Archive of Our Own ^beta

The bites were deep.

They always were, though - like with most things, they had begun to hurt less and less over time.

Midnight rendezvous filled with hisses and whines under the light of the moon had turned to serene ceremonials.

Borderline religious worship, borderline obsession, Angela would never manage to detangle the two.

She had had to stop spending time around others as quickly as the events had begun. The bites would be less sweeter the more people the vampire could smell on her, more harsh, no gentle touches or whispered praise.

Not to mention the blood.

God, the blood.

Some nights, it seemed to never end.

Red tears running down her neck, dried like a willing sacrifice by the time she awoke.

The dizziness had never bothered Angela, nor had the bruising or the pain, and especially not the blood; it had always seemed poetic, romantic, even.

In many ways, the connection was romantic, there were fewer ways to be physically closer to another than crying silently in their arms into the night.

Old German books scrawled in scratched ink about tales of phantoms and vampires in the villages had been of little help, only fueling the fire of passion that lay dormant within Angela whenever the wounds began to heal.

In fact, her reality seemed rather far from what was traditional.

Angela had remarked to herself more than once that the ferocity in the biting and handling had slowly turned into care, adoration, perhaps.

She would never know if her surviving the first occurrence was purposeful or a pure error in judgement.

Though, something about the way the vampire seemed to be able to predict every move before she made it, hear every breath and feel every sigh, put that into question.

Perhaps she had never ran far after that day due to fear, or perhaps some twisted form of lust, a want to be needed.

Whatever it was, her yells had settled into tender whimpers, arms wrapping around the neck of her lover as she graciously cleaned her work, fingers tangling in sleek, black hair that seemingly never knotted.

By the end of it, Angela would always feel half alive, as if she had woken up from a hundred year slumber to the pain edged pleasure of a sharp tongue running over the punctures, of contrastingly precise and careful hands tracing across her skin.

She’d drag herself home half clothed through the obscured streets after a few minutes, somehow never encountering another living soul.

The events would be hazy by the next morning, though Angela would always wake up writhing and missing something, empty and wanting.

And finally, in some twisted, gothic manner, Angela would always feel needed, if only hidden from the world, wrapped in the arms of the undead.