Yandere!Cowboy Vampire x Fem!Human Reader
A/N: This is referencing American culture in the North and South as someone from the northern part of the US.
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CW: Soft yandere, slow burn, overwhelming devotion, gentle and protective, possessive but non-abusive, vulnerable and clingy, reader is obsessed with vampires and is anemic, reciprocated feelings, mentions of death but not to reader or vampire, and yearning.
Vampires have always lived in secret. Many believed it was just a folk tale, or that vampires roamed around only in the Middle Ages. However, many bred and feasted upon humans all the way until the modern day. Though many claim vampirism is a loss of humanity, many traits counter this point. For one, vampires can drink an entire person, but more often than not, they only drink around a pint (the average amount given at a blood drive). This usually leaves the person only a little woozy, not in a fatal state. Another misconception is that vampires cannot be out in the sun, when in actuality, it is very common for them to do so. How else do you think they got to live this far? Typically, one only needs to feast once every three days to prevent oneself from getting sick. Most of them don't sleep but will rest, as vampires don’t require it. They can digest normal human food, but it can never satisfy their hunger. Some eat it for show, because they miss it or they enjoy the flavor, but like rabbit starvation, they can eat as much as they want, but without blood, they will starve to a second death.
Rory, a 6'2" experienced farmhand, works in the rural South. He has bags under his eyes and his stubble was nicely trimmed. Typically, he wore a plain white shirt and jeans. His wavy, inky hair had one small curl that could not be gelled back despite many attempts. He is a classic Southern man, played football in high school, drives his late mother’s old truck and carries his father’s gun.
Rory has been working on his family's farm longer than he can remember. Once it was full of people bustling around to keep the farm working, but over the years, accidents, ailments, and disappearances have dwindled his family to just him. It’s a lonely life, but he’s content, keeping up the work that his family started years ago. His community is grateful for the cows he raises and sells; he has gifts received over the years to show it.
Autumn has just rolled in, and he can finally put on the jacket made by a friend of his grandfather's. Tonight is the first real temperature drop of the season, which makes it a terrible night for the cattle to be acting up. Rory throws his jacket on and holsters his .45 Colt, walking out to the barn. It's colder than a witch's tit, damn. He wasn’t sure what the commotion was, but you can never be too careful around the coyotes out here.
When Rory arrives at the barn, it’s unnaturally quiet. The door is torn from its hinges, and blood is running out from the opening. Hand on his revolver, Rory takes a step towards the barn to kill whatever has just killed his cows. A figure starts to walk out of his barn; whatever it is, it’s one blood-curdling son of a bitch. Its mouth is caked in blood, and its eyes are obsidian black. Rory has been a quick shot his whole life; he had to be, but he could never compete with this thing. Before Rory can register that he can’t see it anymore, he feels teeth breaking the skin of his neck. In that moment, all he remembers is when a dog bit him when he was younger; his mom cleaned and bandaged the wound for him, but she died long ago.
You love working at a bar, but tonight was a long night for you. One rowdy group of newly 21-year-olds tried to stay past closing, and the bartender had to throw them out. It took twice as long as normal cleaning tonight as it should have, thanks to them (way too much vomit for your liking). As a thank you, you locked up the bar alone, letting your coworker head home early; he has a wife waiting for him, and he did wrangle those guys for you. You have tomorrow night off, so really it's not a big deal; you can sleep in and then enjoy your favorite vampire movie reruns all day tomorrow.
The perk of getting out of work at 4 am is that the sleazy men who normally hang around to smoke are long gone. Yet you hear heavy footsteps coming towards you from across the street. Your options are to run or stay to see if the stranger is friendly; your car is only a few feet away from the back door, so the latter isn’t an option. Damn, the door handle is way too cold for your numb fingers; gloves would have been great now. The shake in your hand from the cold makes fitting the key into the door to lock it futile. As if the stress from the unwanted stranger wasn’t enough, the footsteps had to pick up the pace. Fuck it, you’ll apologize to your boss tomorrow for leaving the back unlocked when you're safe and alive at home!
You turn to run to your car, but the footsteps are gone now. What the fuck? It feels like two briar barbs are being pressed into your neck. This weirdo just bit you! You’ve always wondered what it would be like to be bitten, but not by a stranger behind your place of work. This wasn’t romantic at all, just strange. You start to try to push the stranger off, but it's like being held by a statue; he doesn't move an inch, no matter how hard you pound your fists and elbows into him. Before a minute has even passed, you can feel a familiar black dot forming in your vision; kind of like when you haven't taken your iron pills. You're definitely going to pass out. “Shit.”
Rory felt guilty about drinking from you, but he couldn’t drink the blood bags in hospitals anymore; the guilt would kill him a second time. The sleazy men he normally stalked had left, and he was sick of their disgusting blood. This was supposed to be a one time deal: drink his fill and leave you to go home and enjoy your life. He didn’t anticipate you passing out; he hadn’t even taken that much, but he could have overshot without knowing since he got used to drinking from much taller and heavier men. When you relaxed and dropped into his arms, he panicked. He couldn’t just drop you, not after already drinking your blood. He may have been a monster now, but his Mama raised him better than that to drop a lady in need!
He lowers you to the ground gently, cupping your neck to get a better look at your face. Rory did a number on you. You have a bruise on your neck from where he was feeding. A thin sheet of sweat has formed on your pale face; it must be awful in the cold, Rory thinks. He listens for a moment, hoping he hadn’t killed you from shock. Your heart is still running like a rabbit. He lays his jacket on you and picks you up, carrying you to his truck. He finds your driver's license in your purse; the least he could do is take you home to rest, maybe apologize too.
You wake up at home in bed, a welcome sight from the nightmare you just had. A glass of orange juice appears on your side table. He sits on the other side of the room from you — odd how much room he’s giving you.
“Are you like a vampire?” You joke.
He lights a cigarette. “I can’t deny that claim,” he replies in a thick country drawl.
When you don’t say anything, he adds. “I apologize for last night, ma’am.” A pause hangs in the air. “Right, I should go.”
“Get your ass back here, Carrie Underwood.”
“Um, if you insist, Frank Sinatra,” he sits down again, disgruntled.
“If you’re really sorry, the least you can do is answer my questions.”
“Sure, but first, are you feeling well? I can drive you to the hospital if you don’t.”
“Do you just want to drink the blood bags in the hospital too?”
“No no no, I don’t drink bags; that would be stealing from people who need them.”
“Sure thing, Cowboy Dracula.”
You begin to quiz him on everything vampire — whether he sleeps, can eat human food, fly, turn into a bat, has an active beating heart, and be in sunlight. No, he doesn’t sleep, but he often rests in the afternoon. He can eat human food but doesn’t have cravings for it. Consuming animal blood was an experience he did not enjoy. He does like drinking bourbon, though. He can’t fly; that was the first time he tried to do it when he was turned. For all he is aware, he can’t change into a bat. His heart still beats like an old metronome. He’s totally okay in the sunlight, and he still has his farmer’s tan.
When you finish asking him the burning questions you always had from reading vampire romance novels, he tilts his head. “If you are feeling better, I really should go now.”
“Tomorrow, we are going to Twilight Brew to discuss this further.”
“We aren’t doing anything tomorrow. I am leaving now. Have a nice afternoon, ma’am.”
“You're not getting rid of me. I want to know everything about your… form.”
“That is none of your business. I brought you home, and you're okay. So that is it.”
“So you don’t support a woman in need.”
“Rory, my name's Rory.” A smoke trail follows as he walks out the door. Did that fucker smoke 4 entire packs of cigarettes?
Rory is at your door when you wake up tomorrow, still smoking somehow. “Good morning, Rory. Does being undead mean you can’t get black lung?”
He still wants to make up for yesterday evening, so he takes you out for lunch, a perfect opportunity to show him the town. He said he hadn’t been in town for long.
When you arrive at the cafe, he seems very offended that they didn’t offer sweet tea. He tells you about his farm and family; you have to pry everything out of him, but as the hours pass, he starts letting words flow more easily. He had a dog he loved very much until one day it went rabid and bit him. His father put it down out back with the revolver he carried. The accent is growing on you.
For the next few weeks, you make a routine of meeting and talking about everything from what games you played as children to whether Pluto is still a planet or not (he is obviously wrong, Pluto is a planet). You don’t know where he goes at night, but you have heard some regulars talk about a boogie man who stalks men who follow girls at night. One man has even gone missing, but no one is looking for him, so the barflies move on to less interesting topics.
Rory starts coming to the bar during your shift just to talk to you. If you weren’t mistaken, he has a soft look now, but that could also be the bar lighting. Between patrons, he draws you into a conversation about books he’s read at the library and general chatter about what the townspeople are up to. You catch glimpses of him watching you while you serve other customers.
When Rory watches you, he thinks about how truthfully he shouldn’t be meddling in your life. He is a monster that will never die, and you are so blessedly alive. You're kind and so curious, you have a bright future ahead of you, while he will have to wander the earth till the end of time. Yet, he can’t seem to leave you. This is the happiest he’s been in years. Even before he was turned.
One night, while on shift, a customer tries to flirt with you, and Tony calls from the bar, “She’s spoken for, asshole!” You don’t know what he’s talking about until he tilts his head across the bar to Rory, who is filling out a recipe card for you to try when you get home.
He starts working at an apple farm as a farmhand because it reminds him of home. You often come into work to bring him his “coffee,” which is your own blood. He scolds you for risking your health for him, but never turns it down. That would be wasting a meal.
The apple farm owners love his southern charms; they make him apple cinnamon pancakes and sweaters because he always feels so cold. When you come by the farm, the kids giggle at him and ask if you are his girlfriend. He brushes it off but doesn’t entirely deny it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the entire farm from referring to you as his girlfriend.
He is weirded out by the lack of manners up north, and no one says ma’am or sir. And everyone just says whatever comes to their mind with no decorum. And very few people say hello to each other on the street. At first, he thought it was because he was a vampire and probably unnerved people, but after watching people, he’s determined that people are just that way.
His first winter there, if he could feel the temperature, he would have been frozen solid. What would have been a snowpocalypse where he was from, kids hop on the school bus in their little snow boots.
Rory carries your stuff for you, no matter the occasion. For example, if you were moving your shovel to your car but had to grab your work bag as well, he would carry both the shovel and your bag. Of course, he would also be shoveling the snow around your car. But when he is away from you, he always carries something you own in his pocket. Usually, it is either one of your hair ties or your old gloves that don’t fit him but have a lingering smell of your hand soap.
When someone says something vulgar around you, he always cuts them off, saying, "A lady is present." Yet here you are swearing like a sailor…
He writes letters to you daily, whether that be fun facts he finds when he occasionally stops at the library or some place in town he’d like to go with you to. And these are traditional letters, in cursive and all. The only reason he texts you is that it is your only form of long-distance communication. He never had social media, so sometimes he does really text like a grandpa. If he’s not working, he is texting you incessantly, too. This cat he saw reminded him of you. He’s worried you didn’t bring gloves to work. Is that coworker still bothering you about calling out the other day?
When he comes home from the farm, he brings apples and baked goods home for you to share (it’s not like he’ll eat them). Then, when he leaves for work the next day, you find the odd gifts he leaves for you. A pair of new leather gloves and your favorite snacks have been the best gifts he has gotten you so far.
Though everything can’t be perfect forever. One night, when you are both walking home to your apartment, a man stops you both and introduces himself as Sawyer, a two-hundred-year-old vampire. He goes on a long monologue about Rory's grandfather being a vampire hunter and how he was his mortal enemy. This is going to enact his final revenge by killing his last living relative, by first turning him into the same monster that Rory's grandfather swore to kill. You are just kinda there like, damn, what does this gotta do with me?
Sawyer decides that before he kills Rory, he is going to kill you in front of Rory. To the ancient being, you look like Rory’s girlfriend, and not only would it be satisfying to see Rory beg, but it would also remove all witnesses. In the blink of an eye, Sawyer grabs your arm and drags you down the street, making Rory give chase. In a thrilling twist, Sawyer brings you up the side of a building, landing on the roof. It's strangely beautiful out, full moon, city lights, and all. You can hear the traffic far off and Rory making his way up.
Sawyer whispers a thank you as Rory climbs over the edge. This has made his revenge even sweeter. He has you by the neck. Rory's cold hands never bothered you, but Sawyer’s hands were like dry ice, burning your skin off. You make eye contact with Rory; you’ve never seen him so pissed and terrified; it's kinda scary that he cares so much. The one comfort right now is the knowledge that Rory never goes anywhere without his gun.
A silent conversation passes between you and Rory; he asks for permission and forgiveness, maybe in case he misses, or maybe because he thinks it's his fault that you're here now. Either way you nod, it doesn’t matter; you know that he is going to save you no matter the cost. With that one slight gesture, Rory has his gun drawn and fired at the other’s chest before Sawyer has even a second to go on, and he falls to the ground dead a second time.
Rory holds you while you wait for the ringing in your ears to stop. Absentmindedly, you notice he smells like leather and cedar. When you can finally hear again, you incessantly blab his ear off about what had just happened. That was both the coolest thing that has ever happened and the most paralyzing. He is barely listening to you, just watching, relieved that you're safe.
He does not let go of you for the entire night, even carrying you back to your apartment for him to hold you while you sleep. It’s not like you minded; you were scared to be alone after all of that.
After the incident, Rory only leaves your side to go to work, but as soon as the farm lets him go, he is at your work watching for any signs of danger. He tries to convince you to get every screening and test from the doctor imaginable, just in case.
It takes a while for the bruise on your neck to heal; now and then, Rory stares at it for a little too long and becomes a little melancholy.
Months later, Rory takes you back to his hometown for a weekend. The drive was long but had nice scenery. His music choice was abhorrent to you, but you both compromised on a pop station after one too many Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash songs. When you arrive in the evening, you get a room in a quaint motel called the Apple Tree Inn. It smells like grandma's soap, and everything in the room is red, green, and cream. The innkeeper greets Rory like an old friend; they used to go to church together, you gather from their conversation. Rory carries all your bags, not letting you lift a finger. He muttered something about his mother beating him with a stick, whatever that means. You both planned to stay for one night and then head back.
Dinner is at a place called Loretta’s; the building is small and clearly built in the 70’s. The chairs and tables are rickety and kinda sticky, but the people are welcoming. You barely make it in the door before Rory is swarmed by people coming to say hello and ask why he is so sickly looking now. When Rusty the handyman comes and asks to meet his new girlfriend, it takes a second to catch up to you that he is referring to you.
Rory doesn’t miss a beat in introducing you to everyone, telling a totally altered story of the way you two had met. If you could focus, you would hear him saying something about running into you after work and taking you home because you didn’t feel well, but all you could think of was your girlfriend.
When you two can finally sit down to enjoy the meal, the first thing out of your mouth is, “Girlfriend?”
Rory looks down at his untouched brisket and collard greens, then back to you. “Sorry if I offended you; everybody kept asking me, and it was easier than trying to fight them off.” He rubs his stubble and looks off at the ceiling.
Girlfriend of a vampire, which has a very gothic romance novel feel to it. “Hell yeah, I’d be offended at this point if I wasn’t your girlfriend!” You tear into your pulled pork sandwich, definitely a different kind of barbecue than you’re used to, kind of vinegary. Rory chuckles and starts on his food. He seems a little disappointed by it.
The rest of the evening is spent talking the night away, occasionally interrupted by someone new coming and talking to Rory. He really looks sweet when he laughs with the little old ladies and tells kids how big they’ve gotten since he left. You can’t imagine anyone better for you than your Cowboy Dracula.
