A/N: Unbeta'd because Riveriver needs a drink, a hug, and some good old fashioned peace and quiet. Inspired by approximately nine thousand tumblr posts I have seen about vampires, combined with a lovely PM from ShadowCub requesting vampire slayer Leah. ShadowCub, this is the AU where Leah abandons the family business and goes to college. I am powerless to the pull of crackfics. One day, I will write the AU you are seeking. Until then...welcome to procrastination station.

Title, as always, from La Dispute - There You Are (Hiding Place).


The first time Leah sees Nahuel is on a rare sunny February morning; it's the perfect ratio of sun-to-cloud, enough to warm but not brown her already russet skin, and she takes her textbooks outside to cram for her midday lecture. There are only a few other people in the quad—a few girls huddled around someone's cell, a group of boys kicking a ball around—making it easy enough to snag a quiet spot. Her focus ebbs and flows, eyes struggling to stay focused on the lines of small black text, and it's a welcome relief when the soccer ball comes to a rolling stop at her picnic table.

"Sorry!" calls the boy as he jogs nearer, smiling bashfully. "Didn't mean to interrupt you."

"It's fine," she says easily, tossing the ball back in his direction.

She doesn't recognise him—nor should she really expect to, given that she hardly talks to people she doesn't already know—but there's something memorable about him, something that makes her take notice.

Leah can't quite put her finger on what it is.

The only thing that she'll remember later is the weird sheen to his brown skin—too much sunscreen, maybe, or sweat.

It's probably sweat. Gross.


It turns out that Sweat Guy is in her three o'clock seminar, rushing into the auditorium with only minutes to spare, looking infuriatingly put-together despite his near tardiness.

Leah always sits on the left-hand side, three rows from the back; there's a constant problem with the HVAC system that leaves that part of the room ridiculously cold, beyond what most could find comfortable.

Leah likes it. She runs warm, anyway.

The boy from the quad takes the stairs two at a time, pausing at the end of Leah's row. They look at each other for a long moment; Leah concentrates her mind on sending a telepathic message, something like back off, this is my cold spot.

"Okay?" he says finally, cocking his head while eyeing off a seat.

She huffs. "Fine."

He squeezes through carefully, inching his way across the row and he's almost through when his leg brushes her knee and—

Leah hisses, pulling her leg out of his way. "Where have you been, Antarctica?"

He smiles wryly. "Something like that."

Nahuel doesn't say anything further. Leah can live with that.


The first time that Leah and Nahuel have an actual conversation—one that goes beyond hello, hi at the start of class—is exactly three weeks later, when they are assigned to the same research topic. It's some boring fieldwork project, one that involves actual thought about experimental design and data collection, and the last thing that Leah wants to do is spend time trekking around outside, but she really needs to pass this class.

Nahuel turns her way the moment the lecture is finished, his normally serene face creased with worry.

"Don't tell me you're allergic to the outdoors," Leah says dryly, shoving her books into her backpack. "I'm not suffering through this alone."

Nahuel stares at her. Blinks. Stares some more.

"I'm serious. You actually have to do the work."

He nods once, still looking immensely anxious. "Of course, I'll do the work. I just wanted to check that you're okay with me being your partner. Some people feel. . . weird. About me working with them," Nahuel says, fiddling with the buttons on his sleeve. "I didn't think you would, but I wanted to check, you know?"

She really didn't get the clinically insane impression from Nahuel, but this conversation is doing plenty to change her mind.

"Why don't people like working with you?" Leah asks suspiciously, thinking of things like research theft and plagiarism and freeloading, but his answer is somehow even weirder.

"I have specific needs," Nahuel says vaguely, waving his hand.

"Is that. . . are you flirting with me?"

"No!" Nahuel protests. "Not that there's anything wrong with flirting with you. I'd like that, actually, very much."

"This conversation is giving me a headache," she groans, pondering whether to try and get the student office to enrol her in a different class time.

"I have lots of allergies. Inconvenient allergies," he explains. "I don't want to make more work for you, but I can get pretty sick—"

"If you say you're allergic to work I am going to stand up and leave," Leah cautions.

"No, just the usual stuff," Nahuel says. "Sunlight, mainly. Italian food. Cheap jewellery."

"This really sounds like you're flirting with me," she points out. "I'm not wining and dining you. Get a baseball cap. We can work on the project in the afternoons. Oh, and bring your own lunch."

She stands up and grabs her backpack before Nahuel can think of anything else to disclose, because it's already been a long day and she really does not have time for this, not even when he gives her that stupid doleful look that comes to him like second nature.

(Okay, it almost gets her, but she forces herself to walk away before she can do anything stupid. Her self-preservation instincts aren't that dismal.)


In retrospect, it's weird that it takes her another week to realise why Nahuel is so outrageously odd.

Nahuel is waiting for her at the library when she arrives—ten minutes early, mind you—with a Steelers cap pulled low over his face. It's not even that frigid, hardly sweater weather, but he's wearing some ridiculous turtleneck that practically covers him from chin to fingertip.

As far as outfits go, it's unusual.

He's perfectly amicable as they make their way through to the Science Department, holding the door for her and chatting animatedly about some convoluted friendship drama that she can hardly follow.

(No questions, though, because Nahuel's in a rare extroverted mood; she doesn't want to ruin that.)

When the librarian asks whose name the camera will be borrowed in, Leah doesn't hesitate to volunteer. It gives her the self-righteous ability to be super controlling about when and where and how they work on the project, and she's not wholly sold on the idea that Nahuel can coordinate things.

Not as well as she can, anyway.

Leah inks her full name onto the register, taking care not to smudge the letters, and takes the camera with an emphatic thanks.

She's so focused on their afternoon plans—how much there is to do, how they can best collect the evidence they need for their hypothesis, how they can get an A—that she doesn't notice Nahuel's uncharacteristic pallor.

(It's also uncharacteristic for her to notice Nahuel enough to know what is and isn't normal for him, but that is a problem for another time.)

"What?" she asks finally, feeling a little impatient with it all. "No sun, no Italian, no jewellery. What's wrong now?"

Nahuel's mouth scrunches up like he's sucked on a lemon. "You're a Clearwater."

Leah abruptly stops walking. "Do you have a problem with my family?"

He does that annoying trapped prey expression, eyes as wide as they can go. "Your family has a problem with me."

She can't help the laugh that bursts from her chest. "Unless you've been on America's Most Wanted or something, I seriously doubt my family would know who you are."

"It's, you know—" Nahuel drops his voice to a hiss, "—the thing. That's why I was asking if you'd work with me. People get weird about it."

"Okay, okay, just because my family is kind of old-fashioned—"

"—your family is literally one of the Big Three Bloodlines," Nahuel exclaims, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "I just want to get a college education without getting staked, okay? And now I'm going to die without even passing Science Communications, which sucks, because I don't even like this class, and—"

"Wait," she says, squinting at him, "you're a vampire?"


Nahuel is most definitely a vampire.

Vampires aren't exactly uncommon, what with their predilection for biting unsuspecting victims—as well as bite chasers, because of course vampire bites can be fetishised, it is the twenty-first century after all—but she's grown up pretty sheltered from the entire scene.

Nahuel, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Pacific Northwestern vampire affairs, can rattle off precise statistics about how many vampires the Clearwater family have slaughtered—historically, of course, since the recent treaty explicitly forbids extrajudicial killings—and the impact of the Big Three Bloodlines on the broader area, though he begrudgingly agrees to stop using the stupid smarmy title that some genius had given their families years ago.

He manages to relax a little after Leah promises she won't harm him; she's more than a little offended that he assumed she'd leap straight to hate crime, but then again, he is part of the statistically most marginalised species, so it's only fair to let that slight go.

It does explain a lot about him, although she does still run into the typical hazards of befriending such a creature. From the silver thing—

("Get a look at this sample, I already placed the slide."

"Is that one of the old microscopes?"

"Yeah, the metal ones are built so much better - oh. Oh no.")

—to the sunlight problem—

("Dude, you're, like, really sparkling. Did you put sunblock on?"

"I think I-oh, crap, maybe not. How do I look?"

"Five seconds from flaming."

"Hilarious.")

—as well as the garlic—

("I know you texted me, but I feel like Meatball Monday requires at least two warnings."

"Don't be a baby. You know the Caf only uses garlic powder."

"Tell that to my hives.")

—it turns out that there are a surprising amount of logistical issues to ensure Nahuel's ongoing survival.

Now that Leah knows about him, has promised that it doesn't change anything about their friendship, Nahuel's relaxed some of his overly strict protocols. He still checks the daily UV index before opting for a t-shirt, avoids all jewellery like the plague, but every now and then he'll branch out a little.

When she makes an impromptu visit to his dorm to drop off a book she'd borrowed, Leah notices that all of the curtains are open, letting the sunlight stream into his bedroom. Judging by the mottled dark spots littering his arms and legs, he hasn't quite grasped the parameters of his tolerance, but it doesn't dissuade him from further experiments.

(She finds herself inordinately pleased after noticing that the coconut-scented sunblock she gave him sits proudly on the bathroom vanity. Not only does it not smell terrible, it actually minimises his level of crispiness, which puts her mind a little more at ease.)

Now the only thing she has to worry about are his dietary habits—habit being the operative word, because Nahuel seems to have no concept of the importance of regular nutrition. More precisely, he refuses to feed on blood until his body physically cannot tolerate waiting any longer, which tends to result in Leah having to drag his dizzy self into a quiet corner, a stairwell, to force him to down a blood bag. Not only is his avoidance inconvenient, it is anxiety-inducing; the robotic trill of her cell makes her stomach drop, picturing him weak and vulnerable in a gutter somewhere.

That particular mental image makes being a control freak that much easier.

("Is it so much to ask that you listen to your body? You're a vampire, for Christ's sake, you have to drink blood."

"Blood's practically a sometimes food, Lee. A bag or two is all I need, really."

"Three, or I'll start texting your aunt."

". . . Fine.")


Looking out for Nahuel slots almost effortlessly into her everyday routine, even after they finish their project and pass Science Communications and have no real reason to continue hanging out. He sends her weird articles about near-death experiences and fastidiously records his intake on My Platelet Pal—a name that triggers extensive complaints whenever it is mentioned, because Nahuel has very strong feelings about the importance of red and white blood cells in a balanced diet—and willingly answers her many prying questions about being a vampire, which is more than she could have ever expected.

("What's it like feeding on humans? Does it taste better?"

"It's not really my thing. Besides, bags are way easier. You don't have to spend days finding a willing donor."

"D'you think you could pick mine out of a taste test?"

"I wouldn't drink your blood. That would be wrong.")

In the spirit of friendship, Leah experiments with his blood packages, making strange bastardised versions of spaghetti bolognese—entirely inauthentic without garlic, though Nahuel appreciates it nonetheless—as well as visually offensive aspics from her mom's old cookbooks that somehow taste better than they look. Of course, Nahuel could be unrepentantly lying to save her feelings, but her cooking gets him downing five full bags a week, and his skin has never before glowed so brilliantly, so hanging out in his kitchen becomes a regular thing.

It's easy enough to brush off the warmth that being around Nahuel brings; he is her friend—her best friend—and surely it is a given that she wants to spend all her time with him, that his dorm feels just as homely as hers, even if the windows have to be layered with gauzy net curtains and the fridge is fifty percent blood products.

They're best friends, and Leah is happy.

So, of course, that is when Nahuel announces he has a date.


"Do you like this shirt?" he asks, staring seriously at himself in the mirror.

"Depends. Can you see yourself?" she says, not looking up from her phone. It's bitchy and she knows it—especially because they've already discussed the vampire/mirror situation in great depth—but it doesn't stop her from being deliberately unkind.

Nahuel sighs. "Did we already have plans and I forgot?"

"No," Leah says curtly. "And you're going to be late."

"I can't fix it if I don't know why you're upset with me," he says tiredly, buttoning up the dress shirt. "Say, theoretically, if you were bothered that I'm going out—"

"—which I'm not—"

"Then you could say that to me and I wouldn't go," Nahuel says quietly, studying her expression, her clenched jaw. "But you need to say it."

"I don't have anything to say," she bites out, slumping further into her chair, shoulders taut as if she is trying to squish herself into something smaller, something invisible.

"Of course you don't," he says, swiping his car keys from the table. "I'm going now. Lock up behind you, please."

She does, but only after looting his fridge for anything remotely edible.

Only then does she call it even.


In an act of stubbornness, she does not text Nahuel, and he gives her a wide berth, presumably wary of her anger focused in his direction. It's stupid, being furious with him over something she'd never bothered to say aloud (it was obvious, she was always so obvious), but hurt and disappointment and anger always come as a package deal for Leah, and accepting that is easier than delving into the specifics of why exactly she is miserable.

It doesn't matter that she never actually sees her with Nahuel, that his smile doesn't seem any wider or his skin any more luminous (he actually looks rather sallow, and the possessive part of her brain wants to check My Platelet Pal, but that's something a girlfriend would do, so she doesn't) because the ache is still there, raw and real and impossible to ignore.

And sure, this could all be resolved by showing up at his doorstep and apologising, explaining, but he doesn't like her like that—Nahuel likes normal girls, emotionally available girls that can actually express their feelings, and she's sorely lacking in that department.

Besides, if he did, she would know.

Instead of agonising over the entire situation (which she does liberally, but only between the hours of eleven and three a.m.) she tries to focus her time and energy elsewhere, actually studying and cooking bloodless meals and texting her little brother, who has most definitely noticed her absence. He accurately guesses that a boy had something to do with it, though he misses the critical said boy is a vampire and my entire family are renowned vampire slayers, and in all fairness, she cannot blame him.

It is a weird situation.

She is in the middle of downing a bowl of recipe-respecting spaghetti, tapping out a cautious reply to Seth's request to visit—he's pretty open-minded, accepting of all sorts of people, and she doesn't think he will have an issue (then again, he lives in vampire-free territory, so there's no telling how he will react when confronted with one)—when a series of knocks on her dorm room door startles her. It's loud enough to make her drop her fork, so it's either a RA looking to bust her for booze (unlikely) or some sort of emergency (ideally, also unlikely).

Nahuel is standing on her doorstep when she swings the door open, arms crossed and chest heaving, and this time, he is definitely gleaming with sweat.

"I ran here," he says by way of explanation, breathless. "I ran here because I know you won't reply if I text and I am sick of waiting this out, because—"

Leah curls her arm around his bicep, hauling him inside and kicking the door closed. "I don't want the entire hall to witness us fighting."

His eyebrows furrow. "Do we have to fight? I came here because I miss you and this whole thing is stupid, and I like everything about you but your stubbornness drives me insane and it's been a long week and I really, really miss my best friend."

"Girlfriend not keeping you company?" she says, scowling.

Nahuel glares at her. "See! This is what I mean! You're standing here, being all snarky and mean over one single date."

"I reserve the right to be snarky over whatever I want," Leah retorts, narrowing her eyes. "Sue me if I don't want to hear about your proclivities."

"I didn't even say anything!" he protests. "You're the one getting all bent out of shape over a meaningless date.

She leans her shoulder against the wall, sizing him up. Not even a sour mood can make him less than extraordinary—she's pissed off, not dead—and a tiny part of her feels self-satisfied that he's staring her down with those dark eyes, because at least he is looking her way at all.

"Meaningless," she repeats, testing the word on her tongue. "That bad, huh?"

Nahuel exhales heavily. "Well, she wasn't you."

Leah blinks. "Me?"

"Yes!" he says, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "I've been trying to date you for months now and you don't even see me. You just see some idiot who needs fixing, and yeah, that may be true, but it doesn't mean I like it."

She stares at him. "I don't think you need fixing."

"You cook for me! And you're constantly on me about being healthy and going to the gym and, yeah, that's nice, but I don't want to be a charity case to you. I don't need you to pity me for being different, or think I'm some fragile thing that'll break if you look away for more than a second." Nahuel's shoulders sag, defeated, and she almost misses what he mutters next. "I just want you to look at me like you look at everyone else."

Leah should probably be doing something besides staring gormlessly at his downcast expression, but it's. . . a lot.

"I do those things because I like you," she says finally, collapsing onto the couch cushions. "I like you more than I should."

He perches beside her, mouth tugging into a tiny smile. "So you were jealous."

She rolls her eyes. "Just kiss me already."

It's slow, cautious; Nahuel kisses the same way he does everything else, with too much thought and palpable nervousness, though somehow it circles right back around to endearing because it's so entirely him. He cradles her face gently between his palms, gives her the kind of respectable kiss that would offend nobody's sensibilities, except for when she makes a tiny noise in the back of her throat and his control slips just enough for his fangs to catch on her bottom lip. It's a strange sort of pressure, a half-second pin-prick, but then she's thinking about the other more exciting things he can do with his teeth and it's very apparent that kissing Nahuel falls under an entirely new category of experiences.

Nahuel leans back against the couch when he eventually pulls away, a brilliant gleaming grin upon his face, luminous against the pink flush of his cheeks—

—and then it occurs to her, the realisation belatedly creeping in, that not only does Nahuel not blush, but that she has recently consumed a small country's worth of garlic.

He presses the backs of his hands to his cheeks, faintly alarmed. "Did you. . ."

She winces. "Yeah. Can vampires have Benadryl?"

"Let's find out."


A/N: I am marking this as complete for now, but I may eventually revisit this for a meet the parents follow-up. Only time will tell.