He isn't the kind of bloke Rose usually goes for.

She's more into leather and tattoos and bad attitudes – or at least, that's what she's always thought. But he's all elbows and knees, long gangly limbs wrapped up in a pinstriped suit, and there's still something about him that just draws her in. There's a haphazard sort of grace to the way he moves those long limbs. And there's that smile, so wide and bright it's almost unnatural, and so easily changeable – innocent one moment, savage the next.

Rose met him in a basement – and that, that probably should've been the first clue that she needed to start running in the other direction. She'd just been closing up, taking the lottery money downstairs, and there oughtn't to have been anyone there but Wilson, the electrician.

But there'd been no Wilson, not anywhere Rose could see, and then she'd nearly tripped over him, skulking in a back corridor and looking terribly out of place.

When she asks if he's seen Wilson, he just says "Wilson's dead."

Rose doesn't ask why or how he knows – doesn't even think to, until much later.

By then, she's long since decided that she doesn't want to know.

—-

"I'm dangerous, Rose," he growls at her, and there's blood at the corner of his mouth, on the lapel of his suit, dripping from his wrist. "If you know what's good for you– " and he turns a bit, so she can see the way his eyes – a predator's, hungry and dark – flash in the dim light, "– you ought to run."

There's a part of her brain that's saying yes, yes, running is good, start running and do it now.

It's clearly not a big enough part, though, because instead of turning around and sprinting away Rose steps forward, towards him. She doesn't stop moving even when he recoils, even as he tries to put more distance between them.

Instead, she takes his hand in hers and staunchly refuses to flinch, even as the blood on his wrist keeps trickling downwards, in between their clasped palms.

"I made my choice." Rose says quietly, and he looks at her with a kind of hunger that she's never seen before, one that has nothing to do with the warm, red liquid currently dripping down her fingers. "And I'm never gonna leave you."

His kiss tastes of blood, and Rose can't find it in her to mind.

—-

He runs the unnaturally sharp points of his incisors across her neck, trailing them slowly across soft skin. The light pressure is exhilarating all on its own, and when he breathes out "how long are you going to stay with me?", low and soft and dark, it makes her shiver.

Rose closes her eyes and whispers, "Forever."

It comes around a gasp, as his teeth dig into her skin.