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Ericka Van Helsing is everything Dracula did not expect.
Don’t get him wrong—he adores Ericka impossibly. She’s beautiful and fiery and brave and amazingly passionate, more whirlwind than woman.
But in many ways, she is the complete opposite of everything Martha is…was.
It just all seems so sudden. Dracula has forgotten that a Zing feels like this.
Martha is—Martha was the love of his life. For so long, Dracula had known this, had held on to the knowledge that he has loved and lost the woman he was meant to spend eternity with, and he had been fine with that. A love story is still a love story, after all, despite its tragedies. Dracula had long since come into terms with the fact that his story is done.
There had been nothing more left for him in that sense.
But then Ericka—goodness, how she turned his whole world upside down, in all the ways possible. Even now, as she snooped around his office with an open-eyed sort of curiosity, Dracula finds his undead heart aching at the sight of her and he lets out a soft sigh before he can stop himself.
The sound makes Ericka turn to him from where she’s poking and prodding at an ancient Victorian-inspired typewriter he picked up during his travels, and she quirks an eyebrow at him unashamedly. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Dracula says, and smiles toothily when Ericka raises her eyebrow higher, unconvinced. “I like watching you explore.”
“Drac.” Ericka ducks her head at the comment and Dracula delights at how the tips of her ears turn red. She moves on to the paintings on the wall, steadfastly refusing to look at him. It’s adorable. “Your office is interesting. I’ve never seen so many vintage stuff in one place. It’s very…”
“Vampire-y?” Drac offers.
Ericka grins at him. ”Very you.”
Drac smiles back. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah,” Ericka brushes a hand over the wooden surface of the bookshelf before reaching for one of the books. “I like seeing new things.” It’s written in Romanian, Dracula knows, and he’s proven correct when a confused furrow appears on Ericka’s forehead the second she opens it. “Do you even know how to read this?”
“I do.”
“Wait, you do?” Ericka’s head snaps up eagerly. “That’s amazing.”
“Thank you,” Dracula preens a little under her attention, and risks adding, “I could teach you the language sometime, if you like.”
“I—that’s,” Ericka glances at him. “You’d do that for me?”
Drac shrugs. “Of course,” he says. “I like spending more time with you.”
There’s that flush of red again, creeping down from her ears to the rest of her face. "I-I'd like that," Ericka coughs, whirling back to hide her embarrassment into the books on the shelf. It’s contagious, her reaction, and Dracula smiles like a fool despite the heat he feels on his own cheeks. For such a headstrong person, Ericka gets so easily flustered at his sincere confessions. It’s a fairly recent discovery, something that Drac only took notice of once they got to know each other more. It reminds him constantly that this Zing, this special connection between the two of them is new, barely five months long and most of it still uncharted territory waiting to be explored.
Dracula doesn’t feel bothered by it. If he’s honest, he likes the idea of the two of them discovering something new about each other every day.
That’s the thought he’s stuck on when Ericka breaks his reverie with a question.
“Who’s this?”
Drac’s heart plummets from his chest. Ericka picks up the old framed picture from the bookshelf just as Drac was gearing up to stop her. He makes a noise of surprise when Ericka runs her fingers over the iron-wrought vines that curl prettily around the edges of the frame, her eyes studying the picture closely. Dracula can pinpoint the exact moment realization dawns into Ericka, her eyes widening just a fraction and her mouth parting open in the slightest.
She whispers, “This is—“
“Martha,” Dracula confirms around the lump in his throat. Over a century of her gone, and her name still tastes like loss in his mouth. “My wife.”
“Oh.”
Silence falls between them. Drac holds his breath, uncertain of how Ericka will react. He knows what he thought about wanting to explore uncharted territories but this is perhaps too soon for such a heavy topic. Drac waits and waits, the stretch of quiet painful, and then Ericka huffs softly.
“She’s beautiful.”
Drac takes a careful breath. “She was.”
Ericka faces him, clutching the picture frame, and adds, “Mavis looks just like her.”
And with that, all the air rushes out of Dracula’s chest as he chuckles, something heavy and cold easing away from his shoulders. He’d been genuinely terrified for a moment. “Yes, Mavis takes after her, doesn’t she?”
This has never been brought up with him before, this elephant in the room. Not with Frank, or Murray, or any of his friends, not with his acquaintances, and certainly not with Ericka. Martha’s existence has been a ghost haunting Dracula’s heart ever since she died and that has never been questioned before. Maybe it is finally time to address it.
“Ericka.” Drac takes a step forward, and then two, and then he’s crossing the room to where Ericka is standing, watching him. He puts his hand over hers on the frame and Ericka lets him, but holds steady when he tries to gently push down the picture. Instead, Ericka glances at Martha’s face again.
“What was she like?” Ericka asks in a whisper of something Drac can’t figure out. When he doesn’t immediately speak, Ericka looks up to search his eyes and gives a nod of stubborn determination, as if this was a mission she has to do. “Tell me.”
“She was soft,” is the first thing Dracula can think of to say about his deceased wife, and it’s true. Martha is…Martha was, a creature of grace, all fair skin and dazzling smiles as bright as the moonlight that once made his heart flutter. “And gentle. She looked like she was floating on air instead of walking. Martha was…my source of calm during difficult times.”
Ericka hums. “She sounds magical.”
Drac gives a sad smile. “It certainly felt that way when I zinged with her.”
He glances down to see Ericka staring up at him, her eyes still unreadable despite the flashes of emotion through them. Drac reaches up to cup her cheek, smiling a little when she flushes red at his touch despite herself.
“You love her.”
Drac swallows back the pain in his throat. He bites his lip, looking down at the picture between them where Martha’s gentle smile is captured, forever frozen in time. He can’t remember the last time he saw it and felt anything else but heartache. Slowly, Drac forces himself to meet Ericka’s blue eyes, waiting for him to speak.
“Yes,” he says finally, soft but unapologetic with his answer. “I still do.”
Ericka takes a deep breath. She looks like she’s hurting for a split second, and Drac almost takes back his words, but then she steels herself, her stare unwavering on him. “But you love me too.”
“I do,” Dracula breathes out. He smiles, unable to help himself. “I truly do, my Zing.”
“Good.” Ericka nods, ignoring his almost-smitten grin. “That’s good.” She clears her throat, pulling out of his grasp and walking away from him to put back the frame in its place on the shelf. “What was it you said before? Honor the past but make your own future?”
“Yes,” Drac says nervously. He has a feeling this isn’t over yet. “But Ericka, honeybat—“
“Drac, I’m—“ Ericka inhales sharply, fumbling with her words and wringing her hands. She looks uncertain of herself. “I’m not—I’m not Martha.”
Drac’s face falls. “I know, my love, but—“
“No, no, I have to say this—“
“Ericka, my Zing, please—“
“Listen,” Ericka insists, turning on her heel to face him again and closing the distance between them in three quick strides. Dracula is a tall man, a fearsome creature, the Prince of Darkness, but even he reflexively stumbles back a step when Ericka all but crowds in on his space with a storm brewing in her eyes and no warning whatsoever. She grabs him by his cloak, pulling him down until his neck is bent down to her. “I need you to know this.”
“Yes?” Dracula squeaks, helplessly holding on to her wrists.
“I am not Martha—“
“Y-Yes—“
“—but I love you,” Ericka says achingly. It makes Drac’s breath stutter, his long fingers twitching over her hands. “I love you like I’ve never loved before.” Ericka’s fighting to say the words even when she looks like she’d rather bury herself out of mortification, and Drac is hopelessly entranced by the almost-angry honesty in her voice. “I can’t be anyone else other than Ericka Van Helsing—and I know a Van Helsing probably isn’t the best match for you—but I swear, I will love you, just as fiercely as Martha did, if you would let me. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She runs out of breath saying it, and by the end, Ericka is red in the face and glaring at him desperately to answer. She’s breathtaking, a creature of emotion and strength, an utterly overwhelming force of nature.
Dracula can only sigh shakily, just as breathless as she is, but for a vastly different reason. Ericka is nothing like Martha, and he loves her for it. He strokes the skin of her wrists comfortingly.
“Darling,” he confesses with a hushed smile, “I ask for nothing else but for you to love me as you are.”
The storm in Ericka’s eyes breaks away and it’s the most marvelous thing to behold, like watching the ocean calm down after its violence. She gapes at him, full of hope and relief and adoration, and then yanks him down with startling force, drowning his gasp in a kiss that makes his knees weak.
It feels as if it’s consuming him alive, this bruising ache of love that he feels for Ericka, and he lets out an embarrassing noise as he kisses her back, sweet and soft, slowing down just a bit to cherish it.
“Sorry,” is what Ericka says right after she pulls away, flustered. Drac has to blink away the lightheadedness before he could understand her. His lips are still tingling with warmth. “I didn’t know what to say to that. Oh god,” she winces then, curling into herself from embarrassment, “what did I even say to you, that was so cheesy—“
Dracula laughs. He can’t help it, not when the situation he dreaded had turned out to be one of the best moments of his life. “Oh love,” he sighs, gathering a whining, blushing Ericka into his arms and tucking her head under his chin, “you are something.”
Ericka settles inside his embrace with a few more grumbles but finally quiets down with nothing more than a whisper. “Something good, I hope.”
Drac shakes his head fondly, and presses a kiss on her forehead.
“Something amazing, definitely.”
End.