Note! The cabin in this one is not the same cabin in Shadow Kiss. Rather, this is that hypothetical cabin mentioned in Blood Promise that Dimitri and Rose talked about on the road trip in Frostbite, that has now been made a real cabin for the purposes of this one-shot!

Disclaimer! I do not own Vampire Academy, therefore I am not Richelle Mead.

Dimitri and I had once had a conversation about having a cabin out in the rural mountains, and it had ended with the idea that I would be bored in such a place, while he would probably revel in the isolation. At the time, I don't think either of us had considered having company in the cabin, let alone each other, which skewed the imaginative results. I was pretty sure if the prospect of him being my company had been included, there would be no boredom sufficed only by Internet and cable. I don't think there would be any boredom at all. But we hadn't considered this at the time, and I don't think, even after several months of actually living together, that particular conversation crossed his mind. It hadn't even crossed my mind, until I began noticing the bags under my eyes from countless hours doing a guardians job, coupled with Lissa's persistence for me to take a vacation—with Dimitri.

So, it naturally came as quite a shock to him when I announced that not only had I—actually it was more Lissa—gotten us a week's vacation, but we would also be spending that little absence in a cabin in Idaho, not far from the area we had been in when we had that particular conversation. From what I had been informed, it was a cozy cabin, with a small kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and living room, and all the basic necessities provided. Said cabin was supposedly in an isolated location, with plenty of scenery to last several lifetimes.

I think the biggest shock for him, though, came when I—bluntly—told him that there was no cable.

For him, it must have registered as a boatload of impeding boredom on my part. For me, it roughly translated into a lot of time for just him and I. Of course, I would let him read his dearly beloved westerns if he wanted to—I had a camera for that reason. I could take pictures to my hearts content of just about anything—the mountainside, the sky, Dimitri—and easily waste a few hours. And even though there wasn't any cable, there was still a television set, along with a DVD player, so I could always watch movies if I got bored. Yeah, I had left a lot out when I nonchalantly added that, "there isn't any cable, either".

This became quite obvious to Dimitri as well once we got to the cabin. As promised, the cabin was most definitely cozy, in that not too large but not too small way. Everything had an antique feel to it, but not the kind that gave off a cliché feeling. No, this had the good antique, with little pieces from different eras scattered about, all from different places, particularly outside of the United States. The cabin also came with a breathtaking view—which I took full advantage of. I took pictures of everything a million different ways, so later I would have options as to which were my favorite.

I even got a handful of Dimitri and I—okay, handful wasn't the right term. More like enough pictures of the two of us to last us quite a while. Most were of us smiling, with barely a millimeter between us, and standing in any random location we had access to—outdoors, in the kitchen, on the couch. There were pictures of us doing other things, too—a chaste kiss here and there, and a few full on make-outs to accompany those celibate kisses.

My favorite picture, however, was by far the picture I had taken of Dimitri after I had come in from an outdoor-picture-taking-extravaganza. In one hand he had one of his western novels, the broken spine barely keeping the pages together, and in the other, a bar of dark chocolate. He was smirking at me, and had one eyebrow raised. It was daytime outside, too, which only seemed to light up his features more. There was something about all of that and the look of complete relaxation, love, and happiness that made this my favorite picture.

His, on the other hand, was of me, and he had taken it while I was sleeping. Actually, he had taken it after I woke him from sleeping. I had never actually slept with anybody else in the same bed before—literal sleeping, not sex, but even as far as that topic went, it had only ever been with Dimitri—and this was our first winter season together, sharing a bed and all, so we both learned something that night.

I didn't like sharing the covers.

His picture depicted this perfectly—me, and all the covers on my side, surrounding my frame. There was nothing on Dimitri's side of the bed, and you couldn't even tell that he had slept there in the first place. But this wasn't why it was his favorite, according to him at least—I figured that seeing me in a cocoon of covers was funny enough to be regarded as a favorite. No, his reasons were far more detailed. The peaceful look, the faint smile—and the slight scrunching of disappointment that wasn't caught on camera when I realized that he wasn't by my side.

We both learned to cope with this interesting little trait of mine, too—we both just started snuggling closer when we went to sleep.

Review? Pretty please?