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- Gym class
Calliope Burns and her family were in Savannah for a reason.
They were to find and end monsters and protect the unsuspecting people of the small town that had once been overrun.
Unfortunately, a by-product of her young age was that she had to go to school, it helped the Guild maintain appearances, and she supposed it would be helpful under the bizarre circumstance in which she decided that she wanted to do something else with her life.
At Lancaster Academy, she didn’t have to fall into hours of thinking about all of the time that she was wasting on one particular mark: Juliette Fairmont.
All of Cal’s training made it impossible not to notice when she was being stared at.
For a day or two (much longer than she would admit to) she’d mostly admired the adorable beauty of the other teen, but that changed when she began to demonstrate some odd behaviours.
Frequent bouts of headaches, rushing off to the restroom mid-conversation with people, and an apparent inability to pay attention in class.
It was a little late for the treacherous waters of human puberty, but didn’t non-humans develop differently?
The question was, what could someone that looked so innocent be?
She couldn’t be fooled though, not again, which gave her a guise to keep a watchful eye on the girl who failed to talk to her at every opportunity.
It wasn’t relevant that all of this ‘research’ gave her the chance to stare, she could appreciate her beauty while keeping a watchful eye.
Juliette wouldn’t be the only beautiful girl that would be charged with dealing with over the course of her life.
Even so, she was glad that there were no members of the Guild to witness her current form of investigation.
She was in one of the three classes that she shared with her suspected mark, gym was historically the most useful for her purposes.
For everyone else, Juliette appeared to be a normal, uncoordinated teenager, but Cal could tell that she didn’t throw the dodgeballs with her top force, wasn’t running as quickly as she was able to in soccer matches, she needed an extra moment than other students to calm down after being checked in any contact sport.
Her attempts to fit in were only making Cal more and more certain that there would soon become necessary to tell her parents that she was ready to have her first kill, to finally get that tattoo.
When Juliette was called upon for her turn to climb the infamous rope, however, Cal wasn’t thinking about her life’s purpose.
Juliette was ‘struggling’ up the rope but still making more progress than others but was skilfully not putting herself at the top of the class.
Without distraction, she would have picked up on the suspicion that came with being average, but there were one (or maybe two) issues.
How could she be expected to focus with a clear view of Juliette’s flexing muscles as she ascended the rope?
She continued to stare, somehow managing to keep her mouth closed with each move that the girl of unknown origin made.
Finally, Juliette reached the top and slid down, breathing hard but displaying very little sweat.
No one else was interested in that though.
“Calliope, you’re up next,” the gym teacher called boredly, mercifully saving her from having Juliette notice that she was still staring.
Her name jolted her into action and she couldn’t help but notice the definition of Juliette’s arms as they passed each other.
Later on, she would rationalise that it was just to establish how strong she really was.
It would give her an excuse to think about Juliette’s arms in great detail.
- Party
Cal had similar problems at Noah’s party, but it wasn’t just the arms anymore.
The silver bracelet trick told her all she needed to know about Juliette and coming to the party was the chance that she needed to do something about it.
Things were different after their conversation, however.
How could it be possible that a vampire could be so awkward?
She’d put it down to trying to fit in before, but that didn’t meld well with the bee thing.
Who asked another person to make a wish on a bee?! Unless she was some creature who’d only recently been allowed to engage with humans.
Whatever the explanation for the extreme strangeness, Cal had to seek out Juliette by joining the inane game.
Ben changing the direction of the bottle should have raised her defences but she only stared at Juliette, thinking how good she looked in more casual attire.
When the kissing started in the pantry, she completely forgot about the stake she’d dutifully brought with her to this hunt.
With hands and lips everywhere, and with the jars smashing in their passion, it was impossible to think about what she was supposed to do, what kissing a monster should have incited in her.
There was none of the disgust that had been drilled into her for her whole life.
There were only the two of them and the sheer perfection very much caught her off guard.
Just as she thought that this was something that she could get used to, the spell was broken.
By fangs.
Pain radiating down her neck was enough to bring her back to reality and grasp the stake.
Juliette gasped as it lodged into her chest, the look of betrayal mixed with regret almost having her feel guilty.
This morphed into panicked confusion as she didn’t immediately flake into dust.
Some distant faculty in her kiss-addled brain had her flee the scene as Juliette dropped.
Despite being so completely amped up until Talia told her that there was no way that she’d dealt with a vampire, somewhere in the back of her mind she was disappointed that she would never get to have a kiss like that again.
She was almost relieved to find a dishevelled Juliette Fairmont at her locker the next day.
- Pushy
After Juliette saved her from Cook, the spell took over her again.
She wasn’t supposed to be attracted to any non-human, but there was something so incredibly sexy about the look of relief after she drained him, even with the blood dripping down her chin.
She had done something she’d been avoiding at great personal cost to save a girl that she barely knew.
It resulted in their next insanely good kiss and liberated her from trying to justify her attraction to a Legacy Vampire.
Despite everything she’d ever learned, she wanted to spend time with Juliette Fairmont.
She wanted to kiss her, hold her hand, cuddle her, and for the most part, she could do that when they were in private.
Things were different in public places, their parents were against their relationship, which meant that they couldn’t do any of that at school.
That became an acute problem in the classes that they shared.
Right now, their English teacher was droning on about a Shakespeare play that she’d studied in two separate schools, which gave her all of the headspace that she needed to focus on the person that she was pretty sure was her girlfriend.
She was across the room, so there was, unfortunately, no way that they could covertly touch (she was picturing how nice it would be to have her hand on her knee right now), but what they could do was spare glances at each other whenever they were absolutely sure that the teacher wouldn’t notice.
Somehow, even after everything that they had done together, Juliette’s shy smiles had butterflies erupt in the hunter’s stomach.
It caused her to twirl her pen in an uncharacteristically airy way as she continued to stare.
Juliette looked so good in a colourful ensemble that it became increasingly difficult for any of the bard’s words to pierce her psyche.
While in the process of discerning Juliette’s origins, there had been too much rationalisation to truly appreciate how beautiful she was.
Now, she felt free to really take in every curve and contour of her face, especially when she gave her one of her patented awkward smiles.
It was hard to believe that there was someone in the world that she could be attracted to, but it resulted in a great deal of time picturing Juliette pushing her up against any given wall so that they could engage in another mind-blowing kiss.
It was a miracle that she’d already studied the play or there was a good chance that her grades would have already begun to slip.
- Peaceful
Actually being together didn’t do much for Cal’s ability to focus.
There was so much going on in Savannah and all she wanted was to spend time with her girlfriend. It was a strangely teenage compulsion that she had never given into before.
Right now, she was partaking in another activity that she never would have before coming to Savannah.
Breaking the rules.
If her parents knew that she currently had a girl in her bed (with the door closed), she would be grounded for eternity.
What made it infinitely worse was the fact that Juliette was fast asleep with her head lolling to the side, displaying prominently the reason that her parents couldn’t know.
It was rather amusing to discover the phenomenon of ‘sleep fangs’.
The girl was presumably too young to have control over them but it wasn’t a huge deal while she was in bed with someone who knew full well what she was.
It was a sight that unexpectedly made Cal smile.
She didn’t see herself as the type to watch her girlfriend sleep, to enjoy the peace that was so hard to come by in their waking hours.
Ignoring the fangs, she touched Juliette’s cheek and sighed contentedly.
The skin wasn’t as warm as it was with any of the other girls that she had been with, but that was another thing that didn’t bother her anymore.
It was part of who Juliette was and how could she possibly have any problem with that?
She closed her eyes, confident that she would continue to see her in her dreams.
The next morning, she discovered another unexpected aspect about Juliette Fairmont that cheered her up exponentially.
After carefully getting the vampire to the bathroom right under the resident hunters’ collective noses, she discovered something that would never be written in any textbook from the Guild.
She turned away from switching on the shower as a cover to find Juliette looking into the mirror, carefully brushing her fangs.
Cal worked very hard not to laugh before she asked in a whisper, “What are you doing?”
With the brush still in her mouth, Juliette replied, “Avoiding cavities.”
Cal laughed under her breath, unable to resist passing her girlfriend to press a kiss to the corner of her lips before returning to her own morning routine.
- Meeting the family (formally)
Cal had enough of all of the secrets and fights, she loved Juliette too much to go another day pretending otherwise.
It took some time to work up to it, but she finally got the courage to announce this to her family.
Things were tense for a week or two, but she was lucky enough to fall for the only type of vampire that they couldn’t kill. This left them very little choice but to eventually come around and allow her to invite her girlfriend for dinner.
She was confident that really meeting Juliette was all that they needed to see what she saw. Despite this, she spent over 36 hours toiling over her nerves, there were just so many pointy, silver things in the Burns’ home that they could use to hurt her if they somehow remained unconvinced.
With time for worry already out, Cal witnessed evidence that there was no reason to doubt her girlfriend’s ability to be charming.
Things started a little rough when Jack discovered that the vampire already had permission to enter their home, but this passed once they were all seated and Juliette proceeded to say all of the right things.
Theo and Talia helped things along by opening up avenues of conversation unrelated to vampirism which allowed Juliette to launch into a slurry of compliments toward Calliope.
This effectively got Jack and her brothers onto her side and ultimately meant that Cal didn’t need to have much input on the conversation.
Instead, she got to watch her girlfriend talk animatedly to a table full of hunters because she cared about her.
Never before had she had a girlfriend willing to make such a fundamental sacrifice for her?
It made her all the more determined to do the same whenever Juliette convinced the Fairmonts to do the same, that was a work in progress right now so she had to settle for staring at the vampire that she loved.
+1. Called out
Cal had a few girlfriends over the years, but none of them had ever distracted her from her family’s assignments. She cared about all of them in different ways, but she would have never considered going against her family for any of them.
Things were different with Juliette, so Apollo’s comment didn’t affect her quite as it once would have.
During the meal, she was surprised that she felt comfortable enough to leave her girlfriend with her parents to go and get a glass of water. Juliette seemed to be completely fine and safe as she was giving the attentive hunters information about monsters that they were never taught.
Apollo followed her into the kitchen to also grab a drink and said, “If I didn’t know any better, I would think that you’re kind of obsessed with Juliette.”
Cal finished pouring her water and shot her brother an unimpressed look, “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been staring at her for about an hour, I don’t think you’ve even blinked once,” he teased, “Do you do that at school as well?”
Cal stared right at him, trying not to appear too annoyed by the suggestion but it was difficult to not smile. Now that both families knew about their relationship status, she could do more than just look at her girlfriend.
“You’re just jealous that you’re single,” she retorted and strode past him, smiling as her brother blew out a breath and followed.
Once back at the table, she slipped into the seat next to Juliette who turned to grin at her in a way that made Cal sure that she felt for her just as deeply as she did.