1. Chapter 1 (1/2)
a request for my rambling guest - it was going to be a blood droplet but i figured it was getting pretty long and i'm not done with this yet. this is ironic, since i wasn't sure i had enough of an idea to fill the request at all. so, er... here you go, rambling guest. there will be more! and sorry if it's not quite what you wanted.
disclaimer: not mine.
erin had thought that it was the blood making her sick, at first. after all, she hadn't been a vampire for very long - only three or four months - and in that time she hadn't exactly been watching how much she drank. maybe it was some kind of delayed reaction. she'd just hoped that it wasn't an allergy, because she'd heard horrible things about soy blood. even the smell of it made her feel sick, now she was a vampire. she'd have suspected that stress might be the underlying cause of her nausea, but it hadn't really come on until some time after she'd fled garside with malik. paris had been good for her; for both of them. it had been freeing, not having to worry about politics and attacks and what vlad would think. he hadn't thought about what she wanted when he'd turned her, and frankly, she was a little offended that only ingrid and malik had seemed to understand why that was unforgivable.
malik had been different. once she was a vampire, once he didn't see her as food - and he'd since confessed to feeling awful about that, but blood was blood, and she knew the feeling - he'd been nothing but a gentleman to her. he'd been suspicious, of course, because she'd been sticking to ingrid like glue and they had some kind of history, but then when he'd begun to trust her he'd shown her all the attention and, yes, even affection that vlad had completely failed to offer her recently. he'd taken her out flying, even though she slowed him down. they'd gone hunting, even though he was likely to hear nothing but anger from the rest of his newfound family if he gave up on revamp, because she'd felt inadequate not knowing how to. and then, when everything had gone wrong, he'd taken her hand and whisked her away with him to paris, as if he'd always meant to get her there eventually. she'd always wanted to visit, and as a vampire it took almost no time to arrive - she couldn't help but wonder why it was so easy for malik, the self-confessed player and commitmentphobe, to
ing her here when her loyal, dependable vlad hadn't. people weren't always what they seemed, she supposed.
it was when she started craving not only bizarrely specific blood types - male, aged 30-45, type a+, and malik would actually help her to identify a suitable victim with barely a raised eye
ow and a roll of his eyes - but also weird combinations of
eather foods, like mint ice cream with crisps sprinkled on top... well, that was when something began to tug at her memory. she'd heard of strange cravings before - never blood cravings, but the crisps and ice cream variety - and she knew what they could mean. she'd meant to take a test, confirm her suspicions before
inging up the delicate subject with malik, but then as they sat watching a film just hours after she'd made that resolution, it just spilled out.
"malik, i think i might be pregnant." he'd dropped the remote control and left it where it had fallen, batteries rolling across the floor, the film forgotten in the background. for a moment, neither of them had moved, or
eathed, or spoken. and then his arm had wrapped around her.
"fog. are you alright?" that, that immediate concern, that had been what had set the tears flowing. she'd never seen malik look as afraid as in the moment after that first sob, the moment he realised she was crying because of him. he'd pulled her right in close, letting her muffle her cries against his chest. "sorry, i mean-"
"i don't know if i'm alright, malik. i don't know anything."
his hands smoothed at her hair, barely alighting for a moment at a time, as if he was afraid he was doing the wrong thing.
"ok. ok, well... we should probably find out for sure. let's start with that, yeah-?"