Chapter 18: Big Red Button

The elevator chimed and then softened to a stop. Kate craved a mundane night in the lab but she had a feeling tonight would be unpromising. She completed her retinal scan and the heavy doors parted. The lab looked exactly the same: pristine with bright white walls and polished concrete floors. Her shoes, comfortable ones this time, clicked down the hall toward her private office. Once her feet stepped on the carpet, a hushed silence took over - just as Kate preferred it. In less than an hour Niko would arrive for her night shift, accompanying her in subject testing for the sunscreen.

The test box sat on her desk. She sighed, already frustrated at it. It looked unfinished, with cords hanging by its side connecting to the battery pack and the remote button was repurposed from an old centrifuge. It was the best she could come up with on such short notice. Next to it, sat a small neat pile of documents with a pink sticky note on which read:

Surprise
- R.

Kate read the files, and by the end of the last page, she was smiling. In less than 24 hours, Rebecca was able to file a provisional patent on the sunscreen formula - and much to her delight, her sister had put her own twist on it: it was filed solely under Kate's name. Not Bonne Nuit, not Bellefleur Tech but Katherine Jules Bellefleur. This meant that even if they lost it all - the lab, the glass, the company, this would remain hers. Their mission would live on. Under a different label and flagship maybe, but their mother's legacy would continue.

Make no mistake, Rebecca still was and always has been committed to becoming CEO, that she knew. Power was her religion and EBITDAs, ROIs and YOYs were her Gods but somewhere in there, behind the ice-cold facade and intimidating persona, Rebecca's heart still believed that what they were doing mattered. Kate didn't have the words to express how much that meant to her.

There was a sudden knock on her door. "You ready? Testers are already here," Niko said.

"As ready as I'll ever be, I suppose," Kate sighed, putting the papers in her drawer and grabbing the poor little test box. It was a glorified gel nail-curing lamp.

"Is that it?"

"Sadly, yes."

The two of them walked down the testing wing, now both their shoes in sync, with some giddiness to their step. The first testing was always exciting, and Kate was thankful Niko always volunteered for it, even if she always remained behind the glass. It was still nice knowing someone was watching over you in case things went… awry. Niko went into the control room with a wider-than-usual smile, only to show her another surprise: Arnie Odenback.

"What are you doing here?" Kate blabbered.

"Hey now, I wouldn't want to miss this, are you kidding?" He smiled.

Kate suddenly pictured him - and it didn't take very much - in a facility that looked a whole lot like this, wearing a lab coat not too different from the one he was wearing, torturing vampires in the name of scientific advancement. Of watching, orchestrating, measuring their pain, hiding the truth. Arnie was a co-author of 3 vampire studies published 10 years ago and supervisor of another 2. Hell, he did statistical analysis for her own mother. The answer to all her questions, to all of Godric's accusations… It had been sitting here all along, doing product design on a desk not too far from her own.

"How many subjects showed up?" He asked Niko.

"Only three," she sighed. "Our volunteer turnout numbers dropped significantly when we stopped feeding them. Hey, Kate, why did we stop doing that again?"

Because her cloned blood was incredibly illegal and now there were people looking at them with a magnifying glass.

"I got a call from the supplier that we got a bad batch. They didn't tell me when they were going to resume shipping yet," Kate didn't feel good about lying, but she couldn't implicate them either. If anything she should clear her schedule to toss the remaining inventory and disassemble the blood cloning vat downstairs, and make sure it vanished without a trace.

"That's too bad," Arnie shook his head. "Oh, did Niko ask you yet?"

"Ask me what?"

"Kate," she cleared her throat. "I would like to conduct the swatch testing tonight."

Kate blinked once, then twice. "You do know that requires you to… Go out there and talk to them in person, right?"

"Yes," Kate could tell Niko was nervous just looking at the room through the one-way window. "But if I'm gonna make a name for myself in vampire research, I gotta get over it, you know?"

"Get over… Vampires?" She asked point blank. Kate couldn't quite follow what exactly there was to get over.

"Well… Yes."

The bell rang in testing room one, and the security guard escorted in their three vampire testers for the sunscreen. Kate's heart stopped and her body froze at the sight of him. It was him. Again.

"Stop," Kate told everyone and at the same time, no one in particular. "What is he doing here?"

"Who?" Niko asked.

"Him," Kate pointed at Godric, who was now making casual conversation with subject JNS3247.

"That's subject HG1UJ," Niko read on the file. "He was nice enough to help us recruit more subject testers. Like I said, recruitment went down since we stopped feeding them. Can we give them something else instead? Like… free New Blood or something?"

Kate's heart resumed beating, and this time it rattled inside her chest like a caged bird. She couldn't tell them Godric was trying to buy Bonne Nuit yet, and that all their jobs were on the line. She briefly walked to the main computer, turning her back to the one-way window as if he could somehow see her panic. Could he… Hear them? Could he hear her heart trying to escape her chest? What was he doing here? Last time they spoke…

"Kate, is everything alright?" Arnie asked.

She closed her eyes and focused on her breath, ensuring her brain had enough oxygen to think straight. She focused her nervous energy on the locket she always wore, clicking it open and close in a soothing rhythm. All she could think of… Was the paper sitting on her desk. Rebecca had given her the perfect defence. Actually… The perfect offence. She spun on her heels and faced her team.

"Niko, did you put in the eye drops?"

"Of course."

"Then you are going to swab test subjects JNS3247 and KA8172 and I will take on HG1UJ in test room two. Arnie you have the control room."

"Got it, boss," Arnie said, sitting on the team lead chair.

The rest was like a well-rehearsed choreography, even though she just made it up on the spot. Over the speaker, she directed Godric to wait in test room two and then took the exit door back into the lab.

"Hey, where-" Arnie began to ask but it was too late, she was gone.

In a frenzy she sat at her desk, cracked open her laptop, and then manically looked through her digital files in search of a very specific document. She had to use the search bar to find it but was successful all the same. Before she knew it, she was typing edits left and right and hit 'print'. Kate almost ran back to the testing wing, a rush of adrenaline she hadn't felt in… Well, maybe ever. She told herself it wasn't the anticipation of being in a room with him again, nor she was going to spend time trying to convince her it was the truth.

"So, how's she doing?" She asked upon returning to the control room.

Niko was out there, very professionally discussing the sunscreen with the two test subjects, who were now assessing the texture of the three final formulas with great curiosity.

"Is everything alright?" Arnie asked again.

Kate couldn't look Arnie in his eyes as she was too terrified of what she might say, or ask. And even more scared of what the truth would be. She hoped that someday she would gather the courage, and hopefully soon but it was not going to be tonight.

"Yes, I just forgot something," Kate put her freshly printed papers on the table facing down.

The two of them watched Niko conduct the interview and overheard the feedback live through the speakers. All experiments were recorded, another fact that now, did not sit quite right with her. There were far too many similarities between this lab and the vampire research camps. In the testing room, the two subjects had disagreeing views on which formula had the best scent and texture, but both disliked the greasiness of formula three. It wasn't the unanimous knockout answer she was looking for. Glass was easy - it either worked or didn't. A black and white, binary answer. But with consumer packaged goods there was no one right answer. There was no universally beloved scent or texture. To develop the most right answer? There was no equation to solve for, it was all guesswork at best. They were going to need to recruit more testers. Not two or three more, but hundreds.

Kate looked at the clock. "I think that's a good spot to stop there."

"What about the other test subject?" Arnie asked, his brows knitting together.

"He was going to be my phase two subject, but I'm not happy with the test box," Kate confessed, nodding at the poor thing sitting on the desk. "Plus, I think we can improve the formula a bit with this feedback before we go for it."

"Are you serious?" Arnie looked surprised. "All this rush only to postpone phase 2?"

Kate didn't have to argue with him because Niko dismissed the subjects and re-entered the control room beaming with her high levels of adrenaline.

"So?" Kate made a big deal out of it, so she wouldn't have to talk to Arnie any longer. "How was it?"

"Exhilarating! But also… Kind of boring?" She smiled, with red cheeks.

"Told ya," Kate laughed. "You did great in there, Niko. I'm so glad to have another product tester with everything going on."

"What do you mean?"

Dammit. "Well, you know… Corporate is being pushy."

"Isn't corporate… Your sister?"

Kate was not a good liar, was she? "Listen, why don't you guys head home, we'll meet tomorrow at 9 to compile the feedback, play around with the formula and then I'll hopefully have a better box done by the end of the week. And more testers. A lot more."

"Oh, that's it?" Niko's shoulders slumped.

Kate congratulated and thanked both Niko and Arnie thoroughly before practically kicking them out of the control room and ushering them down the hallway. She went with them halfway then pretended she had forgotten something in her office, and waited in silence until she heard the elevator take them away to the surface.

Alone again, in her favourite place. Well… Mostly alone. Kate returned to the control room. It had a one-way window to testing room one, but testing room two was self-contained. The only way the research team could see room two was through cameras and microphones. On the computer screen, she could see him clearly. He sat alone, unphased, playing with the edge of his sand-coloured long-sleeve henley shirt.

Kate then did the most insane move of her entire scientific career. She hit 'stop recording'.

Godric waited in that boring and sterile white room trying to rehearse what he was going to say the moment she walked in. 'I'm sorry' felt both insincere and insufficient. But he had to return here, to her, to continue what he had started. Eric was going down a dangerous path, one that was unfairly lonely. Godric never commanded him to, but he would be lying if he said he never asked Eric and Pam to become public figures for political power. After Nan Flanagan and Steve Newlin died, there was a vacuum to be filled in the public's perception and it was better to fill it with someone of his choosing than leave it to the next power-hungry charlatan on the queue.

Over the years, better candidates popped up, and they were vetted and pushed by the Vampire Council he was head of. Eric and Pam were able to return to the semi-quiet lives they deserved. Except Pam liked the occasional limelight, so she remained in Los Angeles. Now, he was thrown into the ring again, and Godric felt determined to do something. Anything.

It was eerily quiet outside for a few minutes before a pair of little heels made their way to the door. She entered quietly holding her usual clipboard, plus a mysterious white plastic box with a glass lid. Because he had manners of a different century, Godric stood up at her entry.

Katherine was not wearing a lab coat today, but navy blue trousers and a grey mock neck sweater. Her hair was down too, like their last promenade. She put her belongings on the table between them and nodded at him with her clear blue eyes.

"You can't be part of my studies," she said flatly.

Anything and everything he had rehearsed went out the window. "I'm sensing a 'but'."

She pulled a stack of papers out of her clipboard, neatly paperclipped together, and practically slapped it on the desk in front of him. He couldn't help but smile after the 2 seconds it took him to read the whole page. "You're serving me a non-disclosure agreement?"

"And a non-compete."

"My, my, Miss Bellefleur, I didn't know I needed a lawyer present for this evening."

"If you sign it, I can show you what it is that I actually do here."

And there it was, the spark in her eyes. No, if anything they shone brighter. He hadn't snuffed it after all. With vampire speed, he read all three pages. Without hesitation, he signed it.

Kate turned her head slightly, shocked at his willingness to go along with whatever tactic she was throwing at him. "You do understand what you just signed, yes?"

"I understand you gave me an NDA and a non-compete. You walked in three minutes past midnight, not wearing work clothes which means you are not working. I assume that whatever it is you are about to show me, does not belong to Bonne Nuit and thus I cannot buy it."

"And because I hold the patent, and inherited my mother's rights to this research lab, I am entitled to work on personal projects while using this facility and its resources. You can't sue me for it later, either."

"I understand."

Kate frowned for a second, confused at his lack of pushback. She came into that room ready to fight, and Godric immediately surrendered. How could he not? She offered a peek behind the curtain. The good doctor retrieved her signed papers and stashed them in her clipboard. She sat down, and he followed suit.

"About the other night, I'm-" whatever poetic string of words he had concocted missed his tongue. "An asshole."

That was all he could come up with.

Her lips curled up briefly. "You're not. You went through something beyond horrific and I don't blame you for asking questions, for making me…" Godric was at the edge of his seat. "Rethink."

"And I made insulting assumptions about possibly one of the very first public allies in vampire history. I am sorry."

"I'm just trying to follow in her footsteps," her hands held the edges of the white plastic box delicately. "To continue what she started."

A weight lifted in the room. "So what is it? This… Personal project you hold a patent to?"

She pulled out a 3-ounce white squeeze tube with a blue cap from her trouser's pocket and placed it on the table. Upon further inspection, the tube was clear, its contents were white.

"What is it?"

"Hematite Sulphoro-Quinoxaline complex," she said with ease. "It's sunscreen."

He took a double take, eyes bouncing between the tube of magic sitting in front of him and her alluring eyes. Godric imagined it so vividly, being able to walk outside. To hear birds sing and snow melt under a sunny spring day. Just to get into his car, and then drive to a meeting at 9 AM. To catch flights without a coffin. To travel without special accommodations. For vampires to be able to work regular jobs. Go to college. To be witness to a world that was forbidden to them in their making.

Godric picked up the small tube and hesitated to open the cap as if he were holding a grenade with a blue plastic pin.

"It's not the final product yet, I'm still playing around with the stabilizers and the texture," Kate was trying to manage his expectations, but he was already daydreaming about feeling the warm sand between his toes and watching the sun rise in Thailand. "And I haven't tested for longevity, or water resistance yet."

The doctor pulled the white box to the middle of the table. One of the sides had a small circular hole, forming an opening. The top of the box was clear acrylic, revealing small square bulbs flush with the white walls. To the side, was a small junction of cables with a battery pack and a black square remote with a singular red button. It was a UV light box.

"Or if it actually works," she smiled shily.

Godric sat at the precipice of discovery. This… If this worked…. The implications would be more than he could ever dream of.

"Do you have any idea of what would happen if this worked?"

"You wouldn't get a second-degree burn, I hope," she laughed. The blush on her cheeks signalled that she knew the grandiosity of what was in that tube, she was just too humble to boast about it.

"How does it work?"

"Oh," she straightened up. "I guess you never had to put on sunscreen before. Here," she reached for his hand and he delicately gave him.

Katherine rolled his sleeve up to his elbow, opened the tube's cap and squeezed a blueberry-sized dollop on the back of his right hand. She then delicately took it in both her hands and caressed it all over the skin below his mid-arm. Her hands were soft and warm and made his gums ache. She spent a whole minute spreading the thick white lotion on both sides of his palm, between each finger, into the creases of his knuckles until the white cast absorbed into his almost felt… intimate, this type of care. The silence added to the tension and he was torn between enjoying the sensation her hands him and wanting to imagine other opportunities in which she may care for him. Her reaction to him was a mixture of scientific professionally and perhaps a bit of personal intrigue. Her movements were not brusque, but slow, soft, and methodical. Her eyes studied his hand carefully as if she had never held a hand before. There was something about her delicate touch that made him want to give her more than just his arm. If he were being honest, his pants were becoming tighter.

"The top of the box is Bellefleur plexiglass, and inside the box, there are UV lamps. This is the on-off switch," she pointed at the big red button on the remote, abandoning his hand all at once. "Now, place your right hand inside the box, and your left can rest on this button," he followed her instructions. "Your vampire reflexes are much faster than mine, so I will let you turn it on and off. You can also pull your hand out if you feel any pain or discomfort."

The only indication she gave of the importance of this moment was a delicate worry to her lower lip. Godric did not dare move. He just sat there, one hand hovering over the red button, one hand inside the box, on the brink of discovery. Why did she bestow him this honour, he would never understand.

"Does it always feel like this?" His eyes met hers.

"What does?"

"Changing the world?"

Kate laughed. "Just push the button, Godric."

He did, and the purple lights inside the box turned on with a simple click. The lights weren't warm or felt like anything. They were just pale purple lights. When he looked up again, she had the biggest grin on her beautiful face.

"Is it real? Are there UV rays in the light?"

"Yes, it's real," the doctor nodded. "The intensity is low but I just needed to know if the compound concentration worked. It's not like I test this part myself."

Godric released the button and retrieved his perfectly unscathed hand from the box. He even checked both sides of his palm for signs of redness or smell of burnt flesh. There was nothing but the mineral scent of the cream and a slight shine on his skin. He laughed, in both shock and awe. It wasn't excitement or joy he was feeling. It was straight-up euphoria. He wanted to jump up and down, to scream, to do something to remark on how absolutely exordinary this could be.

"Do you have bigger lights with the full intensity of the sun?" Godric asked immediately, he need more discovery, more light, and more of Katherine's addictive smile.

"Of course, for the glass testing."

He looked at her, deep in her wonderful eyes. "Let's do it."

Katherine sat back in her chair, and he could see her brain thinking about the logistics behind what he was proposing. Given he hadn't actually suggested it out loud, Godric deducted she quietly urged the same thing: a full body test. He sat at the edge of his seat until she nodded. "Okay."

He stood up rapidly in excitement.

"Okay," she repeated smiling, giddy at the prospect. Then she took his hand in hers, pulling him along. "Come with me."

She had brought him into this part of the lab before when they first met weeks ago. If she thought she was excited then, what she felt now was off any scale ever known. Reason and logic seemed to exit her brain wherever Godric was around, but this time they were both pursuing the one thing that made her wake up everyday. To hypothesise, experiment, replicate, scale up, analyze. The feeling that when you succeed, just for a small moment, you knew something that no one else in the world did. To feel like you pushed humanity forward… Was unlike anything else she had ever felt. It made her soul sing.

Katherine replayed her math in her head over and over again to ensure that the concentration of UV-blocking compound in formula two would be sufficient to give Godric full protection under the full lights. The test box only emitted 7 milliwatts of radiation per square meter, whereas the full lamps for the glass testing emitted 251.3, which was the equivalent of three tanning beds or 48.5 minutes of a Sahara sun at noon per minute.

"I did test the sunscreen on a glass smear under an ultraviolet anti-radiation optical lens and gave me good results, but human skin isn't glass,"

"Vampire skin," Godric corrected her. "And stop second-guessing yourself."

They entered the glass testing room on the west wing and Kate cleared a table and pulled out the soldering kit. His unwavering trust filled her heart with something she couldn't quite describe. The closest word she could think of was terrifying.

"Godric if I am wrong, you might burst into flames."

"And if you're right, I can walk out of here and take you out for breakfast."

Pretending she wasn't having full body heat flashes at what he just said, Kate snapped the cords out of the small test box. Trying to regain composure, she instructed Godric to pull out three UV shutter panels from the storage room and bring them into the testing room floor. The shutters were the project she was developing before all of this started, and if it weren't for the sunscreen, it would be Bonne Nuit's next product release. The shutters were installed on Bonne Nuit glass windows on a fake wall on casters, like mini walls of a movie set that clicked together. Godric was good at following instructions, and with ease, he clicked the three walls together in a U shape and removed the Bonne Nuit glass panes, leaving just the shutters on the moveable panels.

Next, Kate pulled out the light panel. An eight-foot tall, four-foot-wide wall on caster wheels covered in high-end UV lights strong enough to power a medium underground farm. They placed the wall of lights directly in front of their window fort. Kate cracked open the control panel and started rewiring and soldering cables together to give Godric full control of both the light switch and the shutters. He would turn the lights on from the inside of his little fort, and if he felt any discomfort at all, Godric would activate the shutters to close. Once on, it took a few seconds for the UV bulbs to dim, so the guillotine-like snap shutters would be the safest way to emergency stop the experiment. She tested the shutter buttons several times, each snapping shut aggressively fast. Kate was already feeling her pulse in her ears.

Without asking, and most definitely without warning, Godric took off his shirt. Kate didn't blush because she was pretty sure her blood stopped circulating altogether. Yes, she had seen shirtless men aplenty from her brother's track and field practices and competitions, to her sister's pool parties and sexcapades. Even scattered throughout a myriad of Raya dating profiles as of late. But this… This evoked an entirely different reaction in her.

Godric was exquisitely beautiful everywhere like a marble statue meticulously crafted over an entire lifetime. He was pale, as most vampires were, and his muscles were incredibly defined as his body was leaner than she expected. He had no body hair on his chest, but some dark hairs trailing down just the belly button down his jeans. He also had fascinating tattoos covering his body. His left bicep had seven chevron rings around its entire circumference. On his right bicep were two bands with runic writings that she couldn't quite make out of. Draped across his chest, from trapezius to trapezius was a drawing resembling a spiked torc, a type of Celtic necklace.

The vampire grabbed the small cream container and dotted the white cream on his forearms and stomach.

"You aren't spreading it evenly," the scientist in her noticed right away. "Here, let me."

Gently, she pulled the container from his hands and started evenly spreading the lotion across his shoulders and down his arms. It profoundly struck her that she had never stood so close to him. Kate squeezed some lotion on her hands and tried to steady herself. She could hear the sound of her own throat swallowing as she worked the lotion in. This felt different. This felt like an entirely different kind of experiment.

Kate could feel Godric's eyes boring into her, and his muscles were somehow frozen, as if he forgot how to move. After Kate finished his arms and upper chest she pressed the lotion against his pectoral muscles, and he flinched.

"Sorry," she said, looking up at Godric questioningly.

"Senstive," he whispered, pressing on his nipples.

Kate continued with the lotion, spreading it evenly across his abdominal muscles, feeling herself flush. Why were these muscles so strong…so attractive? Kate gulped down a breath, trying to remember that this was a very scientific experiment and that she needed to remain calm. Rational. She couldn't let his fantastic muscles distract her.

Kate couldn't recall what the V shape on a man's lower abs was called, where the obliques meet the transversus abdominis muscles, but it made her feel a coil tighten deep in her stomach.

Clearing her throat, trying to remember how to speak, she whispered. "Um, a, turn around please, and I'll apply the lotion to your back."

Here, there were more tattoos. An aquatic snake of some sort ran down his spine, along with a red round symbol on his right shoulder blade.

His body told two thousand years of history. He was a true marvel.

There were faint freckles on the top of his shoulders which was so interesting to her, that he could have been freckled by the sun before he was turned that she almost missed the mark upon his shoulder. Upon closer inspection, she realized the red symbol on his shoulder was actually a mix of keloid and hypertrophic tissue, scarring caused by severe burning. The perfect circle along with the runic symbols inside it indicated he was branded when human.

"Does this hurt?" Her fingers touched the red runes with feather lightness.

"No," he whispered.

She put an extra layer of cream on it, as scar tissue tended to be more sensitive to sunlight - at least on the living. Her hands touched the side of his ribs, his lower back down to the edges of his jeans, up his latissimus dorsi, and around his strong round shoulders. It felt incredibly intimate to caress the nape of his neck and feel his neck relax slightly under her fingers, as if he were giving into her. Could it be that, maybe, he like her touch? The walls around them reflected the bright laboratory lights behind them, shining a soft diffused light on his beautiful body. She noticed Godric had goosebumps on his arms, but it could be from being shirtless in a cold lab slathered in sulphoro-quinoxaline-based cream.

Her hands palpated every inch of his back twice, ensuring full absorption into his dermis and subconsciously exploring a two-thousand-year-old body that told stories she deeply craved to learn. In fact, it was hard to stop touching him. Her hands rested on his ribs, inching to go forward and close the space between their bodies. Kate's eyes could not distinguish any spot left uncovered, which in of itself could be dangerous. If she missed a spot, he could burn. The thought of hurting him in the name of scientific advancement paralyzed her with fear. What if it all had started exactly like this ten years ago? What if Kate was no better than those monsters?

"Please turn it off if you feel even the smallest-"

"Shh," he hushed her. His right hand moved across his torso and grabbed her left hand, pressing it against his side firmly. "I trust you, Katherine."

They stood together for a moment, Kate too afraid to let go, Godric too paralyzed by the unimaginable enormity of what they were about to do.

Looking up at his face and strange otherwordly eyes, she realized that she needed to apply the lotion to his face as well. She dotted his face with the sunscreen, and his lips parted and his eyes closed. Kate traced her fingers over his features, the slope of his nose, the strength of his jaw, and the curve of his lips. He was handsome, but there was something more too. This felt intimate and personal, touching his face this way. He looked almost vulnerable.

After she smoothed her thumbs over the delicate skin of his eyelids, he blinked them open. Staring at her, her hands still cupping his face. For a moment, just a second, he looked at her lips. And back at her eyes.

Was…was he going to kiss her?

But then before she could process what that would mean, he backed away.

"Shall we?" he asked, gesturing toward cubicle, a mischevous grinning spreading across his face. Kate nodded.

With a big breath and a shaky hand, Kate took several steps backward until her lower back met the messy workbench. There was a loud pop of a fuze when Godric turned the panel on, engulfing the whole room in a bright light. She could only make out the outline of his beautiful figure standing between the three open windows. Before she could fully take it in, there was a loud shot in the room and the shutters snapped closed making his body disappear in the shadows. The lights of the panel behind the cubicle died out slowly, returning the focal light to the laboratory behind them.

Godric turned around, half stunned and completely speechless. There were a few reddish spots on his neck and around the edges of his jeans, and a steamy smoke rose from his hair.

"Your scalp," Kate gasped. How could she be so stupid? Of course, covering the skin wasn't enough!

Godric smiled, blinking incessantly because his poor eyes burned. His pupils were a tiny dot and the sclera of his eyes were bloodshot. His beautiful eyes - "Oh, God," she choked. "Why did you open your eyes?!"

"I'm fine," he laughed, still blinking as the redness slowly subdued.

"I'll get you some blood," before he could stop her, Kate shot out of the room, her heartbeat blasting in her ear.

How unbelievably reckless and stupid she had been! Going into phase 3 with an unvetted subject, without backup, without recording, without proper safety protocols, and without the proper paperwork. He could have died!

Kate grabbed three blood bags from her fridge and rushed back to the testing room where Godric stood waiting with a strange grin on his face.

"Here, drink, please-" she broke the seal of the blood bag and brought it to his lips in a panic. Blood would heal all the light damage and soothe the pain she undoubtedly had caused.

"As you wish," his lips surrounded the nozzle, but his silver eyes did not leave hers as he suckled the blood bag dry.

The splotchy redness on his skin lightened within the minute that took him to drink the bag. She was already holding the next dose for him.

He slightly gasped for air as his mouth broke away from the empty bag, a devious curl on the edge of his lips.

"Godric I am so sorry-"

"I'm fine," he assured her.

"You are not fine!" Kate's hands trembled as she broke the seal of the bag and handed it to him. "None of this is fine, Godric! What I did was stupidly dangerous, and for what?!"

She was so unbelievably furious at herself. As much excitement as Godric unexplainably ignited in her, Kate could not just toss reason aside!

"For breakfast, of course," he said mid-sip, his cheeks turning a human rosy colour, his eyes still fixed on hers. She hadn't even noticed how closely he stood to her, and how shirtless he still was.

"That's not funny," she snapped.

There was no way she could further test the sunscreen. Not without having enough cloned bags for healing injured subjects. Not without changing the formula to give the cream some type of colour guard to indicate where it was applied and where it wasn't. Not to mention including some type of eye, mouth and scalp protection.

Kate broke the seal of the third bag and gave it to him.

"Are you trying to get me blood drunk, Miss Bellefleur?"

She rolled her eyes. "Stop trying to downplay this."

"Downplay this?" He chuckled without immediately chugging more of her cloned blood. "Katherine, that was the most incredible thing that has happened to me in the past 500 years. I felt the sun!"

Kate tightened her jaw and frowned. "No Godric, you didn't. What you felt was merely 145 UVA and UVB radiation light bulbs through three panels inside an underground laboratory. What you felt was artificial and rudimentary, not to mention that it hurt you."

"Rudimentary? Kate give yourself some credit here-"

"Yes, rudimentary," she insisted angrily. "Compared to what my mother could do, this was a pathetic attempt at…"

Saving Bonne Nuit. Continuing her mother's legacy. Not disappointing her sister. Proving her father wrong. Helping vampires. Destroying biological and societal barriers. Fulfilling dreams. Giving him something special.

Being special. Becoming everything her mother believed she would one day be.

Before she knew it, she was staring at her own shoes with tears flooding her eyes. She could see him moving even closer, and knowing that she would fully become undone if his bare arms wrapped around her in an attempt to make her feel better, she caught a glimpse of the time on her watch. They had spent the whole night here. She grabbed his forgotten shirt off the table and shoved it into his chest.

"Let me show you what I mean," Kate said then walked away from him and toward the door. She didn't want him to make her feel better, she wanted him to understand.

Her shoes were loud, echoing angrily against the walls of the empty laboratory. Godric, now dressed, quietly followed her to the elevator. The chime was cheery, as it always was when the doors parted open. Kate hit the very top button and up they went up the Glass Tower. Godric still watched her, not with a devilish smile but with dark concern.

When the doors parted in the penthouse, the east-facing elevator was met with light. Not a fluorescent, incandescent or UV radiation light. Actual sunlight, created by a higher power, lightening the sky up and painting it with reds, oranges and pinks, dusting the clouds with beautiful shades of yellow and white. Sunlight that rose behind the buildings of a quiet and sleepy New Orleans promising the world a new day. The dawn that banished the darkness away, and with it the moon and the stars, and by natural law - vampires. It was Abigail Bellefleur who created the glass that encased the walls and ceilings of the Glass Tower, forming a full observatory in the middle of the city. Godric had been here before, in fact, they met in the conference room down the hallway. But that had been at 10 PM, not 6 AM.

Godric stepped carefully into the hallway, hypnotized by the beauty in front of his eyes. Two millennia he spent in the darkness, and all Kate wanted to do was allow him to step into the light. Her mother's invention was revolutionary, yes, but still incredibly limiting as Godric was still confined in a glass jar instead of a coffin. Kate wanted to give him the freedom to step outside of it. To go beyond where Abigail's genius had allowed him to.

Slowly, he stepped forward, entering what was actually Rebecca's office. Kate followed him at a distance, giving him space to process what he was seeing, but still trying to imagine what was going through his head.

"Do you remember the last time you saw the sunrise?" She asked, trying to picture an old desert, a beach, or untouched ancient forests that no longer existed.

"Yes," his voice was a whisper. His silver eyes were studying the view as if trying to memorize it. "It was actually not that long ago."

Kate was curious and yet, oddly alarmed.

"I was on a rooftop Dallas," his gaze was far, far away. "And I can assure you there was no glass between me and the sky. Luckily, Eric convinced me to step inside."

She felt a knot on her throat realizing what those words meant. He lived through two thousand years of human history, but also two thousand years worth of suffering. Godric had tattoos of a warrior and brandings of a slave, and he carried more pain inside him than he could probably ever put into words. Kate felt deeply that Godric more than anyone, deserved to feel it. The real thing. The warmth of the sun on his skin, along the the ocean breeze in his hair. To see everything from the pale Nordic light to the warm Mediterranean sky. And she wanted more than anything to be the one to give it to him.

When her hand reached for his again, it wasn't an experiment. And when his fingers interlaced hers tightly, her soul sang louder than it ever had.

An: oh my heartttt

These two just melt me 3 don't forget to comment below!

until next month (yes, next month, it's written hehe)