1.
Your name is Delphine Cormier, and you are very, very old.
There is a strange feeling that comes with having lived this long. A sort of floating, an emptiness that leaves you wandering through this world, aimless. Observing, but never touching. Knowing, but never feeling.
You don't really get Thirsty anymore.
You guess that's one of the good things about your age. With the passing of years, the Thirst fades. You need to rely on blood less and less.
You go for a walk, and the southern heat makes you ache. You don't sweat anymore, but you sort of wish you could just to get the fire out of you.
Your dead lungs long for colder air.
Your dead heart longs for passion.
2.
A man approaches you during one of your nightly walks. He swaggers and stumbles and drunkenly slurs a sloppy "Hey babe," and puts his heavy hand on your shoulder and that is all you need.
You don't feel Thirsty quite as much these days, but you still need to be quenched on occasion.
You aren't sure what it is. Perhaps it's his air of undeserved confidence, or maybe it's the way he called you babe, or maybe it's the stench of sweat and grime that seeps off his body and into your nostrils via the warm night breeze.
Maybe it's because you haven't had a Drink in months.
Whatever it is, it lights the match. Suddenly, as if without your permission, your hands are grabbing fistfuls of the damp fabric of his shirt and shoving him, guiding him to the blanketing darkness of the alley between the corner pizza place and the shoe store right beside it.
"Damn," he exhales happily, his beer breath making you want to vomit. And you are just so disgusted and so angry and you know that if you let him go, he will prey on some other girl who isn't you.
You want him to suffer.
You want to Drink.
So you do.
He lets out a wet little gasp-gurgle when your teeth sink into his throat. All at once you are warm, but not the type of warmth that comes with summer heat. It is the warmth of being alive.
Even when he goes slack, you hold him up by those fistfuls of fabric and take all the life you need.
Finally, when there is nothing left for you to take, you release him, letting him slump uselessly to the ground.
People will find his body.
People will talk.
You will have to leave. It's for the best.
"Good," you say to the dead man looking up at you with permanently begging eyes.
"I hate it here, anyway."
You wipe your mouth free of evidence and slip into the night like it's a well-fitting dress.
3.
You go north.
The cool air eases the fire in your throat and you wonder why you didn't do this sooner.
You get an apartment. It is small, and smells faintly of body odor, as if there were too many people packed into it at one time previously.
But you don't mind.
There is a nice balcony, one that you share with your neighbor who you've never seen. You go out in the morning and smoke a cigarette, with bare feet and arms exposed.
It makes you feel alive.
Not quite as alive as Drinking does.
But close.
4.
You watch the plumes of smoke as they float up to mingle with the clouds, and imagine yourself following suit.
You stare out across the city (which is not very vast, and not very grand or beautiful, but it is the only view you've got) and run a hand through the mass of tangled blonde hair that always used to frizz up in your old city.
"Damn, aren't you cold?"
The crackling voice startles you, which is usually pretty hard to do. You turn your head quickly to look over at the other side of the shared balcony, which is separated from yours by a single horizontal bar.
"Yikes, sorry," the owner of the voice laughs. "Didn't mean to scare ya."
She is beautiful.
Her dark, shadowed eyes blink owlishly at you from behind cat eye frames, contrasting hugely with the bright smile that seems to be struggling to fight those shadows away.
For the first time in a long time, you feel warmth at the tips of your fingers.
"You… didn't scare me," you say, voice quiet. There's no real reason to be quiet, but something about the morning air and her tender gaze urges you to be soft. "I just… I was beginning to think nobody lived there."
She laughs and raises her eyebrows before looking away and taking a drag from something that looks like a cigarette but is also definitely not a cigarette. "That's funny. I'd think by now you'd have complained to the landlord about my music or something."
"I've not heard any music."
She crosses her left arm over to rest on her right shoulder and rubs idly, condensation puffing white and eerie before her lips.
How very alive she seems.
"Yeah, I guess I haven't really been playing any lately. But just wait. You'll hate me before long." She squints into the distance, then turns to grin at you.
"I doubt that very much," you say honestly.
She blushes, eyes widening marginally, and you just smirk a bit. You've long since stopped caring what others think of you, stopped filtering what you say for the sake of pride.
It doesn't matter if you make a fool of yourself in front of a mortal like her.
You'll just outlive her, anyhow.
5.
"Cosima," she says, and it is like hearing your favorite song for the first time.
"Delphine," you say back. And then, never one to forget your manners, you add "Enchantee."
She does that adorable squinting thing again, and then those shadow eyes brighten just a bit as she returns the sentiment. "Enchantee."
You shake hands over the horizontal bar that separates you, and feel very, very much connected.
6.
It becomes routine.
Every morning you go out onto the hared balcony, and every morning she does the same. You smoke you cigarettes, she her marijuana, and you talk about nothing and everything.
Never crossing the bar. Always respecting the boundary.
"Seriously," she says one day as you lean casually on the wall of the building. "It's like, November and you're out here in a tank top and no shoes. You're definitely going to freeze to death, one of these days."
"Not likely," you say, and take a moment to appreciate her oversized sweater and face that's red with cold.
Your stomach flips, quite suddenly, and for a moment you are stunned. You haven't felt anything like this in…
Well, you don't know how long.
"Hey. You ok?"
You look over to see those eyes, so haunting, searching as they take in your gaze.
"Yes," you say. "Sorry. Must be the cold, finally getting to me."
She smiles in satisfaction. "I warned ya."
Except she didn't.
Nobody did.
Who's going to warn a vampire that after 2,000 years of loneliness, she'll fall for a short little human with wild hands and a quick smile?
7.
Sometimes she has to excuse herself.
She'll get a certain look on her face, like maybe she might throw up, and she says "uhhh be right back, gotta piss," before disappearing behind the sliding door of her own apartment.
It is unsettling, to say the least, and sometimes you can hear her coughing. Choking, more like, the sound rasping and desperate and so bone-rattling that for a moment you feel death breathing down your own neck, even though you already faced him long ago.
"You should really quit," you say one day as she takes a long drag from her joint and exhales slowly, letting the smoke settle in her lungs for just a moment before releasing it.
"Huh?" She frowns, brow furrowing, eyes pinching.
"The smoking. I hear you sometimes, when you have your coughing spells. I can only assume the smoking is the cause?"
For an instant she looks a bit puzzled, and she turns her head to look straight ahead and contemplate what you've just said before releasing a hoarse laugh.
"Wow," she says. "Hypocrite, much?"
It's not the same, you want to say, because you are already dead.
But you bite your tongue.
8.
It's not from the smoke.
It's because she's sick.
She tells you this with trembling lips. Tells you how it's a mysterious respiratory disease, and that the only thing the doctors can determine about it is that it's degenerative.
Terminal.
She is dying.
That night you hear her coughing through thin walls and wonder how you never heard it before.
Perhaps it is because you are tuned into it now.
You cry for the first time in many, many years.
You are already dead, and yet here you are, clinging to a life that does not belong to you.
9.
You have one other option.
You shake your head and tangle hands in hair and wish you could claw the thought right out of your skull.
10.
You break the boundary.
She's talking, telling you something about a book she read on evolution, and her hands are waving and she is so enthusiastic and happy and so you just
do
it
You don't realize it until you're leaping over the bar that separates her side from yours. Don't realize it until you've got her chilled face in your hands and her soft lips pressed against your own.
Oh.
Oh.
You feel warm, but it is not the warmth that comes with summer heat.
It is the warmth that comes with being alive.
11.
Your hands are all over each other, eager, roaming, curious.
"It's about – fuckin' – time," she growls between kisses as you work at her bra. You don't remember how or when her shirt came off, or your pants, but it doesn't matter because her skin is under your hands and it is all at once hot and thrumming and alive –
You are in her bedroom, now, and you urge her down onto the bed, climbing over her and coming down with the force of thousands of years of darkness.
You don't know when you go from kissing her face to kissing her neck, but you do, and you can feel the life pulsing there and your teeth begin to ache and your body coils ready to strike and you are predator and she is prey and-
No.
No.
nonononononononononononononononononononononono
You jump off her, as if burned, and she stares at you, flushed and interrupted and disappointed.
"What?" she breathes, head swiveling to follow you as you cross the room to gather your clothes. "What is it?"
She squints harder than usual without her glasses, and you'd think it cute if you weren't already preoccupied with the feeling of being sick.
"I'm sorry," you croak, and your vision is blurry and you're trembling and it takes all of your self-control not to take her life right now.
The animal in you Thirsts.
The human in you Loves.
So you leave.
12.
Despite those events, the two of you find yourselves out on the balcony the next morning.
At first there is only the sound of you lighting up, and the sound of her breaths wheezing wetly in her chest. Then finally, you can no longer take the pressure building in your head.
"I am sorry… for yesterday," you murmur.
She shrugs. "It's cool, I guess."
"No, it… it is not 'cool.'"
She giggles a little at your use of casual language. "Ok, fine. It's totally not cool. Did you like, have a reason? For flipping your shit and running off? I mean, I know I'm revolting, but-"
It's meant as a joke, but it strikes something in you. "Don't say that," you say, a bit too quickly. "You are beautiful."
She lets out a little huff of air in her surprise, the smiles. "All right. Then, what is it?"
And her face is so open, so trusting and willing, that you…
"I…" you start. You swallow. Start again. "I… am very old, Cosima."
She scoffs. "Yeah, ok. You don't look real old to me, but I'll take your word for it. So, what? You felt weird about it because you think you're… too old for me?"
"No," you say. "You are missing the point. When I say old, I mean… thousands of years old."
She looks at you, hard. Tilts her head. Grins. "Bullshit."
You stare back, holding her gaze, and try to convey just how much you aren't joking.
Her grin fades. She moves her head back to its normal angle.
"You're not kidding."
"No."
"Well, fuck me."
13.
"So. Vampire."
"Mmm."
"Like, blood-sucking, can't-go-out-in-the-sun-vampire?"
"Well, not exactly." You pull strength from your cigarette. "The drinking part, yes, but very rarely. As for the aversion to sunlight, that is merely… a myth."
"Really? Huh." She acts as if you just told her some menial fact, and it puzzles you.
"You are taking this… awfully well."
"Yeah, well, once you're dying nothin' really gets to you anymore." She scratches the inside of her wrist. "But as a scientist, I'll need to request some sort of proof."
So you hold up a finger, asking silently for her to wait. You concentrate on the Thirst, think of Drinking. Soon, your canines begin to ache.
You open your mouth to reveal fangs.
"Damn!" She ducks under the bar and comes over to your side so she can get closer.
"Not too close," you grind out, voice low and gritty. She backs up a bit until you've regained control.
"Wow," she breathes, admiring your now entirely human teeth. "That was some trick."
"Not a trick."
"No, yeah, I know –" she waves her hands frantically. "I believe you."
"You are… not afraid?"
She shrugs noncommittally and turns to look out over the grey city.
"Like I said, once you're dying, nothing really fazes you anymore."
You wish she would stop using that word.
14.
The sickness takes its toll, and soon your daily morning ritual becomes more like a tri-weekly ritual and you miss her.
She lets you come to her apartment when you express this, and soon you spend more time there than in your own.
You watch her tremble and sweat her nights away and wish there was something you could do.
A tiny voice in the back of your head reminds you that there is something.
But you cannot.
You will not.
15.
She deteriorates so quickly it is almost frightening, an you can feel death's jaws hovering in the dark corners of the apartment.
"You know you could," she breathes.
"No."
"We could be together forever –"
"No."
You will not be the one to rip this beautiful creature's soul away.
16.
It comes for her one night, hard and fast and unexpected.
She coughs and coughs, and there's so much blood and not enough air and –
And you make your choice.
"Cosima," you breathe. "I will do it, if you want me to. I'll do it. But you have to swear to me it is what you want."
She lifts one hand as she struggles for breath, and you snatch it out of the air, holding tight as if that will keep her with you longer. She squeezes back with surprising strength.
"Please," she rasps. "I justfound you. I'm not… r-ready to leve you yet."
That is all the convincing you need.
So you take a deep breath to keep yourself afloat
and close your eyes and clear your head
and sink your teeth into her throat
and try to rid your mind of the word dead.