Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In direct contrast to everything else in Dennis’s life, his first encounter with Casey is like a fairy tale. Unfortunately, that fairy tale is Snow White... specifically the part about a man happening upon a beautiful, seemingly deceased young woman and finding himself overwhelmingly attracted to her. Dennis had gotten a job as a night guard at the morgue and had to go into the cooler one night because SOMETHING had set off a motion sensor in there. It was a packed house so some bodies had been left out on stretchers in the center of the room and... there she was. A perfect little pixie of a girl, pale and cold and still.

She was uncovered, that should have registered to him as odd but he was too struck by her beauty to care. It was too easy for him to pick her up bridal style and spirit her out to his car, even if his common sense was screaming at him to stop the entire time. Back at the lower unit condo that he rented, he was overtaken by a sort of elated mania. He should just take her back, he’d wind up losing the job but if he took her back maybe it wouldn’t be TOO much worse than that. Independent of his conscious mind, his hands set to work laying her out on his bed and cutting her clothing off with scissors. He’d expected to have to clean away discharge but... no, she was pristine and supple.

If it weren’t for the lack of a pulse and the low temperature of her body, you could have assumed that she was sleeping. Still, he made a solution of water and rubbing alcohol and wiped her body down with it to remove any possible bacteria. She was covered in faded, silvery scars that caused protectiveness to irrationally flare-up in him. Despite this only adding to his arousal, he found himself being needlessly gentle with her in spite of the fact that she was clearly beyond pain now.

Standing over her angelic form, he’s suddenly overwhelmed; tears prickle at the backs of his eyes and his chest grows tight. He falls on his knees beside the bed, takes her tiny, porcelain hand in his, and kisses it. All the while, the voice of reason in his mind keeps telling him that this is far and away the worst thing that he’s ever done. He’s crossing a line, after tonight his life is over for all intents and purposes regardless of rather or not he gets caught. For a while he just kneels there, holding her hand, shaking and fighting back tears.

Once he has his emotions under control, he rises and begins to methodically undress. Despite still being a virgin at thirty-eight, Dennis is far from innocent. There are things in his porn collection that could probably get him put on a government watch list and the younger girls at the strip club he passes on his way home from work know him on-site (though not by name because he’s never told them his name.) He’s even picked up a prostitute before but he couldn’t get further than having her dance for him and then watching her shower. He’d given her her money and now avoids the street where he’d picked her up.

He gets... nervous around women and when he’s nervous he can’t... There’s also the guilt. He only gets turned on by girls in their late teens and even if one of them would have him he would know that a little girl shouldn’t be anywhere NEAR a creep like him. Not that he ever even SPEAKS to young girls, he doesn’t trust himself and assumes that they’d just laugh at him. A part of him is enraged at this laughter (which so far only happens inside his own mind) and that makes him trust himself around them even less. This one can’t laugh and he doesn’t have to worry that he’s hurting her.

Naked, he sits on the bed beside her and runs his right hand over her body; from her throat, down over her breasts, and to her pubic mound. The hair there is soft. He slips a finger inside to find more resistance there than he cares for. He gets some vaseline and slicks his fingers with it before sticking them back inside and swirling them around to coat her inner walls. Her neck is like a column of cool velvet as he nuzzles against it.

The preparations have gotten him so peppering her neck and collar bones with kisses is all he had the patience for before plunging in. Or, rather, he’s about to plunge in when he feels a hand on the back of his head and freezes. His heart stops when he feels her lips on the side of his neck and then a sharp pain. The pain is excruciating at first but then abruptly mellows into pleasure. If he had been standing, he’d have fallen down but instead, he just collapses on top of her. The pleasure mounts in his core as his extremities go numb and as his orgasm hits, he passes out.

------

As the man’s desires, which had been forefront in his mind at the time, play through Casey’s head, she almost decides to kill him but then she sees his past. Once the fear and love and loneliness and physical agony of his childhood pass, the fear and loneliness and psychological agony of his present sinks in, and she decides that she can’t kill him. Leaving him unconscious on the bed, she goes to the bathroom and rinses his semen off of her. Coming back into the bedroom, she picks his discarded shirt up off the floor and puts it on. He’s a big man so his shirt hangs on her like a dress. She finds orange juice in his refrigerator and places it on the bedside table, he’ll need it when he wakes up.

For a while she sits in the desk chair that she’s moved over to beside the bed and studies his sleeping form. He got more than an eyeful of her and she supposes that turnabout is fair play. He’d have been terrifying to her back when she was alive but now she’s able to look upon his considerable bulk with detachment. He’s covered in the kinds of scars that she’d had back before she was turned and she’d gotten a general impression about how he’d gotten them from his mind when she’d been drinking from him. She’d seen too that he has other scars, on the inside, that have left him a social and emotional cripple... incapable of having a normal life.

Knowing that he’s alone in the world and sees no end to his loneliness in the near or distant future actually makes her feel less guilty about what she’s considering doing. All he really wants deep down is to be needed, to be of use, and to be appreciated for his usefulness... she can give him that. The part of her mind that’s still aware of human moral standards wants to be disgusted by him but that part is very quiet these days (these nights?) and easy to ignore. Yeah, he’d been about to fuck a dead body as far as he knew but... does that really hurt anyone?

He has some unsavory compulsions toward people like her (or rather, people like the person that he’d thought that she was the remains of) but he lives in fear of those compulsions. He’s developed neurotic fixations and rituals related to those that he has purely because if he’s thinking about them he can’t be thinking about... her... people like her... people like who he thought she had been. Maybe, if they’d met when she was alive and she’d somehow learned all this about him, she’d have felt angry and revolted but now she feels a bit sorry for him. After all, a compulsion isn’t the same as a genuine desire, she knows that first hand. For example, she does not DESIRE human blood...

While she’s still on the fence about rather or not she should just leave before he wakes up, his eyes open. At first, she thinks that he might faint again from shock but then he seems to remember that he’s naked. He sits up abruptly, pulling the blanket on the bed over his lap. He gets his feet on the floor but then seems to grow disoriented.

“Drink.” She says, handing him the half-full bottle of orange juice. He takes it slowly, careful not to touch her hand, as he gropes at his neck with his other hand.

“W-what did you...?”

“I took some of your blood.” her tone is matter-of-fact. “Only about as much as they’d have taken if you’d donated at a blood bank.”

He seems... scattered, which she supposes is understandable. After taking a few swallows of orange juice, during which he doesn’t take his eyes off of her, he settles on something to say.

“... you were in the morgue.”

“Yes and you brought me here.” She glances around the room. “...and ruined my clothes.”

He flushes and his eyes suddenly dart away from hers. He runs his over his scalp and then keeps his head down. When he speaks again, his voice is barely audible (or WOULD be, to human ears.)

“I thought... that you were....”

She gets why he’s having difficulty continuing. After all, is trying to fuck someone’s corpse better or worse than trying to rape them? She honestly doesn’t know but supposes that it doesn't matter to her since she knows that he couldn’t possibly have raped her.

“You thought I was dead.” She states matter of factly and for some reason that breaks him. His eyes grow wet and his breathing gets strained... like each breath is a suppressed sob.

“I’m sorry... I’m SO sorry... I swear I’ve never-”

“Done that before?” She cuts him off because she knows that he hasn’t and she tells him as much. “I know.”

She nods down at the bottle in his hand and he takes another drink.

“I’m not mad.”

Before he speaks again he seems to spend a while considering rather or not it’s a good idea to do so.

“What were ya’ doin’ there?”

“I fell asleep somewhere that wasn’t well hidden enough, some well-meaning person found me and called the cops... I guess I should be grateful that I didn’t wind up having to kill a coroner.”

“... why didn’t ya’ kill me?”

“Because I didn’t want to.” She says, as though it should have been obvious. “And because I thought you could be useful to me. Would you like that? To be useful to me?”

He seems at a loss for how to respond. It’s admittedly a strange question being asked in bizarre circumstances... and he’s naked.

“How about I go wait in the living room while you get dressed? Then we can talk.”

She doesn’t wait for him to respond because she doubts that he will. The couch in the living room is the sort of thing you’d find in a doctor’s waiting room and there’s no tv. The living seems to just be where he keeps his weights and lifting bench. There’s a card table in the dining room area, just off the kitchen, with a single folding chair by it. There’s no dust, she remembers from what she’d seen in her mind's eye while feeding that dirt and clutter make him anxious because they’d made his mother anxious and when she was anxious she tended to lash out... at him.

After not too long (but probably longer than it took him to just put clothes on) he emerges from the bedroom tentatively, as if he’d been hoping that she had just left the house after she left his room. Seemingly at a loss for what else to do, he stands in front of her, waiting for her to speak as if awaiting the proclamation of a death sentence.

“So, you’re Dennis, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Casey.” She holds her hand out and he gingerly takes it. “So, you’d like to fuck me.”

He blushes again and stammers.

“I-I’m sorry-”

“Ok, you need to stop saying that.” She fixes him with her gaze. “I heard you the first time and I already said I’m not mad. I’m just trying to establish your price.”

“Price?”

“What if I told you that I wouldn’t be opposed to giving you what you want as long as I was getting what I needed in exchange?”

“...my blood?”

“Um, no.” She shakes her head. “I mean, if you’re offering that’s great but I couldn’t drink from just you often enough to sate myself without killing you and, like I said, I don’t want to kill you.”

“What do ya’ need, then?”

She thinks.

“Well, right now I just need a secure place to sleep and an internet connection and... clothes but I think that was a given since you recked mine.”

Despite his generally flat affect, she can see in his eyes that he’s still struggling to wrap his brain around the situation.

“You wanna’ sleep here?”

“Unless you’ve got something else in mind.”

He shakes his head, still looking lost.

“I’m proposing a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“You’d stay here and... we’d...”

“Fuck, sleep together, make love... whatever you want to call it.” He seems to get more nervous at the mention of physical intimacy and she tries to address what she thinks is the problem. “I can even lie still and keep my eyes closed if that’s what you want.”

He shakes his head again while casting his eyes to the floor and raking his fingers over his scalp again.

“What?”

“I just... I don’t want you ta’... do that... if you don’t want to.”

It’s strange that that’s his concern and not the fact that under the proposed arrangement, he’d be sharing a living space with an undead creature that feeds on human blood.

“You’re not unattractive, you know that, right? And I assure you that there’s no way you could make me do anything that I didn’t want to do.”

He blushes a little, it’s kind of cute.

“So... you’d be sleepin’ here.”

“There’ll be other stuff down the line but if I ever ask for something you don’t want to give me you can just refuse and I’ll go.”

She expects him to refuse, any reasonable person would. He’ll refuse and then she’ll just find somewhere else to go. It’s not as if he can tell anyone what’s happened here, no without looking crazy AND incriminating himself.

“I should go back ta’ the morgue and finish my shift so it don’t look too suspicious... I can get ya’ some clothes on my way back.”

“Is there security camera footage of you taking me out.”

“I can check but there shouldn’t be... there’s only a camera in the lobby, the rest is just motion sensors.”

“It’s not one of the better morgues, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

Chapter Text

By the time he returns, she’s already somehow unlocked his computer and appears to be making a Facebook page. Dennis doesn’t use social media. He finds it odd that she’d be making a profile just now. Wouldn’t she already have one if she made regular use of that sort of thing? If she’s bothered to look through his browsing history, she’s somehow avoided seeing anything that she finds worth commenting on. Still...

“Um... Ya’ can use that fer now but I’m gonna’ find ya’ something else.”

By retroactively giving her permission, he avoids confronting the fact that he’s likely powerless to stop her from doing whatever she damn well pleases. If he sounds agitated, she chooses to ignore it.

“Ok,” She signs out and closes the window at a pace that suggests that she doesn’t particularly care if he sees what she’s doing. “Do you have any hair dye?”

He shakes his head, feeling his brow crease.

“Do you have any peroxide?”

“Yeah... in the medicine cabinet.”

She makes no move toward the bathroom and looks down inquisitively at the bag he’s holding. He went to Walmart because that was the only place open that he knew for a fact sold women’s clothing. He hands the bag to her.

“I remembered yur size from...” He has to stop there because he’d really rather not revisit his having cut her clothing off with scissors. She should be mad over that but she isn’t and he doesn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. Since he knows nothing about her other than the fact that she’s a mythological creature, he’d gone very generic with his selections. He got her three pairs of jeans, a six-pack of white tank tops and socks... he couldn’t bring himself to look through the women’s undergarments and now he’s worried about what she might assume based on the fact that he hasn’t brought her any.

If she’s dissatisfied or offended she doesn’t show it. She removes the tags from a pair of jeans and sets about putting them on. He doesn’t even notice that his eyes are following her movements until she does. Their eyes meet and she... smiles. His guts twist into knots and his face burns.

“Right, I owe you, don’t I?” She purrs and Dennis’s stomach drops to his knees. Before he knows it, he’s stammering.

“I-I’m j-just really... t-tired...” He almost apologizes but stops himself because why should he apologize to her? He also tells himself that he’s not stalling, why would he want to forestall the part where he gets what he WANTS? He just actually is tired... it’s been a long night. She raises a brow and he half expects her to start mocking him but she doesn’t.

“I guess it is getting close to dawn. You usually sleep during the day?”

“Most’a the time, less I got errands durin’ the day.”

She nods.

“Good, then I won’t have to worry about keeping you up.”

He feels himself flush more and is suddenly tongue-tied.

“Do you have anything I can cover the window in the living room with? Better safe than sorry.”

“There’s no windows in the bedroom.” The potential implications of what he just said dawn on him and his social discomfort deepens. (Why? He’s agreed to let her stay here in exchange for sex so why would he be shy about mentioning it to her? Whatever this sort of arrangement is called, he’s apparently bad at it.) “I-I mean that I can sleep on the couch.”

“Or, we can both sleep in the bed.” She offers in a patient, gentle tone as if he’s a skittish animal while allowing the jeans to slide off of her and walking over to the bed. “I go catatonic about half an hour after sundown so it’d be like I was a... body pillow or... a doll.”

As it dawns on him that she’s assuming that he’ll only be comfortable fucking her if she’s incapacitated, a wave of self-loathing washes over him aided by the fact that she’s not ENTIRELY mistaken in that assumption. God, he’s pathetic.

“Dennis." Her voice cuts through the fog that had begun to gather around his brain. When he looks up at her, her features soften. “How about this, you go get ready for bed and I’ll turn off the light in here, get undressed and get under the covers. Then, when you’re ready, you can just... decide what want to do.”

Dennis takes a set of his pajamas into the bathroom with him. He takes a LONG shower during which he masturbates while replaying her voice purring ‘...I owe you...’ over and over in his mind. Fuck, what is wrong with him? She’s NAKED in HIS bed right on the other side of the wall and he’s in here jerking off while thinking about her. He gets out, dries, dresses, and brushes his teeth. He considers putting on some aftershave but then tells himself to quit being ridiculous.

Afer getting into bed, he puts his phone on the wireless charging station on his bedside table then briefly studies her in the light from his screen. Her eyes are closed but... is it half an hour after dawn? Is she faking it? The light goes out automatically and for a moment he listens for the sound of her moving in the dark. He spends what feels like a very long time lying there trying to work up the nerve to reach over and touch her but he falls asleep before he can.

------

Casey wakes up sometime later. The specific time isn’t important, she just knows that it must be after sunset or she wouldn’t be waking up. She rolls over and looks at Dennis who is still fully clothed. She supposes that it’s not implausible that he washed up and got dressed after fucking her unconscious body but she doesn’t feel like that’s what happened. After she pulls on a pair of jeans and a tank top, she goes and makes coffee. Though she personally can’t partake, she figures that it won’t kill her to be courteous.

The fact that he wasn’t more eager to consummate their arrangement has her worried he may be having second thoughts. He doesn’t have any friends or family he could tell about her and she doubts he’ll be going to the cops (again, what would he say?) but in order for her position here to be secure, she needs to be certain that he LIKES having her here and at present, she isn’t. Maybe he’d accepted her offer on impulse and is regretting it now. She gets the sense that allowing a complete stranger (let alone a dead one) to crash in his house is pretty out of character for him and he seems the type to break if he’s bent too far too quickly. She’ll have to be gentle.

Maybe he’ll be more into it after she makes use of that peroxide. For what she has in mind, she needs to look as young as possible and she’s found that when she’s blonde she can pass for fourteen or even thirteen depending on how she’s dressed and how she carries herself. She supposes she’ll have to shoplift some makeup. She doesn’t have any money and she won’t feel comfortable asking Dennis to spot her until they’ve at least slept together. She both doesn’t want to try her luck and would feel kind of guilty if he actually gave it to her without receiving anything in return.

Most of the cabinets are empty but she finds a box of baking soda in the back of one of them and sets to work making a paste with that and the peroxide. While she’s sitting at the table doing that, she becomes aware of Dennis watching her from the hallway.

“There’s coffee.” She stands, assuming he’ll want the chair, and resumes her work while leaning against the kitchen counter. Walking into the dining room, he looks at her inquisitively.

“It’s for my hair.”

Seeming to accept her explanation, he walks over and pours himself a cup of coffee. For a moment he just watches her as if trying to be certain that she’s actually there. Maybe when he first woke up he’d thought that he dreamed the previous night, she wouldn’t blame him. He’s dressed for work but his shirt is still open and, looking at him, she feels a little regret at the fact that he may not be able to fuck her while she’s awake. He really ISN’T unattractive. Though she supposes that the joke is on her for expecting a guy who stole her corpse from a morgue to have normal sexual urges.

“How long have ya’ been like this?”

“Dead, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know... about twenty years... once you stop aging time kind of blends together.”

He mulls this over while he sips his coffee.

“...how does it happen?”

“Well, for me, it was like in the movies. I’d already lost a lot of blood and then he gave me his.”

“Who’s he?”

“My maker.”

She thinks that he probably wanted a name but that’s just too bad. She’s tried to make sure that none of her... activities wind up causing Barry any trouble. Dennis seems to want to pry further but also seems averse to doing so, he’s clearly not used to being the one initiating the conversation.

“... how’d you lose all that blood?”

“Someone shot me.” He winces sympathetically and she expects that he’ll ask for further elaboration but he doesn’t. She decides to change the subject. “You work tonight?”

“Yeah, til one... are you just gonna... be around here?”

“I’ll need to go out to feed but I’ll make sure no one sees me coming or going.”

“Yer gonna go out an... kill someone?”

“Depends.” Again, she expects him to ask for details but he doesn’t. Eventually, he clears his throat and scratches the back of his neck.

“I’d prefer ya didn’t use my computer anymore... I’ll pick one up fer ya on the way home.”

“Ok.” She’ll need to die her hair and get makeup and probably some more ‘girly’ looking clothes before she can take a profile picture anyway. “I’ll be sure to be here waiting for you when you get back.”

She locks eyes with him, strides across the kitchen, and, standing on tiptoe, pecks him on the mouth eliciting a little gasp. Leaving him in the kitchen, she goes into the bathroom to apply her DIY hair lightener and when she emerges he’s gone.

Chapter Text

While Casey is waiting for her hair to air dry, it dawns on her that Dennis hasn’t gotten her shoes. That settles it, she needs money. She considers searching the house to see if Dennis has any that she might be able to borrow and then replace before he notices but decides that she doesn’t want to incur his ill will. Later on, she may need him to trust her and she knows that the foundation for that will need to be laid as early as possible. So she’ll be getting money the way that Jade taught her, she doesn’t like it but she can’t deny that it’s foolproof.

Considering that she’s not wearing makeup, provocative clothing, or shoes, she’s able to pick up a John surprisingly quickly. He’s probably assuming that she’s a drug addict but she also knows from experience that a certain type of man is magnetically drawn to the obviously artificial shade of blonde that peroxide produces. She drinks from him about as much as she drank from Dennis and sees his abusive father, who would make him watch while he raped his mother. She chokes him unconscious and then takes his wallet; inside she finds three hundred dollars in cash which means that the fifty dollar blow job he was planning to buy from her probably wasn’t all he planned on doing tonight.

The first store she comes across is a Walmart (probably the same one where Dennis got her clothes) and she supposes that for her purposes it’s more than adequate. She buys a few outfits that look like the sort of thing that a tween girl who desperately wanted to be seen as sexually mature would wear. She gets hair ties and Hello Kitty barrettes, a pair of pink Converse knockoffs, and also a pair of women’s work boots for regular wear along with button-downs and hooded sweatshirts to wear over the tank tops Dennis got her. She gets a pair of pink, fluffy pajama pants, and a spaghetti strap tank that says ‘Princess’ in pink glitter because she thinks that some selfies of her alter ego in her pajamas will add authenticity to her profile. She intends to continue wearing nothing while lying next to Dennis.

After paying for all that plus the cheapest possible makeup (which she’ll be applying with the intention of looking as though she’s just started wearing it) she still has a hundred dollars left. Getting an idea, she goes back to the pharmacy department and buys a sleeping mask. When she’s completed her shopping, there’s still plenty of time until Dennis will be home so she goes back to the house and changes into one of her costumes. Studying herself in the mirror, she considers practicing with the makeup but then decides against it. For her purposes, the more unpracticed it looks, the better.

By the time he gets home, she’s changed back into jeans and a tank top and hidden her costumes in the back of the hall closet. She’s not entirely sure why she doesn’t want him seeing them. Maybe she’d just rather that he not know any more than absolutely necessary. He sets down a bag from Best Buy. She hadn’t expected him to BUY her a new laptop, she’d thought that he had a way to get a hold of a used one, but she resolves to pay him back one way or another. The envelope interests her more. She picks it up.

“It’s yer paperwork... fer when you were brought in... nobody even seemed to notice you went missing.”

“Doesn’t exactly do wonders for my sense of self-worth but it’s good for us, isn’t it?”

“...yeah.”

“Are you alright?”

“I just thought they’d at least ask me about it.”

It sounds like he feels guilty, like he WANTED to get caught. That won’t do, she’ll have to direct his attention elsewhere. While Casey looks over the laptop, Dennis makes himself dinner (breakfast?), jus fried eggs, and toast. Maybe she could cook for him? Or would it not be in her best interest to come across as maternal considering his background?

“Thank you so much.” She smiles at him, trying not to show her fangs. “This is perfect.”

“It wasn’t expensive.”

“It’s more than you had to do.” She’s also going to eventually need a burner phone but she’ll either get that herself or wait to ask him for it until after he has more to thank her for. She decides that she had better get started on that. “I wanted to ask you something?”

He quirks a brow.

“Why didn’t you do anything when I was asleep?”

Suddenly his food is very interesting to him.

“...I was tired.”

“Ok but I was wondering if maybe... I mean, when you took from the morgue you thought that I had completely... vacated my body, that I was an object and I was just wondering if maybe knowing that I’m still in here ruins it for you.”

He looks hurt and ashamed.

“I swear I’m not... like that.”

“I’m not judging and even if I were, I’ve killed people, my opinion shouldn’t be important to you.”

“... I’d never even done that before.”

“Ok, so you’re not ‘like that’... what are you like?”

She knows that he hasn’t been with anyone alive or dead but she doesn’t think that it would be a good idea to bring that up. When he just continues to avoid eye contact, she gets up.

“When you’re ready, come into the bedroom.” She caresses the back of his neck, eliciting a little shiver. “I got you something.”

When he enters the bedroom she’s kneeling naked on his bed, holding the sleeping mask. He blushes at the sight of her but his eyes briefly trail down to her clothes where she left them on the floor. She smirks but manages not to laugh.

“So, I’m going to put this on and lie down and you can stay over there or come over here. You can touch me but I won't touch you unless you make it clear that you want me to. It can stop whenever you want, go as far as you want... ok?”

After a long pause for consideration, he nods. Casey puts on the blindfold and lies down. She doesn’t need to see to know where he is in the room. If she focuses, she can hear his heartbeat and his breathing. She hears him walk over to the side of the bed where she’s left her clothes and then hears him picking them up. She suppresses another laugh.

After he folds her clothes and sets them on the computer chair, he returns to his position by the door. Sticking near an exit. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to be afraid of her given what he knows but she has a feeling that this fear isn’t the rational kind. Enough time passes that she would think that he left the room if it weren’t for the fact that she didn’t hear him leave. Eventually, he speaks with a little more confidence than he’s exhibited thus far.

“There’s a-a catch ta’ this, isn’t there?”

“I already told you that this was an exchange.”

“Yeah but... this just how ya’ get a roof over yer head?”

“No, I can go stay with my maker whenever I want but sometimes I just need space.”

This isn’t true but she doesn’t feel like they're at the point where she could tell him everything even if she planned on eventually telling him everything which she doesn’t.

“And ya get ‘space’ by doin’ this?”

So apparently he’s not only not unattractive, he’s also not stupid. She’s not sure yet if this is a good or a bad thing.

“I’m not constantly shacking up with guys if that’s what you’re worried about and vampires can’t get venereal diseases.” She decides to try to steer things in a more predictable direction. “You know, I wouldn’t have made you this particular offer if I didn’t find you attractive... I can’t POSSIBLY be the only person who’s ever told you that you’re hot.”

Casey lets her left-hand trail idly between her legs while bringing her right up to cup her breast, stroking the nipple with her thumb. She hears his heart rate increase just slightly and arches her back to afford him a better view of her breasts. She rolls the nipple between her fingers as she pulls back her clitoral hood and rubs the little nub with her middle finger. She hears him swallow. When he speaks his voice is conspicuously horse.

“What would you’a done if ya’ didn’t think I was attractive?”

“I’d have left while you were passed out.” She says casually. “Or, if I was desperate, I’d have found another way to make you give me what I needed.”

This seems to be exciting him so she decides to go all in.

“Once I killed a guy and then stayed in his apartment for two weeks before anyone even noticed he was gone... it was a really nice apartment.”

By now he’s walked over to the bed and he reaches down and takes her hand from between her legs and puts it on the bed beside her. She feels his weight bend the mattress beside her as he trails his finger through her pubic hair. He runs his knuckles gently over her slit and she arches her back more and moans in an exaggerated response. He slides his other hand up between her breasts and presses it loosely to her throat as if considering strangling her. She tilts her head back accommodatingly and sighs; if he wants her to pretend to choke then she will.

Instead, he moves his hand up and slides his thumb into her mouth, prying it open. She lets him and lets him kiss her though it’s less of a kiss and more just him licking the inside of her mouth. His lack of experience is equally evident in how abruptly he slips two fingers into her. It would be painful if she were human but since he can’t damage her body, it’s just another sensation. She pretends to enjoy it, assuming that that’s what he wants.

The hand between her legs disappears as she feels him move to straddle her. He keeps kissing her mouth for a while before moving down to her neck, sucking and biting. The hand that was on her throat slides back to pull her hair as he works his way down to her breasts. She hears a zipper and then his breathing becoming even more rapid and... he’s laying on top of her fully clothed and masturbating. She supposes that it certainly could be worse and even if it were it’s over too quickly for that to matter, his hot seed splatters against her folds, where he’d been rubbing the head of his cock and he lets out a puppy-like whimper.

After lying on top of her for, maybe, a minute he stands and tells her to stay where she is. Moments later he comes back into the room and wipes her down with a warm, wet cloth. He leaves the room again and then she hears the shower. She removes the blindfold and sighs at the ceiling. It’s not bad, she tells herself, just not particularly satisfying. She resumes her pose from earlier, one hand between her legs (middle finger on her clit) and the other playing with her breasts until she reaches her climax. She’s a little disappointed that he didn’t walk in on her in the act but she doesn’t have time to dwell on that. She can feel dawn approaching.

------

When Dennis returns to the bedroom, having scoured himself raw in the shower, Casey is asleep. He tells himself that tomorrow night he should just tell her to leave; this whole thing is a bad idea but... what if she refuses to leave? It’s not like he can MAKE her. Worse, what if she doesn’t refuse and just leaves him alone... all alone... somehow even MORE alone than before. He had planned to sleep on the couch but she looks so inviting curled up on her side. He finds himself settling in behind her, burying his face in her newly blonde hair (did she do that for him? Because he liked it better before) pulling a blanket up over both of them and falling asleep far more easily than he’d expected to.

Chapter Text

After Casey has been with Dennis for about a week, he buys her a cheap flip phone saying only that he noticed that she didn’t have one. It can take pictures with very poor resolution but she supposes that that will lend validity to her back story (that she’s a neglected thirteen-year-old whose family is poor.) The first thing she does is text Barry. She doesn’t tell him where she is, just that she’s found a secure base of operations and that she doesn’t know how long she’s going be here. He just tells her to ‘b careful bby grl’ but she receives at least one text a night from him after that. She doesn’t mind it, he’s like an anchor.

While Dennis is at work, she works on building her online persona, trying to make friends with as many of the wrong people as possible. While he is home, she works on establishing a report with him... building trust. She knows that the closer they get, the more emotionally dependent on her he becomes, the more likely he’ll be to comply if she ever asks him to do something questionable. She’d have thought that by now he’d be asking HER to do questionable things (she saw plenty of them in his mind) but so far the kinkiest it’s gotten is him having her sit blindfolded on his lap while he watches porn. Their ‘lovemaking’ is the same with only slight variations; he’ll remain fully clothed while she’ll be nude with her eyes covered, he’ll grope her and kiss her and make clumsy efforts to stimulate her before rubbing himself off on her without penetrating.

Honestly, it would be less frustrating if she didn’t find attractive. It would also be less frustrating if she didn’t know that she was physically strong enough to make him do whatever she wants... to FORCE herself on him. She won’t do it, of course, but until now she’s never even felt tempted. She thinks that there’s a distinct possibility that he’s holding back because he feels guilty (mostly because that seems to be his default setting) and she tries to correct for that by telling him about the things she’s done. She tells him about the people she’s killed, both deliberately and not, and the ones she’s slept with, the ulterior motive that she often has for doing so.

If any of this bothers him, he shows no sign of it beyond sometimes becoming aroused. One night while they’re laying together as they usually do after the fact, she gets an idea. She stretches and when she brings her arms back down, trails a hand between her legs and begins to casually play with herself. She hears his heartbeat quicken and his breathing gets a little shallower. Smiling, she settles further back into him and sighs, and then experimentally reaches up with her unoccupied hand strokes the back of his neck.

Taking the invitation, he slides his hands up her body to pet her breasts. Eventually, his right hand trails down her abdomen to stop just above her pubic mound. He’s suddenly shy again as if he hasn’t touched her there before. This appears to be the constant back and forth with him, they’ll get just so far and then he’ll withdraw and they’ll have to start over. When he speaks his voice is quiet and horse.

“Can you show me...?” Though he seems unable to say it, she knows what he means. She takes his hand and guides it slowly to where her’s had been. She shivers as she rubs herself against his hand and feels him starting to get hard again.

“I don’t usually do it right, do I?” He pants.

“Putting your fingers inside isn’t as important as this...” She rubs his index finger against her clit. “Right here.”

He keens in the back of his throat and buries his face in her neck but doesn’t stop or pull away so she keeps talking.

“You know what I want inside me?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer because she knows he won’t. “I want your cock... I want you to fuck me so hard it makes me bleed and then I want you to lick the blood off my cunt like a good boy. Do you want that Dennis? To be good for me?”

“Y-yes... I’m sorry I haven’t been...”

Huffing in frustration, she pulls off the blindfold and then forces him to look into her eyes.

“Stop. You’re not going to say that anymore.”

Seeing some hurt in his eyes, she kisses him deep and slow while bringing her other hand down to rest on top of his, prompting him to continue his ministrations. She keeps plundering his mouth while plays with her and has resisted the compulsion to bite down on his tongue when she cums. For a while, she just lies there savoring the afterglow and the heat of his body and the feeling of his erection pressed against her. He gets turned on so easily and rebound so quickly... maybe she should teach him to put that stamina to good use. Slowly, carefully, she rolls over to face him, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest.

He showered and dressed for bed after their usual activities so he’s just wearing pajama pants and a ribbed, cotton tank top. After a week of frustration, it feels like the height of indulgence just to be able to look at him and touch him. She decides to try her luck.

“Dennis, can you lie on your back for me?”

He hesitantly rolls onto his back and then for a while she just lies next to him, eventually reaching up to stroke his chest through the thin cotton. Even that has him closing his eyes and trembling just a little but he doesn’t move away. She knows why he has issues about being touched; it was his mother, when he started puberty she’s started crawling into his bed with him at night and... If he only knew how similar they are. She doesn’t plan on telling him, though. After all, it wasn’t like he had voluntarily told her about his mother. His blood had told her.

“Do you want me to make you feel good?” She traces a finger along the waistband of his pants. “You don’t have to fuck me, I can use my hands or my mouth.”

He cringes a little at the second suggestion and she knows why. She tries not to laugh.

“Don’t worry, I learned how to avoid fang based collateral damage a long time ago.”

He doesn't respond.

“Come on.” She coaxes. “You can’t actually prefer doing it yourself.”

He still doesn’t respond so she just lies there quietly, running her hand over his chest and throat. She can feel the blood moving under his skin. Though he’s still visibly aroused, his brething evens out after a while. She nestles closer until she’s pressed flush against his side and then whispers in his ear.

“Touch yourself.” He tenses and she presses a few kisses to the side of his neck and brings her hand up to the other side of his face. “You can keep your eyes closed...Come one... please.”

He slides a trembling hand under his waistband and she rewards him with a kiss. They keep kissing while he stimulates himself and as his movements begin to stutter and his breathing grows more and more ragged she trails her hand slowly down his chest. As she traces a finger along the cut line that leads to his groin he cums, moaning into her mouth. When his breathing has evened back out, he finally opens his eyes to look at her. She smiles.

“Good boy.”

Chapter Text

Casey is not proud of it but by now her father has become less than a memory. What remains of him in her mind is an echo of an echo, a faded memory of a story that someone else told her. She remembers having loved him but she doesn’t FEEL that love anymore... the girl who loved him feels like a different person... the person who told her the story. The fact is, the longer she’s undead, the more all her pleasant memories fade, and yet she remembers every horrible second of what John did to her. In fact, she could swear that the details get clearer and clearer the more they’re replayed in her mind and the further into the background her sadly short time with her father fades.

This sometimes makes her think about Patricia and how old she supposedly is and how she supposedly died. Maybe Casey shouldn’t say ‘supposedly’ because Orwell says that he has found historical records sufficient to confirm at least the vague outline of her origin story. There was an old ledger found buried under an old stone foundation upon which it is assumed that a courthouse once stood that confirms the witchcraft trial of a Patricia S. (Midwife) which culminated in a “trial by water.” The footnote in the book Orwell has been writing since he arrived in the united states explains the term “trial by water” in far more words than Casey thinks are necessary to explain a deliberate drowning but she’s no scholar. It also explains, briefly, that the trial was inconclusive as no body (alive or dead) could be located after.

Casey sometimes wonders if by now Patricia is capable of remembering any part of her life other than the “trial” with any real clarity. Surely, she must have known some happiness, there must have been people she cared for who cared for her, but by now how faded is that happiness? And are the people any more than rumors of echoes of ghosts? When Patricia tries to direct her focus to the past, can she find ANYTHING other than 2 weeks of torture (the ledger says ‘fortnight’) followed by a deliberate drowning? Casey doesn’t see how she could since she herself can barely remember how her father looked without the aid of a photograph but can remember exactly how uncle John smelled the night he chose to dispense with all pretenses and simply climb into her bed and claim what he felt was his.

She’s relieved to learn that Dennis rarely drinks and when he does it’s never the sort of brown liquor that John favored. He rarely partakes because alcohol is, after all, a luxury and there is little room for luxuries in the almost monk-like structure of his day to day (night to night?) existence. As far as she can tell, before her, his only indulgence was porn... LOTS of porn. He also has a collection of books but there’s nothing in it that she’d consider pleasure reading. He seems greatly concerned with how things are meant to work and how to fix them if they are not working that way. Dennis is also interested in microorganisms, cleaning techniques (he even has a few old issues of magazines like Good Housekeeping), and psychology.

Dennis has always suspected that there was something wrong with his mother’s brain and now he worries that there’s something wrong with his; that he either inherited it from her or that what she did to him made him ‘sick.’ Casey looked around when he wasn’t home and found prescription anti-anxiety meds in his bedside drawer, kept WAY in the back so that anyone who just glanced in there wouldn’t see them. Did he always hide them or did he just start since she’s been living here? And did he get them from a general practitioner or does he see a psychiatrist? Casey just wants to know because if it’s the second one that may give her something to worry about. What do psychiatrists typically do when a patient tells them that they’ve been stealing corpses to fuck?

Casey is sitting on the couch right now making only the latest of multiple attempts to think up a way to ask him if he sees a psychiatrist while pretending to be absorbed in something she’s doing on her computer. Dennis is in front of her, lifting weights. He’s clearly uncomfortable with her being in the room while he does this but he doesn’t have the nerve to ask her to go into the bedroom and, anyway, she gets the feeling that this sort of discomfort is a turnon for him. The subtle nervousness she sees here is the same as the more pronounced anxiety that being complimented causes him. She’s figured out by now that he has a praise kink that he isn’t aware of, that’s why blushes and gets all flustered whenever he’s given a compliment.

She also likes seeing him this way, vulnerable. He’s lying on the bench doing a chest press and, unbeknownst to him, his tank top has ridden up a little, exposing a sliver of skin between its hem and the waistband of his grey sweatpants. She thinks about how, if she were to go over there and gently run the tip of her finger over that patch of skin, he’d start and drop the bar on himself... It might even break his sternum. When he finishes and sits up, their eyes meet and he flushes just a little more. She lets a slow smile crawl across her lips, not bothering to conceal her fangs anymore.

“Come over here.” She coos and he abruptly looks away.

“J-just lemme’ go take a shower first.” He’s showered twice a night (during the week it’s once before work and once after but on his day off it’s once when he first gets up and again after he works out), this is another thing that she’s not sure if he’s always done or if he does because of her. Vampires don’t sweat and it’s possible that her lack of any conspicuous odor had made him more self-conscious but it’s equally likely that he’s always been this self-conscious. For the record, humans do have a smell to them regardless of how often they bathe but it doesn’t bother Casey, it’s just the way humans happen to smell. You don't get disgusted when a dog smells like a dog, do you?

“Come... over... here.” She stands and looks at him expectantly. He comes over reluctantly but she still rewards him. “Good boy, now give me a kiss.”

He tries to keep it brief but she cups the back of his skull and delves her tongue into his mouth, running it over his palette. When he tries to take control of the kiss, she pulls away but keeps her hand on the back of his neck. As she brings her lips to his ear, she slides just the tips of the fingers of her other hand into the waistband of his pants.

“If you touch yourself in there, I’ll know, and I’ll be VERY disappointed, understood?”

She pulls back again to look into his eyes. After a long, tense pause, he nods, and then she lets him go. He rights himself, trying to act as if nothing just transpired, and goes into the bathroom.

-------

Despite the fact that he knows that it won’t get him as clean, Dennis uses cool water in the shower. He needs to clear his head, it’s SO hard... so hard to think straight around her. She’s been here almost a month and at around the three-week point, they had officially become lovers. Like most of their relationship (?), it hadn’t been romantic. It had been one of his nights off and she had told him that she needed a ride somewhere and when he’d asked where she’d given the name of a cheap motel twenty minutes away. He must have looked confused because she’d said it was ok, she could take the bus. She’d been wearing makeup and clothes that he hadn’t seen her in before and he hadn’t liked any of it, she didn’t look like herself.

He had wound up giving her that ride... he doesn't remember exactly why. Maybe he’d been hoping for some sort of confirmation that this absolutely COULD NOT be the only thing that it seemed like it could possibly be. She’d had him park a block away and told him that he could leave and come back in an hour but he hadn’t. He sat there reading on his phone until she’d come back. On the drive home, he’d waited and waited for her to explain herself but she hadn’t.

By the time they got back to the house he’d been angry because how dare she... how DARE she? She’d just barged in and nested in HIS apartment and now she was having him chauffeur her to cheap motels to fuck other men? Is that what she was doing on the internet all the time, looking for hookups? Did she think he was so pathetic that he’d just let her run off and fuck random sleaze bags while the best he got was a blowjob? In his rage, he seemed to completely forget that she’d been more than willing to give him more, that HE was the one who’d been holding back.

When they get to the house she announces that she is going to take a shower and is in the bathroom before he can say anything. He waits and fumes and eventually she emerges from the bathroom wearing only a towel. He snaps.

“You had me take you to meet another man!”

“Yes.” She says so calmly that it throws him enough to clear a little of the dark cloud around his brain. He notices for the first time how upset she looks; how sad and vulnerable. Before he can say anything, she lets the towel slide down her body, pooling at her feet.

“I need you,” She says in a breathy, near-whisper as she walks over to him. “I need you inside me, please. Make me forget him... all of them.”

She runs her little hands up his chest and presses her little flower petal lips to his and he snaps again. He carries her to the bed and then he’s absolutely brutal. He pins her down and kisses her hard enough to bruise and bites her lips until they split and bleed. He wraps a hand around her throat and makes his way down to her breasts, sucking and biting. His hands shake as he tries to undress with one hand and hold her down with the other.

She seems to relish each square inch of newly exposed flesh. She caresses him with her hands until he gives and takes his hand off of her throat, letting her up. She helps him remove his clothing, caressing him as she goes and purring and cooing over how ‘beautiful’ he is. When he’s undressed, he pins her again by the wrists (he would eventually learn that he couldn’t have done this if she hadn’t let him) and slams into her to the hilt with no preparation or warning. She moans and arches her back and it only takes minutes for him to spend inside her tight little cunt.

As his orgasm passes, he collapses on top of her and begins trembling, feeling tears prickle at the backs of his eyes. Following the wave of pleasure, a wave of shame washes over him and suddenly he’s apologizing and he can’t breathe. Somehow he winds up on his back with her on top and she’s shushing him and peppering his face and neck and chest with kisses. She works her way down, suckling his nipples, lapping over his navel, nuzzling into the hollow of his hip, until she reaches his cock which is already half-hard again. She licks their comingled fluids off of it and then takes it into her mouth and sucks until he's right at the edge of climax and then... she stops.

She rises up, one knee planted on either side of his pelvis, and looks down at him hungrily. Placing a hand on his cheek, she forces him to look at her and then sinks, SLOWLY, back down onto his hard length. For a long while she just sits there, not moving and not allowing him to move. She lies down on top of him and kisses him, deep and lingering, and then brings her mouth to his ear.

“The longer you hold off,” She whispers. “The better it’ll feel when you let go.”

She kisses him again and then pulls back to look directly into his eyes.

“I want you to promise me that you won't cum until I tell you that you can. Do you promise, Dennis?”

“Yes.” The word comes out of his mouth automatically, before he can even think. She pecks him on the lips one more time and then begins to ride him. As she bears down he can feel her internal muscles undulating, squeezing as if her cunt is trying to swallow his dick. Eventually, as she arches her back and bears down so hard it’s painful, he seems to hit something inside her and she moans and goes faster and faster. Feeling her cum around him for the first time is a borderline religious experience and then she lies down over him again and kisses him and whispers ‘now’ against his lips and he spills inside her again.

She does this again and again, playing with him until he’s hard and then riding him to her climax (sometimes allowing him his own) until he’s so exhausted that he’s practically falling asleep even as he continues to reflexively fuck her. Just as he’s sure he can’t take any more, she lies down on top of him again, like a lioness guarding her kill, and buries her face in his neck. He falls asleep with his half-hard cock still inside her and the delicious prickling of her pretty little fangs as they pierce his jugular. There’s pain and then serenity and then oblivion.

In the shower, he feels his neck and finds only barely tangible little divots in the place where she’s bitten him. There’s been a power shift in their relationship since that night that’s made all the more frightening by the visceral response it seems to provoke in him. Deep down he wants her to use him up until there’s nothing left and he HATES himself for feeling that way. Even so, he only touches between his legs long enough to clean there and when he’s done he goes into the bedroom to find her waiting for him, naked on his bed. He has a towel around his waist and when she tells him to drop it, he does so unthinkingly.

On the night following the consummation of their ‘relationship’ he’d finally dared to ask her what exactly had gone on at the motel the previous night. She hesitates a while but ultimately tells him, calmly, that she had gone there to meet with a man whom she plans to eventually kill but only after he leads her to other, even worse men whom she will also kill. She confides in him, finally, that she is using his apartment as a sort of base of operations for a hunting trip. She is hunting a very specific type of person and she would like for him to help her.

Chapter Text

Casey is luxuriating in a hot bath while Dennis sits on the floor beside the tub, leaning back against it. Apart from completely draining a human being of blood, very long, very hot baths are the only thing that makes her feel warm all the way through. She’s also had Dennis buy her scented bath salts so that there’ll be a perfume to her skin. She idly rakes her fingers over his scalp, occasionally trailing down the back of his neck, to help him stay calm while they talk about what will be happening in the near future.

“See, the reason that the cops don’t usually make much progress with these sorts of things when they go undercover is that they’re not willing to have sex with anyone. To get in deep enough to do any damage, they’d need either a woman who could pass for a girl who was willing to have sex with one of these creeps while another one watches or a guy who was willing to have sex with an underage girl.”

“So... that first meetin’ was ta’ make sure you were willing to...”

He can’t say it. She knows he’s still not comfortable with any of this but he knows he can’t stop her and if she’s going to be doing it he’d rather be involved because he worries about her and is still under the delusion that there are things that could actually hurt her that he’d be able to protect her from. Back when she was human she’d be annoyed by his paternalistic need to feel like he’s protecting her but now she just finds it sweet. She does also plan on letting him be of use to her, just not in that particular way.

“Yeah. There’s this guy I met online, he told me his name is Jerry but that’s probably not his real name, who I’m letting think that he’s tricked me into thinking that he’s in love with me; that he normally wouldn’t have been interested in someone so young but he thinks that I’m mature for my age and just feels this connection to me.”

She scoffs but then it occurs to her that some of what she’s said may be cutting Dennis a little close to the bone. She kisses him on the back of the neck and then goes on with no emotion in her voice.

“When I met him in the hotel, we had sex and I pretended that it was my first time and that I was really nervous and that it hurt but I was trying to hide it because I wanted him to think that I’m more experienced than I actually am. Since I passed that test, he’s going to be taking me to a party where I’ll meet some of his friends.”

“A-and ya’ think that they’re all... pedophiles?”

“Yeah, I suspect... I’m going to try and get as much contact information as I can and see how many of them were Facebook friends with Tatianna DuBois.”

“She the girl who went missing?”

“Yeah and Bethany Heart and Melody Jones and Rebecca Stark but Tatianna is the most recent one... if I’m right, and I’m SURE I am, this is going to end with me either finding them or finding out what happened to them, and then I’m going to kill as many of the people who were involved as I can lay hands on.”

She knows that part of the reason that Dennis is willing to help her is because of the porn he watches. There is always a niggling concern in the back of his mind that some of the girls in those videos (the ones that actually look like teenagers) may not be voluntary participants. This concern isn’t enough to make him stop but it is enough to make him hate himself just a little more each time he cums with their assistance. She supposes that that won’t be a concern for him much longer, though, since she’s slowly conditioning him to only cum when he has permission from her. This of course leads to him being sated less often but MORE sated and for longer when he is.

“An’ this... party... you know when it’s gonn’a end?”

“No... if you want you can just drop me off and I’ll get home on my own, or you can just drop me off and I’ll text you when it’s over. If one of them offers me a ride home I plan on taking it though.”

“... why?”

“To make them think that I trust them.”

“And you’ll have’em bring you HERE?”

“If I have to.”

“Won’t that... complicate things?”

“If I wind up having to explain who you are, my plan is to say that you’re my uncle.”

“Uncle?”

“Yeah. I got stuck with you when my dad died and I HATE living with you because you’re so strict but you work nights which makes it easy for me to sneak around.”

“... what about yer mother?”

“She died when I was too young to remember what she looked like... That’s my story anyway.” Shaking her head a little to dispel the melancholy that she feels encroaching, she kisses his temple. “I’m getting out.”

He stands up to give her room. As she rises from the water, he makes a pretense of not looking directly at her though he likely knows that she’d have no problem with him openly staring. He follows her into the bedroom and watches out of the corner of his eye while she puts on the perfumed body lotion that she had him get at the same time as the bath salts (both are ‘sweet pea’ scented.)

“I don’t feel right, leavin’ you alone with... them”

“It’ll be fine, worst comes to worst, I’ll wind up having to kill someone tonight but I’ll deal with that when and if it comes.”

Her costumes and cheap, pink lingerie are now in the chest of drawers along with his clothes and her regular clothes. She puts on the pink lace bra and the matching thong and the fishnets that she got from Forever 21 in the mall slowly because she knows he’s watching. Over that she puts on a pink plaid mini skirt and a cropped white t-shirt that’s so thin the bra is plainly visible through it. She puts on her cheap, plastic stripper heels and goes back into the bathroom to put on her makeup. She knows that this sort of thing isn’t what Dennis prefers, not that he would turn it down, but it’s a cheap burlesque of what he really wants.

He drops her off a block from the motel at which she met Jerry the last time. The party is supposed to be here but she hasn’t ruled out that she might be taken to another location. She hasn’t told Dennis about this possibility because she knows that it will worry him and he doesn’t need to be any more worried. She kisses him goodbye knowing that, even though she’s said it’d be alright if he leaves, she’ll find him waiting on that exact spot when she returns.

------

Dennis waits in the car for hours that feel like days until he eventually gets a text from Casey saying that she has a ride. He returns home and just waits, pacing the floor until he sees lights outside. She comes in looking disheveled, makeup smeared, and possessive rage swells inside him but he holds it in check. There’s not long until dawn and he knows she’ll want to bathe. She stops at the door to the bathroom and looks at him expectantly. He follows.

She has him undress her and then himself. They get into the shower and she has him wash her then, to his surprise, she insists on doing the same to him. By the time she’s done he’s hard and trembling with the effort of not cumming. She takes his hand and leads him into the bedroom where she lies down on the bed, pulling him down on top of her.

“Fuck me.” She hisses. “Hard, as hard as you can.”

She’s clearly upset again and a part of him is worried about that but he can’t stop himself and she doesn’t seem to want him to. He ruts into her with reckless abandon and the whole time she keeps encouraging him to go harder. She wraps her legs around him and purrs in his ear ‘now’ and he spills inside her with frightening intensity. She holds tight to him for a long time until he eventually feels her grip loosen and realizes that the sun must have risen. He pulls out and disentangles himself from her with unnecessary gentleness. He wipes his fluids off of her with a wet rag and then climbs into bed beside her but finds himself unable to sleep until he eventually takes one of his tranquilizers.

When he eventually awakes, she’s already up and has put the coffee on as she usually does when she wakes first. He pours himself a cup and then goes to sit by her at the table. He got a second chair within the first week of her being here. She’s on Facebook again, looking up all the names she’d gotten the night before. She tells him about how she’s already gone through some of their histories and found connections to the missing girls. Experimentally, he lays his hand on top of the one she isn’t using to scroll and click and his heart aches pleasantly when she turns that hand over to interlace her fingers with his.

Chapter Text

On the night that things go sideways, Jerry picks Casey up from the house and then Dennis trails them in his car. At the last party Casey was brought to there had been a few other girls that looked around the same age as her. She’d allowed herself to be ‘convinced’ to play truth or dare and found herself kissing one of them. She’d knicked the girl’s lip with her fang and found from her blood that she wasn’t even sure where she was. The girl had been brought here from another city; she’d gone to a man’s apartment voluntarily initially but he’d been giving her drugs on and off for weeks and she wasn’t even sure how much time had passed or where she was and she was terrified.

Later that night she’d bitten Jerry while they were having sex and he’d been thinking about how he was going to miss her. The next time they saw eachother it was going to be at a special event at which he’d be giving her to someone else. That was why men had come from outside the city. There was going to be a sort of pedophile swap meet where each man was going to leave with a different girl and then keep her until the next meet. Jerry had invited Casey to the swap meet under the guise of it being a party that a lot of his ‘fashion industry friends’ would be at looking for models. Casey’s alter ego Michele wants to be a model more than ANYTHING.

Casey has told Dennis that she thinks this will be the best time to ‘pull the trigger’ as there will be six of them there (key players) and they will have brought their victims with them. She has told Dennis that she only needs him to do two things, he is to follow her and Jerry to the house and then wait at a distance until it looks as though all the guests have arrived. Once they’re all inside, he is to come up to the house, place security bars on the front and back doors, and then cut the power. He is to wait in his car until either she comes to find him or the police arrive. He doesn’t like the idea of leaving her there should the police arrive before she comes to find him but she promises that come what may, she’ll find her way back to his apartment either that night or the following one.

Dennis still doesn’t like it, he’s sick with anxiety as he tails the car that Casey is in. The house they come to is deceptively normal-looking, in a fucking suburb all be it on the very edge. An agonizingly long time goes by, he doesn’t know how long, just that it’s too damn long, but eventually the trickle of cars to the house seems to have stopped. He pulls his car onto the dead-end road that goes alongside the house. The streetlights stop before the road does so, if he parks at its very end, his car is in a patch of darkness from which he can easily creep up behind the house.

He already had some idea of how to cut the power but looked it up on a computer at the library so that it couldn’t be traced to him just to be sure. Unfortunately, his sources must have been out of date because he finds none of the mechanisms that he would need to shut off the power from outside on the outside of the house. He panics briefly but then (thinking of Jerry touching Casey) forces himself to pull it together. He knows only one other way to cut power to the entire house but it requires him to go into the basement. There’s a padlock on the grate over the egress window but he’s able to get through that fairly easily using the tools he’d brought to cut the power.

Emerging into the basement, Dennis is confronted with a man’s back. The man is fiddling with something on a tool bench along the wall opposite the window. Dennis doesn’t notice him until he’s almost in the room so immediately after his foot hits the basement floor, drawing the man’s attention.

“Who the fuck are you?” The man says in a tone more indignant than alarmed. Something in Dennis snaps and before he knows it, he’s tackling the man to the floor which the man’s head hits with a loud crack. The man continues to struggle and so Dennis pulls him up by the front of his shirt and slams him back down again, crack! When the man stills, Dennis gets up off of him, not checking his pulse because that way he can convince himself that he’s just unconscious.

For a moment he holds completely still and listens for any indication that someone might have heard the commotion and come to investigate. Hearing nothing but the generic party noise from upstairs, he scans the room. The thing that the man had been fiddling with is a camera and there’s a bed along the far wall. Off to the side of the bed, there’s a door that doesn’t look right; it’s made of a thick piece of plywood and the parts of the cement wall where the screws for the hinges and padlock were put in are chipped as if the screws were put in by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. Beside that, Dennis sees the fuse box.

Getting his toolbox from just outside the egress window, he takes the mag light from inside and turns it on. He flips the switches in the fuse box to their off positions as quickly as he can. He hears the music that had been on upstairs stop, he hears sounds of general puzzlement... he waits to her screams or... something. He should just go, he tells himself, he knows that Casey can handle herself... but then he hears the thud of something hitting the floor above him. Curiosity grips him and before he knows it he’s going upstairs.

------

The instant the lights go out, Casey snaps. The first to go is Jerry because he’s closest to her. She breaks his neck in seconds and, since it’s dark, none of the others notice it at first. She moves fast and is on her third victim before the girls notice what’s happening (or rather notice that SOMETHING is happening, likely not knowing exactly what) but their panic is background noise. She’s been looking forward to this for months and it feels SO good to finally let her resentment of these men out of it’s cage.

The second man (Cliff, short for Clifford) is relieved to die, he’s been expecting some sort of karmic punishment since he started off down this path and the anticipation was eating him up inside. The third man (George) is hoping that there’s no afterlife because he doubts that it will be kind to him if there is. The man who was to be fourth had shot her at some point but she’d been to absorbed in feeding to notice it. He shoots her again as she pounces on him but it doesn’t matter, the wound will be closed by the time she’s done draining him.

He HATES her, he fucking HATES ‘that stuck up little bitch’ so much and it feels so right to have his life force running down her throat. She is so lost in the ecstasy of the knowledge of this horrible man’s hatred for her that she doesn’t notice what’s going on behind her. She’s splattered with something cold and then... fire... she’s engulfed in flames. She's never been lit on fire before and now she knows that knowing how it feels isn't worth having to experience it. She seizes on the man who'd lit the fire, instinctively latching onto his throat as they both begin to burn.

She's not thinking about how she won't survive this. Between the pain and her frenzied state, she's not thinking at all. She had to have blacked out then because the next thing she remembers being consciously aware of is a man's voice. She lying in a tub of cold water and the man keeps pouring it over her. She's not conscious of any of the words he's saying, only the franticness of his tone. Then her awareness, reduced to animalistic instinct, zeroes in on his body heat, his pulse... the sound of his heart.

Latching onto him isn't a conscious decision. She drinks in big greedy gulps until enough of her human mind returns that she realizes who's blood she’s drinking. She shoves him away from her with an amount of force that likely injures him. The one little thread of reasonable thought she can hold onto tells her to put space between herself and him QUICKLY. There is a blur of night air and splatters of blood and then... Barry. The minute she hears his voice a calm settles over her and, knowing she's safe, she blacks out again.

------

Barry has to knock for a while before Dennis answers but when he does Barry can see why it took him so long. He looks, and this is coming from a place of concern, like hot garbage. He also seems greatly confused by Barry’s presence.

“I’m a friend’a Casey’s, I come bearing gifts.” Barry says by way of explanation before slipping past Dennis into the house. Once inside, Barry scans the living room. “You... moving or something?”

“...no.” Dennis says before moving on to what is clearly his real concern. “Casey sent you?”

Ignoring the question, Barry goes to the card table in the dinning room and sets out the contents of the CVS bag he’d brought with him. He lines up the bottles of various vitamins, a few bottles of Pedialite and a few cans of soup. Dennis looks confused at the items on the table.

“Casey was worried that she mighta’ taken a little too much from ya, so I told her I’d make a housecall.”

“... ya brought me... groceries...” Dennis’s tone is such that Barry can’t tell if this is a question or not but he choses to treat it as one.

“I got some friends that I feed from on a regular basis and I foound that when I over do it, this helps’em rally... and the soup is just soup.”

Barry can see gears turning in Dennis’s eyes, as if he’s struggling to wrap his brain around the fact that a vampire brought him soup. During the silence, Barry takes him in. Despite looking as if he hasn’t slept in days and having an angry wound on the side if his neck and burns on his hands and forearms, he’s not bad looking, just a little... severe for Barry’s taste. Still, with the slightly little adjustments he could be downright beautiful. It’s hard to see at first since the poor guy’s clearly been crying (though he looks like the sort of person who wouldn’t appreciate having that mentioned) but Dennis’s eyes are really something. Barry thinks that he can remember the color of the sky on an overcast afternoon and if he’s right Dennis’s eyes are that color.

“...is Casey alright?” His voice almost breaks when he says her name. Wow, Barry thinks, she’s relly done a number on this one. When she’d had an arrangement like this with another guy, he’d seemed relieved when all was said and done.

“She’ll be fine, I just ain’t gonna’ be letting her venture off on her own fer a while.” Barry sees the realization that he’s talking to Casey’s maker dawn on his face. It’s a kind of alarmed awe tempered by his natural flat affect. Barry smiles. “I wanna thank you for what you did. Casey’s my only baby... it would’a killed me to lose her.”

Dennis’s eyes moisten just a little but it doesn’t spill over; Barry gets the impression that it probably rarely does in the presence of another person.

“Is she...” Dennis half-chokes on the words as if he thinks he shouldn’t say them but can’t stop himself. “... s-she through with me? Is that it?”

“She hasn’t said anything about rather or not she plans on seein’ you again, she just wanted me ta' make sure you weren't dead." Barry really does feel sorry for the guy. "For what it’s worth, I can tell she likes you. The last guy she did this with, that I know of, may as well have been a used Kleenex fer all the thought she gave him when it was over.”

He regrets using the word ‘over’ because it can’t be making the guy feel any better and, really, he has no idea if it’s over. He’s almost hesitant to ask his question because now he’s worried that the poor guy will think it’s the only reason he came but he has to.

“I just need ta’ know... have any... legal authorities contacted you?”

The expected flicker of hurt crosses the human’s features before his expression goes limply blank.

“No and ya’ don’t need ta’ worry.” He says flatly. “Even if they did come lookin’ fer me, I wouldnt’ say a word about her.”

Barry believes him and is relieved. It wouldn’t have been a big surprise if he went to the cops out of spite over Casey disrupting his life and then, seemingly, ditching him. Barry decides he likes this guy.

“Good, again, thank you SO much. I’m gonna’ go now but I’ll check up on ya’ in a few days and... before I go... I’d like ya’ ta’ drink some of my blood.”

Dennis’s brow furrows in what is either confusion or disgust.

“I’m not turning you, you’d have ta’ be a lot closer ta’ dead for me ta’ do that, I’d just like ta’ give ya’ a little boost... help ya’ rally... if ya’ want it...?”

Dennis studies him for a long time, as if he can somehow infer what the effects of drinking his blood will be just by looking at him and then says, hesitantly...

“...ok.”

“Ok.” Barry smiles. “But I’m gonna’ tell you what I tell everyone else that I do this for; this is MEDICINE, you get it when yer SICK and not at any other time. Trust me, you don’t wanna’ go gettin’ addicted to this stuff.”

Barry gets a drinking glass from a cupboard, fills it half with water and then tears open his thumb with his teeth. He lets his blood drizzle into the water where is swirls like a wisp of smoke.

Chapter Text

Casey will never love anyone more than she loves Barry. She can’t even classify it as a romantic or platonic type of love, it simply exists as a concrete fact above all others. No matter how much time passes or how much things change, her love for Barry will remain a constant. No matter where she goes, all roads will eventually lead her back to Barry. She draws great comfort from that and supposes that should she ever face the prospect of living in a world without him, that is when she will choose to end it.

She’s in his room now, lying in his bed where he told her to stay while he went to check on Dennis. Back when he’d first turned her, she’d had no choice but to obey him but that faded within the first ten years. Still, she doesn’t plan on getting up... she’s exhausted both physically and emotionally and being here, surrounded by reminders of her maker, puts her more at ease than she’s been in months. He’s ‘grounded’ her, which is something that he does semi-seriously from time to time; it’s not a real punishment, it just means that she’s gotten him worried so she’ll need to stick near him and let him baby her for a while. She had planned on going home (which is wherever he is) for a while after finishing her latest project anyway.

He comes back and she waits to see what he will say.

“He’s... cute... in an ex-con kinda’ way.” He sits on the edge of the bed. “He definitely didn’t seem glad ta’ be rid of you.”

Casey feels guilt coil in the pit of her stomach.

“Have the cops been bothering him?”

“No but he said that even if they did he wouldn’t give anything away. I believe’im but I’m gonna’ keep checkin’ in just in case.”

Casey assumes that he hadn’t let her go with him this time because she’s still weakened, fire damage takes a long time to heal, but she for some reason has a feeling that she shouldn’t ask if she can go with the next time. She’s not sure how semi-serious her ‘grounding’ is and she doesn’t want to seem like she’s pushing it. Besides, she should just leave Dennis alone now, shouldn’t she?

“Was he hurt bad?”

Barry cringes.

“He was pretty banged up but I gave him somethin’ to help with that.”

Casey’s known him long enough to know what he means by this. Barry likes using his blood as ‘medicine’ to help others. He has a circle of ‘friends’ that he gives regular small doses of his blood in exchange for bimonthly pints of theirs. Some are sick, some use the blood to heal plastic surgery scars, some are dancers or athletes; the sorts of people who incur constant small injuries but are expected to keep performing in spite of them. He insists that these people are not in his ‘thrall’ (the common term used for when a vampire maintains control over humans for an extended period of time, usually by seducing them, getting them addicted to their blood, or promising them immortality) but Casey’s never seen one of them deny him anything.

She must look concerned because he elaborates.

“I gave him the smallest possible dose, just fer a little boost.”

“I think that... after he's healed, we should just leave him alone.”

“It’s your call I guess but he don't seem ta wanna be left alone."

Casey sighs.

"He thinks he's in love with me. I felt it the last time I fed on him."

"And he just THINKS that?"

"I think he was just really lonely before I came along."

"Well, yeah, but it's possible both those things are true. You are pretty cute, ya know."

Casey smiles.

"Even if he is... he's better off not getting any more involved with this than he already is."

"You referring to yer pedo hunting or the fact that you're a vampire?"

Casey actually has to think about it.

"... both."

Barry lies down next to her.

"It's ur call, Doll, but I don't remember you havin' ta put this much thought into rather or not ya'd be cuttin' the other one loose."

Casey knows what he means and she does... like Dennis... she likes him a lot but... One of the things about which she and Barry tend to disagree is rather or not it's possible for vampires to have relationships (either platonic or romantic) with humans without it ever becoming exploitive. Barry thinks that they can and should but Casey's always believed that there's too much of a power imbalance for that to be possible. During her time as an immortal, she's made a point of only having RELATIONSHIPS with other immortals; getting involved with humans only casually or when she needs something from them. She tries not to put too much thought into why this is because all schools of thought that vampire scholars (yes, there are vampire scholars) have put forth on the subject just sound... ugly to her.

There is a school of thought that holds that vampires are simply more evolved than humans. By this reasoning, vampires are no more capable of having partnerships of equals with humans than humans are of having such partnerships with apes. Yet another school of thought holds that humans are to vampires as human children are to human adults and so a vampire treating a human as an equal would in fact be in the human's worst interest. It stands to reason, then, that a vampire's relation to a human should be, at best, that of a caring authority figure. Dennis is not a child and he's CERTAINLY not an ape and if Casey sincerely believed him to be either she definitely wouldn't feel right about fucking him.

Barry doesn't hold either of these views but the one he does hold doesn't feel right to Casey either. Barry believes that vampires and humans aren't even separate things, that a vampire is simply another TYPE of human. He believes that as long as the association is mutual and both sides are getting what they need out of it and free to leave at any time, it’s no different than two humans being friends.

Orwell doesn't have relationships with humans for two reasons. First, it would interfere with his policy against 'meddling in human affairs.' Second, because he has no intention of turning anyone (at least not under the current circumstances) and he thinks that even if he and a human explicitly agreed that he wouldn't be turning them, some part of them would always be holding out hope that he would (‘there is not a sentient mortal creature that doesn’t wish that it could live forever, even if only subconsciously’) and that would taint all their interactions. Casey supposes that Orwell probably understands mortality better than anyone due to his means of humanely feeding, which is drastically different than Barry’s. Orwell employs the 'reaper' method; which entails feeding exclusively from the very old and the terminally ill. He believes this to be the only method of feeding that doesn't 'disrupt the organic flow of human events.'

Jade doesn't put nearly this much mental energy into almost any of her decisions and believes the other three to be 'over thinkers.' Casey envies the blend of impulsively and unshakeable confidence with which his maker's maker navigates the afterlife. Being without the energy to weigh theological pros and cons right now, Casey takes the path of least resistance.

"I'm just gonna wait and see how he feels after he's healed and the dust settles. He probably won't want anything to do with me after his head clears."

------

Because of the warning about addiction, Dennis expects the blood he drinks to have some sort of noticeable, immediate effect. Instead, the water just tastes like water with a coppery after taste. Barry departs and Dennis heats up a can of the soup, eats it, takes the vitamins, and then goes back to sleep. He’s not sure how much time has passed since Casey ran off into the night after attacking him because he’s been sleeping on and off at random since then. It’s not just the physical pain that’s exhausting him, it’s the knowledge that she’s gone from him now abruptly and, he had thought, permanently.

When he wakes up it’s still dark outside so he assumes that he hadn’t slept long but then he checks his phone and sees that he’s slept through the day. The burns on his hands are gone, he reaches up to touch his neck and finds Casey’s bite mark considerably shallower... he’s glad that it isn’t gone entirely. He feels better than he can remember having felt in a long time but he can’t put his finger on what exactly is better. He’s just more... awake. Colors are brighter and his hearing is clearer... all the little aches and pains in his body that he’d been barely aware of are gone.

He is overcome with the uncommon urge to simply go out and walk and so he does. There is very little true dark in any city and Philadelphia is no exception but he manages to find some in a wooded area on the edge of a nearby park.

“Hiya’ Stud, come here often?”

Dennis freezes.

“D-did you make me come out here?”

Barry smiles.

“Don’t worry, it’ll wear off when the effect of my blood does. How ya’ feelin?”

“...good, I guess.”

“Ya look better. No cops yet?”

Dennis shakes his head. For a while, Barry just studies Dennis while he grows increasingly nervous. Eventually, Barry smiles which only makes Dennis more nervous because he doesn’t know what it means.

“I’m gonna’ be honest, it’s kind’a throwin’ me that you dont have more questions. Is Casey not the first vampire you’ve dated?”

Is that what he and Casey have been doing? Dating? It feels somehow both too large and too small a word for what’s transpired over the past few months... It’s not that Dennis doesn’t have questions, he’s just not sure which ones it’s alright to ask. It would help if he knew what exactly this man was to Casey. Is he a father figure? He doesn’t look nearly old enough to be. It feels petty but Dennis can’t help but wonder if this is the sort of man Casey prefers to be with when she has a real choice in the matter. He’s not a vain man but suddenly her feels very ugly.

“How’d you find’er after she... left my place?”

Barry looks off to the side and bites his lip, thinking.

“There’s this... sort’a... psychic distress signal vampires put out when they're REALLY hurt that only other vampires from the same bloodline can hear. Also, she might not have realized it but she’d been moving toward me... it’s an instinctive thing.”

Dennis mulls this over.

“Did ya’ know where she was the whole... the past few months?”

“I could’a found her if I really wanted to but I give her her privacy when she wants it and she’d been textin’ me so I knew she was ok.”

A new wave of self-consciousness washes over Dennis.

“How much did she tell you about... the situation?”

“She told me she hunkered down with a guy if that’s what ya mean.”

“This the sorta thing she does a lot?”

“The To Catch a Predator part or the shakin’ up with a guy who works nightshift at the morgue?”

Dennis feels himself blush and Barry seems to take sympathy on his embarrassment. He laughs but then goes on gently.

“Every few years she gets this... itch that she can only scratch by goin’ on a little huntin’ trip. She doesn’t always pick up an accomplice but when the opportunity present itself she does cause that makes things a little easier.”

“That don’t bother you?”

“Which part?”

Dennis isn’t even sure which part he means. When it takes him too long to answer, Barry takes the initiative which seems to be his habit in conversations.

“I’m not jazzed about her killin’ people but that’s more because I worry about what it does ta her, ya’ know, mentally but from how she made it sound, you were helpin’ with that.”

“I was?”

Dennis is honestly surprised to hear this; he’d assumed that he was the only one really getting anything out of their... arrangement. Barry smiles at him again.

“She’s a big girl, she knows what she likes and it’s not like you could make her do anything. No offense but she’s stronger than she looks.”

A silence that’s probably only uncomfortable for Dennis briefly descends. Barry seems to decide that it’s his turn to ask questions again.

“So... you live alone, I take it?”

“Yeah.”

“And you work at the morgue?”

“Nights.” Dennis nods feeling his face get even hotter.

“You got no people?”

Dennis shakes his head, not sure what the other man is getting at.

“So this was kind’a a lucky break fer you?”

Dennis decides he doesn’t like this line of questioning and tries to change course.

“Listen, if you just keep comin’ back because you’re worried I’ll tell someone, you don’t need ta’ worry.”

“I know... ya’ gotta’ understand, it’s just real important that this doesn’t attract the... wrong kind of attention.”

Dennis furrows his brow.

“Ya’ mean... the government?”

Barry seems to be thinking for a moment.

“I... guess you could call what she does ‘governing’...”

“She?”

“It’s not important.” Barry laughs nervously. “If all goes well, ya’ won’t need to know, and if you don’t NEED ta’ know it’s for the best I don’t tell ya.”

Dennis isn’t sure what to make of this.

“Ok... but... like I said, ya’ don’t need ta keep comin’ back... if that’s all it's about.”

“It’s not.” Barry says, as if Dennis has said something ridiculous. “Honestly, I think ya’ might be good for her. Ya’ see, she kind of... isolates herself... from humans anyway and there’s only so many vampires in the city and she doesn’t get on with all of them.”

“... can’t she just go outside the city?”

“Uh... it’s complicated... it’s kind’a connected ta’ that... attention we wanna’ avoid.”

“Well... I don’t think it’s gettin’ attention from anyone.”

Barry looks at him incredulously.

“You don’t pay much attention ta’ the news, do you?”

Chapter Text

Once online, it doesn't take Dennis long to find news of a "bizarre incident in Philadelphia suburb." It had begun with the fire department being called and ended with six charred corpses and seven live teenage girls being removed from the house. In the basement, a seventh corpse had been found that appeared to have been 'savagely beaten to death.’ Reading this, it fully dawns on Dennis for the first time that he had KILLED a man... he had KILLED a man with his BARE HANDS... The seventh girl was also found in the basement in a 'hidden room' (... it hadn't been hidden, Dennis thinks, the door had been plainly visible.) The basement itself appeared to be set up as a 'sort of amateur pornography studio'.

The girls who'd been at ground level when the incident began had fled upstairs when 'the power was cut and something started attacking people.' Reports about what that 'something’ was are mixed; some of the girls say it was a person while others claim that it was a ‘big animal, like a dog or something.' All agreed, however, that the fire didn't start until they'd all been upstairs for some time. When the upper floor of the house had begun to fill with smoke, three of the girls attempted to escape by climbing out onto the garage roof. One of those three was found unconscious in the driveway, having fallen and struck her head on the pavement, while the others were still on the roof when authorities arrived.

The girl found in the basement revealed herself to be the daughter of the owner of the house, who'd been reported as a runaway two years prior. Her father had apparently molested her all throughout her childhood, escalating to keeping her in the basement following multiple escape attempts in the summer of her sixteenth year. At first, she’d been left loose in the basement but he had built her a ‘soundproof cell’ when he caught her trying to attract the attention of the neighbors through the basement window. She said that during her imprisonment other girls were sometimes kept there with her (four in total during that two-year period) and she would be forced to ‘perform’ with them for the camera. She would also often be drugged and made to attend orgies where there would be other men and other girls, some of whom seemed willing and some coerced or drugged.

The girl’s reports of how they came to be in the house are varied. Two of the the three who climbed out onto the roof claimed to have been kidnapped. Of the four who’d still been inside, two claimed to have come there willingly with their ‘boyfriends’ while the other two said they were lured there with the promise of ‘modeling work’ both by the same man. A seventh girl was supposedly present (the remaining girls were inconsistent about what her name was and who she’d come there with) but could not be located in the aftermath. A later search of the house (only the living room area of the ground floor had been really damaged by the fire) revealed pornographic materials featuring ‘underaged persons’ as well as a variety of illicit substances and ‘questionable paraphernalia’...? The investigation is ongoing.

Dennis feels sick. He had left the house burning. In that moment, all he’d been able to think about was Casey, and the fact that there were other, innocent people in the house that he was leaving in danger hadn’t even occurred to him. He had looked RIGHT AT that door in the basement, he’d even thought that it didn’t look right but his desire to see Casey kill had overpowered his curiosity. He HAD wanted to see her kill... he won’t even deny it. He’s felt a perverse sort of jealousy toward those men because they were going to get to experience her in a manner more intimate than he probably likely ever would (she’d have to come back to kill him, wouldn’t she?) and he’d for some reason thought that watching it happen, seeing them suffer, would, what?... take out some of the sting?

He feels self-loathing welling up inside him and goes to lift weights. He finds that due to the blood he’s drank his usual routine feels very easy so he keeps going longer, adding more and more weight than he normally would. He doesn’t stop until his arms are giving out and he gets shakily to his feet. The water in the shower feels oddly sensual, sliding over his skin and he finds that he can’t help but touch himself. It takes him an agonizingly long time to cum because he’d gotten so used to only doing it with her permission.

When he falls into bed he is drained but still finds it hard to sleep. He comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t actually feel guilty about not investigating the door or even about killing that man but he does feel guilty for not feeling guilty... if that makes any sense. If he’d done anything differently that night Casey would have wound up burning to death and NOTHING would have been worth allowing that to happen. Even if he never sees her again he can at least derive some comfort from knowing that she is still somewhere out there in the world and that it’s because of him. She might not love him but he can go on loving her which is better than mourning her.

He winds up taking double the normal dose of his sedative and then slowly drifting off to sleep thinking of her; cold on a stainless steel table, her naked in his bed, her on top of him, fucking him and biting him and using him up...

Dennis returns to work the following night but when he gets out he finds Barry waiting for him. The vampire offers to buy him breakfast and they go to a nearby iHop that’s empty save for a group of teenagers. Dennis doesn’t allow himself to look over at them as they make their way to a booth at the back of the room. Despite not seeming to be a naturally accommodating person, the waiter with the sleeves of tattoos shows them to the booth when Barry requests it. Dennis will eventually learn that it is rare for a human to deny Barry anything that he requests but he’ll never be entirely sure if this is a supernatural power or if the man is simply very good at asking nicely.

Once they’re seated and the waiter has taken their order (Barry says that he’s ‘fine with just coffee’) something occurs to Dennis.

“You’ve got money?”

“It’d be hard fer me ta’ pay if I didn’t.”

“You... got a job?”

Dennis doesn’t know why but for some reason it strikes him as odd for the undead to work for a living... it seems like... not a waste of time because he guesses they have plenty of that but a waste of... something. Barry seems to pick up on the underlying confusion behind his question.

“A lot of us find ways ta’ get by without working but I like my work.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a freelance clothing designer. Some’a my clients pay me in money, some in blood.”

“People trade their blood fer clothes?”

Barry smiles.

“People have made bigger sacrifices for art.”

They cease their conversation as the waiter brings Dennis’s order. Barry makes brief conversation with him again and compliments him on some of his tattoos. When the waiter leaves, silence briefly descends during which Dennis begins to eat because he doesn’t feel comfortable looking directly at the other man. Eventually, another question comes to mind.

“Were you a designer when you were alive?”

“I was in school for it but I didn’t get to finish.”

It dawns on Dennis fully for the first time that he is talking to a dead man. He wants to ask him when and how he was turned but isn’t sure that that’s appropriate. Similarly, he now wants to know what the circumstances of Casey’s turning were but he’s not sure he’s supposed to ask. Is that an overly personal question to ask a vampire? Dennis isn't great in normal social situations but he doesn't even have a vague frame of reference for something like this.

"How about you?"

Dennis had been mediocre in school when he was very young but by middle school, his eyesight was bad enough that reading for extended periods gave him headaches. His mother had said that he was just making excuses. He barely made it out of high school and hadn't bothered to apply to any colleges.

"I didn't go ta college."

"Ok but... I'm assuming you haven't always done night security at a morgue...?"

"I've had... mostly security and maintenance jobs."

Dennis has a laundry list of maintenance-based certifications but he doesn't assume any of them would be of interest to Barry and he's not about to tell him that he took the night guard job because his social anxiety had began to grow overwhelming. It occurs to him that he must be very dull compared to most of the other people that Casey knows... no wonder she's already lost interest. Something else occurs to him.

"Is there any chance the cops might find Casey?"

"Not much'a one, especially if she lies low fer a while. All they got ta' go off ta' find the 'missing girl' is some bogus social media accounts but... she told me a guy dropped her off at yer place a few times?"

"... he's dead though."

"Right but it's still kind of a dangling thread, no way'a bein' sure he didn't mention it to someone who's still alive.."

Dennis doesn’t know what to say and for a moment Barry seems to be turning things over in his mind but then his eyes focus on Dennis again.

"It's a good thing ya' left the place burning though, a friend'a mine said that if the bodies are burned up enough they won't be able ta' tell what actually killed them."

"...those girls could've gotten hurt."

"Yeah, but they mostly didn't so look on the bright side."

The girl who'd fallen off of the garage had yet to regain consciousness as of the time of publication of the last article Dennis had read. Her name is Claire Benoit and she hadn't been involved in any of this until that night. She'd accompanied a friend to the party because she didn't think it'd be safe for her to go alone. Suddenly Dennis has lost his appetite.

"Do ya' have a criminal record?"

Dennis is thrown by the question and it must show on his face because Barry back peddles as little.

"Sorry, it's just... you killed that guy in the basement, right?"

Dennis’s knee-jerk reaction is to go on the defensive but he fights it and nods.

"Ok, well that's why I was asking. That friend I mentioned told me ta' ask because if they find yer prints on the body and you've been arrested before they'll be able ta find you in the criminal database."

Dennis feels stupid for not having even thought about fingerprints. Why didn't he wear gloves?

"I haven't been arrested."

"Good." Barry brightens. "One less dangling thread."

Yet another thing occurs to Dennis.

"What if somebody in the subdivision saw me... comin' or going?"

Barry tenses.

“... not really any way’a knowin’ I guess.”

Barry looks at Dennis contemplatively until he eventually gets uncomfortable.

“Well, like I said, I won’t tell them anything.”

“I believe you, I’d just also rather you not go ta’ jail after you did me a solid.”

Dennis supposes that the prospect of his incarceration should bother him too but for some reason it doesn’t. He’s more concerned about Casey.

“Anyway, even if they did find something suspicious about the bodies, I doubt they’d assume it was vampires.”

“It’s not just the cops we need ta’ worry about...” Barry seems to be considering how to phrase what he’s about to say. “If certain details were ta’... say, make it onto the news... that would end bad fer us.”

Dennis’s confusion must show on his face again.

“There’s this rule with vampires that we’re not supposed ta’ do anything that might reveal our existence ta’ the general public and if any of us gets too close ta’ doing that our Sovereign is supposed ta... contain the problem by... killing everyone involved.”

“Soverign... like a king?”

“They all go by Prince regardless of gender... don’t ask me why. Most cities have one and mostly all they do is make sure there’s enough blood ta’ go around and make sure that knowledge of the ‘Dark Gift’ doesn’t go mainstream.”

“... should you be tellin’ me about it?”

“It’s safe for you ta’ know it as long as you don’t spread it around but, like, if I told you and you told someone and they told someone and so on she’d probably eventually feel the need to... contain that before it spread too far.”

While Dennis is mulling this over, Barry starts to look more nervous.

“Listen, I gotta’ bed down soon but... would you be up ta’ spendin’ the day at my place so we can talk more tomorrow night?”

Dennis stalls because he doesn’t want to ask if this means that he’ll get to see Casey again... he doesn’t want to seem desperate.

“Or I can just come back ta’ your place tomorrow night... you work?”

“I-I don’t work tomorrow night but... I don’t have ta’ go home.”

Barry smiles.

“Alright, I’ll get the check and we can get outta’ here.”

Chapter Text

Barry lives in a warehouse that is partially refurbished into two apartments one of which belongs to someone called ‘Orwell.’ Dennis is told that he can go anywhere he wants except there and shown a small bedroom where he’s told he can sleep. Barry doesn’t have time to say much more before he has to go and bed down which leaves Dennis alone in the strange apartment. He’s not going to be sleeping, he knows that already. He briefly considers looking for Casey but decides against it because maybe she doesn’t want to be found... does she even know he’s here?

It occurs to him that maybe he shouldn’t have come here. Maybe SHE’S not even here and he’s been lured here under false pretenses. What if he’s not supposed to know as much as he knows and Barry is just going to kill him... but why would he wait until tomorrow night to do that? To distract himself from his whirring thoughts, Dennis winds up examining the apartment but that doesn’t keep him busy long because there’s just the room that he’s meant to be sleeping in, a small kitchen with no food in it and a bathroom. All this implies that Barry has human guests at least occasionally since, as far as Dennis knows, vampires don’t eat or have any need for toilets and Dennis can,t think of any reason the man would have had those things installed if no one was ever going to use them.

He opens the door that Barry had gone through when he said he was going to bed, telling himself that he’s not going in there, he’s just going to look inside. What’s on the other side is not a bedroom but a portion of the warehouse that hasn’t been refurbished. It’s just a massive room with a cement floor and brick walls. There are windows but newspaper has been pasted over them so that they only emit a soft glow that doesn’t do much to illuminate the room. Dennis finds himself starring into the near darkness for a while because he can just barely make out shapes in there that are perplexing at first but that he eventually realizes are dressmaking dummies, a forest of them, clustered in the middle of the room.

Mildly unsettled by the sight, Dennis retreats back into the empty kitchen where he realizes that the lighting fixture in the center of the room is improperly installed, VERY improperly. The electrical wire has been stapled up the wall and across to the center of the ceiling where the only thing holding the fixture itself up is additional staples placed more closely together. After resisting the compulsion for about an hour, pacing back and forth across the kitchen, Dennis grabs the fixture and yanks downward. As expected, barely any force is required to dislodge it. Dennis certainly hopes that Barry didn’t pay anyone to do this but the only alternative is that he did it himself and is really just that incompetent when it comes to basic home repairs.

Unable to help himself, Dennis winds up going to the hardware store and purchasing a new length of cord because there were places where the staples had cut into the other one and that is a FIRE HAZARD. He also buys steel brackets to at least affix it more firmly to the wall. Ideally, the wire should be INSIDE the wall but he supposes that can’t be helped now... at least not without cutting holes in the drywall and he already thinks he might be overstepping by doing as much as he is. He’s not often a guest in someone else’s house but he’s pretty sure it’s not normal to be rewiring light fixtures while your host is asleep. He rewires the fixture but while he’s reaffixing it to the wall he notices that the staples left small holes in the drywall... they’re barely noticeable.

Dennis walks back to his apartment to get the jar of spackle that he’d bought to fix the small holes that had been in the walls when he moved in. He finds a ladder in one of the unrefurbished areas of the building that has clearly been there a long time because it’s incredibly dusty. He finds a rag in one of the drawers of the kitchen and cleans it thoroughly before bringing it in. The spackle takes several hours to dry after he applies it and once it’s dry he realizes that it’s a different shade of white than the walls and ceiling and contemplates buying some paint before eventually deciding that that would be insane. This all must have taken longer than he realized because while he’s on the ladder attaching the final brackets, he hears a voice behind him.

“What are you doing?”

He turns to see Casey and is simultaneously relieved and VERY embarrassed.

“... that was a fire hazard.” Is all he can manage, gesturing to the old cord coiled up on the floor.

“Oh.” Her tone implies that this is only a mildly interesting piece of information. As he climbs down from the ladder he struggles to think of something to say. He feels as if he should have a lot to say to her but as is often the case words are failing him. What he really wants is to just hold her but he’s not sure she would welcome that. He’s not sure she even wants him to be here since he’s fairly certain that Barry didn’t run the decision to bring him by her before making it and she doesn’t seem to be having any particular emotional response to seeing him again.

As he’s considering asking if she wants him to leave, he notices that the fire damage isn’t completely healed. Her skin is... sort of... shriveled and pitted in places.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not anymore, it's just not done healing yet." She seems to grow self-conscious. "I'm sorry that I just took off... if I had stayed I might have wound up killing you."

"Nothin' to apologize for then. I was just worried about what might've happened to you after you left."

"It probably would have gotten pretty ugly if Barry hadn't found me."

He suddenly notices that she's wearing a robe that's too big on her and it occurs to him that it must be Barry's. He feels a little crackling of jealousy that he knows is petty and pointless. The man has literally granted her eternal life so even if there were any sort of competition between them, Dennis knows that he couldn't possibly win. Besides, he's being presumptuous, isn't he? Maybe her relationship with Barry isn't even like that... maybe her relationship with HIM is no longer 'like that.'

She'd been pretty blunt about having ulterior motives for being with him and of course, their time together wouldn't have mattered as much to her as it did to him. After all, she is OLDER than him and was clearly not as inexperienced as he was in the beginning... a few months is probably just a 'fling' to her. It's possible that their transaction has simply come to an end, in which case he must look pretty pathetic right now. She seems to realize that he's growing uncomfortable.

"I guess I should take this as a sign that we have his blessing. Too bad, I was hoping for one of those star-crossed-lovers deals."

Dennis’s laugh is entirely due to relief and he hates the quaver in his voice when he speaks.

"I was worried you didn't wanna see me anymore."

Despite it being at his expense, her laugh is a pleasant sound.

"I mauled you like an animal and then disappeared into the night and THAT'S what you were worried about? I thought you might be glad to be rid of me after that."

"I don't wanna be rid of you..."

He almost adds ‘ever’ to the end of that but stops himself. Normal people don’t say things like that this early in a relationship, do they? She walks over and slides her hands up his chest, bringing them together at the back of his neck. She looks up at him with those eyes, like pools of honey, and all he can think about is kissing her. He leans in but she stops him, pressing two fingers to his lips.

“I just... want you to know that the odds of this ending with me making you a vampire are REALLY low.”

He had honestly not even thought about that so the fact that it isn’t an option does phase him. He just wants to be with her... for as long as he can.

“I don’t care about that.”

She doesn’t seem entirely convinced but she does let him kiss her. It’s SO good, like water in the desert.

------

Ok, so this is happening. She and Dennis are going to be... dating doesn’t seem like the right word but... he’s going to be a part of her life. She’s not just using him anymore, this is real. He wraps his arms around her and she hadn’t realized how much she missed being held by someone warm and breathing. There is a lot of debate, mostly among vampires, about rather sex is better with humans or vampires but Casey thinks that that’s an apples to oranges comparison. A craving for one can’t possibly be satisfied by the other.

When she slides her hand down to his belt, he tenses and pushes her away just a little.

“It’s ok, Barry went to meet with a client, we have a few hours.”

That seems to dissolve his inhibitions. He picks her up and carries her to the bed in the guest bedroom. She just lets him take her, thinking that being in control will ease his nerves and he needs that right now. She found in their time together that the way he is in bed is a truer reflection of his mood than even his facial expression is. She learns now that when he’s been missing her he is slow and thorough.

He goes over her whole body, kissing the places that the fire damage is the most noticeable until he comes to between her legs. He requires some direction since this is the first time he’d ever pleasured her with his mouth but he gets the hang of it surprisingly quickly. His tongue is like a little flame lapping at her clit and she winds up moaning aloud and grinding shamelessly against his face. After the swell of her orgasm has passed she worries that she may have accidentally hurt him but that concern is negated as he works his way back up her body. He sucks one of her nipples into his mouth and swirls his tongue around it and then sinks his teeth into it just enough that it starts to hurt but not far enough to break the skin as he pinches the other one, digging his thumbnail into it.

Casey keens at the blend of pain and pleasure, arching her back to grant him better access. He continues upward to nuzzle at the side of her neck and then suck on her earlobe.

“I missed you.” He rasps against her ear. “I’ve missed to SO God damn much.”

Once he’s inside her he finishes quickly. Another thing she learned in the time together was that when he’s really worked up like this it’s best to just get him off fast the first time. He rebounds quickly and lasts longer the second time around and she wants to do that. She wants to get him hard over and over and over until he’s completely exhausted beneath her but she worries that he may not be fully recovered from what happened yet and she doesn’t want to overtax him. Instead, she maneuvers him onto his back and lays her head on his chest. She had missed the sound of his heartbeat.

He drifts off to sleep so quickly that it confirms her suspicion that he didn’t sleep at all over the past day. She lays there, listening to his heart and idly tracing his scars with her fingertips until she hears Barry calling to her from the other room.

Chapter Text

“A lot of my firsts were with my uncle.” Casey says, figuring that the rest will be easier if she just jumps in with both feet. “I would give ANYTHING for that not to be true but... there it is.”

When Dennis only looks sympathetic and not disgusted, she pushes on.

“It started when I was little... I couldn’t even tell you my age, all I know is that he was a fucking giant compared to me. He would... coerce me into playing little ‘games’ that involved touching each other's bodies or removing our clothes. Never both at the same time, for some reason... maybe he thought that made it okay. He told me that if I told my dad, we’d both get in trouble but I don’t think I ever believed that. I think I didn’t want to tell my dad because I knew how much he loved his brother and I didn’t want to ruin their relationship. Hell, maybe my dad wouldn’t even have believed me.

“My dad’s biggest flaw was always how much he loved and how desperate he was to think the best of the people he loved. So maybe he’d just have accused me of making up stories... I’ll never know.”

Dennis wants to say that HE would have believed her but he doubts it would give any comfort. If they had met at that time, Dennis would have been a child as well and dealing with problems of his own. There’d have been little that he could have done for her. Casey goes on, tone flat, as if reciting something she’s memorized.

“After my... after my dad died I had to move in with John and then the ‘games’ got more elaborate and there were... other things. Like, when I did something wrong, which I seemed to do all the time with him, he’d punish me by making me take off all my clothes, tieing my hands behind my back with a shoelace, and then spanking me with his belt until I cried. Afterward, he’d give me a bath and put my clothes back on himself. He’d ask if I was going to be good for him from then on. If I said yes he’d kiss me on the mouth but if I said no he’d smack me so eventually I learned to always say yes.”

She pauses to see how this is affecting Dennis, he looks like he’s in pain.

“It went on like that until I was thirteen... by then I’d picked up on the fact that the ‘games’ we’d played weren’t normal and had started refusing to play them and his temper got generally worse. He’d find more excuses and more creative ways to ‘punish’ me... sometimes it’d be something as small as an imagined dirty look or a thought he suspected I was having.”

Dennis nods sympathetically which makes sense. Casey’s seen everything his mother did through his blood so she knows that she and John were similar in some ways. Same medium, different styles.

“Anyway, when I was thirteen we got into an argument over something... I can’t even remember what, and I stormed off to my room. I slammed the door in his face and I locked it. It was the first time I’d ever used the lock on my bedroom door. Later that night, when I had managed to fall asleep, I woke up and he was in the room... he’d removed the door handle altogether without me even hearing him. I wasn’t naive enough to ask him why he was there. I think somewhere deep down, I knew we’d been building to what happened. He climbed on top of me and I tried to fight him but then he hit me so hard it made my ears ring and choked me... by the time my senses cleared he’d already taken my pajama bottoms and my underwear off...”

She looks at Dennis to make sure that she doesn’t need to go into any more detail and is relieved to see that she doesn’t.

“It hurt so much and after that, it became a regular thing. Eventually, I stopped fighting and would just lay there and let it happen. That was the best way to get it over with quickly... just let him have what he wanted. After a while, he wasn’t satisfied with me just lying there and started trying to get me to be more of an... active participant. First, he tried coercion, then threats. The threats worked and then doing what he wanted became the best way to get it over with and you better believe he used that against me. He’d say things like ‘You must want it or you wouldn’t have done what you did last night’... he’d accuse me of having led him on, teased him... MADE him do it... because I wanted it too.”

She stops to take a deep breath, not wanting to get emotional.

“You don’t gotta’ keep goin’ if you want to.” Dennis offers but Casey declines.

“No, I want you to know... I know all about you, after all.”

She takes another deep breath.

“Eventually he turned it into a sort of functional exchange. If I needed anything, and he made sure that I could only get anything through him, he’d make me ‘pay’ for it in some way either before or after. Eventually, it became a fact of life, there were certain things I just had to do if I didn’t want to be even more miserable so I’d do them... like... chores. I’d shut off my mind and go through the motions and then later when I was in bed I’d pray that he’d drink himself to death.”

Dennis feels guilty because it’s clear that Casey never felt any pleasure during her abuse and he had. The fact that his body would respond in spite of him is something that he hates himself for to this day.

“The first person I tried to tell was the guidance counselor at my school. She was a new age-y, hippie, feminist type who always made a big deal about her office being a ‘safe space’ where we could tell her anything. I told her what John had been doing to me and she responded by having me come back for an appointment the next day... John was there. Once she had us settled in, she said ‘Now, Casey, why don’t you tell your uncle what you told me.’ I told her to go fuck herself and ran out of her office. To this day, I still can’t get my brain around what her fucking motives were... maybe she thought I’d made it up, and having me repeat it in front of him was supposed to be some sort of punishment... bitch.”

Dennis concurs and goes to hold her but she moves away.

“Not yet... ok?”

He looks disappointed but nods and returns to where he’d been sitting.

“I was terrified to go home after that. Even with no resources, I managed to be on the lamb for... three days before the cops found me and brought me back. I don’t know why I didn’t try telling them... maybe I should have?”

Casey shrugs.

“John was totally calm when the cops were there and they even laughed about it. He acted like it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be brought home in handcuffs. I was dumb enough to let that get my guard down so I wasn’t expecting it when, as soon they left, he grabbed me by the hair...” She demonstrates, taking a fist full of her hair on the left side of her head. “... and smashed my head into the wall. After that, it’s just a blur of him throwing me around the apartment, slapping me, and punching me... asking me what the fuck I’d been thinking, if I wanted to go into the foster system... if I thought I could survive without him. It felt like it went on forever and by the time I started to black out he was ripping off my clothes.”

“I woke up in his bed and he kept me there for the two weeks that he kept me home from school. He was weirdly kind and gentle the whole time, he made me soup and cleaned and dressed my wounds himself... he gave me prescription painkillers that he had for a back injury. Every day he’d make me undress in front of him so he could monitor how the bruises were healing and he’d kiss them... especially the ones on my chest.”

For a moment she can’t go on and she finally lets Dennis take her hand. His is comfortingly warm and dry.

“I killed that guidance counselor, you know.... After I became a vampire I found out where she lived and killed her and her husband in their bed. Looking back, I’m not 100% sure they deserved it but at the time I was SO angry.”

Dennis doesn’t look a bit shocked and only holds her hand tighter.

“I tried to run away on and off for the rest of the time I was with him and he’d get angry but it was never as bad as the first time. Things went back to normal after that, he was the masculine sun around which I was forced to orbit, and I was his little sexual Pez dispenser. On and off, he would seem to start to feel guilty and then the talk would start. He would tell me what a little slut I was, say that I was probably blowing every pimply face little twerp in my homeroom, make it sound like I was so superhumanly salacious that there was no way any man could resist me.”

“It was all rationalization, of course. I had’t even thought about doing anything with anyone but him but eventually, I thought... if he was so convinced that I was a slut, then why shouldn’t I go ahead and be one. I was already being punished for it so why not do it, you know? So, my first sexual encounter that I don’t desperately wish hadn’t happened was with a guy named Hector Rodrigo. He was a sort of a wannabe gangster but if you could get passed that he was sweet... at least, to girls that he found attractive. I was late for third period one day and I ran across him the the stairwell. He was smoking weed and jokingly asked if I wanted some. He looked surprised when I said yes.

“It started off as us just smoking together but then I kissed him. We made out for a while and then I started touching him between his legs, through his clothes. The next thing I knew I was kneeling down and blowing him. I didn’t finish though, I got his right up to the edge and then stood up and walked out of the stairwell. Of course, he couldn’t follow me because his pants were around his ankles. It made me feel powerful.”

“I thought he’d be mad about it but instead, he started inviting me to ‘skip third period’ with him a few times a week. Things escalated but I never let him cum in my mouth. I’d suck him until he was almost there and make him finish himself while I watched. I’d let him rub between my legs and touch my chest but I wouldn’t let him under my clothes. Eventually, he got a girlfriend and we carried on for a couple of months after that until he told me he didn’t feel right doing it anymore. I thought I’d be angry or at least jealous but instead, I felt... nothing. I wondered what was wrong with me if I was so broken that I’d never feel attached to anyone. I got depressed for a while but it wasn’t about him necessarily. That became another repeating cycle. Every few months I’d find a new guy, usually a burnout that no one would believe if he told them I was easy, and I’d do things with him until he called it off for whatever reason and I’d feel nothing. One guy actually wanted to get serious... Eddie Clark... that was his name. We’d been lying on a couch in the prop room of the school theater, dry humping and kissing and then he pulled back and asked if I’d like to go to his house for dinner that Sunday. Obviously, I couldn’t, John wouldn’t miss that, but also I just didn’t want to. I remember that I asked if he was serious and laughed and before he started telling me what a cold bitch I was I saw genuine hurt in his eyes. Now that I think about it, maybe I was a bitch back then.”

“You didn’t owe them anything and they had no idea what you were goin’ through.”

Casey kisses Dennis lightly on the lips.

“You’re sweet but I could get pretty mean, especially to guys. I wasn’t the little, nocturnal ray of sunshine that I am now.”

They both laugh, she loves to hear him laugh. She climbs into his lap and lets him put his arms around her. After a few moments of kissing and groping, she pulls back and continues her story.

“Think it was my eighteenth birthday that really set John off. He knew that if I got away again no one could make me come back so he stopped letting me leave the apartment. He put a lock on the outside of my room and kept me in there while he was at work and then when he got home all I was allowed to do was cook, clean and service his fucking cock. I’m ashamed to admit that at one point I tried acting like I actually wanted him because I thought it would convince him to give me more freedom but of course that didn’t work. By then he knew all too well how much I hated every cell in his fat, hairy body.”

“One day, he came home and caught me trying to pry the nails out of my window frame and then he beat me so bad I thought I might die. It’s another blur after that. He gave me painkillers almost constantly and went from keeping me locked in my room to keeping me locked in his. I thought it would never end but then one night a miracle happened. He went out into the living room for some reason and left me alone in his room with the window open. I was just lucid enough to get out onto the fire escape and even made it halfway down before he shot me.”

“Shot you?”

Dennis’ whole body tenses up as if he wants to go kill John himself right now and (not for the first time) Casey thinks that she might love him.

“Yeah... I fell the rest of the way to the ground and tried to get out to the main street so that someone could see me, maybe help me... but Barry blocked my path. He killed John and then he gave me his blood, he tried to explain the whole vampire thing to me but I was pretty out of it by then, and then he picked me up and took me home with him... and he’s been the one that I orbit ever since.”

In the wake of the story, Dennis doesn’t seem to know what to say. Eventually, Casey gets bored of the silence, shifts her position to straddle him, and starts kissing him. He’s hesitant as if he thinks he should say SOMETHING, but of course, he eventually gives in and kisses back. He runs his hands over her body as if trying to soothe away the pain she suffered in the past... so sweet.

Suddenly she feels as if they aren’t close enough so she takes off her sweater. She has no bra on underneath and she guides his head down until his lips are near her breasts. He takes a nipple into his mouth and his hot breath feels so good against her cool skin that she moans aloud. He peppers her chest with kisses before doing the same to the other nipple. She lets him get good and absorbed in the task before pushing him away and standing up. She unzips her jeans and lets them fall to the floor along with her underwear.

“Take your clothes off.” She orders and he rushes to comply, as he always does. She takes a moment just to take him in, relishing every inch of his smooth, meticulously sculpted body, before going down on her knees and taking him into her mouth, apparently catching him off guard. His gasp makes her smile but then she remembers to be careful with her fangs. She loves the taste of him and the weight of him on her tongue, the way he shivers and hisses in a breath, winding his hands in her hair. Once, as a game, she told him to try with all his might to push her head down on his cock and he wasn’t able to which made teasing him all the more satisfying after that.

She keeps it loose and soft, providing just enough stimulation to get him hard but not enough to make him cum. Occasionally she lets a fang graze the side just to hear him hiss again. He’s never said it but she thinks that having sharp objects so close to a delicate part of his body does something for him. She keeps it going for nearly ten minutes, never increasing the intensity, relishing the knowledge that she could do this all night, string him along until he weeps with frustration and he would let her... even if he tried to pull away, she could hold him in place. She’s too kind for that, though, so when she hears him breathily whimper ‘please’ she takes her mouth off of him and stands up. They kiss some more and she takes his cock in her hand, still gentle, still just enough stimulation. He wraps his arms around her possessively and kisses her as if he can suck John’s poison out of her. She thinks she might love him.

She guides him over to the bed in Barry’s guest room, where he’s been sleeping since things got serious between them, and pushes him onto his back. He goes easily and then she mounts him, just brushing her pussy against his cock. He looks up at her as if he’s seeing the sun for the first time and reaches up to caress her face.

“You’re so beautiful, so perfect and no one should ever hurt you, EVER. I’d kill your uncle, I’d kill that guidance counselor, I’d kill anyone who ever even made you FEEL bad. I’d do that for you.”

She takes his hand between both of hers and kisses it then lightly bites his fingers as she slides down onto him. He moans as if he’s dying. She rides him, angling her hips so that each thrust hits that special place inside of her, and keeps thinking about how this man, this sweet, beautiful man, would do anything for her.

Chapter Text

They’re in a Karaoke bar, not the sort of place that Dennis typically frequents but when Casey had asked him if he wanted to go with her, Barry, and Jade, he hadn’t been able to say no, as if he could deny anything to his sweet little mistress. Dennis is also worried because Casey has recently died her hair bubblegum pink and he’s worried that this may mean she’s on the prowl again. She’d told him she was going for a “manic pixie dreamgirl” vibe with tonight's outfit, jean shorts with black fishnets underneath, boots, a tank top, and a jacket made out of squares of colored fabric (like a quilt) that Barry made for her. He hasn’t known her long enough to know if she goes for a ‘vibe’ at any time other than when she’s trying to attract a pedophile.

Jade is... ok, Dennis supposes. When they’d first encountered eachother, she’d asked Barry if they’d hired a janitor while she was out. She is short and sleek and onyx colored with buzzed-off hair but a feminine enough face that it doesn’t detract from her appearance. She was around Casey’s age when she was made a vampire but is otherwise not Dennis’ type. She wears heavy makeup and revealing clothing and is fond of making cutting remarks that Barry tells Dennis he shouldn’t take too seriously. When Casey had told Jade the story of how she and Dennis met, Jade had said ‘Leave it to you to find the one good-looking necrophile.’ This was apparently a joke.

Dennis is slowly sipping straight vodka because he likes how antiseptic it feels going down his throat, Barry and Jade have drinks in front of them but are not drinking and Casey has gone up onto the stage. She sings a song called ‘The Red Means I Love You’ which seems to be from the perspective of a woman who is jubilant over having killed her lover and drank his blood. Jade and Barry laugh while Dennis wonders what it means about him that he finds this charming. When Casey looks at him and smiles flirtatiously, he reflexively smiles back. He also tries to figure out if Casey is doing a character (acting younger than she is) or not.

She bounds back to the table, laughing along with the others, and sits down beside Dennis and rests her head on his shoulder. She isn’t acting like she isn’t with him, so she must not be hunting... right? She has a drink that matches her hair.

“You ok?” She asks, mouth close to his ear. She knows about his social anxiety.

“Fine.” He kisses her on the forehead.

Jade goes to the stage and begins to sing a song that the screen behind her informs Dennis is called ‘Truth Hurts’ by Lizzo. While she sings, she dances and the men closer to the stage seem mesmerized. Casey has told Dennis that this is a power she has possibly because she used to be a burlesque dancer when she was alive. She can ‘beguile’ men with both her body and her gaze.

“You goin’ out with Jade after we wrap up here?” Barry asks and Casey looks thoughtful.

“I guess... it’s not too late for me to pick up someone here though.”

Dennis knows she’s saying this because she doesn’t want to leave him for a long stretch of time. She often demonstrates this concern but Dennis doesn’t know if it’s because she wants to be with him that badly or if she worries about him being on his own. He doesn’t know why she’d worry, he was on his own for a long time before her. These days, though, the only thing he does alone is go to work. All his things seem to have migrated to Barry’s place and when not at work he is always with either Casey or Barry, though he and Barry are sometimes not in the same room at the warehouse.

“You can go with Jade if you want.” He says, not wanting her to decline just because of him.

“I won’t be long.” She says, intertwining her fingers with his on the table beside her untouched drink.

When they leave, Jade and Casey walk off into the night while Barry summons an Uber to bring him and Dennis home. During the Uber ride, Barry chats pleasantly with the driver while Dennis says nothing. When they get to the warehouse, they separate, Dennis, going to his little apartment to lift weight while Barry goes to his room to work on his commissions. Dennis is doing bench presses when he suddenly becomes aware that he is being watched.

He racks the bar and sits up to look around the room only to eventually hear a voice behind him.

“A friend of Barry’s, I assume.”

Dennis starts and almost falls off the bench, then quickly stands up to look into the kitchen. The man in the kitchen is tall and lean and completely bald with an angular face, bright green eyes behind round glasses, and a small triangular beard below his lower lip. He is dressed the way that Dennis has always imagined college professors must dress. For a moment Dennis is too shocked to say anything because to get into the kitchen the man would have had to enter the room completely soundlessly and walk right past his weight-lifting bench. How did Dennis not notice him until just now?

“Uh...um... friend’a Casey’s actually.” He eventually manages and the man looks skeptical but doesn’t express his doubt. There’s a long silence before the professor finally breaks it.

“And you’re name is?” There’s an accent there, a crispness to certain syllables, but it’s so subtle that Dennis can’t place it.

“S-sorry...” Dennis quickly puts his shirt back on before approaching the man in spite of his instincts. “I’m Dennis.”

He extends a hand but only about halfway, unable to commit to the gesture. The man reaches out and takes it (his hand is cold as stone.)

“And I am Mister Orwell.”

It suddenly dawns on Dennis that this is THE Orwell, the one that Casey mentions all the time. Most of the questions Dennis asks Casey about vampires are answered with a statement beginning with ‘Orwell says...’ or ‘according to Orwell...’ or ‘Orwell told me...’ Given how much she seems to have learned from him, this man is essentially a second father to Casey and Dennis has no idea what to say to him... Luckily, Barry enters the room.

“Ain’t you a sight fer sore eyes!” He says as if Orwell is not at all intimidating. “How was New Orleans?”

“Hot and crowded as usual... the new Prince is very young... I give him about a year.”

“Ain’t that about how long most of ‘em last.”

“Since the ten-year reign of Miguel Swarza.” Orwell returns his attention to Dennis, the eyes are green, TOO green... like emeralds. “You didn’t tell me that we had a guest.”

“Oh, sorry, this is Dennis. Him an’ Casey an item.”

Again, Orwell looks skeptical but says nothing.

“Is Jade still out?”

“She’s home if that’s what ya’ mean, her an’ Casey are just hunting right now.”

“I have been keeping and eye on the news.” Orwell says this with a certain gravity as if Barry should know what particular thing he’s referring to... and Barry does.

“Yeah... luckily that whole thing just kinda’ blew over. You gotta give the girl credit though, nothin’ about the scene screams vampire.”

“It doesn’t have to scream it for certain people to see the signs.” Orwell is tense for only a moment and then relaxes. “I’ll talk to her when she gets home.”

“She’s had plenty’a talkin’ to but luckily Patricia didn’t feel the need to honor us with a visit.”

This for some reason causes brief concern to flash across Orwell’s face. Dennis seizes the opportunity to stop being a third wheel in the conversation.

“I-I’m just gonna go take a shower if that’s ok?” Dennis doesn’t know which of them to look at.

“Go fer it.” Barry says jovially as if this situation isn’t awkward. They continue their conversation as Dennis walks away.

-------

Dennis is profoundly relieved to hear Casey’s voice as he emerges from the shower. He dresses and walks out of the bathroom to find the four vampires in his kitchen in wrapped conversation about Orwell’s trip. Casey wants to know if he visited some witch doctor. Dennis walks up beside her and takes her hand, it’s warm and her skin is pink with the blood she’s just consumed.

“So, is the new one another one’a those Anne Rice readin’ Leastat wannabes?” Jade asks, laughing.

It takes Orwell a moment to answer.

“It’ll be nice when they finally get one that isn’t.”

Jade laughs harder and Orwell smiles. He has two sets of fangs, one where each canine should be and a smaller set just inside of those. Casey has told him that ‘according to Orwell’ there are many different kinds of vampires and the physical difference between most of them is the configuration of their fangs. Barry, Casey, and Jade all have the same fangs.

“You eaten yet tonight? We don’t got time fer yer usual schtick but I know some clubs that’ll still be crowded.”

“Thank you but I think I’ll wait until tomorrow night.” He turns his too-green eyes on Casey. “Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment?”

“Cut the kid a break.” Jade answers before Casey can. “So she roasted some pedos, big deal. The cops never came anywhere near us and Patricia didn’t even send Ian ta’ read her the riot act. If it ain’t worth his attention then it sure as hell ain’t worth yours.”

Orwell sighs.

“Just tell me that you didn’t light the fire.”

“No.” Casey shakes her head. “Someone lit me on fire... Dennis got me out of the building.”

For a moment, Orwell looks at Dennis thoughtfully, and then he sighs again.

“Alright, I suppose you’ve suffered enough, but I’d like you to accompany me to the hospice tomorrow.”

“Sure.” Casey smiles demurely. Dennis wants to ask what they do at the hospice but he doesn’t want to seem naive... and he has a feeling that he already knows.