V4V

Dreamwidth Vamptober writing prompt: @meli_writes — Vampire whose bites just really fucking hurt — did you expect some magic bullshit?

You opened Sanguine on your phone twice, three times a day for a week and a half, drearily dismissing throbbing crimson heart-emoji Likes from chasers half the country away. You should delete it, you keep telling yourself, all the apps are a useless deserted wasteland outside of London. And then you look at that one profile coming up again and again amid the usual dismal handful remotely in your area, little miss only known as V4V.

Sounds like a terrible idea, you tell yourself.

Doesn’t sound like you.

You should delete the app.

After a week and a half, you reason yourself step-by-step down the garden path of well she’ll be swamped with chasers, everyone is. She won’t even notice if you tap Like. You’re nobody’s type anyway, so you’ll just be a face in the crowd to ignore. You won’t match anyway, so you won’t have to attempt first-message eyecatchingly witty without looking like you’re trying too hard. You won’t match anyway, so it’s fine, it’s safe, you’re not risking anything, it won’t take any effort.

You tapped Like, killed the app, shoved your phone under your pillow. Told yourself you should delete it; tomorrow for sure.

When you startled awake after three hours of sleep and groggily had to pick between trying to drop back off or a few rounds of a godawful phone game that really wouldn’t help, you pretended to think about it for a couple of minutes and then slid your phone out, squinting and turning down the screen brightness.

Notification.

Shit.

You fumble, of course you fumble, you can feel every word from your fingertips on the phone screen fucking up and jamming your foot into your mouth harder even than creeps on specialist porn sites would enjoy witnessing.

She seems to find that funny. You funny, like a Facebook video of a staggering kitten overturning its food bowl onto itself and emerging sad-eyed, bedraggled, looking half dead. Look at this cute idiot thing. Every second of talking to her is like having a mortified flush branded into your skin. She burns like sunlight, if the sun enjoyed laughing at you the entire time for your crispy-fried flailing.

She says she’d like to meet you in person.

You panic a little, curl up with a blanket pulled tight over your head. She doesn’t need to witness this trainwreck. Fucking this up in person will not be cute. Face to face will make this too real. Real-you will get you rejected; rejection by real-her will hurt.

You’ve strayed into a Catch-22, though, haven’t you, where if you say no in terror you’ll get deservedly rejected anyway, and it’s already going to hurt. What were you thinking when you tapped Like?

So you say yes, in terror, because you might get hurt but at least you won’t look like a fucking catfish or something.

“I like to bite,” she says, and theatrically tongues the point of a fang. You’re pathetically riveted by the part of her lips, the flash of wet muscle and sharp point. “…Actually nothing to do with fangs or feeding,” she adds after a beat, eyes glittering at your gormless raptness, corners of her mouth twitching up. “I always did. The feel of flesh between my teeth, the purpled indents of exerted bite pressure. The…” and she narrows her eyes a little, smile twitching a little more— “pain inflicted.”

“Not just the putting people in their place,” you hear yourself say, as if you have anything sensible to say, “but the…toying with them there,” and she inhales in a slow, controlled way, puts down her drink.

“Why hasn’t someone snapped you up already?” she says, looking levelly across the dim corner pub table, matter-of-factly serious, and you’re caught too flat-footed to even shrivel under the attention.

“Me?” you say stupidly, like you’ve been called on to explain that the sky is blue and water, wet. You shrug in familiarly awkward dismissal. “What’s to want?”

She doesn’t like that. Frowns at you. “I don’t waste my time on people who aren’t worth it,” she say sternly, and you’re back on terra firma, at least, as you hang your head and fumble for your jacket. “Jesus, what are you — no. Don’t you dare. Don’t touch your coat.” She stands, rounds the table, and slides in beside you, boxing you in. “I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t worth it. You’re worth it. Who the hell did such a number on your self-esteem?”

You give a tight, frightened shrug, fraught and balled up with tension.

“It’s too soon to ask you this,” she says, taking your hand, gripping it tightly. “It’s not fair on you, not when — you’ve obviously been through the wars a bit, haven’t you? But I want—” and she leans against you, pulls your joined hands in front of her on the table, trails the fingers of her other hand up and down your forearm. “I want to take you home.”

You shiver.

She wraps soft rope around your wrists, in her big soft bed, and coaxes your fingers closed around the unknotted ends; stretches your arms above your head, belly-down, quivering.

“God,” she says hoarsely, hair brushing your back. “How are you real.” She runs her nails lightly down your sides. “Look how responsive you are.”

You whimper as she languidly, torturously rubs massage oil into you, neck to toes, warring between going limp and winding into tension.

“I want to bite you,” she murmurs eventually, head snuggled against yours. “Can I bite you?” and sounds almost shaky.

She was not lying about enjoying biting.

She nips up and down your arms, your neck. Worries down your ribs, sucks toothy hickies over your scapulae, moaning. Takes a greedy mouthful of the back of your thigh and clamps down growling until you shout helplessly into the bed and thrum and twist with the difficulty of not kicking.

“Sweetie, sweetie.” She gentles you, stroking and petting, her body wrapped around your leg. Her hands are shaking. “Too much, I’m sorry—” and you shake your head vehemently, eyes squeezed shut and face in her pillow. Shift to offer up the meat of your other trembling thigh. Her fingers dig into you.

“Don’t offer me too much,” she says. She sounds dangerous, throaty and intense.

You shake your head again, try to summon a voice from your throat instead of just a thready whine.

“God, you are so—”

There are tears in the corners of your eyes, wailing, when she undigs her teeth from the matching livid oval on the back of your other leg. You wordlessly shriek and heave for breath at the now-savage front-toothed nips at the back of your knees and all down your calves.

She pins your ankles down with her full weight, and your whimpering pitches up already in anticipation.

“One more, just one, you’re so good, you can do one, you’re so good—”

You are; you are, you will.

The high, sharp purity of the noise that comes out of you, the scream that bullies its way out of your throat, when she finally sinks in her fangs; into the tender meat of the sole of your foot.

You come back from the swimming, floating haze slowly, tucked beneath the cozy blankets of her bed, safe beneath the press of her weight, arms around you, warm voice crooning wordlessly into your hair.

You mumble something lacking in well-shaped syllables, or much driving sense of what you mean to say.

“Hi,” she says, sounding almost a little shy, now. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, we’re all done; you were so good.”

You yawn and press your face as close to her as you can, mutter something else unintelligible, and then, with an effort, say two clear words that spurt a startled laugh from her; “Chew toy,” before closing your eyes and accepting rest.