ericka found herself suddenly very unconcerned with two-year plans and was instead decidedly concerned with how deep she could burrow her fingers into wonderful black hair.

"You are incredible," he said, every word punctuated with affection. "That (kiss) is the most (kiss) attractive thing (kiss) I've (kiss kiss kiss) ever heard, Captain."

"Oooh! You like that!" She wound her legs around his waist and pulled her head back to look at him from between her lashes. "Wait until I tell you about my plan to consolidate the computers check-in system." Ericka lowered her voice into a husky, svelte whisper. "It'll save us at least seven percent on the bottom line."

The check-in desk was left empty when Dracula very quickly lifted her up and whisked her back to their room, her laughter a ghost against the stone.

The files were temporarily forgotten.

But they'd get back to them later. Much, much later.