A/N: All I can say is - enjoy!
He's arrogant. A touch ethereal. Stubborn.
For weeks she tries unsuccessfully to avoid him.
It's bad enough that he knows. It's worse still that he's interested in it.
"So, like, is there a Starbucks for vampires, or do you just—"
"Oh my god," she blurts, taking the coffee cup from him and dumping the entire scalding serving on his hand. "What part of back off do you not understand?"
He blinks, utterly unmoved, and her breath catches in her chest.
"Oh my god," is all she can say.
He grins shyly, the hints of sharp incisors poking out from the corners of his mouth.
There is no vampire handbook.
There is a stake and a kindle and a mob, but there is no instructional pamphlet, no how-to-avoid-cannibalizing-your-family instructive video, no meal preparation fact sheet. All they can rely upon are the intimate communities of harems throughout the cities, clustered in remote corners where civilians dare not wander.
In the country, the mobs single them out and exterminate them with alarming reliability. In the city, the population densities are so great it's impossible to tell you best friend from a potential predator.
Because, at heart, that's what they are. Predators.
Children know. They look into their eyes and draw closer, awed, like a baby deer approaching the hunter's trap for closer inspection.
Beca knew. She saw the stranger with the easy smile, the suit and tie but ruffled hairstyle, the jaunted legs, and thought, He's like my dad.
She never looked back, never once thought Stranger danger.
And he bit her.
She was eleven years old. She wishes she'd been twenty-eight, settled down, worldly, big enough to hold her own against the changes that would wreak havoc with her body; or thirty-nine with a thriving career, a welcoming home, and a capacity to understand and accept her fate. Fifty and accommodating, without overinflated expectations of the world, a gentle prevalence against adversity.
Instead, she is eleven when it happens, and she is eleven and three-quarters when she drinks blood for the first time (deer blood, and she weeps, because it'll never been a family dinner again). She is twelve when she breaks her arm and refuses to have it seen because she can't let her pediatrician know she isn't normal. She's thirteen before her "wisdom teeth" grow out; she rides out the excruciating pain for months before, in a fit of pique, she rips them out.
She's fourteen and high school is very, very different when you can't let other people touch you for fear that they'll know. After three years of limited contact, she's touch-starved enough to attempt dating – with disastrous results: countless near-exposures, including one boy who turns out to be a bona fide vampire hunter. She's careful to lay low and not be singled out after that, skirting the edges of the pond, letting bigger fish have all the glory to themselves.
At sixteen, she stops sleeping. Not for days or even weeks at a time: permanently. It drives her to a quiet sort of madness before she takes up mixing, filling the long dark hours with song.
At seventeen and against her father's wishes, she adopts a Hermann's tortoise. It's a terrible pet: boring, slow, and quiet, but it fills a strange void in her to watch Louisa roam her room, steadily munching carrots and lettuce. She spends countless late nights reading about tortoises and creating an upscale tortoise habitat for her companion. Over time and as a result of countless quiet social disappointments, she finds it's nice to have someone to come home to, even if she's careful to wear gloves when handling her: the coolness of her own skin endangers Louisa's wellbeing.
For all intents and purposes, she follows a relatively normal learning curve – minus most of her body heat and plus the fangs – for years.
Then her dad insists she go to college.
"You can't be serious."
Sitting at the kitchen table on a sunny Sunday afternoon, he levels her with a very serious look and replies in his most somber tone, "I'm very serious."
There are flecks of gray in his hair she can't miss and her stomach turns to think about what will happen when fifty years have passed and she's still, biologically, twenty years old and he's long gone. "There's no point," she tells him stoically, forcing the lump in her throat down. Immortality is a beautiful idea and a terrible reality when you're the only one who benefits from it.
"Becs. It's college. You get to learn things. And I'm not talking about what you get from a textbook. College makes you into a new person."
"Going to LA will make me into a new person," she retorts slowly. He can't be serious.
"Yes, it will," he concedes, and thank god for rationality. "But I want you to give college a chance. I think you'll like it."
"I really, really don't think so," Beca replies. Then, leaping onto any voice of reason she can think of, she leans back against the kitchen counter, elbows crossed, and says, "Someone will find out."
At that, his eyebrows arch delicately and he replies coolly, "Barden has a zero tolerance policy for violence."
She barks a laugh. "I feel safer already."
"So, what, you're just going to find a hole in the wall and disappear?" he demands, his own frustration drawing out as he rakes a hand through his hair. "You've gotta do something with your life, Beca."
"I will: it's called moving to L.A. and making music."
"One year," he bargains. "One semester."
She sighs deeply, picking up her satchel.
"I'm going on a walk," she tells him, slipping out before he can push her any farther.
When she comes back late that night, there's a post-it note on a package.
"One month," it reads.
Immediately underneath, there's a pamphlet. She slides the first page out and the headline rears out at her: WELCOME BARDEN UNIVERSITY FRESHMEN.
With a disgusted noise, she replaces it on the counter.
Two months later, carrying her humble possessions in one suitcase, here she is.
And forty eight seconds after arriving on campus, there he is.