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For a long time, Alex’s vampirism had been the hardest part of her life. Being constantly plagued by the moral dilemma of not wanting to hurt anyone but needing human blood to survive wasn’t fun and, as it would turn out, was even worse when she was also dealing with the struggles of homelessness.
But her days of living on the streets and finding rats in alleyways to stave off her hunger as long as possible were behind her. Her father had been kind enough to let his underage offspring live in his house again and, while they had no relationship, she preferred the silence to the screaming matches. She spent as much time as possible away from the place anyway, spending her free time in the pottery studio and only using her bedroom when none of her friends had space for her to spend the night.
She was also finally attending high school again. She’d fallen behind in her classes after being homeless for so long, but she’d caught up for the most part and didn’t worry about her grades that much. They weren’t perfect, but she managed a C-average and that was good enough for her, so she invested most of her brain power into the various forms of art she enjoyed—mostly pottery.
As for her diet, her boyfriend took care of that.
Magnus finding out about her being a vampire had been an accident. She never intended to tell anyone, he just happened to catch her on a bad night. She was hungry, there weren’t any rats around, shit happened. Neither of them ever talked about what happened that night.
Upon finding out about what Alex was, Magnus hadn’t freaked out over the fact that supernatural creatures were real (he did, technically, but not for very long) or judged her for being a borderline cannibal. Instead, he’d been worried about her lack of a stable food source, and eventually offered himself up so she stopped having to starve herself.
Alex hadn't accepted the offer at first. Again, the whole moral dilemma about needing to consume blood made her feel weird about it, but she’d given in eventually and it was probably one of the best decisions she’d ever made, just below asking Magnus out. She would admit to neither of those things out loud.
Especially not at that moment, because Magnus was mad at her and expressing that in the meanest, cruelest, and most vile way possible.
They were both sat on his bed in his uncle’s mansion. Magnus had his physics textbook on his lap, writing down equations that he would need to memorize for an upcoming test. Alex was supposed to be doing the same thing, but she was busy gnawing on his shoulder instead. But not really. She just had her teeth on him like she was going to bite down, but she wasn’t even pressing down hard enough for her fangs to pierce his jacket, let alone his skin.
“I said no.”
Alex groaned and dramatically threw herself against the mattress. “You’re so mean to me. I said I was sorry!”
“Sorry doesn’t replace my book.”
“But I’m wasting away here!” She complained. “I’m starving, I’m gonna die if I don’t eat soon.”
“No you're not, you’re being dramatic,” Magnus said without looking up from his textbook. “You ate yesterday.”
“I’ve done so much running around, though, I’ve definitely burned off thousands of calories since then.”
Magnus looked up just long enough to make brief eye contact.
“Your pupils are normal. You’re fine.”
Alex hated when she was called out on her bullshit, no matter how obvious it was. The eye thing wasn’t even something she was aware of until Magnus had mentioned it shortly after learning what she was. According to him, her pupils got really big and took over her irises whenever she was hungry. That combined with his knowledge of how much blood she needed to live without being plagued by constant hunger made it impossible for her to convince him that her craving for a little snack was actually an urgent need for blood.
Not that she wanted to lie to him about what she needed. It’d feel wrong to take advantage of Magnus like that, she was just playing up her complaints to be annoying and she was sure Magnus knew that. It wasn’t something she did often because, most of the time, Magnus was all too willing to offer up his blood.
Their original agreement had been that Alex would take blood from Magnus only when she desperately needed it, as Alex still hadn’t liked the idea of drinking from him at the time and wanted to limit it as much as possible. Magnus ended up hating that arrangement because while it meant that he wasn’t getting bit very often, it did mean that Alex was taking a lot of blood at once whenever she drank from him. It’d left him disoriented, dizzy, and gave him a massive headache every time.
So, at Magnus’s request, they switched things up so that she was taking blood from him more often, but in smaller amounts. The official agreement was that she would drink from him three times a week, but she was spoiled, so she usually went over that number. It was currently Friday and she’d already bit him four times that week.
Magnus usually had no issue with it and, in many cases, even encouraged it. Usually by outright asking if she wanted it or by silently offering his wrist if he noticed she was having a particularly rough day.
When he did refuse her, it was usually because she’d upset him and hadn’t given a proper apology, and it was never when she really needed it. Alex could stab Magnus and he’d be trying to find out when he was allowed visitors the second he got to the hospital just so he could make sure Alex didn’t go hungry, but he would revoke her extra snack privileges on very rare occasions.
“It was Mallory’s fault.” Alex eventually mumbled.
“You provoked her.”
“Did not! She–” Alex was very rudely interrupted by Magnus shoving a stick of pink silicone into her mouth, which she quickly recognized as one of the many stim necklaces he’d bought for her.
“Chew on that and focus on physics, okay?”
Alex huffed, but reluctantly retrieved her own spiral notebook from where it’d fallen to the ground and began to take notes alongside him, gnawing on the necklace the entire time without bothering to put the string around her neck until Magnus forced her to because he got tired of her angrily swatting it away when it interfered with her note-taking.
As much as she hated to admit it because of how ridiculous the necklaces used to make her feel, buying them for her was one of his better ideas. She used to unconsciously bite Magnus without any intention to drink from him just because it felt nice on her sore teeth and, after he’d dumped a pile of green and pink silicone onto her lap, she was eventually able to break that habit. Mostly. She relapsed sometimes.
She was able to get through the rest of their little study session without complaining, though her focus wasn’t perfect. She frequently got distracted by doodles when she was supposed to be memorizing how to calculate the velocity of a launched object, but that was normal for her. Her notes never were complete.
When Magnus finally closed the textbook they were sharing, Alex dramatically tossed both the textbook and their notebooks away, letting them hit the floor with a loud thud. Then she rolled over so her head was on his lap, looking up at him.
“Sorry.”
She’d never admit to it out loud (there were many things she’d never say out loud), but some of her distraction while studying had been because she’d been doing her best to form a decent apology. It wasn’t easy, she hated having to admit that she’d done something wrong or hurtful, but she’d do it for Magnus. He’d forgive her in the end regardless of whether or not he got an apology because he was usually more disappointed than he was angry, but she hated knowing that he was upset with her regardless of how serious the situation was. Magnus hardly ever treated her differently, but she just knew he was disappointed and that feeling was the most uncomfortable thing in the world.
Magnus didn’t say anything, he simply looked down at her with a raised brow, waiting for her to go on.
“It was really Mallory’s fault, if you think about it–”
“Try again.” Magnus interrupted.
Alex groaned and rolled off his lap again, burying her face in the nearest pillow. The thing about Magnus was that he really didn’t mind not receiving apologies for minor things his friends did, but he also wouldn’t accept anything half-assed. So if Alex was going to apologize, she would have to do it properly.
When she peered at him over her pillow, he was looking at her expectantly, but the corners of his lips were upturned. He thought it was funny to watch her struggle. He was evil like that.
“I’m sorry.” She eventually got out. “I didn’t mean to ruin your book. I should have looked where I was throwing it before I attacked Mallory so it didn’t end up in the fountain. I don’t apologize for fighting Mallory.”
Magnus didn’t look surprised by that and even gave an understanding shrug.
“I’ll buy you a new one?” Alex offered.
Magnus made a big show of looking around his room. It was plainly decorated and one of the smallest rooms in the mansion, but it still had much more space than any one person would ever need.
“You see where I live, right?” Magnus asked. “I’m not letting you spend money on me.”
Alex expected that. Magnus had access to his uncle Randolph’s wealth and therefore had more money than he knew what to do with. He didn’t take advantage of it and had even spent a couple of years living on the streets after his mother died just because he didn’t like Randolph. He only lived with him because he ran into some legal issues after getting caught stealing food and would have been put in the foster care system if Randolph hadn’t become his legal guardian.
From what Alex knew, Magnus and Randolph had no familial bond, they just co-existed in the same house whenever Randolph wasn’t on one of his trips. Magnus rarely spent money on himself but was always finding excuses to throw hundreds of dollars at his friends. Alex tended to dislike having people spend money on her, but since Magnus’s money came from a millionaire who was also a bit of an asshole, she had no issue in allowing him to buy her anything she so much as expressed even the slightest interest in.
“We can go hiking, then,” Alex said. “And I’ll let you choose the trail.”
Magnus always chose the trail, but he visibly perked up regardless, as he always did when the idea of hiking was mentioned.
“And we can go to that falafel place you like.”
“Why was I mad at you again?”
Too easy. Anytime Magnus was the slightest bit upset with her, promising a hike and falafel got her his forgiveness every time.
(It also worked the other way around, as Magnus could just as quickly obtain her forgiveness by allowing her to paint his nails or try to teach him how to use a pottery wheel.)
“So what mountain should I be preparing myself to climb?”
“I’ll think about it,” Magnus said with a shrug, taking off his jacket. Alex didn’t think much about it until he pulled at the collar of his shirt, exposing more of his neck. “Anyway, you bit the fuck out of my wrist yesterday, do you think you can be a bit more gentle this time?”
Alex’s head immediately popped off her pillow. She knew Magnus would forgive her pretty easily, but she wasn’t expecting him to immediately offer himself up as a snack. She hadn’t planned on asking for blood again either, as she didn’t want to make her apology seem like nothing but a ploy to get blood.
“You sure?” She asked, trying to dull her excitement. “I don’t need blood right now, you don’t have to let me bite you.”
“Yeah, I know,” Magnus said. “I’m okay with it.”
That was enough for Alex. She sat up, sitting in front of Magnus on the mattress. She replaced the hand he used to pull the fabric of his shirt away from his neck, his hand falling to his side while hers held the fabric in place, making sure she wouldn’t have to bite through it and minimizing the chance of staining it with blood if some started to drip down.
Alex leaned in, but as soon as her fangs lightly grazed his skin, he tensed up.
“It'll hurt worse if you don’t relax.” She murmured against his skin.
“I know, I know, sorry,” Magnus mumbled. It took a moment, but the tension eased out of him again.
There was no way for Alex to make the process painless. She was biting him with needle-sharp fangs, it was going to hurt, though she did her best not to drag it out. For a brief moment, she let her fangs rest on the skin where his shoulder met his neck, just long enough to let him know where she was about to bite him.
Then she bit down, sinking her fangs into his neck. Magnus hissed in pain the way he always did and Alex pressed a small kiss to the skin above where she’d just bitten, a silent apology for the pain she’d inflicted, before she brought her lips to the fresh injury and began sucking the blood into her mouth.
Alex tried not to be weird about it. Magnus was very understanding of her non-human traits, all things considered. He’d never bought her old lie of not enjoying the taste of human blood and only consuming it out of pure necessity, nor did he ever judge her for it, but she still didn’t want to make her borderline obsession with his blood specifically too obvious. She’d drank human blood before meeting Magnus and she wasn’t keen on informing him that she genuinely preferred his over anything else.
But she couldn’t completely hide the pleased sigh that escaped her as the coppery tang of his blood flooded her mouth and she couldn’t stop herself from gently sucking on the open wound when his blood didn’t drip fast enough to sate her.
The process was significantly less awkward now that they were dating, in Alex’s opinion. She was basically just giving him a really aggressive hickey, but they weren’t strangers to various forms of romantic affection, so it wasn’t a big deal. She preferred taking blood from his neck even before they were together because she’d never liked him being able to see her face as she fed, though he was considerate enough to stare at the ceiling or the wall when she did take from his wrist.
As she’d only bit him to satisfy a craving and not to sate hunger, she cut herself off when the bite wound stopped dripping blood instead of intentionally worsening the wound to get more. The moments right after she was done drinking were always the most awkward, so she often looked for a way to break the tension, usually by saying something obnoxious or absurd just to confuse Magnus. This time, instead of telling him she was done drinking like a normal person, she flattened her tongue out and dragged it up the side of his neck, something Magnus would recognize as entirely unnecessary because of how small the actual bite was, to which he quickly shoved her away with a shout of “Gross!”
Alex laughed as she fell back against the bed. Magnus didn’t look nearly as amused, picking up his jacket and using the sleeve of it to wipe the spit off his neck, smearing blood in the process.
“Oh, so I’m allowed to drink your blood and you draw the line at a little spit?”
“Yes,” Magnus answered immediately. “I signed up to get bitten, not to get slobbered on.”
“I use my mouth to bite you. You’re getting spit on you either way.”
“Just hand me the wet wipes.”
Alex did just that, leaning back to grab the pack of wet wipes and tossing them toward him. He caught them and quickly wiped at his wound, something he did every time she bit him, hence why they’d been sitting on the nightstand. The purpose was to avoid infection, and Alex used to make him put on a band-aid as well, but she’d long since given up on that since he always tore them off in less than five minutes, claiming he hated the feeling of it sticking to his skin.
After he’d tossed the wipe in the trash can across the room, Alex moved closer again, loosely throwing her arms around his shoulders.
“Thank you,” She said, offering what she would consider a winning smile.
“You’re welcome.”
Alex leaned in for a kiss, because any loving girlfriend would want to kiss her annoyingly pretty boyfriend, but Magnus seemed to expect that and pressed his hand against her mouth because he was a cruel, cruel man. One just had to disregard how understanding, kind, and helpful he was to see it.
“Brush your teeth.”
“I’m not gonna stick my tongue in your mouth!” Alex protested, though her words were muffled by the hand over her mouth.
“I’m still not kissing you until you brush your teeth.”
Alex groaned loudly, just to be annoying, before she rolled off the bed and stood up. This was a routine they’d gone through many times before because, as accepting of Alex’s supernatural nature as he was, he still refused to kiss her when she’d just had his blood in her mouth. Which was fair, Alex wasn’t offended by it.
She disappeared into the bathroom attached to Magnus’s room to do as he demanded. Alex spent so much time at his house that, over time, personal items just collected there. She had her own toothbrush, mouthwash, toothpaste, and bath towels in his bathroom. If she were to open his closet, she would find plenty of her clothes hanging up right alongside Magnus’s. He knew that she was always going to end up at his place sooner rather than later, as she preferred to stay out of the building in which her father lived as much as possible, and so it was just more convenient for some of her stuff to remain at his place. Sometimes she would find him wearing one of her pink sweatshirts and she would playfully accuse him of theft while she tried not to think about how pretty Magnus looked wearing her clothes.
Anyway. She spat out her toothpaste and rinsed her mouth out before she exited the bathroom. Magnus was still sitting on the bed, not noticing Alex’s return because he was flipping through the notes he’d just taken. So Alex announced her presence by pushing his notebook away, placing herself in his lap, putting her hands on either side of his face, and pulling him in for a kiss.
Magnus tensed for a moment, surprised, but relaxed just as quickly when he realized what was happening. He loosely wrapped his arms around her waist and they stayed there even when Alex broke the kiss, though he said nothing for a moment and licked his lips with a thoughtful look on his face.
“You used my toothpaste again.” He concluded after a few seconds.
“I wanted to feel minty fresh,” Alex said, smiling as if to show off her pearly whites. “My mouth doesn’t feel clean if it tastes like candy.”
“Then you shouldn’t have bought a bubblegum toothpaste meant for children.”
“I take my aesthetics very seriously, Magnus. I had to buy the pink one.”
“Green mint toothpaste isn’t that hard to–”
Alex leaned in for another kiss, effectively cutting off his sentence, not that Magnus put much effort into continuing and seemed plenty happy to kiss her back instead.
“Stop being logical,” She spoke between kisses. “I was told I get kisses if I brush my teeth, not that I had to use a specific type of toothpaste.”
Magnus mumbled something that sounded like ‘fair enough,’ but it was difficult for him to speak clearly with another mouth pressed against his. But he didn’t seem to care too much about repeating himself, so their kiss was not further interrupted by stupid arguments.
So being a vampire wasn’t the coolest thing in the world, far from it but, sitting in her boyfriend's lap and kissing him senseless without any worries about him judging her fangs, she couldn’t say she hated where she was in life.