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Pairing 🩸 Vampire Jun x Human Female OC

Synopsis 🩸 Your boss is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life, it's like he glows from within and brightens your day. But one evening after work you find him doing something that's about to change your life forever. That is, if he lets it.

Genre 🩸 Supernatural/Vampire au, angst, smut, fluff

Plot warnings 🩸everyone works in publishing, Vernon almost joins a cult (he's barely in it, but when he is, he's a menace), a brief reference to weed (Vernon), mentions of alcohol, Wonwoo being the annoying bestie is just canon in all my fics at this point, lots of references to blood (drinking it, blood play), threat (she's scared in the moment but gets over it pretty quickly), lots of literary references (Junhui, it turns out, has basically had everything to do with almost every famous literary work), I've tried to make his life historically accurate but he's almost 2000 years old so he's seen a lot, they're in love but he's refusing to accept that, heavy angst for a little while because Jun is an idiot, arguing/ bickering, Wonwoo is unhelpful (again, it's canon in every fic I write and he's in it), everything works out for them (without giving anything away), mentions of Seungkwan, Jeonghan, Joshua and Soonyoung being vampires too but we only meet Seungkwan, a car accident (mild injuries),

Smut warnings 🩸making out, fang play? (she's into the idea of him biting her), biting (with fangs), slight blood play (he tastes her), body worship, a lot of skinship? they just want to feel each other, oral f.recieving, vaginal fingering, nipple play, it's all very romantic but he does call her a pervert,

Word count 🩸 27.7k

a/n 🩸 this has been a labour of love and honestly could've been about 60k words, vampire Junhui is literally the perfect man (vampire) and I hope you like him!!

You can describe a lot of things in this world as beautiful. The view of the sun rising across the ocean, particularly old buildings which leave your mind reeling at how anyone could build something so grand hundreds of years ago, even the sight of a star filled night. But the one thing that you think might be the single most beautiful thing you’ve ever had the privilege of seeing?

That’s simple.

Wen Junhui.

You’re not even exaggerating, there’s something about him that means the only word you can truly describe him as is beautiful.

Even now as you sit in a staff meeting and he’s trying to hammer home to you all that you need to find new writers who bring something fresh and not the same old same old, he seems to glow in his beauty. You’re certain it can’t just be you that realises it, every other editor and member of staff must be able to see it too. Although maybe they just manage to tune it out, you have always been attracted to the shiny things in life and the way he seems to almost shimmer as he floats through the room means you can’t take your eyes off him for a single second.

“You’re drooling again.”

“Shut up Wonwoo.” You whisper through gritted teeth, although make a conscious effort to divert your attention away from the beauty that stands before you.

“You know you should….”

But Wonwoo doesn’t get to finish his sentence, Junhui’s attention turns to you both and even Wonwoo, who is generally unaffected by even the most disastrous of circumstances, sits up straight like a child who's just been caught doing something they absolutely shouldn’t be doing.

“Was that something you wanted to share Wonwoo?”

God, even the way he talks is like something from the past, it holds that same reverence of people centuries ago who used to speak properly and with authority, rather than the abbreviations and slang that everyone uses today. You’d once written lol (by accident) in an email to him and you’re certain you saw him getting a dictionary off his bookshelf to see what this strange word you’d emailed him meant. It’s just every single facet of him demands respect, be it his beauty or the way he holds himself, he’s a monolith in a world of pebbles and you can’t help being drawn in by him.

“Oh! Er…” Wonwoo frantically looks around the room hoping something might jump out at him, because he really can’t tell his boss that he was about to say ‘You know you should just fuck him in his office’, “_____! She has a couple of manuscripts by new authors that she hasn’t shut up about for weeks!”

Fuck you Jeon Wonwoo.

But then Junhui turns his attention to you and you’re presented with a hopeful smile that in all seriousness, you would enter a battle for.

“Is that true?”

You’re certain his skin is actually shimmering, not in that fresh glow you get when you’ve been in the sun or the mirror like hue you get after a particularly amazing facial, but it just shimmers like he’s glowing from within. You’re not even sure skincare could achieve it, it’s surely…..

“_____?”

Shit. The whole publishing department is waiting on your answer and you’re sitting deciding whether it’s moisturiser or genetics that causes your boss to be fucking ethereal.

“Sorry!” You blush, picking at the skin near your thumb nail, “I do have a couple that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, but I wasn’t sure they’d be what you were looking for.”

“To be honest,” damn his smile for making it so hard to concentrate on a word he’s saying, “I don’t know what I’m looking for. We need something fresh yet…timeless, I suppose. We need something to shake up the industry, like…..”

“Like 1984 but perhaps a little less true to life?”

You’ve done it. Your life has peaked. You have made Junhui laugh, you’ve seen the wide smile that forms on that stoic face and now you’ll never get over it. And it isn’t that he’s unpleasant, he smiles to you all and wishes you a good morning, but you’ve never seen him laugh. And now you have and you think you want to have the privilege of hearing it every day for eternity.

“That’s exactly it _____, yes. If you have time this week, drop by my office and we’ll check out those manuscripts.”

Breathe _____. He’s asked you to stop by his office for work. The way your heart just leaped, you’d think he’d just gotten down on one knee and asked you to be his wife.

“O-okay,” you nod, fumbling with your notebook and pen, whilst you desperately try to play it cool.

“Very smooth.” Wonwoo murmurs as he watches Junhui start talking about publishing deadlines.

“Fuck. Off.” You poke him with your pen, enjoying the way he tries to pretend it didn’t affect him.

The rest of Thursday, after the meeting, had been derailed by Vernon. One of the writers you look after as his editor and a man so annoying that in a few years, it wouldn’t surprise you if you were doing jail time for murdering him.

He’d called you in a panic, saying his creative spark had fizzled out and he was going to join a new “collective” of artists in Nepal, where he’d smoke weed and take part in group activities that would allow his creative juices to flow freely again. So, when you’d arrived at his house by the beach and discovered exactly what these “activities” included, you informed Vernon what he was actually planning on joining was a cult.

You then had to spend forty minutes with a frantic Vernon looking over your shoulder, coming down from his last high with a whole cake on a plate because of his munchies, as you checked every email from this “collective” and rang his bank to make sure they hadn’t already taken any payments. When the leader of the cult called him, not that you realised they used phones, you always thought cult leaders would have some sort of edgy system of communication, Vernon threw the phone to you in a blind panic.

Two hours. Two whole hours of your day wasted by talking to a man named Supreme Leader John the Second (presumably Supreme Leader John the First was the first cult leader) who was adamant that now Vernon was in the collective, he couldn’t leave.

It was only when you listed just how high maintenance Vernon was (he will only eat fish on Wednesdays or every third Saturday of the month, he likes to use a mixture of mouth washes and has specific measurements for said mixing and he will only eat cookies with even numbers of chocolate chips in them because odd numbers “encourage the world’s evils”) that Super Leader John decided that Vernon probably wasn’t suited to their collective and they’d actually quite prefer it if he never contacted them again.

So, Thursday had been a write off. And for most of Friday, Junhui had been in meetings with various higher ups that didn’t concern editors like yourself. But now most of the office had gone home and you were left with two manuscripts that had landed on your desk months ago, and that you’d fallen in love with as soon as you read them. They’re by unknown authors and aren’t the usual sort of thing that this company is used to publishing. All you can do is hope that Junhui likes them, if not, you’ve got yourself all worked up over the simple act of visiting his office, for nothing.

His office sits at the end of the large open plan work area, you can’t see in it as there’s a small corridor that leads into the actual office itself, but once you’re in there it’s like a dream. You’ve only been in a couple of times but each time you’ve been awestruck by the floor to ceiling bookshelves, full of books that you can tell he’s read from how well thumbed they are, and that don’t even look out of place in such a modern building. He even had special protective films installed on the windows so the sunlight coming through the glass building wouldn't harm any of his tomes, he is literally the man of your bookish dreams.

You take a deep breath, the excitement of getting to spend one on one time with Junhui mixing with the nerves of spending one on one time with him, and knock on the door.

You don’t get an answer, maybe he’s out? Maybe he’s gone home already? It is Friday after all and a man like him must have a wealth of options of things to occupy his time with.

You risk one more knock and if you get no answer, you’ll leave the manuscripts on his desk with a little note saying that you hope he likes them.

The second knock brings no response and so you slowly enter his office, the manuscripts bearing the brunt of your nerves as the paper slightly crumples from how hard you’re gripping them.

What you find though, makes your blood run cold.

“OH!” Junhui looks at you in horror, quickly hiding the cut crystal glass he’d been drinking from and trying to wipe his mouth, “I didn’t hear you knock _____! Sorry!”

You don’t reply. You can’t reply. You just stare at the man in the fine cut three piece suit, who would look as beautiful as ever if not for the red smears around his lips, that he’s desperately trying to wipe away with a handkerchief, with wide eyes.

Your heart is pounding in your ears, you’ve never felt fear like it. Every fibre of your being is telling you to flee, to get away from him and whatever he was just doing and yet you can’t.

It’s like you’re frozen to the spot, nothing but fear pumping through you but your legs are cemented to the spot halfway between his desk and your way out of this nightmare.

“W-was,” you swallow, trying to collect your thoughts, “was t-that…..in that glass…..was it?”

You don’t finish your sentence, the reality of what it was he was drinking makes you feel like you want to vomit and if what he was drinking is what you think it is, you need to get as far away from this freak as quick as you can.

You drop the manuscripts and run, ignoring Junhui shouting after you to come back and let him explain. Explain what exactly? Why he was sitting at his desk, quite happily sipping on a glass of fucking blood like it was a fine wine to be savoured? For the first couple of seconds, you wondered if it was tomato juice or a Bloody Mary but Bloody Marys don’t leave a stain on your skin like that. Because when Junhui tried to wipe away the residue on his mouth, it smeared and stained. It smeared and stained exactly like blood.

You know you’re going to have to answer the door. You’ve seen vampire movies, nobody just sees a vampire drinking blood and goes happily about their life afterwards. And from the way Junhui has been knocking at your apartment door for the past ten minutes, your life isn’t going on happily at all.

On your drive home, which you just hope you didn’t hit any old ladies or drive through any red lights whilst you weren’t paying any attention, you did toy with the idea that he’s just a weirdo. He’s just a weirdo that drinks blood and that might’ve been something you could deal with. But then you thought about it, really thought about it. The shimmer to his skin, the way he talks like he’s from another time, literally everything about him completely juxtaposes everything that the modern man is. And you know it’s far reaching and anyone would call you insane if you tried to tell them, but you just know it, it’s the only thing that makes sense. Wen Junhui is a vampire.

He’s been gently knocking on your door, desperately pleading with you to let him explain but you’re not an idiot. You know once you open that door, you’re dead. You’ve always had good veins, every nurse that’s ever taken a blood sample has commented how wonderful your veins are and so he won’t waste any time in feasting on you. You’re certain of it.

You did try to google what wards off a vampire, but the first one was sunlight and given he’s chosen to work in a glass building, even if his office does have protection for his books, sunlight doesn’t seem to be a problem. And what is more, you’re not religious so why the fuck would you just have a crucifix around the apartment?

Yes. You have garlic but it’s surely not enough to ward off a whole vampire, there’s probably some equation whereby each foot in height equals ten bulbs of garlic and you’ve only got two bulbs, it’s not going to be enough. And sadly for you, you’re clean out of wooden stakes. So do you just resign yourself to being a sacrificial lamb to the hot vampire who you work for? Perhaps you could fight him off? You did self defence classes for like three weeks and you once made Wonwoo’s nose bleed when you accidentally punched him fighting off a bee, you have some fighting skills.

“LET ME IN OR I WILL BREAK THIS DOOR DOWN.” Junhui gets tired of trying to be nice and shouts through the door instead.

Shit. He probably could too, why he hasn’t already is a mystery to you.

You gather your things, hoping they’ll at least ward him off for a few seconds and walk slowly to the door, your hands shaking and wondering how long it’ll take someone to find you. That’s if he even leaves any of you, maybe you’ll be so delicious that he’ll just eat every last bit of you. Do vampires even eat people? Or are they zombies? He’s surely not a zombie, not with that haircut.

“Stand back!” You’d have been proud of yourself for that if your voice hadn’t broken a little.

He doesn’t say anything but then what are you expecting him to even say? He’s going to kill you either way, all you’ve done by asking him to stand back is give him a little run up to the killing. Fucking idiot.

You open the door and hold your hands in the air, hoping your choice of repellents work at least a little.

But Junhui just stands there, eyes flitting between your hands and the traces of a smirk on his lips.

“What are you holding?”

“DON’T COME NEAR ME! I MEAN IT!!!!!” You waggle your hands at him frantically.

“_____,” he bites his lips to hide his smile, “the whole crucifix and garlic thing is bullshit.”

“SO, YOU ARE A VAMPIRE?!” You jump back, your arms still outstretched. Part of you was hoping he was going to say you’ve got an overactive imagination and he’s on some sort of detox that rich people do.

“Can…” he looks around the empty hallway, “can we talk about this inside?”

Your arms fall to your sides, you didn’t prepare for this, you thought he’d pounce but he’s treating this more like a business meeting.

What’s the point in saying no? He’s a vampire, he won’t take no for an answer anyway, you’re lying to yourself if you think you have a single thread of authority in anything going on here.

“Ok, but only if you stay right by the door. I want a good six foot buffer zone,” you wave your arms around yourself, showing him exactly where he can’t go, “do not come in this buffer area.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he says smoothly and walks into your apartment.

Damn for a man who drinks blood, he really does smell fantastic, it’s like cedar with a mix of rosemary. It’s otherworldly, like nothing you’ve ever smelt before. But now isn’t the time to falter, you have an actual vampire in your apartment, it really shouldn’t matter that he smells nice.

“What do you want?”

“What did you think those were going to do?” he gestures to what you’re holding.

“Well. Garlic,” you gesture to him like it’s a given that garlic would help you ward him off, “and,” you glance down at the book you’re holding, “I’m not religious so don’t have a crucifix or bible or anything, this is the closest I had.”

“You think Mr Tumnus is going to help you fight off a vampire?” he smirks.

“The Chronicles of Narnia are based on the Bible,” you falter a little when you realise how fucking ridiculous that sounds, “it might’ve helped.”

He has just admitted that he is a vampire though, so you haven’t really got time to worry about your choice in defensive books.

“If you’re going to kill me, I won’t make it easy. I've got lots of salt.”

“You’re going to make sure you’re perfectly seasoned?” He raises an intrigued brow at you.

Fuck. So, the whole salt thing is a myth then.

“Salt doesn’t work either?”

He shakes his head, fighting off a smile.

“Oh, well then I give in,” you throw yourself on the sofa, “if it helps, my emergency contact is down as Wonwoo because he’s my oldest friend in the city, but don’t call him tonight. He has puzzle club with the old men in the neighbourhood and he hates being disturbed. You think you’re scary, you haven’t been on the receiving end of one of his lectures.”

Why can’t you just shut your damn mouth? Always have to drone on and on when you’re in a panic, like bamboozling whoever is scaring you would stop them from hurting you.

“I don’t want to kill you ______,”

“Oh please, don’t use the whole I don’t want to do this, I need to do this. I’ve read Dracula.”

“No,” he sits on your coffee table, chuckling at the ancient copy of ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ that you thought would help and very much ignoring your six foot buffer zone, “I don’t need to kill you either. I just need to know you won’t tell anyone.”

“Like anyone would believe me if I told them my boss was a vampire.”

“You seem quite calm considering you’ve just found out your boss is a vampire.” He narrows his eyes at you.

You’re not calm. You’ve no idea what you are. All you know is that you’re having to come to terms with the fact that not only do vampires appear to exist. But the boss you’ve been crushing on for god knows how long, is one.

“There’s not much I can do. You’ll either kill me or I’ll have to keep it secret. I’m not being sectioned because you’re a vampire.” You say indignantly, desperately trying to get some kind of upper hand here.

“I don’t want to kill you _____. I’ve said that. But I need to know you’ll keep this secret. If not, I have to move on and you’ll all lose your jobs.”

Oh great. So now the job of every person who works for one of the biggest publishers in the country, relies on your ability to keep a secret. Something which famously, you’re terrible at. You’ve told your mom every secret you’ve ever been told and Wonwoo seems to have some sort of sixth sense for when you’re hiding something. He’ll sniff it out before you even enter the office.

“I won’t tell anyone,” you sigh, leaning back into the sofa, “I can’t be responsible for everyone losing their jobs. But…..can I have those manuscripts back?”

“Why?” he smirks.

Shit. He’s already them. Or one of them at least.

“I didn’t know…..I wouldn’t have…..oh god,” you groan, ignoring the little laugh that comes from Junhui.

“You wouldn’t have brought a manuscript about a vampire to your boss that happens to be a vampire?”

“How did you read it already? It’s been like an hour?”

“I can read pretty quickly.” He shrugs like it’s nothing.

You should probably ask him to leave but you’re nothing if not nosey and if you’re never going to talk about this with him again, you want to ask him what life as a vampire is really like.

“Go on.” He smiles.

Can he? Oh fuck you hope he can’t read minds. He’s being very calm for someone that will have been subjected to some pretty explicit daydreams you’ve managed to conjure up, if he can read minds.

“Can you?” you ask quietly, “read minds?”

“No,” he snorts, “you just look like you have questions and to be honest, I’d be surprised if you didn’t.”

“Thank god for that!” your eyes widen, “I mean not that I’ve been thinking of anything weird. You know, just worried about stranger danger I guess,” you trail off.

“Could I?” He gestures to the spot on the sofa next to you.

“Oh! Sure! Do you want a drink? Although….” What the hell do vampires drink? Thinking about it now, you’re not sure you ever have seen him drink, other than the blood he was drinking earlier.

“Any b negative?” you freeze on your way to the kitchen, “I was joking _____. I’ll just have whatever you’re having.”

“Mint tea?”

“Perfect.”

He stands up to take his jacket off and you desperately try not to think too much into the fact that you’re spending time in your apartment, with your hot boss who you’ve been pining after for ages. The fact he’s a vampire should make you want to run and bang on your neighbour’s door for help, but you feel oddly at ease with him. He doesn’t seem to mean any harm to you and the fact that if you told someone, he said his reaction would be to leave, rather than hurt you, shows he truly has no intentions of hurting you.

“Here you go,” you mumble as you hand him the steaming mug of tea and sit down on the sofa next to him.

“Thank you. You’ve quite the collection of books.” He smiles and nods over to your messy bookshelves which have far too many books than the old shelves should be holding.

“Hm,” you hum, swallowing your sip of tea, “I’m running out of space for them. I know everything is going digital and people say print is dying, but I don’t know. I just like having the physical copy, I like seeing what I’ve read and the characters I’ve known.”

You turn back to him, shocked to find a fond smile on his lips.

“What?”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself. That’s what I’m always trying to hammer home to the execs, people want the physical copies of books. I understand the ease of digital things, but I still think there’s hope for published books. It isn’t the write off they think it is.”

“Can I….Do you mind if I……”

“Ask me whatever you want ______.”

Even the way he says your name makes your body tingle and heart leap. You shouldn’t still be having this reaction to him now you know he’s basically a monster.

“How old are you?”

“1941 years old.”

“That would mean you were born in….” you try to work it out, “85? Like the year 85?”

“If you’re using the current way of counting, yes. Although I was born hundreds of years before that system came into practice, before that we just used the eras of the current rulers and things.”

“So,” You cross your legs and get comfy on the sofa facing him, not realising just how softly he’s looking at you, “where were you born? Like does that country still exist?”

“It’s still China.” He nods, “But it’s very different from when I was born there. If you’d have told four year old Junhui he’d be moving around the earth in a metal box he’d have never believed you. Or known what metal was.”

You can’t imagine what that must be like. To have seen history with your own eyes.

“Did you always live in China? Or did you just recently move?”

“Recently to you and recently to me are two very different things ______.”

“Right,” you nod, a little embarrassed.

“I’ve lived all over the world,” you look up at him through your lashes, “I’ve seen the fall of Rome, I saw people say ‘Oh Shakespeare? He’s just a phase, he’ll be forgotten in a few years’ and I’ve seen some of the worst things mankind has ever done. You tend to have to move around every few decades or so, people grow old and when you don’t,” he smiles, though you note it doesn’t seem quite as happy as he wants it to, “you need to move on, so you’re not caught out.”

“That must be lonely.”

You sip your tea and wait for an answer, but when you look at him, he’s just staring at you with an emotion you can’t quite make out.

“No-one, not that many people have ever found out about me, but no-one has ever said anything like that. Or even thought about how it must feel to live like I do. It’s not a bad thing!” He rushes to say when he sees you looking a little worried you’d said the wrong thing.

You just nod and go back to your tea.

“Do you like the Chronicles of Narnia?” He averts his eyes to your well-read copy on the coffee table.

“It was my favourite books growing up. I think I've read them all a hundred times.”

“You know,” he sips his tea like he’s saying something totally normal, “it was me that came up with the name for Aslan.”

“What?! You’re just making that up!”

“I’m not!” he laughs, putting his tea down and picking up your book, “I was studying at Oxford University, I met Clive,” you scoff at him casually calling the author of your favourite childhood book Clive, like he’s friends with him, “at a local pub by chance. I told him I was a literary scholar, and he told me about the book he was writing and how the main hero was a lion and what he represented. But he was struggling with a name, so I suggested Aslan. I’d recently been in Turkey and Aslan is Turkish for Lion. Anyway, Clive loved it and so, Aslan was born.”

You blink at him. For someone that always has so much to say, you’re utterly speechless.

“What was he going to be called before that?”

“Mr Lion.”

You throw your head back in laughter much to the joy of the vampire sat beside you.

“H-he,” you hiccup out another laugh, “he was going to call him Mr Lion?”

“Well he did have form for it. Those poor beavers never got names did they? Just Mr and Mrs Beaver.”

You freeze. He’s actually telling the truth. You thought with a response like Mr Lion, he was just joking to calm your nerves.

“You’re being serious?”

“Yes! I named Aslan!”

“That’s fucking wild.” You shake your head.

“I have a first edition, if you wanted to see it?”

“Really? I’d love that! I love old books, I’ve never dreamt of owning any, or even seeing any, but I love the history of them. How they’ve been passed down and where they’ve been to get where they are now.”

If you could read Junhui’s mind you’d know that for the first time in a very long time, possibly ever, he feels completely captivated by you. He’s had romances through his life and people he thought he loved, but he’d never told anyone else about his “condition”, and thankfully, he’d never been found out, except for a few close shaves.

Suddenly though, he’s in a situation where someone knows his secret and that someone just happens to be one of the most beautiful and endearing women he’s ever met in his long life on this earth. It’s selfish to indulge you, and he tells himself he’s only offering to show you because you seem so interested in it, but a part of him, quite a big part is selfishly doing this because he can’t help wanting to spend more time with you.

“I’ve collected quite a few interesting pieces over the years. I could pick you up tomorrow? That’s if you don’t mind coming to my place?”

“Oh.” You sit up, a little shocked. “I-I’d really like that. You don’t mind showing them to me?”

“_____, in this life I don’t get to show many people, or anyone, this part of my life. People would ask way too many questions about where I found these things. So it’d be nice to share them with someone, particularly someone who seems to hold the same reverence for these things as me.”

“Then, yes. I’d love to come to your place.”

“Perfect,” he finishes his tea and even heads to the kitchen to clean his mug, “I’ll pick you up at 10? Or is that too early?”

“No, that’s fine!” You say excitedly, showing him to your door.

“Great,” he pauses like he was going to hug you, but instead sends you a small smile and sort or taps your arm before he heads through your front door, “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“Bye.” You grin and wave him off.

As the door closes, your back hits it and you can’t help the huge grin on your face. You’re spending your Saturday with your hot boss, at his apartment no less. Fuck, finding out he’s an ancient vampire might’ve been the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

You’d slept pretty well for someone who’d just found out that her boss is a blood drinking vampire, but you put that down to the fact that in the excitement of the prospect of spending time with him, you’d somehow completely blocked out that he is, in fact, a vampire. And that just yesterday you walked into his office to find him casually drinking a glass full of blood.

But now you’re waiting for him to pick you up, having been ready to go for the past hour because your nerves were kicking your ass, and you can’t help but think how incredibly stupid you’ve been to get yourself into this situation. Sure, he didn’t seem like he meant you any harm. And surely if he was going to kill you, he’d have done it last night, it makes no sense to keep you alive and give you the opportunity to tell someone what you’d found out. But that doesn’t mean that you haven’t been frantically pacing your apartment since seven this morning and wondering whether this was all some kind of trap.

This could all be a ruse to lure you to his place and keep you there. Perhaps that what vampires do, they don’t kill people straight away, they do it slowly. He might be intending to just keep you locked away somewhere in his home and feast on your blood whenever the mood takes him. And yet. You still felt oddly safe being near him last night, he didn’t speak to you with any threat, he didn’t seem to want to threaten you at all. And, if it had been a date or something, you’d have been pretty pleased with how easily you both got on, the chat flowed freely and he’d even made you laugh. Which is better than the last three first dates you’ve been on.

You check your watch, it’s only been a minute since you’d last checked it but other than picking the skin near your thumb nail, a habit your mom said would get you into trouble one day, you haven’t got much else to do. Five minutes. Just another five minutes and he’ll be knocking on your door, and you’ll be going to an actual vampire’s house. That is, if he’s on time. But you’re certain vampires generally are on time, they just have that vibe around them that they’d probably be punctual. Not that you’ve met many vampires. Although you have now met one, which considerably more than most people.

A gentle knock on the door breaks you out of your thoughts and you take a deep breath before you stand up. You’re excited, you can’t deny that, but it’s like the fear you feel before a first date has quadrupled because you have absolutely no idea what to expect from this. And it isn’t even that you can call it a date, he’s just asked you if you want to see his book collection because he never gets to share it with anyone. It’s more just your boss showing you something he knows you’ll like, rather than a first date with the potential for it to lead anywhere.

“Hi,” he says softly when you open the door.

“Hello”

You’re not sure why, but you were expecting him to be wearing a suit. He just always is in a suit. You certainly weren’t expecting the 1941 year old vampire to be sweats but you can’t say you’re mad about it. He looks warm. Like he’d give really great hugs and keep you safe. Shit you need to stop this, he is literally a vampire.

“Ready to go?”

“Sure,” you close your door and walk along the corridor with him towards the elevator.

“Did you sleep well?”

“I did,” you ponder, “a lot better than you’d think I would after yesterday.”

“Panic only set in this morning?” he smiles. How the hell can he read you so well? It’s not like you’ve spent a huge amount of time with him and yet this is the second time that it feels like he knows what you’re thinking.

“Sort of,” you admit, “you don’t scare me, not really. I think my imagination is scaring me a lot more than you.”

“I swear to you, I don’t mean you any harm. And,” he presses the button to the elevator, “you can ask me whatever you want to, I don’t mind. I know it’s a lot to take in.”

You just smile softly and nod, both of you entering the elevator and heading down to his car. You have questions. You have a lot of questions, but you’re probably better off waiting until you’re in private. The last thing you need is for any nosey neighbours to hear you ask where he gets his blood from and if he actually feeds off real people.

When Junhui parks in the underground parking lot of a large, luxurious apartment complex, you can’t help but feel a little stupid. You heard vampire and just presumed an old, pretty scary, mansion in the woods. Not modern luxurious apartments in the most affluent part of the city. This goes to show that all your over thinking is pointless, you’ve no real idea of what to expect from all of this other than your boss has shown you nothing but kindness since you found out this secret and you’ve spent the whole morning making assumptions about how he lives.

Before you can even open the door, Junhui has rushed around from the driver’s side of the car and opened it for you.

“Thank you, you didn’t have to do that.”

“My mother taught me manners and I’ve never forgotten them.”

“Your mother taught you to open a car door for people?” You challenge, hoping he sees you’re joking.

“Well,” he grins, ushering you towards a private elevator for the penthouse complex, “no, she taught me to always let ladies walk through doors first. But I’ve adapted with the times.”

“Is your mother still alive? Is she…..like you?”

He pauses as he presses the button to close the door to the elevator and you worry that you’ve been too forward. Of course he doesn’t want to tell you everything about his life, he was probably just saying you could ask anything to make you less panicked.

“She died a long long time ago now. She wasn’t like me, she never knew I became like this.”

“I’m sorry,” you play with your sleeves, “I shouldn’t have asked something so personal.”

You try to avert your eyes, taking a particular interest in the ceiling off the elevator but he interrupts your feeble attempts to ignore the awkwardness.

“I said you could ask me anything you wanted. And I rarely get a chance to even acknowledge what I am, let alone speak about it. I have to lie and say my parents are back home, or they died, or whatever my current story is for the last few decades I’m in any one place.”

“That must be tough, living so many different lives.” You nod. You struggle with dealing with one life sometimes, let alone multiple.

“It is,” the elevator bongs and he ushers you into a large entryway, “but it’s amazing in parts. I’ve seen and done things that most people with even the wildest imagination couldn’t dream up.”

“Like naming legendary lions?” You smile at him, handing him your coat and him hanging it up with his.

“Exactly.” He says proudly.

It’s only when you wait for him to put a door code in that you realise just how big this place is, just the entry way is bigger than most apartments and it’s decorated beautifully. There are a couple of modern works of art on the walls and on either side of the door are large ornate vases that are about half your height. The only other thing is an old school coat stand and shoes rack, no doubt something he bought on his travels. If you asked him about them he’d probably say something ridiculous like they belonged to an old european monarch or something. So instead you just keep your mouth shut and will yourself not to fall for the seemingly perfect vampire who’s invited you over to look at his book collection.

“Shoes.” He looks down at your feet like your mother would if you forgot to take your shoes off in your grandma’s house.

“Oh!” You quickly launch your sneakers off your feet, “Sorry! Do you have those like foot cover things?”

“This is my home _____, not a museum. I just don't like shoes in the house. You don't need foot protectors and you don’t need a full hazmat suit either.” he smirks.

“I was just checking,” you grumble, taking an active interest in the vase near the door rather than his smug face.

He opens the door and gestures for you to go through first, his mom’s manners still at the forefront, and you slowly walk into the apartment. It’s huge, open plan and designed like something out of an architecture magazine. The walls are simple, white and clean and numerous works of art and prints line the walls. A glass staircase leads up to the second floor and you’re certain it continues up to another level after that. You’re not surprised it’s grand, he’s been alive thousands of years, he must have amassed a huge amount of wealth with that. But on the whole it just feels……..

“You don’t like it?” He must’ve noticed your slight disappointment.

“It’s just very……normal? I-I mean not normal,” you panic, “I just mean, it looks how I thought it would before I knew what you were. Not that I think you’re any different now, I’m not prejudiced ....”

“______. Although I think this little ramble is very cute,” fuck your cheeks must be bright pink at that, “I understand what you mean. You were expecting something out of a horror movie? Or some dark dungeon where the sunlight couldn’t get me?”

“I guess,” you shrug, “is that whole no sunlight thing not true then?”

“None of those old myths are true. Apart from the stake through the heart, that would kill anyone. It’s pointless anyway, I can move quicker than most people can think. It’d take a miracle to actually be in the position to run a stake through a vampire's heart.”

“How quick?” You narrow your eyes at him but before you can even finish your sentence he’s gone, “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

You spin around trying to find him, just to hear a cough coming from above you. You look up to find Junhui leaning against a grand piano positioned in front of the large windows on the floor above you, looking very pleased with himself.

“H-how? What? I didn’t even see you move!!”

In the blink of an eye he’s back beside you and again, you’d hardly seen it. It was like when you walk into a room and a spider or mouse quickly darts into a safe place. You know you’ve seen something but you can’t be sure.

“So you can see why the whole stake through the heart is tricky.”

“Damn, there’s not much point in me taking my stake out of my bag then.” you sigh dramatically.

“I don’t think you’d ever kill me.” He says happily, moving over to the kitchen.

“Why?” You ask, following him and trying not to get distracted by the fact he seems to have every kitchen appliance of your dreams.

“You just said you weren’t prejudiced. Like insulting a vampire for their stereotypes was the same as insulting any human for the stereotypes they may have about where they’re from or what they do. Nobody that kind would kill anyone.”

“Thank you?”

“You’re welcome,” he chuckles, “do you want a drink?”

“It depends what it is.”

Yes, you’re not prejudiced. But you’re entirely sure you could stomach seeing him drink blood without throwing up all over his kitchen.

“Take your pick.” He says as he throws open the door to a fridge the size of your whole bedroom. Ok, maybe not that big but it is the biggest fridge you’ve ever seen in your life.

“Why do you have all this if you can’t have it?” You ask as you try to decide what the hell you want to drink. Which isn’t easy when he seems to be stocking more options than your local convenience store.

“Who says I can’t have any of it?”

“I saw you drinking blood Junhui…” Your eyes widen, “I mean Mr……”

“Junhui is fine.” He smiles fondly at you. “And you also saw me drinking mint tea.”

“So you can eat and drink like a human? But you still need blood?” You settle on an orange juice and close the fridge door, trying not to look at how good he looks leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms folded.

“Exactly,” he nods, “I can eat and drink whatever I want, but I need a little blood each day.”

“Do you go to the toilet then?”

Fuck. You didn’t mean to actually ask that. How fucking embarrasing.

“Most people would be more interested in the blood,” he beams at you once he’s stopped laughing, “but yes, I go to the toilet.”

“Good,” you nod, taking a sip of your orange juice and wishing your brain would develop at least some kind of filter, “and the blood? You don’t……I mean it’s none of my business if you do……but do you? Feed off people?”

“No,” he says kindly, “There are only a handful of us left in the world. Luckily my friend Seungkwan works for one of the top hospitals in the country. We move together generally although we don't see each other much. He supplies us both with blood from the hospitals he works in. In the early days,” he sighs, gesturing for you to sit on one of the stools near him, “when I’d first been changed, I did feed on humans. I couldn’t help myself, I resented what I’d been turned into. I hated humans because I still longed to be one. But, after those first few years, I realised I couldn’t change what had happened to me. And a whole generation had passed, it wasn’t the fault of the humans any more than it was mine. And so I found new methods, now it’s simple to avoid feeding on humans.”

“How did you become like this?” Now you’ve started, you want to know as much as possible about him.

“When I was growing up, we didn’t really have legends of vampires. There were stories of the undead living off humans to survive but nothing of actual vampires. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was coming back from a night of drinking with my friends and before I knew what had happened, I was attacked. I think they meant to kill me, to feed off me completely, but something spooked them and they fled. I was unconscious for days because of the amount of blood they’d taken but there was enough of their DNA in me that I was fine. Better than fine, I felt unstoppable. But I hated what I’d become, I hated that they took my life from me.”

“How did you know you’d become a vampire though? If you’d never heard of them? You could’ve just gotten better?”

“Seungkwan found me. If I’m honest I think it was him who stopped me being killed but he’d never admit that. He’s always hated vampires who use their power to cause fear or hurt people. He’d been hunting down the last truly evil vampire, the one who turned me, for years. It took him another century until he did finally stop him. But Seungkwan explained everything. And then he disappeared. If he hadn’t…..If he’d have guided me in those first few years. It might’ve saved the people I hurt.”

“It’s not your fault you reacted like that. You can’t blame yourself for what you did because of something you never asked for. That’s not fair, Junhui.”

He stares at you with an unreadable look on his face and you worry you’ve been too forward, acted too friendly or something when he is still your boss and you do barely know each other. It just feels so unjust though, for him to have never asked to be a vampire and it’s not like he could help the fact he needed blood to survive. It’s like holding it against a baby that they need milk or an adult human for needing water. He needed blood to survive.

“Sorry. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“Actually,” he smiles, “I did. Thank you.”

It feels like if you speak now, you’ll ruin the moment. But is it even a moment? You feel like it is, the way he’s staring into your soul feels like it is. But maybe this is just him, maybe he’s always been kind and reserved and you’re only just now getting to know him.

“So,” you break eye contact, hoping that might stop your heart hammering, “there’s only two of you?”

“No,” he shakes his head, his smile broadening, “there’s six vampires left in total. Me and Seungkwan tend to stick together. Joshua and Jeonghan keep to themselves mostly, they’re living somewhere in the south of France and spend their time lounging around their pool and sleeping with whoever they please, masking it all behind being wealthy art dealers. And then there’s Soonyoung and Pearl….”

“Pearl?” You squint at him, confused by the sudden name change.

“Hm,” he hums, smiling to himself, “Soonyoung’s wife. She recently decided that a truly organic way of life is the way forward and now they live in a yurt somewhere in South America. Her name changes every few decades, she’s happy I suppose, and that’s all that matters. They went through a lot together, she got changed into a vampire by the same bastard who created me. It took Soonyoung years to convince her to change him. They’d been childhood sweet hearts and were only a week off getting married when she changed. She agreed eventually, but she hated doing it.”

“It’s romantic,”

“It’s barbaric,” He says harshly, “to willingly change the person you love, to sentence them to eternity. I understand why she did it but I don’t condone it. It’s like giving someone hundreds of life sentences.”

“S-sorry.” You mumble, a little taken aback by how his attitude changed.

You’re sorry you upset him but honestly, it doesn’t seem that bad. He’s seen all the wonders of the world, he’s lived through history and he seems to have done it all with people he would consider his friends. You’re struggling to see what could be so bad, other than the whole drinking blood thing.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, rubbing his eyes, “it’s just it seems great and everything but you’ve no idea how lonely it is. Sure you make friends but they either die or you have to move away before they realise they’re aging and you aren’t.”

“Did you never meet anyone you loved?” The idea leaves a sour taste on your tongue but you’re not expecting a man who is nearly two thousand years old to never have been in love. You’re only thirty and you’ve got more ex’s than you’d care to admit to.

“I did,” he says somewhat shyly, “and it isn’t like I live like a nun, I sleep with people,” you try not to grimace at that admission, “but I always have to hold myself back, I can’t be myself around them and so it never lasts.”

“You’ve never told any of them?” Why you feel a little smug about that, you don’t know. It’s not like he’s willingly told you, you literally walked in on him drinking blood. He could hardly deny it.

“Nope,” he says standing up, “only you. Now, do you want to see all my cool stuff?” He says, raising his brows like he’s trying to entice you into something but all you’re trying to do is forget the ‘only you’ he tacked onto the end of his last answer, and tell yourself that it doesn’t make you special.

“I’d love to” you recover.

“Great, follow me.”

“This is all,” you stare at the portrait of Junhui, standing beside who he tells you is DaVinci, “I don’t even know what to say.”

You stare around the room in wonderment. The whole top floor of his penthouse is dedicated to everything he’s collected over the years. He had to put in about four sets of codes to open the door. Not that it looks peculiar from the outside, it looks like the top floor of any other fancy home would, perfectly painted walls, ornate furniture and large wooden doors. But it’s all just a facade, only one of the doors is real and behind the real one is treasures that you’d never thought you or anyone would ever see.

So far he’s shown you Ernest Hemingway’s lost suitcase which he swears he had nothing to do with actually stealing, he just happened to be at a bar in Paris when the man who had stolen it was boasting about it and how that man had then very sadly lost it. When Junhui had tracked down Earnest, as he called him because obviously he seems to know everyone personally, Earnest had said he didn’t want it back, it added an air of mystery to his name that would help his name and works be remembered far more than just the literature he’d had published. And so he forgot Junhui had ever told him he’d found it and Junhui now holds one of the most looked for mysteries in modern literature.

He has Shakespeare manuscripts, which apparently “Will” had given Junhui himself as thanks for helping him get home in time for his wife’s birthday. The way he spoke about him like he was just some friend that he’d lost touch with, chuckling to himself as he told you stories about how they’d meet up after performances and argue about which actor made the best Hamlet or whether the Globe was looking a bit shabby.

Looking through his bookcases was like looking through history, like seeing every character you’ve ever loved and known in their earliest form. No editing or altering that may have happened over the years. Your bookcases when you get home will look pretty shit when you walk in and you’re confronted with your battered copies of all his treasures.

“You’ve seen history. Like, you’ve seen words being created. Shakespeare invented almost 2000 words you know, or at least made them popular. And you were there, it’s just so……I don’t know…..big?” you look up at a bookshelf, eyes widening when you see what looks like an ancient, probably original written copy of Journey to The West.

You’ve spent the past hour, when you weren’t listening to Junhui telling you the stories of his life, wandering round the large room like it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. And it is the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. But Junhui, he’s seen a lot of great things. But he thinks the greatest thing he’s ever seen in his whole long life is you in this room. The way you get excited when you spot something that you can’t believe you’re seeing, or the way your eyes widen every time he mentions someone in history that always sounded more like another book character than a real person.

He’d always thought you were beautiful, your whole aura lights up even the most boring of meetings and on the few occasions he’d spoken to you, he thought you were completely endearing. He did wonder whether there was something going on between you and Wonwoo. But then he saw Wonwoo put you in a headlock one day when you were arguing over who got the last piece of the brownie you’d bought, and that put the end to that idea. There was nothing romantic in that headlock. Or the way you bit his arm to get out of it. It didn’t matter anyway. Junhui made the decision long ago that he would never start a relationship with anyone, too many people get hurt. And he knew if he started something with you, it wouldn’t and couldn’t be a one time thing like so many of the flings he’s had over the past few centuries.

But then you caught him drinking blood and when he’d found you (having found your address by hacking the HR records he knows he shouldn’t have been looking in), the way you’d tried to fight him only warmed his heart. He saw your books, he felt how kind and warm you were with someone that you should’ve been scared of and he couldn’t help himself. He told himself this was just because he knew you’d appreciate everything he’d collected over the centuries, and that he was just excited to show someone everything, that wasn’t Seungkwan. Who had as much interest in this stuff as a bollard.

But he was playing with fire. And he knew it.

“He invented most of the words he’s credited for.”

He waits for you to realise what he’s said. And like clock work you freeze and whip around to face him.

“You didn’t invent words,” you scoff, “did you?” you ask slowly.

“Radiance.”

You stare at him. He invented a whole fucking word and he says it like it’s nothing? Sure, people have invented new terms before when new things are invented. But radiance is just an everyday word. Everyone knows it and everyone uses it.

“You invented the word radiance?”

“Mm-mm,” he nods, “Will wanted a word in All’s Well That Ends Well to describe the beauty of someone, and I thought about the fact it brings light when you’re around someone you love. Anyway, radius is Latin for beam. But you’re radius sounds almost insulting. So I suggested radiance and all’s well that ends well.” He shrugs, laughing at his own joke.

“Who were you thinking of when you invented it?” It’s none of your business, you don’t know why you’re asking, but you can’t help wanting to know and your mouth moves quicker than your head.

“No-one in particular. I didn’t think I’d ever meet someone who made me feel that way.”

“Didn’t?” You glance at his lips.

“Yeah. Didn’t.” He glances down at yours.

The air suddenly feels like you can’t breathe, there’s something drawing you to him even though you know you should be scared of him. But he must feel it too, he hasn’t moved away or broken the moment and yet neither of you move closer. It’s like you’re stuck in your place but wishing that he’d take the initiative and do what you want him to. You daren’t, you don’t know whether it would spark something fearsome in him. Although the idea of him biting you makes you weirdly excited but you try to push that thought to the back of your mind.

The sound of the buzzer for his elevator breaks you out of the moment, both of you jumping at the sound and crashing back down to reality.

“That’ll be the food,” he rushes off, “you take your time up here, I’ll get the food and plates. I’ll shout you when it’s all sorted.”

“Ok.” you say quietly, watching his back as he rushes off out of the room.

He felt it. You’re sure he did. But you don’t want to bring it up and ruin whatever this is and so you go back to pursuing his bookshelves. Every other find makes you more shocked than the last but you can’t shake what just happened and the moment you just shared. Because you are certain it was shared. It can’t have just been you that felt it.

About ten minutes later and you hear him bellowing from two floors below you. Clearly he’s not just got it in him to be quick but also damn loud too.

“That copy of To Kill A Mockingbird,” you start as you hop down the last two steps, feeling weirdly at home in this penthouse you’d never been in until today, “it’s not actually signed is it? Harper Lee barely signed any copies. If you were in Europe, how do you have a signed copy?”

He beams at you from the sofa as you wander over, your stomach growling at the sight of the noodles he’d ordered. He’s set it up on the coffee table so you can both sit on the floor to eat just like you would at home. It’s pretty easy to forget he’s a blood drinking vampire when he acts like any other person you know.

“I’ve lived in every country in the world at some point _____. And I met Harper when I was working at NASA. I went to Alabama to visit a friend, who happened to be friends with her and she was kind enough to sign a copy for me when I said I collected literature.”

You gawk at him, the drink he’d poured you half way to your mouth. But to be perfectly honest, you’re just pleased you haven’t dropped it all over yourself.

“N-nasa……..you met…..WHAT?!”

He tries not to laugh at you, if he’s honest he just wants to squeeze your cheeks because you’re so fucking cute, but he doesn’t.

“I was helping with the dimensions and initial plans for the rocket. Leonardo,” you huff at how he just references DaVinci like an old friend, “had a keen interest in aviation and he told me about some screw that could withstand high amounts of pressure, hundreds of years ago. I wrote to NASA, obviously not telling them where I'd learnt it, and they asked for my help for a month or so.”

“I thought I was cool because I went to school with a girl who has ten million followers on Instagram but shit,” you lean back against his sofa staring at the noodles.

“Hey, things change and what’s cool changes.” he shrugs, moving your noodles in front of you.

“Oh please, I bet you don’t even know what Instagram is and working on a rocket that went to the moon beats followers every day of the week.”

“I do know what it is, thank you very much,” he smiles as you both pick up your chopsticks, “and I will admit. The rocket is pretty cool.”

“And yet you didn’t know lol when I put it in that email?” You challenge playfully.

“Yeah, you did catch me off guard with that. How did you know?”

“Oh!” Shit. You can’t tell him that a large part of your day is spent watching him. And another large part is spent fantasising about what you’d do if you ever found yourself alone with him, “I just happened to look over as you checked the email on your phone, that’s all.”

You shove the noodles in your mouth as quickly as you can, trying to ignore how he seems to be watching you as you do, clearly not believing a word you said but he lets it go.

“Did you see the Austen?”

“Oh my god,” you wipe your mouth, hurriedly swallowing the food you were chewing, “yes! I can’t believe you have that! I never thought I’d see that, all three volumes of Pride and Prejudice. Well. First Impressions.” You pause, thinking about what you’ve just said, “if you’re about to tell me that it was you that made her change the name I think I will actually explode or something.”

“I’m not,” he laughs, taking a sip of his drink, “but I did meet her once.”

“What was she like?” You ask excitedly.

“She was headstrong,” he nods fondly, “but. She was sad, mostly. She seemed like she never really got what she wanted in life, like she was living through the women in her stories. But she was kind and clever, and told Seungkwan to stop being so moody when his horse had eaten his hat, so she’ll always be a hero in my eyes.”

“I’m pleased she was kind.” you sigh, “I always loved her books.I’m not sure I’d cope if I found out she was this awful human being that everyone hated,”

“Do you know who was a weirdo?”

“Who?” you ask, like he’s about to tell you some juicy gossip.

“Mary Shelley. Have you ever heard the story of…….”

“That she lost her virginity on her mother’s grave. Yeah, I've heard it but it can’t be……” Your words trail off when you see his face. “NO?!”

“Yep,” he nods, like he hates talking about it but loves it at the same time, “it’s true.”

“It wasn’t……you?”

“NO!!” He looks horrified, “It was Percy! Thank god they married each other. Pair of odd bods.” he shivers like the memory of them disgusts him.

“What the hell possessed them to do that?” You grimace.

“Fuck knows but they were pretty proud of it. He was married at the time too. Which in my opinion just makes it all so much worse. Those two caused chaos.”

“You don’t have Frankenstein then?” You chuckle, going back to your noodles.

“Oh I do, it’s a first edition, signed and everything. But it’s right up at the top where I don’t have to see it and be reminded of how much she scared me.”

“A vampire? Scared of a normal woman?”

“She was weird ok!” He laughs defensively.

You eat pretty quietly after that. Both of you quite content in each other’s company. The rest of the day is spent looking through more of his collection, him showing you coins and little treasures from every country and era he’s lived through, even describing exactly what it was like when they finally finished the great wall of China after centuries of work. But you don’t remember much after he awkwardly asked you if you wanted to watch a film, neither of you wanting to say goodbye just yet, because you fell asleep. Not a care in the world for the fact that you’d managed to well and truly fluster Junhui, when your head landed on his shoulder, for the first time in almost two thousand years.

The sound of pots and pans clanging around stir you awake from an absolutely bizarre dream in which you had to stop Wonwoo from fleeing with Jane Austen because she’d already said she’d marry you, even though gay marriage was hundreds of years off being made legal. It had ended pretty abruptly when presumably Junhui had moved a pan pretty heavily. But in your dream you’d pushed Wonwoo in front of a moving carriage because there was no well in hell he was taking your girlfriend.

You’ve no idea how and when you made it into this overly comfortable bed but you admit you’re in no rush to get out of it. Even in your clothes you’d arrived in yesterday, it’s still the most comfortable you think you’ve ever been in your whole life. But the smell of bacon draws you from your need to stay in the cocoon you’ve made for yourself and you begrudgingly get out of the bed.

Before you can even start to worry about the fact you’re imposing on his hospitality, not that you’d intentionally fallen asleep on him and presumably, if he was uncomfortable, he’d have woken you up and said it was time for you to go, you find a set of folded clothes, a note and even some toiletries.

Good morning! Or good night, depending on when you wake up. When you’re ready, I’ll cook us some breakfast. I’ve left some comfy clothes and some stuff to freshen up with (if you want to of course). Hope you slept well.

Junhui

Fuck, you really want to not read too much into the fact he’s lending you clothes and he doesn’t seem mad that you’d taken up one of his spare rooms, but you’d be lying if you said you didn’t feel all giggly because he seems quite happy to have you here.

You shower and brush your teeth with what he's left you, not surprised that he’s left you only the best products on the market and quickly dry your hair once you’re in his sweat pants and t-shirt, noting that the t-shirt reads ‘I love books and I tolerate you’, and rush down the stairs. You get the impression you could spend years with Junhui and still not know everything about his life but damn you’ve enjoyed getting to know him. And even when he asked about your life, he seemed genuinely interested, like what you were telling him wasn’t the same old story he’s probably heard a thousand times before.

It takes you a second to get your bearings but you find the stairs pretty quickly and speed down them, slowing slightly at the bottom then he doesn’t think you’re over eager. You find him in the kitchen, where you presumed he was from the smell of bacon and clattering of pans, this time in shorts and hoody and once again looking like he’d give the best, most snuggly hugs. Not what most people would think of if they were spending time with a vampire but there’s just something about Junhui that seems to scream comfort to you.

“Good morning.” You say quietly, suddenly feeling a little nervous.

“Hey!” He smiles, spinning round with the pan, “I hope I didn’t wake you. All these years on the planet and I’ve still not mastered cooking really. Many have tried but I’ve still burnt the bacon.” he frowns into the pan.

“It’s fine. I like crispy bacon,” you grin at him, sitting on one of the stools when he tells you to sit down and it shouldn’t be long, “thank you for leaving these clothes out. And I’m sorry I fell asleep, I hope I’m not intruding. I will be out of your hair soon and I’ll wash these and bring them to work tomorrow.” You say happily, pouring yourself some apple juice he’d decanted into a jug.”

“Are you in a rush to get home?” He winces when rather dark bacon lands on the plate in front of you.

“Not really,” you shrug, “but I’m sure you have plans and I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

“I do have plans,” he mumbles as he sits down next to you, “but I wondered if you wanted to come with me?”

“Sure.” you say, trying to eat the bacon without him noticing just how hard it is to chew.

“You don’t want to ask what we’re doing?” He jokes.

Shit. Now he thinks you’re over eager. But do you even care? You like him, he seems to like you, why shouldn’t you show him that you enjoy spending time with him?

“Sorry, sure, what were your plans?”

“There’s an exhibition of ancient Chinese literature at one of the galleries, I was hoping to check it out.”

“Compare your ancient Chinese literature with theirs?” You smirk knowingly.

“Exactly. And we could get dinner? If you’re not bored of me of course.”

“Junhui, I think if I found the hot vampire boss boring, then there’s no hope for me.”

You go back to buttering a slice of toast before you even realise what you’ve just said but when you do, your horror stricken eyes meet his wide smile.

“I-I didn’t mean…….wait no I’m not saying you’re not hot……oh god” you groan, hiding your head in your arm.

“Hey, I’ll take it. It’s not every day a sexy older woman calls you hot.”

You drop your toast. One because Junhui just called you sexy. But mainly because, what the hell does he mean ‘older woman'?!

“Older woman? You’re almost two thousand years old!”

“Yeah but when I was changed I was only 28. So technically you’re a cougar.”

“That would suggest this is something more than friends?”

He freezes, like he hadn’t thought this through but you just put that down to the fact that he’s not used to this. He said he’s only used to one night stands and things, maybe the beginnings of a relationship are odd to him after all this time.

“You done?” He stands up, taking his plate over to the dishwasher.

“I am,” you smile happily following him over and helping him clean up, “could we stop by my place so I can get changed?”

“You don’t want to go out in my t-shirt?” he smirks at you, “I’m insulted _____.”

You giggle, like joking and eating breakfast with Junhui is the most natural thing in the world. You could get used to this, and now you’ve made it clear that you like him, and he seems to like you too all you feel is excitement for what’s to come. The day passes in a blur of laughter and Junhui being very smug that some of the “ancient relics” were actually reprints that no-one has noticed, before you have dinner under the stars at an open top restaurant and he drops you home. Now having the courage to hug you, not just awkwardly pat your arm like he did two days prior. And you go to sleep full of happiness and excitement for this flourishing relationship.

For the past month you’ve spent every weekend with Junhui. Even at the office you message each other and on a couple of occasions he’s eaten lunch with you and Wonwoo. They both discovered they have a shared interest in comic books and you started to worry that Junhui would kick you to the curb and decide Wonwoo was the one for him.

Wonwoo nearly fell to his knees and proposed when he visited Junhui’s apartment one night after work and he saw he has every edition of his favourite series. Junhui hasn’t told him he’s a vampire and thankfully the comic books are in his TV room, so Wonwoo just thinks the top floor is more bedrooms and has no idea that Junhui is hoarding some of the world’s greatest treasures up there. You're certain Wonwoo genuinely wouldn't care if Junhui casually told him he was a vampire, he's the most laid back man you've ever met. It’d be a quick “cool, about those comic books" and he'd never mention it again.

But up until you Junhui had never told anyone. And he only told you because he had to. So you don't want to push it.

You did worry that you were spending too much time with him, that you were over staying your welcome whenever you went over to his place. But it was almost like he was actively finding reasons for you to stay and, most of the time, he was messaging you first and finding more and more reasons to talk to you. Not that you minded. You could spend every waking second of the day with him and never get bored.

But there was one thing that was playing on your mind. You didn’t know what this all was. It felt like the beginnings of a relationship, at times it felt like it was a relationship, he would always make sure you’d eaten and wish you good morning or good night, you felt like you were going on dates.

They definitely felt like dates. But then he’d never even held your hand or made any attempt to kiss you or anything. Though you’re certain he wants more, every time you find yourself saying goodbye to each other, he spends more time looking at your lips than he does looking you in the eye. It cannot just be friends. You can't have gotten it so wrong that he thinks this is just friendship.

It’s annoying you but you’re trying to be understanding. There’s presumably so many different things he has to think about to even be around humans the way he is. He must always feel a constant urge to bite, to taste blood and you don’t want to make that worse for him. And so at the moment you’re content to just see where this goes, you love spending time with him and he seems to love spending time with you, what more do you even need right now?

A message flashes up on your screen as you’re editing, the sight of Vernon’s name making your stomach drop.

Vernon: OH MY GOD WE ARE GOING TO HAVE SO MUCH FUN

You: What are you talking about? I’ve told you Vernon, I’m not getting high with you

Vernon: Not that. The book retreat!! I can’t believe you agreed to it, honestly your bosses seemed dubious but Junhui just told me!! Thank you for saying yes, me and my creative juices need this. Fuck three months in Peru!!!! Get packing bestie!!!!!!

You stare at your screen. What the fuck is he talking about? He’s high. He must be. Because there’s no way the company would allow that long an extension for him or his juices. And three months? Away from home? And what the hell is in Peru that’s going to make him write anymore than his creative trip to Thailand or Alaska.

This whole thing seems like bullshit but the one thing that’s making it worse? “Junhui just told me”. Does he agree with this? He wants you gone for three months? But you were just sat daydreaming about the date he has planned for the weekend. He was going to take you to see some gardens that he’d found years ago that have the rarest flowers in Asia. And yet now you find out he’s shipping you off to Peru?

This isn’t right. Before you can even re-read the messages again to make sure what you’ve read is right, you’re carried through the office on a wave of anger and hurt, and within seconds you’re knocking on the door to Junhui’s office. You don’t even wait for him to say come in, what’s the point, it’s not like you can find him doing anything worse than the last time walked into his office.

You find him reading through a manuscript but he puts it down pretty quickly when he sees you.

“Hey! I didn’t hear you knock, sorry I was miles away in this……”

“I knocked.” You interrupt, not liking him insinuating that you hadn’t.

“I didn’t say you didn’t knock _____.” He frowns, he's never seen you pissed off. It doesn't suit and he doesn't know what he's done to cause it, but he hates it.

“You’re sending me away?”

Junhui stands up, not having realised Vernon would open his big mouth already.

“I’m not sending you. Vernon asked could you go with him, he said he needed you to keep him out of trouble.”

“So you’re sending me away?” You press again.

“_____ this is your job.” He sighs, walking around his desk and leaning against it in front of you.

“He’s been on hundreds of writer’s retreats and I’ve never had to go then! Why do I have to go now? I’d be gone for three months! You’d be ok with that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be ok with that?”

You stare at him, the only thing you feel is your heart cracking and your finger frantically picking the skin near your thumb nail, because at the moment, it’s the only thing reminding you that this isn’t all a nightmare. And sadly is your reality.

“Because we’re…….we’re,” you want to say because we’re a couple but now you just feel fucking stupid for even letting yourself think that.

“We’re friends _____. Friends can go three months without seeing each other.”

“Friends? We call everything over the past month being friends?!”

“Nothing’s happened between us _____. I’ve never given any inclination that it was more.” He says it kindly, too kindly. Like he’s rehearsed this or something.

But all you feel is panic. You can’t have gotten this so wrong? You know what you felt and you know that he felt it too! You’ve seen him speak to multiple women in this office, he never talks to their fucking lips, he doesn’t even spend time with them more than he actually has to.

But then has all this just been because you know about him? That you’re the only person who’s ever found out he’s a vampire and he’s felt like he had to be kind to you to make sure you didn’t tell anyone? He’s just been tolerating you because he didn’t want you to blow his secret. It cannot be that. You can't fake how happy he was when you were together.

“That’s not true,” you say quietly, staring anywhere but at him, though maybe if you did you’d see the pain in his eyes, “I know what I feel Junhui. Has this all been a lie? You don’t even like spending time with me?” You look at him, his heart breaking when he sees tears welling in your eyes.

“I do like spending time with you _____. Like I would any other friend. STOP DOING THAT!” He makes you jump when his voice suddenly raises and there’s an anger in it you didn’t think you’d ever hear from him.

You glance down at where his eyes are fixed but all that’s there is your hand. You weren’t doing anything to warrant that outburst.

“So you want me to go? For three months?” You ignore his anger and demand an answer.

“I want you to do your job,” he sighs, rubbing his forehead, “he needs to get this novel finished and you’re going with him. End of discussion.”

“You can’t just do that! You’d throw this away, you’d…….”

But before you can finish your sentence you feel like all the air has been knocked out of you as your back hits the office wall, Junhui painfully close to you caging you in. You say Junhui, this isn’t your Junhui, it’s not the man that two weeks ago tried to make you cupcakes and failed spectacularly.

No, this Junhui could only be described as a monster. His face is so close to yours but you feel no warmth, his breath is like ice and when you focus on his face, your blood turns as cold as he is. His eyes are blood red, almost shimmering in their sockets, his skin pale and with fangs that send a wave of horror through your body.

His breath is ragged and even though you try to wiggle out of his hold, whimpering slightly at how the man you thought you were falling for has turned into something from your nightmares, he stops you, his body rigid against yours like a tonne weight, not a normal man.

“J-junhui, please,” you whimper, trying to push him off but he just stays staring at you like you’re his next victim, “you said you d-didn’t do this. This i-isn’t you Junhui.”

“You don’t know who I am,” he spits, no care in his voice, not like there used to be, “I told you to stop fucking doing that, why can’t you listen?!”

You glance down at your hand, every inch of your skin prickling and yet a numbness over takes you when you see what he's talking about.

Blood.

Your blood.

Where you’d been frantically picking at the skin near your thumb, a habit your mom always said you should stop and now it’s going to be the thing that drives Junhui to do something he hasn’t done in centuries. You get the sudden urge to run, to bolt out of this office and never look back and yet it’s like your feet are cemented to the spot. It’s not like you could move anyway, he’s got you trapped.

He’s got you trapped as blood trickles down your thumb and you get the impression that he’s not going to be able to hold back much longer.

“I’m sorry,” you cry softly, trying to wipe your thumb on your skirt, “I didn’t m-mean to. Please Junhui, this is me, it’s _____, you can’t do this. You haven't hurt anyone in years! You said you regretted ever hurting anyone!”

“But they,” he takes a deep breath, almost thriving off the scent of your fresh blood, causing you to whimper and try to cling to the wall, “didn’t walk in here demanding things and not doing as they were told.”

The way he’s speaking, the way he’s leering at you, it’s like being in the worst horror film you’ve seen. Only normally when Wonwoo makes you watch those, you can cover your eyes and pretend you’re not there. But you are here. And you can’t get away from the monster in front of you.

“I-I didn’t demand. I got it wrong, I was wrong. I’ll go to Peru. I’ll go wherever you want me to. Just please Junhui, let me go.” You plead, tears streaming and body shaking.

“You’ve ruined everything you know,” he hisses with his head in your neck, his lips just millimeters away from him getting everything he needs and you never taking another breath, “I was happy. Or as happy as I could be and then you,” his teeth graze your skin, “you come barging in here and fuck my life up. And now you try to tell me this isn’t me?” his teeth stop, the tips of fangs weighing on your skin, “This is why you shouldn’t be here. I can’t be in a relationship, I can’t give you what you think you want, this is me _____. This is my reality the second I let you in too far and you suddenly hurt yourself or fall and graze your knee. This,” his teeth scrape down your skin as you sob and try to lean away from him, “is the reality of your life if you don’t fucking leave me alone.”

You can’t even speak, your breathing is heavy, your body is quivering in fear. It would only take a second and he’d taste you, he’d kill you.

“Get out, get out of the office. Out of the fucking building. Just don’t come back in before you leave with Vernon.”

He turns away from you and your heart breaks. You caused this. He told you to stop and you didn’t.

“I-I’m sorry Junhui, please………”

“GET OUT!!!”

You flinch and rush off out of the office. Ignoring the confused stares from your co-workers and how Wonwoo is already making his way over to you. You just grab your coat and bag and sprint out of the building not even able to decide if you’re more hurt by him dismissing the past month or relieved that you’ve managed to get away from him before he did something that he’d regret and you wouldn’t have survived.

Junhui can’t concentrate. Even with heightened senses and rocket-like reflexes, he’s been reading the same manuscript for three days and not a single word is making any sense to him. He’s never felt like this, sure he’s probably felt like this but if he has, he doesn’t remember it. He’s had hundreds of people in his life die, it’s just the circle of life, people are born and people die. When his mother died, he was distraught but even that didn’t feel like this. She was old and it was her time and although it broke him, he could make sense of it.

But he can’t make sense of what he’s feeling at the moment.

It’s been three days since he told you to leave the office and not come back until you’d been away with Vernon. And for three days he’s felt pain like he’s never felt before. His chest aches and he hasn't eaten, even Seungkwan dropped by yesterday when Junhui hadn’t been to collect his usual supply of blood. Seungkwan was expecting a lot of things when he made it to Junhui’s apartment but his friend of almost two thousand years, crying and watching sad movies was definitely not one of them. He told him everything, poured his heart out and Seungkwan’s response? “You’re a fucking idiot.”

But that’s easy for him to say, he seems to be able to have relationships for a few years and then carry on like nothing ever happened. Junhui couldn’t do that. Not with you. In the month you’d be in his life fully, not just as an employee, he’d fallen in love with you. He knew he had because he’d never felt like this in his life. He just wanted to be around you all the time, the sound of your laugh made even his cold heart warm and when you talked about what you loved, it just made him hope that one day, you’d look like that when you spoke about him too.

A week ago he nearly kissed you. You’d been at his place, not even doing anything exciting, just sitting on his sofa, your feet tucked under his leg as you both sat reading. He’d noticed you had a habit of telling him the little excerpts of what you were reading that had made you laugh or meant something to you and, in his opinion, that was one of the most intimate things you could do. To want to share even the smallest of things that made you feel even the smallest emotion showed him just how much you cared about his opinion but also showing him that you want him to see what’s important to you, even if it’s the littlest of things.

The sun setting behind you as you giggled quoting the line of your book, you just looked so radiant that it took everything in him to not throw caution to the wind and finally kiss you, just like he’d wanted to do when you were trying to fight him off with The Chronicles of Narnia.

But that night served as a warning. He couldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t let himself be tempted no matter how much he felt like he needed you. How would he go on for eternity when you’d gone? He wasn’t scared of stopping loving you when you grew old, he knew he’d love you no matter how old you got, you’d still be you. But what would happen to Junhui? Once he’d given you everything and he had to go on forever knowing his one true love would never be with him again.

So when Vernon was moaning about writing retreats he saw an opportunity to get you away from him for a while. The idea hurt him, it is hurting him, but it would hurt more in the long run and it would give you a chance to meet someone else, to live your life without having to deal with everything that comes with him being a vampire. You deserved to live and to be happy and he knew at some point, he’d end up hurting you.

Though he’s not sure any of that would even matter anymore, you’d surely never want to see him again even after you’ve come back in a few months time. The fear in your eyes when you saw the worst side of him will stay with him forever more, the tears and way you flinched away from him broke him. He’s not even sure why his reaction was so visceral. He can be around blood, over the centuries he’s perfected his self restraint meaning that he can be around even the worst injuries. But that one small tear on your skin triggered something in him that he hasn’t experienced in over a thousand years. Seungkwan said it was probably how the mixture of needing to send you away, the reality of sending you away and how the confusion he was feeling at loving someone, truly loving someone, was playing with his emotions. That one drop of blood was the straw that broke the camel’s back and the end result was him terrifying the last person on earth he’d want to hurt.

You’d tried to call him. Though he’s no idea why. He’s no idea why you even said sorry to him before you ran out of his office. It was him who should’ve been apologising, not you.

A knock on his office door shakes him from his thoughts and for a few hopeful seconds he thinks it’s you, that you’ve resorted to barging into his office again just like last time because he’s ignoring your calls. But who is he kidding? You won’t want to be in the same room as him again. Not now.

“Come in!” He didn’t think anyone was left in the office, let alone needing to speak to him.

“What the fuck have you done to her?!”

“Wonwoo? What? Done to who?” Junhui stands up and marches round his desk as Wonwoo storms into his office.

“Oh come on, you know who. Last time I saw her she was running out of here, crying and fucking terrified! And now she won’t answer her phone, she won’t open her door. That isn’t _____!! What the fuck did you do?! I swear if you’ve hurt so much as a hair on her head, I’ll fucking kill you!!”

“I wouldn’t hurt her!”

Wonwoo scoffs, so close to Junhui that he can feel his breath against his skin, fists clenched like he’s ready to fight.

“Oh so it’s just a coincidence that she runs out of your office and now she won’t talk to anyone? You’ve done something. I know you have. I really thought you were better than this, all those fucking months she’s been hoping something would happen and you’ve broken her!!”

So you’d liked him longer than he even knew? Fuck that just makes him feel even worse. You liked him and even when you found out the worst secret you could, it still didn’t change your opinion on him. All it does is confirm you’re everything he thought you were and more, to not let even something like what’s wrong with him affect your opinion of him, just shows what a remarkable woman you are. He just hopes Wonwoo isn’t right. He hopes he hasn’t broken you.

He racks his brain for how to get out of this but all he can think to do is tell the truth. It would mean telling someone else and someone else knowing his secret, another chance that his life as he knows it would come crashing down. But Wonwoo isn’t going to let this go and the last thing he needs is someone saying he in some way is a man who would harm a woman, or anyone for that matter.

“Sit down.”

“Fuck off. What did you do to my friend?!”

“Wonwoo!! Sit. Down.”

Wonwoo must sense some sort of danger in Junhui’s eyes because he actually does as he’s told and sits down. For once in his life.

“I don’t know how to start.” Junhui sighs, hoping the ceiling might have some answers.

“I don’t care where you start, just get to the part where you hurt _____ and then I can try and fix it.”

“When she came to show me the manuscripts that you’d mentioned in the meeting…..”

“That was ages ago,” Wonwoo interrupts angrily, “I want to know what’s happened now!”

“You will! Just listen to me! Please!”

Wonwoo just glares, his arms folded and waiting to hear what any of this could have to do with what’s wrong with you.

“When she came in, I didn’t hear her knocking. When she found me I was,” he sighs, knowing with every admission of what he is, he risks a little more of his safety, “I was drinking blood.”

Wonwoo just stares at him and Junhui wonders if he actually said it out loud. It sounded like he said it outloud. But Junhui imagined a lot of reactions. Wonwoo just having a blank face was not one of them and it’s unsettling him to be honest.

“Did you…..”

“I heard you,” Wonwoo booms with nothing but disdain, “what does that have to do with what happened three days ago?”

“You’re not going to ask why I was drinking it?”

“To be honest, I don’t give a flying fuck. I want to know what it has to do with _____.”

“I’m a vampire.” He says bluntly.

“Well I would hope so if you’re drinking blood. At least it means you’re not a weirdo.”

Junhui just stares at him. How can one man be so indifferent to finding out that not only do vampires exist, his boss and new found friend is one? Junhui could only dream of being that easy going. You’d told him that Wonwoo was a chill guy. But there’s being a chill guy and then whatever the fuck Wonwoo is.

“That’s all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say? I don’t care what you are, man, I just want to know what’s happened to my best friend!”

“I said she needed to go with Vernon for three months to Peru.”

“As what? Punishment for her finding out? You only started hanging out after she found out, why has something happened now?”

“Fuck, it’s better starting from the beginning,” Junhui sighs, throwing himself on the sofa next to Wonwoo, “she ran off when she saw me and when I got to her place, she tried to fight me off with garlic and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.” Junhui smiles fondly at the memory.

“That woman,” Wonwoo shakes his head with a look of either disdain or disbelief, possibly a mixture of both Junhui thinks, “she has no fight or flight skills. She did self defence for like two weeks and decided she’d just negotiate out of a dangerous situation and that fighting wasn’t for her.”

Junhui can’t help but smile to himself, even through the pain. He can imagine you in the classes, deciding there and then that it wasn’t for you, even remembering how you’d tried to negotiate a safety buffer between the two of you when he’d first entered your apartment. Fuck he’s way too down bad for you. This is all too much.

“Even after she found out, after the initial shock, she still managed to empathise with what it must be like, to be two thousand years old and everything that comes with it.”

“Huh,” Wonwoo huffs, glaring out the corner of his eye.

“What” Junhui frowns.

“Two thousand, it’s just not that impressive,” he shrugs, “I thought you’d be older.”

Junhui blinks at him. If he’s honest he’s pretty fucking pissed that out of the two people he’s told, one had messed with his heart more than anyone ever has and the other has basically just said that he’s disappointing!

“But that doesn’t explain what happened the other day, unless…….Did you try to bite her?!”

“No! I mean, fuck!” he wipes his face his hands, “I love her. I love her like I’ve never loved anyone but I can’t be with her, I can’t ruin her life and I can’t live for an eternity without her, when she’s gone. So I acted like we were just friends, even when she was trying to tell me it was more and that she couldn’t be away for three months. I thought hurting her now was better than hurting her more later on. But she kept picking her fucking thumb even when I told her to stop and she made it bleed and I lost control. For the first time in centuries I wanted to bite someone. I didn’t. But I wanted to. And she saw me how I never wanted her to, I was seconds away from biting her Wonwoo.”

“But you didn’t?” He needs to check and Junhui gets that.

“I didn’t,” he shakes his head, “but I scared her, she was fucking trembling and pleading and still all I wanted to do was bite her.”

“If you love her, could you not just turn her into what you are?”

“You think it’s that easy?” Junhui looks at Wonwoo incredulously, “I’d be taking away her life Wonwoo, I’d be sentencing her to a life never ending.”

“But,” Wonwoo frowns, “surely if you have a life of eternity together then it’s not so bad. Plus you could turn me too, I’m a hoot!”

For the first time in days, Junhui laughs a little. Not a lot. But a little is better than nothing. It passes too quickly though, the reality of what turning someone into a vampire actually means, stopping any small amount of joy he might feel even for the briefest moment.

“It’s like murder Wonwoo. I haven’t fed off people since I was four hundred or so years old. I wouldn’t even know if I could stop once I’d started. I couldn’t cope with that, if I couldn’t help myself and I ended up losing her.”

“So your solution was to send her away for three months? What was that even going to achieve Junhui?”

“She might’ve met someone,” Junhui shrugs, not even believing what he’s saying.

“You’ve met _____,” Wonwoo looks at him dubiously, “she isn’t the kind of person to just fall out of love with someone. She loves with her whole heart and she’s been wanting you for a lot longer than you know. If her finding out this,” he gestures his hands at Junhui, “didn’t scare her off, why would being away from you for three months do anything?”

“It was the only thing I could think of. I can’t do it Wonwoo. To her or me.”

“Fucking idiot.” He scoffs and shakes his head.

Junhui just wishes people would see what he’s trying to say, why the fuck does everyone think its so easy?! To just take the life out of someone?!

“You know it’s not tha……….” But Wonwoo’s phone ringing cuts him off.

“Hello?”

Wonwoo’s face changes from indifference to horror and Junhui is immediately filled with a feeling of dread. Because if Wonwoo shows so much indifference when being confronted with an actual vampire, nothing good could’ve gotten that reaction from him.

“Come on,” he rushes when he hangs up his phone and runs to the office door.

“Why?”

“It’s _____. Just hurry the fuck up, we need to get to the hospital now.”

To say your head is throbbing would be an understatement, it feels like someone’s using your head as a bass drum and you’re not even sure you can open your eyes. But the sound of someone repeatedly saying your name makes you panic, had you drunkenly called Wonwoo? Perhaps keeping your eyes closed would be the better option, you don’t need one of his lectures about how he wasn’t put on this earth to be your nurse maid. Something he refuses to listen to when he has a cold and you insist on giving him the same speech.

You don’t even remember coming back from the store, you remember going to the store. You’d just finished packing for three long months in the depths of hell with Vernon and decided what the fuck, you don’t have anything to do for the two days until you have to leave. You were going to get drunk, watch Twilight and berate Bella for even going near a vampire, but then at least her vampire admitted his feelings. Perhaps if you find a nice werewolf, he might be more inclined to not try and gaslight you into thinking that you’re just friends.

All you want to do is stew in your hangover and yet some prick just will not stop saying your name……..

“______ can you hear me?! Fuck, where the hell is that doctor?!”

Doctor? For a hangover. That seems somewhat extreme, even for a drinking lightweight like you.

“Wh…..” you try to speak but even trying makes your head hurt, “Jun……” What are you thinking of? Of course it’s not Junhui, that’s just your fantasies talking.

“Oh that’s very nice,”

You know that voice. You’d sadly know Wonwoo’s voice anywhere but you just can’t seem to come round enough to give him a piece of your mind.

“_____? Can you hear me?”

That is a voice you don’t recognise. What the hell has Wonwoo done? He’s surely not invited a group of people round to deal with your drunken ass?

“_____ try to open your eyes for me.” Well that seems to be easier said than done, because it feels like your eyelids are being weighed down by bricks. “Take it slow and open them,”

You don’t know who this demanding ass is but can he not see you’re trying to open your eyes?! Fucking bossy. God knows where Wonwoo has found him but he can damn well leave your apartment as soon as you can hurl yourself out of bed.

You manage to open them, the lights far brighter than you remember your bedroom lights being. And in fact you don’t remember your ceiling looking like the one you’re blinking into focus at all.

A massive head looms over you and you flinch, the last face you had so close was that of a monster that up until a few days ago you’d have sworn you loved. Though you’re still fairly certain you do. Hence the need to drink and shout at Bella Swan to get as far away from Edward as possible.

“Can you hear me?”

Why is this man treating you like you’re an idiot?

“Obviously.” You rasp and hear Wonwoo snort. But when you try to move your head and glare at him, it feels like you’ve been surgically attached to whatever you’re lying on.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I’m not twelve,” you croak out, your voice sounding much weaker than you remember.

To his credit, the man looming over you chuckles, but holds his hand up again.

“I’m a doctor. You’ve been unconscious for two days, could you help me out and tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”

Unconscious?! And for two days?! Fuck you need to find Vernon, you need to catch your flight. Or maybe you have caught your flight, perhaps Vernon had finally persuaded you to get high with him and now you’ve embarrassingly over done it and this nice Peruvian doctor is trying to help you. But then why would Wonwoo be here? If they’ve made him come and get you all the way from Peru, you’ll never here the fucking end of it.

“Three.”

“Good. I’m just going to shine a light in your eye, if you could follow my finger for me?”

You do as he says, hoping the quicker he’s done, the quicker you can find out what the hell happened.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“I went to the convenience store down the street and now I’m here. Wherever here is.” You say slowly, barely even hearing yourself from how hoarse your voice is.

“Ok,” he nods, looking you over, “we’ve done scans and we don’t think there’s any lasting damage. We were a little worried about your hearing but clearly, that’s fine. We need to keep you in for a couple more days and then you’ll need constant supervision for a week or so after that. But if you have no problems whilst you’re still here, I’ll be happy to discharge you in two days..”

“What happened though?” You try to sit up, but note once again that you can’t.

“Oh,” the doctor leans towards you, “you have a neck brace on, as I say you don’t have any lasting damage and no broken bones so if you can promise to make no sudden movements, I can take that off.”

“Take it off please.” You can’t stand feeling like you’re trapped.

“No problem,” he gently undoes it, “do you want the bed up a little?”

“Please,”

He presses the button on your bed and you slowly rise. But it’s as you’re edging further up, the room coming into view, you feel like someone's knocked all the air out of your lungs and you’d actually rather be lowered back down again. The last person you need to see is him. Dealing with Wonwoo will be bad enough.

“Do I have to sit up?” you try to ignore the two men sitting looking panicked, “I think actually I’d be better fully reclined,” you try to reach for the button but your arm feels like lead and you just wince, “don’t you think I’d be better lying down? Perhaps some sedatives to knock me out again? My head feels like it’s been hit by a bus.”

“It was a car.” Wonwoo says as he marches over to you, looking more pissed than you’ve ever seen him, “Don’t you ever fucking worry me like that again!”

He launches himself around you, your whole body aching from the impact of it and all you can do is pat his back gently, never having had a hug from Wonwoo. Apart from when his childhood cat died but he’d insisted that wasn’t a hug, it was just he needed a little help standing up.

“This is weird.” you mumble, still awkwardly patting his back.

“I don’t care. I thought you were dead, you moron.”

“Charming.” It's only then though that you realise what he said, “wait, I was hit by a car? I wasn’t drunk?”

“Why would you be drunk?” He pulls back, eyebrows knitted in confusion.

“I was going to the convenience store. I was going to watch a film and get drunk,”

“Very classy.” He smirks, perching on the side of your bed. “You must’ve been on your way there though, you didn’t have anything with you as far as the paramedics were aware. The guy was speeding, the cops have arrested him but you don’t have to worry about that now. We came straight here when the emergency room called.”

“We?”

“Er,” Wonwoo stands up and shows you that the other man sitting in the corner of the room wasn’t a figment of your imagination. “Yeah, I was in Junhui’s office when I got the call. We both came straight here.”

“Why are you here?” You try to say it like his presence doesn’t bother you, like the last time you’d seen him hadn’t broken your heart.

“I wanted to check if you were ok.”

Hearing his voice makes you feel like it’s repairing a little of your broken body, just by how much comfort it brings you. But he said you were wrong, that this was all one sided and so you will yourself to stay strong.

“Well I am. You can go now.”

“_____.” Wonwoo says softly, “he’s not even been home since we got here two days ago. Even when I went to change and shower at home, he stayed with you.”

“I don’t care Wonwoo. You wouldn’t get it.”

“I know he’s a vampire.” He says bluntly.

You stare at him, your head now not only throbbing, but spinning.

“H-how? I mean,” you panic remembering the doctor who definitely shouldn’t be hearing this, “h-he doesn’t mean vampire. He’s not well, he’s a bit odd really, he just makes things up for……..”

“You don’t have to cover for him or Junhui. I’m Seungkwan.” He offers you his hand to shake.

And you do shake his hand, not that you can speak, your expression is more like a fish than anything else. Your mouth opening and closing with no clue of what to say now you’re confronted with yet another vampire.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Good.” You say stupidly, your brain really not firing on all cylinders, and thankfully Seungkwan just chuckles and takes a seat next to Junhui.

“How do you know he's a vampire?” You rush to ask.

“I went to ask……”

“Demand.” Junhui interrupts, smirking a little at the glare Wonwoo sends him.

“I went to ask what the hell had happened to you. He was the last one who’d seen you and you looked so upset when you left the office that day. And you’re so fucking stubborn, there’s no way you didn’t hear me banging on your door.” He scolds you.

“I wanted some alone time,” you sniff, “am I not allowed that?”

“You don’t have to cover for me. They both know what happened, how I lost control.” Junhui interrupts.

“I don’t care about you losing control. And I don’t want you here. I have enough friends, I don’t need another one.” The recollection of him telling you that this whole thing had been nothing more than friendship still leaves a sting in your heart and him being here just makes you feel fucking stupid all over again.

“_____ please,”

“I don’t understand why you’re here. Friends can go three months without seeing each other,” you try to mimic his voice even though yours is still croaky, “why even bother coming to the hospital?”

“Because I thought I’d lost you!” He stands up, voice pleading and tears threatening to fall.

“Have I shown you my espresso machine in my office Wonwoo?” Seungkwan gets up from his seat quickly.

“Er,” Wonwoo looks between you and Junhui, “no! But I’d love to see it! I love coffee!”

“Don’t you dare!” You try to shout after him as they both rush to the door, “Wonwoo come back here! You can’t just leave me like this!”

But it’s no use. They’ve gone. So much for caring about you, if they know how he lost control then it’s pretty shitty behaviour to leave your bruised body in his care. Though you’re not scared of him, not really. He couldn’t help his reaction to the blood and even though, yes you were terrified when you got home, that subsided pretty quickly. The only thing you really felt was embarrassed that he clearly didn’t feel the same as you. That you’d thought it safe that you were both on the same page and instead he just fobbed you off with that friends bullshit.

“I won’t hurt you.”

“Not physically maybe.” You try to avoid looking at him. “I’m alive. You can ease whatever guilty conscience you might’ve had and go home.”

“I’m sorry for what happened.”

You just hum and nod, not looking at him and sniffling as tears start to cascade slowly down your cheeks.

“I’m not normally like that around blood, I can normally control myself.”

“So this is somehow my blood’s fault?!”

“What? No! I was just trying to say that doesn’t normally happen, I’m not a……threat….like that, I guess.”

“I never thought you were. And I still don’t. So you can go. Tell Vernon I’ll get the first flight I can.”

“I’ve already sent someone else with him, not that he really needs anyone,”

“Right,” you scoff, “now I’ll be no trouble from my death bed, he conveniently doesn’t need anyone to babysit him.” You try to fold your arms but everything aches, which just makes you want to cry even more.

“I hate seeing you cry.” He says it before he can even stop himself, you can tell that much from the way he slightly panics that he’s said it. He’s always so certain in what he says, something you suppose comes from years of simply being alive and knowledge that comes with that.

“I’m trying not to.” You sniffle, trying to remain stoic but failing miserably.

This feels like the worst break up you’ve ever been through and yet it’s completely one sided according to him, just a friendship that technically doesn’t have to end. But you couldn’t keep spending time with him, every second you’ve already spent with him has taken a little of your heart as the clock ticked by. It would just hurt too much. You know it would.

“Please just go Junhui. I feel humiliated enough as it is and now I’ve literally been hit by a car, I don’t think I could get any more pathetic.” You pick at a stray piece of cotton on the blanket covering you, hoping he’ll just go quietly.

“I can’t,” he looks almost sheepish and you narrow your eyes at him, “you’re staying at my place for the week you need to be supervised.”

“WHAT?!” You try to sit up but your woozy head stops you and before you know it Junhui has you in his arms and he’s making sure you settle back on the bed. “You can’t,” you try to get your breath because somehow moving even the smallest amount has winded you, “you can’t just decide that.”

“I didn’t. Not on my own anyway. I mean, I suggested it and Seungkwan and Wonwoo agreed.”

“Oh well you should’ve said that sooner! You’ll let me know who I need to vote for in the next election and how you’d like me to have my hair cut won’t you! Chauvinistic shit heads.” You huff.

He scowls at you but you don’t care. How dare they just make decisions for you!

“Wonwoo says that Mingyu?” he checks the name of Wonwoo’s roommate with you, you begrudgingly nodding, “has taken up DJing so you couldn’t go there, him blasting music is hardly going to help a head injury. All your other friends, he said you’d hate staying with. And I’m told,” he smirks a little, “that you’d throw a fit if we told you that you had to go and stay with your parents.”

“No, I'm not having them fussing over me. Once they had me, they’d never let me leave. I love them but they would hyperventilate at the idea of having their baby back home, as they’d say. No.” You shake your head adamantly, ignoring the way it hurts, “I can’t go there.”

“Then sadly, the only option is my place.”

“Sadly? Fuck,” you huff sadly, “just let me go home. I’ll call Wonwoo if there’s any problems.”

“No,” he rushes to correct you, “I didn’t mean sadly for me. I meant for you. It was my idea for you to come to my place, even before Wonwoo gave us other options.”

“But you’ll be at work anyway. I may as well just go home. And I don’t want to be around you.”

You ignore the way his face drops at that.

“I swear I don’t usually lose control like that _____!”

“I don’t care if you show your fangs or threaten to bite me, I don’t give a fuck about that. I like you Junhui,” there’s no sense of beating about the bush, not in the circumstances, “and I think you know I do. And I get that you don’t see me as more than a friend but I don’t think I can be around you knowing that this whole thing has been so one sided. I was certain, so certain you felt the same and I feel like an idiot.” Your voice gets quieter as you trail off, your stomach in knots of embarrassment.

Junhui just wants to shake you and tell you that you’re like no woman he’s ever met, that he thinks, no he knows, you’re the love of his life. It’s breaking him that you think he doesn’t feel the same as you, but it’s the safest option for both of you. He knows it is.

“We don’t really have an option. You need someone to watch you, I’ve already told the office I won’t be in and I’ll stay out of your way if you want. I’ll give you a bell or something to ring in emergencies but other than that, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Or I could just go home.” You press again.

“Seungkwan won’t discharge you if he thinks you’ll be on your own. So unless you want to stay in the hospital, where I’ll be staying anyway if you’re here,” he says sternly, “then you’re staying at my place.”

“Fucking ridiculous.” You turn away and miss Junhui’s little smile when he realises you’ve given up the fight and he’ll be able to make sure you’re safe and cared for. Much to your disgust.

You knew you could be stubborn. In fact you were certain there were few people in this world more stubborn than you. But it turns out there is someone much more stubborn than you. Junhui. Because no matter how much you ignored him and no matter how much you pleaded with Wonwoo and even Seungkwan, who you didn’t even know, to come and stay at your place, then you wouldn’t need to go to Junhui’s, he still refused to leave your bedside. Even when he had to use the bathroom, he used the one supplied in your private room (the perks of knowing one of the top doctors in the hospital is a vampire) and whenever it came to food, he’d already ordered something to be delivered to the hospital.

Wonwoo would turn up around the time the food had been delivered and you all ate together like one big, slightly dysfunctional family. Junhui would try to talk to you, you’d insist on talking passively aggressively through Wonwoo who would then try and ignore you, and Seungkwan would simply sit and enjoy the drama of it all.

But now you’re two days into your stay at Junhui’s penthouse and your resolve is crumbling along with your heart. Because he truly is the most caring man you’ve ever met. Each morning before you wake up he creeps into your room and leaves your pain medication and a glass of water by your bed, makes sure you’ve got clean perfectly folded clothes to put on, takes your worn clothes and puts them in the laundry and he even brushed and dried your hair when it was too much for you to do. Even though you’d declared to him that you didn’t want his help and you’d happily got to bed with wet hair, he refused to leave the room until he knew it was done and you had no risk of catching a cold by going to bed with your hair wet.

He told you he’d stay out of your way and it seems he meant it. Because after he’s made sure you have everything you need and you’re safe, he heads to his home office and you don’t see him again until it’s time for your next meal or round of medication.

Which you guess is what you wanted. You told him you wanted nothing to do with him. But he’s so close and you find yourself pining for his attention, that you know he’d willingly give you if you hadn’t repeatedly told him you didn’t want him near you. It’s like there’s an invisible string between you, that you know isn’t broken, it’s holding on by a thread but it's not broken, and that’s what's making it so hard for you now.

By your third day at his apartment, you decide to swallow your pride and head to find him. You’re allowed to get out of bed, you’re not ill, but you just can’t do anything strenuous. Although, maybe putting your bruised ego to the side for the sake of being near the man you love would be classed as doing something somewhat strenuous.

You wander down the stairs, smiling at the slightly messy kitchen where he’d been trying to make you eggs this morning and move towards his office rehearsing what you’re going to say. Perhaps you could say you need something to read? But that won’t work, he’d left a pile of books by your bed along with his iPad in case there was anything you wanted to watch on it. He’d literally thought of everything you might need during your stay, proving once again that he’s nothing like the monster you saw the last time that you were in his actual office at work.

You’re so lost in your own thoughts that you don’t realise you’ve been standing in his office doorway for a good thirty seconds until his worried voice breaks you out of your thoughts.

“Is everything ok?” He panics, you never having actively sought him out in the three days you’ve been here.

“Er, yeah. I’m….” he looks you over like he’s worried you’re in pain or something, “I’m lonely?”

“Oh,” he stands up straight, looking round for his phone, “do you want me to call Wonwoo? Or someone else?”

Fuck you feel horrible. You’ve made it so clear you don’t want him near you that now he doesn’t even think you would possibly mean that you want to spend time with him.

“No,” you shake your head, your voice quiet, “I could’ve just rung him myself. I wondered…..well I wondered if you wanted to watch a movie or something? Of course if you’re busy it’s fine.”

“I’d er,” he scratches his neck, “I’d like that. But before that……something came in yesterday that I had been meaning to show you. I had it shipped from my storage unit in Europe before we…..well before everything happened. I didn’t show you yesterday because I didn’t want to overstep but now you’re here, I’d really like to show you.”

“What is it?”

“It’s upstairs. I could show you now?” He asks softly, like he doesn’t want to make a mistake and scare you off.

You just nod and follow him quietly up the stairs. In the time you’ve spent together you’d never really had a quiet moment, from the second he entered your world it was like you both wanted to tell each other everything about your lives, no matter how big or small it was. And now there’s a void and you still don’t truly understand what caused it. One second it was the fine and the next he was sending you away.

He punches the codes in and you feel a warm feeling washes over, like being back in this room full of treasures somehow feels like home. It isn’t even the artefacts and tomes that make you feel that way, it’s being surrounded by Junhui’s life, everything that he treasures, just makes you feel closer to him than you could ever dream to be.

He leads you over to the large table in the centre of the room, papers scattered over it but a large metal box and book stand catch your eye.

“Please,” he gestures to the chair next to the one he’s just sat in, “sit down.”

“What is it?” You stare at the metal box as you sit next to him, not noticing how Junhui moves his chair just a little closer to yours.

“I’ve had these for about nine hundred years, it took me centuries to track them down but I finally did. I don’t look at them often because I don’t want to risk anything happening to them. But I wanted you to see them, she,” he smiles at the box, “she reminds me of you a little.”

“Who?” You narrow your eyes at him.

“You’ll see.” he smiles softly.

He opens the large metal box and you peer inside. You were expecting something large or impressive from the size of the box, maybe even a small bust of whoever it is that reminds him of you. But it’s just papers. Well. Parchments, ancient ones, but parchments none the less.

“Parcements?” You ask, confused how “she” can be on parchment paper.

“Have you ever heard of Sappho?” He smiles at the parchments as he gently takes them out of the box and places them on the book stand.

You rack your brain but short of a few short mentions at university, you really couldn’t say you’d heard of her.

“Vaguely,” you shake your head, marvelling at how old the pieces look in front of you, “but not really.”

He just nods, sending you another gentle smile and looks at the parchments you’re already lost in.

“She was a poet in Ancient Greece, hardly any of her writing survives, there’s probably about a hundred museums that would shoot me to get hold of these,” he chuckles, “but I always found her to be the most fascinating of all the ancient writers or poets.”

“Why?” You frown, wondering how she can be so much better than any of the ancient greats everyone in the world has heard of.

“Well, she’s a woman for one. Which in those times was unheard of for great poets or writers. But,” he sighs, leaning back in his seat, watching you and not looking at one of his most priced possessions. “She didn’t rely on myths or legends for her work. She lived in the real world, she wrote about love and feelings and what it was like to be passionately in love. By all accounts she was one of the strongest, most determined women of her time too.”

You stare at the parchment, you can’t read it, the writing is completely foreign to you but that doesn’t matter. The writing in front of you was by a woman in Ancient Greece. This parchment predates the whole modern era. Junhui had shown you a lot of things that would be considered old by anyone’s standards but this? Well this is on a completely different level to anything you could’ve ever dreamed of seeing with your own eyes.

“But?” You turn to him, dragging your eyes away from Sappho’s writing, “Why does she remind you of me?”

He doesn’t look at you, he now takes your place in staring at the parchment.

“She broke the mold. She lived a life of love and without prejudice. You know,” he smiles sadly, “she was married to a man who she loved with her whole heart and yet still explored the idea of being attracted to women in her poems. I’m not saying you are obviously, not that it’d matter if you were” he corrects himself, “but she didn’t hold prejudice against those who were attracted to the same sex. She didn’t hold prejudice against anyone from what I’m told, she was accepting and understanding. For a woman to be so forward thinking and to be heard was so underheard of,” he shakes his head completely lost in his own thoughts, “I guess you sort of reminded me of that. You found out about me, most people would have called me a freak or monster, and you were so accepting, so ready to give me a chance and see past what I am. Even in the hospital, although I’d already asked for these to be shipped, I don’t even think you realised you did it but even after I treated you so terribly, you still tried to cover for me when Wonwoo just blurted out that I’m a vampire.”

“Thank……” But you don’t get a chance to finish, it seems Junhui is so lost in thoughts that his subconscious is free flowing and nowhere near stopping.

“And if anything,” he smiles sadly as Sappho’s lost poems, “you remind me even more of her now. These poems, they’re about love. About how you feel when you’re in love, how your heart races, how you feel like you’re almost falling ill with something when you’re around the person you love so violently that your heart hurts. She celebrated love.” He nods to himself, “And she was brave enough to celebrate love. In all forms. No matter who it was. And that’s what you did, that day in my office when I tried to send you away. You were brave enough, just like Sappho, to stand there and tell me I was wrong and that you knew it was something way stronger than friendship.” A stray tear falls down his cheek as you desperately try to keep your composure, “You’re just like her. You’re strong and you’re a trailblazer who I’ve no doubt could run that company if they’d just let you. But you’re caring, you’re so willing to love, and love fully that you stood there in a room full of coldness and told a vampire that he was wrong to dismiss what was happening as friendship.”

Your heart is in your throat, feeling just how he’s just told you Sappho felt about love.

“A-are,” you swallow, trying to blink away tears, “are you saying I was right? That it wasn’t one sided?”

“I’ve lived almost two thousand years on this earth _____,” his eyes slowly find yours, “and I never felt this pull to someone. The need to be around someone all the time. I’ve loved people,” he nods, choosing to be honest, “but I’ve never felt like this. I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought I was saving you by sending you away. But all I was doing was being fucking selfish.”

“What do you mean?” You frown, wanting to hold his hand but choosing to stay still, you don’t want to unsettle him further.

“I told myself it was for you. Because I’m a danger to you. But me denying my feelings was the only thing that put you in danger. Seungkwan thinks that’s what caused me to turn on you,” he clarifies, “the mixture of feelings I’d never had before and then that one drop of blood tipped it over the edge.”

“But how does that make you selfish?”

“If we did this. If we had a relationship. You’d grow old, it’s just the way the world is,” he shrugs, “and I don’t doubt I’d love you till your dying breath. I’d want you till your dying breath no matter how old you got. But what do I do then? When you’ve gone? I’d have to live for the rest of eternity knowing that I’d never see you again. Even if afterlives exist, I never die, I’d never see you there. I couldn’t cope with that _____. I couldn’t live knowing that I’d known the love of my life but only had her for a fraction of it.”

Your tears fall freely, his admission both fixing and breaking your heart all over again. He loves you, just as much as you love him. Or probably more. You’ve only lived thirty years and never left like this, he’s lived for thousands and says the same thing. Something you can’t quite get your head around but makes you feel more loved than you ever have. You know what you want to say, you want to say that he’s being ridiculous and he could simply change you. Which you know is reckless and ill thought out but you want nothing more than to spend an eternity with him.

“Does it not hurt more to throw it away when you know you have at least a chance to be with someone you love, even for a short time? If you walked away from this now, you’d always have what ifs, for the rest of time. If you gave us a chance, you’d have memories of the happy times at least? Surely that’s better?”

He stares at you, eyes shining from tears.

“I can’t throw it away now.” He tries to take a deep breath in a bid to stop his tears, “Even if you told me to fuck off, I don’t think I could. When Wonwoo got that phone call. I couldn’t cope, I couldn't leave you. I couldn’t lose you without you knowing that I love you with my whole heart. And when you came round all I could think about was how I didn’t want to waste a single second of your life on trying to push you away and ignore what you were brave enough to say was happening here all along.”

“So you’re saying?” You ask quietly. He’s been pretty clear but this is still the same man who told you that he’d never shown you any inclination it was more than friendship, he can’t blame you for checking.

“I’m saying,” he sniffles, wiping his cheek, “if you want to. I want to be with you. I want to know what it feels like to be in love. To freely love just like Sappho did. How you tried to before I stopped you.”

Your breath hitches with tears. Thank fuck you went to his office.

“I’d like that,” You smile through your tears, “I’d like that a lot.”

He reaches forward, his fingers gently moving your hair behind your ear and eyes searching yours.

“Thank you,” he whispers as his lips meet yours for the first time.

They’re cold, not like any other kiss that you’ve ever experienced but yet there’s a heat that comes with it, like kissing the person you love more than anyone is making you feel warmer than you ever have. It’s slow and heavy, like he’s showing you he’s got all the time in the world to love you. Your hands move to hold his cheeks and deepen the kiss but Junhui seems to be one stop ahead of you, he pulls you chair even closer and more or less pulls you onto him so you’re straddling his legs, your lips never stopping as you get your first proper taste of him. His tongue is warm unlike his lips and you can’t help but hold each other closer as your tongues explore each other’s mouths. You already know that you could never get bored of this feeling and thankfully Junhui has no intention of letting you go now he’s got you.

He does break the kiss though, smiling as he leans his forehand against yours, his hands holding your waist.

“I didn’t mean to do it like this. But once again you led the way when you came into my office. I’ve been sitting at that desk for days trying to figure out how to tell you.”

“I think Ancient Greek poetry was a pretty impressive way to declare you love me to be honest.” You tease, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“Being a vampire has some perks,” he smiles at you, his fingers drawing patterns on your waist. “I meant what I said though. You’re like no-one I’ve ever met and I can’t promise we won’t have our struggles but knowing we’ll face them together means the world to me. And I need you to know that what happened that day in my office hasn’t happened in centuries and I hope it’ll never happen again. I’m fine around blood normally I swear.”

“I figured,” you shrug, “my period started yesterday and I’m still alive.”

The way you feel his laughter as well as see it sends a thrill through you. You’d always said Junhui was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen but now you need to correct that. Because Junhui laughing whilst he holds you close to him is definitely the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life. In this room full of treasures, he’s definitely the most precious you’ve had the honour to see.

The rest of your time spent recuperating at Junhui’s place passed by in a wave of him fussing over you trying to do too much every time you tried to put him out of his cooking misery, and gentle touches and promises of how you’d never let anything like this happen again. When he felt like it was all getting too much, or he felt like he was going to lose his cool, he’d tell you and you could find a way to work through it.

He also made it quite clear that he knew your period was starting the day before it actually started, apparently he can smell the change in your hormones or something and when it started, he could smell the blood. Something which made you panic that the smell was bad or in some way problematic for him. But he quickly put an end to that spiral though by asking did you think you were the only woman on her period he’d ever been around, which you suppose makes sense, he must sense every woman in the office’s period you suppose.

As the days passed, you just fell even more for your vampire boyfriend. He’d shyly asked you if you wanted to stay in his room with him, rather than his spare room. Neither of you were ready for anything more to happen than kissing or just simply holding each other, but he just wanted you close and you felt exactly the same way. On the first night in his room, he said he wanted to read you something. You presumed it was going to be some kind of romantic poem or excerpt from another lost ancient writer. But instead he confidently stood in front of the bed and began dramatically reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to you, strange voices for all of the characters and everything.

It was only after he’d finished reading the first three chapters that he threw himself onto the bed with you and said that he just wanted to hear your laugh. That almost week of not hearing it, he said, had been the worst time of his life and he just wanted to hear it properly, before you both spent your first night holding each other. Something that made you want to giggle and kick your feet, but you remained composed. Sort of.

The whole time staying at his apartment felt like a dream and you’d think being back in your own apartment would feel like crashing back down to earth. And yet, it doesn’t. Because even as he helped you get settled back at your place, constantly saying that if you didn’t feel ready then he’d happily let you stay at his as long as you wanted, you knew that you’d never feel as low as you did when you ran out of the office. You had your whole future to look forward to and there was no sense in rushing things. You knew you loved each other and that was more than enough.

Two years later.

“It’s just a taste really, I don’t think you’d even really register any difference as long as you’ve had your blood for the day.” Seungkwan says casually as he fills up all your glasses.

“Just a taste?” Junhui scoffs at you, Seungkwan and Wonwoo as you all nod knowingly, “Why are you two nodding? Neither of you are vampires!”

“Because I’ve listened to Seungkwan and he knows these things.” You say, like Seungkwan is the wisest person you’ve ever met. “And Wonwoo has also listened. He’s great at listening, why do you think his ears are so big?”

“Hey fuck you!”

“You won’t be saying that to me when I’m a vampire.” You say matter of factly.

“And you won’t be becoming one if you use your advantage like that.”

You gawk at your boyfriend, disgusted that he’d say that to you, particularly in front of Wonwoo who’s looking more smug than you’ve ever seen him.

“I mean it _____,” Junhui says, taking a sip of his drink, “I’m already going against everything I believe in, if you’re going to use it over people, I won’t do it.”

“He’s not people, he’s Wonwoo,” you say, like it’s obvious. “And you know I’m not like that. We’ve been through this.”

“I know,” he sighs, scratching his eyebrow, “I’m just……..I still don’t know if I should do it. Maybe we should get Joshua to come over and do it. He’s the oldest. He’s turned people before. We could call him and he’ll be on a flight before we know it.”

“NO!” You interrupt, making Seungkwan jump and drop his food off his chopsticks, “I don’t want someone else to bite me. I want you to do it.”

“Oh this is disgusting, do I have to be here for this?” Wonwoo asks Seungkwan.

“Yes. You need to hear this as much as _____. You’re the one who’s insistent you want to become one too.”

“Childish.” You mumble to Wonwoo.

“Why should you get to see everything in the future and not me?”

“Because I fell in love with a vampire,” you narrow your eyes at him.

“I think you’ll find he loves me just as much. I’m like your brother, aren’t I Junhui?” He looks at your boyfriend hopefully, Junhui looking slightly panicked.

“I wouldn’t object to having you around.” He concedes much to your disgust. The last thing Wonwoo needs is his ego boosting.

“Oh well why don’t you spend eternity with him then,” you throw your napkin on the table dramatically, all of them knowing you’re joking. You’re too excited to be truly angry.

“Because,” he leans towards you, “I fell in love with you and you’ve somehow become so important that I can’t imagine any future without you. So sadly, you’re going to be stuck with me. Forever.”

“Dis-gusting.” Wonwoo says flatly as Junhui peppers tiny kisses on your lips and you giggle into them.

“So it’s just a taste,” Seungkwan carries on once he’s given your sickly pda enough time to come to an end, “you need to take enough blood that her blood sort of panics, in simple terms, her body needs to panic and take on your dna to keep itself alive. It’s a fine line and it’ll be quick, a bite and you only need a couple of mouth fulls for it to be done. Anymore and…….”

“Anymore,” Junhui interrupts, “and I kill the love of my life.”

The table falls quiet at that.

About a month ago when you turned 32, you brought up the subject of Junhui changing you, you wanted him to do it and you wanted him to do it whilst you still looked like you. It may be vain but you don’t want to be an old lady and he finally decides to do it.

It wasn’t a shock to him and to be honest, he’d been thinking about the same thing. Your two years together had shown you two things, that you loved each other like you didn’t think was possible and that Junhui was going to struggle to go on once you’d left this world. You’d gotten the impression he was thinking about it when he spent hours talking to Pearl and Soonyoung on the phone. They’re the only other vampires alive that had been through this and you couldn’t see any other reason that he’d be talking to them so much more than normal.

You hadn’t gone into it blindly. You knew you’d have to distance yourself from your parents a little as you got older but Junhui said with skincare and things the way they are now, you could probably get away with not cutting them out completely. They wouldn’t really be able to tell you weren’t aging all that much. And you’d have to move around every few decades but that didn’t matter, as long as you were together. You couldn’t see any logical reason for him to not turn you.

Junhui had resisted doing it himself, even when he’d gotten his head around the fact that in taking your mortal life, he was giving you both an eternal life together. He’d stopped seeing it as murder, like he’d spent a lot of his life doing, because he knew that you’d still be you. You’d still have the same personality, the same looks, even the same preferences in food and literature, you’d just have reflexes like the speed of light and everything else that came with being a vampire.

Seungkwan and Junhui had been meticulous in their research and planning for the days after he’d turned you. They found enough evidence to suggest that if they doubled the amount of blood that they both have daily, your thirst should be satiated enough that you won’t have the urge to bite anybody. They’d both taken two weeks off work and they were going to monitor you, gradually allowing you near more and more people the more your body adjusted to the change, until you were able to function normally in society just like them.

It didn’t stop Junhui’s worries though but you loved that he was up front about them. He didn’t want to hide any part of himself from you and that included the uncomfortable truth, that the main thing he was scared of was killing you. It wasn’t that he didn’t drink enough blood daily, it was more that he hasn’t had that thrill of fresh blood from the source in centuries. And, if their research is anything to go by, the blood of someone you love tastes even sweeter than that of any other human being. He knew he could resist, he’d realised in your time together that you’re one of the clumsiest people he’s ever met, he’s cleaned up cuts and grazes and never had an issue. But drinking it? When you’re willingly giving it? He was scared. And you all knew it.

“You’ve got this Junhui. I know you have. As you do it, just think of the fact that you never have to say goodbye, that if you don’t stop when you need to, you lose everything. That should be all you need to not lose yourself.” Seungkwan says kindly.

“And let's not forget _____’s self defence classes, she’ll fight you off.” Wonwoo jokes, knowing exactly how to bring everyone back from worrying.

“Hey. I have a mean right hook.” You say, flexing your nonexistent muscles.

“It’ll be fine Junhui. And I’ll come by first thing in the morning with the blood.”

“When do I get turned?”

“When I can be bothered.” Seungkwan dismisses Wonwoo and goes back to finishing his dinner.

You and Junhui smile at each other as your friends bicker, knowing that after tonight, you’ll never have to worry about losing each other ever again.

“I thought,” you mumble against Junhui’s lips as he keeps kissing you, “that you were turning me.”

“I am,” he says against your skin as his lips move down your neck, “but I just wanted to show human _____ how much I love her, one last time.”

His soft lips travel down your body, kissing every bit of skin they come into contact with, like he wants to make sure he’s touched every miniscule part of you before he finally grants your wish. Every tiny peck makes your body feel like it’s on fire and all you can do is lie back on your shared bed, both of you naked, and relish the way he’s worshipping your body.

“How are you so perfect?” He whispers as he takes your nipple gently into his mouth, humming around it as he sucks gently.

You’d had sex. You’ve had a lot of sex in your two years together. But this feels different, this feels like you’re giving yourselves to each other, to be naked and bare to each other as he takes your mortal life away and renews it with his unkillable DNA feels like a new birth. It’s possibly the most intimate you’ve ever felt, you’re just two people about to do something that will change your lives for eternity. In all the years you’ll spend with each other after this, no matter how the world changes and whatever life throws at you, this will always stay the same. How it all started, both of you feeling each other in your purest most honest forms, will always feel like this. You’ll always have each other, you’ll always be able to have each other like this.

His lips leave your nipple, his tongue licking a soft line between the valley of your breasts until he finds your untouched nipple, his lips wrapping around it softly and savouring the feeling of it in his mouth just as much as he had done your other one. Your hands run through his hair, your eyes closed in pleasure as you sigh at the feeling over him sucking your pebbled nipple. No-one has ever made you feel like this, so beautiful, so wanted. He’s seen hundreds of bodies in his life and yet every time he sees, or feels or tastes yours, it’s like he’s in awe of you, like he can’t get over how stunning you are and that you love him as much as he loves you.

“I love you,” he hums as his lips move lower and lower, trailing down your stomach, even stopping at your belly button and giving that a little kiss because he knows the ticklish feeling would make you giggle.

“I love you too,” you giggle as his lips travel painfully close to your pussy.

You can’t even be annoyed when he bypasses it entirely, you know once he gets a taste of you, he won’t be able to stop. The man has spent hours with his head between your thighs and you both know that he doesn’t stop until you physically can’t take anymore. So he can’t get sidetracked by your perfect pussy because he’s not finished showing the rest of your body the same amount of love as he’s already shown your upper half. His kisses turn wet as he kisses your thighs, your body twitching a little when his hair brushes past your pussy when he kisses the inside of your thighs.

“I don’t know,” he mumbles as his lips move down your legs, kissing every where he comes into contact with, “how I got so lucky to find someone as fucking exquisite as you after all this time.”

He dodges your feet after he places a gentle kiss on one and you laugh, almost ruining his little monologue. Not that he minds, your laugh has become his favourite sound in the world and one that he can’t wait to hear forever more. But clearly your feet are out of bounds if he doesn’t want you rolling around laughing and so he makes his way back up your legs, savouring the way your soft skin feels against his lips, his tongue occasionally popping out too because any part of you tastes divine to him and he can’t resist.

Junhui glances up at you as he reaches your pussy once again but instead of moving back up your body, he dots featherlight kisses all over you, over your folds, over the inside of your thighs, everywhere he can to show you just how much he loves you. His left hand takes yours in his whilst his other hand gently opens you up for him, his eyes shining in love as he kisses your clit, the feeling making you moan a little as his lips kiss their way down to your leaking entrance.

“So pretty,” he kitten licks your hole, tasting you straight from the source, “I can’t believe I get to spend eternity with you. All mine, to taste, to savour, to worship.” He licks a long stripe back up to your clit, your hand squeezing his from how good it feels.

His lips suck gently on your clit, your hips bucking a little from the pleasure it sends shooting through your body.

“Do you think every part of you tastes good darling?” He must feel the way you twitch at that because you feel his smirk disrupt his sucking on your clit he’d gone back to doing.

You’d told him just how much the idea of him biting you excited you, you’ve no idea why, you think it’s because it’s something nobody has ever done. It’s something so forbidden that for him to do it, to bite you and to taste your blood, it makes this whole thing even more erotic. You’d spoken about tonight, you’d told him that you wanted to feel him bite you just once before he actually bites you properly. You know you’re risking a lot and you’re amazed he agreed, if Seungkwan found out, he’d be furious. “Just one bite and just a taste.” But you want to know how good the pain feels and see the effect your blood has on him before you’re too lost in changing into a vampire that you don’t see anything at all.

“You’re such a dirty girl ______. It’s pretty perverse to want to see the effect you have on me like that. But,” he licks your pussy again, humming at the taste of your fresh wave of arousal, “I’d give you anything darling, I’d give you the whole fucking world if I could.”

He licks one more time before his tongue carries on up along your stomach and wraps around one of your nipples again.

“Fuck!” He makes you jump when suddenly drops your nipple and shouts, “I love you so fucking much.” He says through gritted teeth, your heart pounding and pussy clenching when, for the first time in two years, he looks up at you and you see those red eyes and pearlescent fangs that you saw once before in his office.

“You think you can just tell me that you want me to taste you, all of you, and I wouldn’t say yes?” his teeth scratch along your skin softly, just above where your heart is pounding.

You try your best not to squirm but you can’t help it, you’re not doing it out of fear, you’re doing it because of the threat of him sinking his teeth into you at any given moment. The thrill of that expectant pain only makes you drip more than you ever have for him.

His fingers trail down your stomach as his teeth pause in their scratching, weighing just a little heavier on your skin and making your body pause in anticipation. But he doesn’t do anything with his teeth. His fingers however plunge into your aching hole, making you arch in pleasure at the sudden stretch of his two fingers and your skin, that his teeth were already resting on, ripple the skin, perilously close to breaking it but somehow not.

“Look how wet you are just at the thought of me tasting your blood, I never knew you were such a pervert darling,” he mutters against your skin, his fingers dragging against your gummy walls and hitting your g spot tantalisingly.

You can’t respond to him, you’re too lost in pleasure and the idea that you’re totally in his care. Your whole body is his to do with as he pleases and if one thing goes wrong, you’re done for. You trust him, you trust him with your life or what you’ll have left of it after this, but it’s the temptation that he’ll have and danger that comes with it. It’s warped, but the idea that he is going to be so drunk on you when he tastes you, that you’ll be giving him so much pleasure in ways no other woman ever has during sex, is sending you a little crazy.

His fingers hammer in and out of you, the sounds of your sopping pussy and moans that your body doesn’t seem to want to fully release as you wait for him to taste you, filling the room. You’re close, you’re so close and he knows it. He knows your body like the back of his hand, he knows every twitch and every tiny response you have to him and so he knows from the little pattern of clenches your pussy is making around his long fingers, that it won’t be long until you come undone around them.

It’s because he knows you so well, knows what you want from him, that just as your high is about to it, he sinks his fangs into you just enough that it punctures your skin.

“Fuck,” you cry, your pussy trembling around his fingers just as much as the rest of your body is as the pain of him biting you and drawing blood mixes with the pleasure coursing through your body from the greatest orgasm of your life. You feel like you’re floating, your whole body filled with electricity as you writhe and cry beneath him, gripping his body and riding his fingers to see you through your orgasm.

When you open your eyes and blink Junhui into focus, the sight makes your blood run cold. Yet you’d be lying if you said it didn’t make your pussy clench painfully in overstimulation.

He stares at you, eyes glistening red and fangs dripping in your blood. The bite has already healed, the dull pain of it and your blood in his mouth being the only reminder that he’d bitten you, as he takes his fingers from inside you and licks your essence off them, the taste of your blood and your cum mixing together and creating something that Junhui has never experienced in all his years of living. It’s like the ultimate delicacy and it stirs something almost animalistic in him. You’re his. You are totally and utterly his and that taste just solidifies it. It’s like it's imprinted something in him that you won’t ever be able to take away, not that he’d ever want you to.

The blood drips from his fangs onto your breasts and you both look down at it, knowing exactly what he’s going to do even as more blood drips down onto the purity of your skin. His tongue darts out and he licks every last drop that’s fallen, his tongue getting more and more frantic the more he tastes. And you’ve never felt more desired, more totally beholding to someone than you have in your entire life. He hums into the taste and if you couldn’t feel his fangs drag against your nipple as he was licking your blood from your breasts, you’d think he was back to your usual caring Junhui.

But when he’s cleaned everything off you, your skin a little pink from how he’s spread the remains of blood over you when he licked it off, and he looks into your eyes. Reality hits you. He looks at your untarnished neck, his red eyes shining a little brighter at the prospect of what’s about to happen and you know that this is it. Your mortal life is going to end and you’ll have the privilege that every other person doesn’t get, you’ll get to spend eternity with the man you love. Both of you seeing the wonders the world has to offer now and the wonders that are yet to come.

You know your Junhui is still there, he isn’t so lost in the taste of you or his desires that he’s totally left you, because he nods just a little, silently asking you if you’re ready for this.

“I love you Junhui. I want forever with you.”

His breath hitches, he takes in your naked body and moves to hover over you, his body resting against yours, skin to skin as he holds your hands above your head.

He places one last gentle kiss to your mortal lips, whispering a gentle “I love you too.” against them before he moves his lips down along your jaw and onto your neck.

His lips stop and it’s like your world stops with it. You take one last deep breath in and as you breathe out, you feel his fangs sink into your neck much harder than they had during that first bite. It hurts. It’s the most painful thing you’ve ever experienced but Junhui’s hands squeeze yours letting you know he’s still yours, he hasn’t become the monster that could kill you as he gently sucks on your neck. It isn’t like when someone sucks a love bite onto your neck, with each tiny suck it sinks his fangs even further into your skin and makes you sob just that little harder from the added pain.

But the pain is the last thing on your mind. You feel his DNA running through your veins, overtaking the DNA that makes you human and changing you into something colder, something more primal. You feel cold, colder than you ever have and yet you feel more alive than ever. Like as more of his DNA courses through you, the stronger your body feels like it’s getting, like you could take on a whole stampede of rhinos and come out the victor.

He yanks himself away from you, his body shaking and convulsing like everything in him is telling him to carry on, to get his fill of you until you’re dead. But he can’t do that. He won’t. You’re his _____ and he knows if he doesn’t stop now, he never will. He kneels back, still holding one of your hands but drawing away enough to allow the bite enough time to heal and the temptation to keep biting to heal along with it. He strokes your waist with his free hand and waits for you to come round, hoping he hasn’t drawn too much blood from you, as you gasp for breath and shake a little on the bed, your body trying to fight his DNA off yet cling to it to keep you alive.

“Come on _____,” he whispers, looking at you with wide eyes that are now completely devoid of any red, your Junhui well and truly back. But he just wants to make sure that you’re back and to be honest, he’s starting to panic. “Please darling, come on. We’ve got this, we can do this,”

His hand keeps stroking your waist and if he was a little less panicked he’d feel that you’re squeezing his hand, trying to show him that you’re still there and your body is just trying to catch up with what’s happened.

“My love?” He lunges forward when your eyes blink open, the wound on your neck healing completely as you do. “_____ are you with me?”

He startles a little when you open your eyes and red ones stare back at him.

“What?” You mumble, not liking the look of slight horror on his face.

“Nothing,” he shakes off the shock, “I just forgot your eyes would be red until you have your first blood, that’s all. Are you ok? You feel ok?”

“I feel fantastic,” you smile, “like I could fight someone and actually win.”

“Yeah,” he scoffs, “that’ll wear off in an hour or so. Come on, let's get you washed and changed then you can sleep it off before Seungkwan comes with the blood.”

“Hold on,” you pull his hand as you sit up, both of you face to face, “thank you for doing this. I know it took a lot and I know you hated it. Just….thank you. And I love you.”

“I love you too.” he says, kissing your lips and noting it doesn’t feel much different from kissing your human lips. “Come on,” he stands up and scoops you into his arms, smiling at how you laugh at his antics and realising this has really changed nothing other than you get to spend your whole life together.

“There was one more thing I needed to tell you about all this.”

“What,” you frown as he places you on the bathroom counter and sets the bath running, “if you’re about to tell me some awful thing about being a vampire that you kept to yourself, I’ll kill you Junhui.”

“Yeah, I’d like to see you try newbie.” You quirks his brow at you. “And it’s not that. You know how Wonwoo wanted turning too?”

“Yeah?” You say slowly, not really liking where this is going.

“Well. When Seungkwan brings the blood in the morning. He’s also bringing Wonwoo. Because you’ll both be needing that blood……..” he waits for you to realise what this means.

“I HAVE TO SPEND TWO WEEKS LOCKED IN THIS APARTMENT WITH FUCKING WONWOO?!”

He dodges the toilet roll you aim at his head, though only just now your reflexes match his, but can’t help but laugh as you berate him. All he can think as he adds bubbles to your bath is how lucky he is that you walked into his office and caught him drinking blood. If you hadn’t, he’d never be here now. Being shouted at by the love of his life and looking forward to an eternity of this chaos that he’s grown to love so much.

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