Work Text:
QT hefted the tray of croissants into the industrial oven before closing the door.
“Okay,” she said, dusting her hands off on her apron, “What did you need?”
“I just wanted to see if you were all set for Atlanta.”
QT laughed. “Maya, I’ve been planning this since last December, I’ve got everything settled.”
“I know, I know. Maybe I just wanted to see my friend too,” Maya said, her voice saccharine.
QT smiled. It was always easy to smile in Maya’s presence.
“I’m clocking out!” she called out to the rest of the bakery.
The other workers nodded her along and she peeled off her hair net and untied her apron. “Who even let you in here?”
“Your boss. You know, I can be very charming when I need to be.”
Oh did she. QT followed Maya out the back door. “Right, so you snuck into my place of work just to ask me a question? You couldn’t have texted?”
Maya rolled her eyes. “Maybe I wanted to walk you home. It’s almost sunrise.”
“I know.” QT started walking, knowing that Maya would fall into step beside her.
She did, of course. “I bet you have all the gas stations mapped out.”
And the rest stops, but she wouldn’t mention that to Maya.
Instead, she asked, “Are you ready?”
“To spend thirty hours in a car with you? Absolutely.”
“Thirty-two hours,” QT corrected instinctively. Then she softened. “And thank you for doing this with me.”
“No, I get it. This makes a lot more sense than flying.” Maya smiled gently. Funny, how when Hasan made jokes like that, they were annoying, but when Maya did it, QT just felt warm.
Which was silly, since vampires naturally ran cold. That was part of what drinking blood did: raise their body temperature to a livable level. Which reminded her…
“Can you get me some blood bags tomorrow?”
“O negative?”
“I don’t care. I just need something to tide me over.”
“You sure you don’t want me to find a person for you? I think that would be better.”
It would, but QT avoided drinking directly from people as much as possible. She hated how it made her feel, the rush that went through her whole body. It was too good, too much. The kind of overwhelm that made her lose control.
And QT had too much of an addictive personality for that. She only drank from humans when she was really desperate. She tried not to do it more than once a year, just enough to keep her strength up.
But it had been almost eleven months since she’d last fed from a human.
QT tried not to think about that. She just needed to make it to the coven meeting, and then she’d have access to all those human assistants. It wouldn’t be hard to find someone who’d consent to giving one meal.
In the meantime, she needed more blood bags.
.
Maya stayed over. This was somewhat inevitable, since she lived in Texas and would deeply offend QT if she tried staying at a hotel.
But still. QT liked to tell herself that it meant something.
“What are you thinking about?”
“The fact that blood is kind of like a sauce, if you think about it,” QT replied as she threw out her empty blood bag.
“I usually consider it more like a drink and we’re just on liquid diets.”
“How are you so perfect?”
Maya laughed. “What do you mean?”
“You always know how to make me feel better.”
“That’s because we’re made for each other.”
She meant it as a joke, but there was some truth to the statement. Maya had been made into a vampire partially to entertain QT when she was a young vampire. Maya had been only a few years out of college, biologically close in age to QT, when she made the mistake of walking home on a night when QT’s maker was hungry.
That was all a long time ago, though. Before QT killed the vampire that turned her and took over the coven.
Unlike most American vampires, QT had been doing this for a long time. Not as long as Hasan, but for long enough to know the old rituals. Enough to know that allowing another vampire to stay over was indicative of profound trust. A vampire’s lair was supposed to be highly protected, so an invitation to not only enter it but make your own nest there… that meant something.
Though she knew the rituals as well as QT did, Maya would call all of this nonsense.
Ordinarily, QT would agree.
But something about seeing Maya curled in the nest she’d made for herself in QT’s guest room made her feel like the old ways of doing things had some real merit.
When Maya was in her place, snuggled under her blankets, QT truly felt like the head of the American coven. Like one of the most powerful and respected vampires alive. She felt, in a way that she’d never felt in her childhood, special.
“You’re so cute,” she said.
Maya smiled. “Thank you. You should sleep, too.”
“I will.”
Once I see you sleep.
“You don’t have to wait for me to sleep. I’m not the insomniac here.”
Some traits followed you even through immortality.
“It’s okay.”
“Go to sleep, QT.”
So she did.
.
The drive to Atlanta was one that QT would simultaneously never forget and never get a good enough grasp on to really remember. It was one of those road trips that extended for so long, she completely lost her sense of time, forgetting that there had ever been a time in her life when her muscles didn’t ache all weirdly.
Why was it that vampire muscles could ache?
Throughout the whole drive, she and Maya talked, reflecting on the Blake Lively saga and airing out their frustrations about clothing manufacturers’ inconsistent sizing charts and singing along to Taylor Swift and talking about their pets like they were children left behind while their moms went to war overseas.
It was like they’d compressed their whole friendship into thirty-two hours in the car, the sleepless hours blending into one another and making every conversation feel as dreamy as a childhood memory.
“Should we stop?” Maya asked at some point, when the sun was high enough that they were both lethargic.
“No,” QT said. Vampires didn’t need sleep as much as humans did. If she’d fed from a person recently, she wouldn’t even be this tired. Maya’s skin was still glowing, the bitch.
“Then at least let me take over.”
“I’ve only been driving for six hours.”
“Exactly. You should really let me drive.”
QT made the mistake of glancing over at Maya. The sun fell so beautifully over her profile, making her impossibly beautiful.
Oh, who was QT kidding? Maya was always impossibly beautiful. Problematically beautiful, enough to make QT do things she didn’t really want.
Like pull over at the nearest rest stop and let Maya take over.
She’d need to feed from a human soon, which was so irritating. Unlike other vampires, she knew she’d never get married. Having a human tagging along all the time had been annoying enough before her last assistant retired. Having someone like that who she also fed from consistently… That sounded horrible.
Besides, she already had Maya for a constant companion. The only things she needed humans for were their blood and their industrial ovens.
.
The first thing they did when they got to Atlanta was get a hotel. Or rather, check in for the hotel reservation that QT had made months ago.
She’d gotten Maya a separate room, but when Maya stepped out on the second floor and QT stayed on the elevator, she couldn’t help but feel like she was leaving a part of her heart on the floor below her.
After spending so long with someone else, it was weird to just… separate.
But at least she was close by. The part of QT’s brain that was still wired to the old rituals loved that their nests would both be in the same lair, that they trusted one another even in this unfamiliar space.
She wondered how many other American vampires were staying in this same hotel, fluffing the same duvets and pillows to make a comfortable nest.
The coven meeting wasn’t for another two days, so maybe the answer was only two.
The thought made QT smile as she readied herself for bed.
.
The coven meeting went as well as one could expect. There was a bit of chaos as Aiden introduced his husband—god, of course he’d go and get himself hitched as soon as possible, the poor thing couldn’t even find his meals for a year. But overall, the event ran pretty smoothly. She assigned the new vampires their assistants, made sure everyone’s living arrangements were in good order, and talked to the vampires who were concerned about getting caught.
Luckily, no one requested that she induct anyone unexpected into the coven, which meant no one had suddenly gotten caught in the last few days. New vampires were supposed to get reported to QT, but some vampires were very irresponsible when they changed people.
She had her eye out for some new converts, actually. She gave Hasan another year, max, before he folded and changed Austin.
“You did a great job,” Will said.
QT smiled. “Thank you. I’m glad everyone’s here.”
“I mean, where else would we be? This shit’s mandatory.”
“You’d be surprised how many people pretend like that’s not true.”
Will frowned. “Can’t you, like, track us down?”
QT smiled, pleased that someone remembered this. As the leader of the coven, QT had a unique power: she could detect any member of the American coven by the scent signature of their blood. When a vampire failed to attend a coven meeting, their signature changed, turning darker and almost rotten from the lack of community connection. It was so strong that leaders of other covens could instantly detect it and send the wayward vampire back to QT.
She’d only had to track down a disobedient vampire a small handful of times, when they’d been turned by particularly irresponsible people and hadn’t known that coven meetings existed, never mind that their presence was expected.
She liked to think that the regular attendance was a reflection of her organizational skills and not the consequences of failing to show up.
QT liked to think a lot of things.
“How did you get this position anyway?” Austin asked, leaning over the table.
“The previous leader turned me,” QT explained. “And I was his favorite.”
“So nepotism,” Hasan concluded.
“Hey, no one else volunteered. Do you want to do this?”
“Hell no.”
“Exactly,” Maya said, smiling. “QT is perfect.”
.
The hours after a coven meeting always felt like coming down from a high, like QT was sinking back into a reality that wasn’t nearly as sparkly and loud and energized as the event which had just ended.
But Maya was always there, her smile gentle as she helped stack the chairs and throw out the plastic cups and paper plates that the assistants had left scattered about. There were even a couple of blood bags, which seemed in poor taste. But not all vampires were as sensitive about blood as she was.
“What ever happened to the old rituals?” QT muttered.
“Old rituals?” Maya laughed. “What are you talking about?”
“If you made this much of a mess as an assistant a hundred years ago, we would’ve sacrificed you.”
“Okay, don’t be dramatic. Getting fed on by the coven leader isn’t that big of a sacrifice.”
“I just feel like we’ve lost our way.”
Maya paused, and her gaze was heavy, intense enough to make heat skate up QT’s spine. Heat. On a vampire, can you imagine? “Do you want to bring them back?”
“There’s no way we can convert people back,” QT said. “And it’s good to be modern. It just makes me anxious how no one seems to care about…” She paused, trying to remember what her maker always said. “Reverence.”
“Do you just want somebody to submit to you?” Maya asked.
QT expected her to be laughing when she said that, but her expression was fully serious. So QT answered her seriously. “I mean, maybe. We don’t even bite each other anymore.”
“Not unless you’re being kinky,” Maya agreed. “But I’d let you bite me.”
“Really?”
“Of course! I’d trust you with anything.” Even as she spoke, Maya tilted her head slightly, baring her neck.
A longing so deep that QT had almost forgotten it existed rose through her body, down her fangs. “I… Are you sure?”
To allow another vampire, especially one of a higher rank, to bite you, was to submit your whole self to their power. It was an admittance of submission and servitude, the highest honor you could give to another. It was an act more profound then marriage, though it wasn’t necessarily romantic.
QT had been bitten this way by her maker, but she’d never done it to another.
Still, instincts ran deeper than experiences.
She leaned forward, pressing her lips against the soft skin of Maya’s neck. It was cool, and smelled vaguely of flowers and amber. Then QT bit.
.
Biting for submission was quite a different thing than biting to feed or to change someone. It wasn’t about taking or exchanging blood. It was about the posture itself, the vulnerable position she was putting Maya in. It was the posture of a sacrifice.
She barely tasted any of Maya’s blood before she pulled away and tenderly licked the wound until it closed.
“How do you feel?”
“The same,” Maya said simply. “I was always yours. This was just to make you feel better.”
Before QT could say anything, Maya clapped her hands together. “Alright, this looks good enough. Let’s let the cleaning crew handle the rest. We need to get you a human.”
“What?”
“It’s time for you to feed.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Sure,” Maya agreed. “But so can I.”
Then she dragged QT out into the night.