I shoved her up against the wall, clicking handcuffs on her wrists behind her back before she could react.

She blinked as her face was pressed up to the ancient slightly grimy wall of the abandoned subway station, and inhaled sharply in pain, then laughed. "Cold iron handcuffs? Such a bad girl... guess someone's really happy to see me again."

I tilted my head to one side. "Too much?" I kept her shoulder pressed against the wall as my other hand fished inside my purse for the key.

"No, you're good, cutie." She suddenly pushed against me and tried to run, but I shoved her against the wall and kissed her. I shoved my tongue inside her mouth only to taste copper and the sun and the grass and the world that existed far before and would exist far after humanity-- and realized she bit her tongue, and I had to turn my head, and after a moment, spit the blood out. Such a waste, I did truly want her inside me. "Really? Hospitality clause?"

The woman laughed again. "You're always so quick, I like that about you." Her voice was teasing

I shoved her against the wall and started groping her thigh. "Did you like the pictures I sent you?" My voice was low and breathy.

"Mm-hmm." She tried to push me off with all her strength, but of course it couldn't compare to mine.

I pinned her to the wall by her throat, not pressing too hard, and she stopped struggling as I pushed up her dress and started rubbing my fingers against her already wet pussy... she never wore underwear, she said because she couldn't get used to it, but I think it was just because she was that slutty... not that I could pretend to take the moral high ground there, if there even was one.

This was all just a game to us, just like me writing this little biography of a slice of my life.

We were, after all, immortal.

I had first met Aurelie some centuries back, coming out of a tavern in some country -- Ireland, maybe? No, Australia. ...maybe it was Austria? It all blends together sometimes.

Okay, her name wasn't Aurelie, but it has been changed, not so much I'm worried that you'll find her -- if you have the knowhow to find her, you'll know better than to get involved, but more that people can't pronounce her name, so I'm not going to write it down. Aurelie is cute, she said it was fine, we're going with it.

Similarly, I'm not going to match the era of speech. I mess up my words enough as is, I don't need to remember how "thou/thee" works or whatever... well. It's good to use on your close friends and lovers, but someone who's not close to you is going to take it as an insult. There, that's literally all you have to remember to about "thou/thee", the important bit that's going to make people warm up or beat you up, depending.

Where was I?

So, I had been walking outside a tavern to look at the moon and regret not being turned into one of the moonchasers instead... something about that feralness, losing my mind once a month, my hunger being something that I had no control over... it was dreadfully romantic.

Looking down from the murky clouds that covered an almost-full moon... oh, let's say it was all the way full, just for vibes. The moon shone as bright as day. Yeah, that sounds suitably romantic.

As my eyes lowered from the once-in-a-decade beauty of the moon, I saw her, and if I had breath, it would've stopped. She was dancing by a stream and singing a song, and I knew she wasn't of this world, but I was drunk and melancholy.

I had been unalive for a century then-- all my friends had told me not to keep track, that it just became more depressing if you paid attention to it year by year... but you know, it wasn't my fault I easily memorized dates.

Many of those I knew also said I shouldn't have been turned... but it hadn't been my call, and it was a little late for that.

I walked over and sat down on the ground, and watched her for a little while, twirling and singing like it was the most natural thing in the world. No one else intruded on us... I don't know because they were all too drunk and melancholic, or because they had better sense, or maybe my eyes pierced some sort of veil.

Finally, she sat down in front of me crosslegged, and tilted her head to one side, exposing her neck. "Can I help you with anything?"

I tried not to look at her neck. I was hungry, I hadn't eaten for days. If I fed from her, she could probably do whatever she wanted to me... but fuck it, that sounded better than being half-alive like I was now. I wanted the ineffable will inside her that made her sing and dance despite quite possibly being a thousand times as old as I, or more.

She was obviously trying to taunt me into it, regardless of if she knew that I knew what she was, roughly, or not.

I, being drunk, young (relatively), and foolish, leaned in, and sank my teeth into her neck. And she tasted amazing. I kept drinking for a little while, and her blood kept coursing into her mouth, until I finally pulled back, panting for breath. I didn't even need to breathe. Not usually, at least.

"You've taken hospitality without asking for it," she said sweetly, "which means you're mine now."

I smiled at her. "Okay."

She pouted. "You knew in the first place? How bad is your life, that you'd offer it up to a fae for a sip of blood?"

"For you, my lady, even looking upon you would be enough to utterly ensnare me." I took her hand and kissed it all over.

She giggled, gently pushing my shoulder back with her other hand, although not enough to really impede my actions. "Oh, you." Had she meant to stop me, it would've been trivially easily for her to do so.

Undeterred, I continued to kiss up all over her arm with exaggerated kissing noises, and she giggled more, rolling over on top of me and rubbing her hand down against my cock.

I had gone through some cultivation and drank mare urine and so forth, and forced my dead body into one more curved, one I felt more at home in, but it didn't do anything about my cock... well, I kinda liked having a cock anyways, sometimes. Made me feel vulnerable, having something outside myself that people could abuse or pleasure as they desired.

She didn't look surprised at all, though, stroking me and leaning down to kiss me on the lips.

"Do you really want to be mine that much?"

"Sort of? I don't know, we just met. But... what's life but a series of impulsive mistakes?"

Her smile widened far beyond what a human's mouth could, and for a moment, I was afraid. "One could ask the same of death."

But then I saw the light dancing in her eyes, and my heart danced with her. If she killed me, it would be playfully, and maybe that was my melancholy, but it was hard to be scared of that. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to live -- if you could call it a life -- but you get depressed enough, and it's hard to be actively scared of that.

That's not to say vampires can't live real lives, just that a mixture of holing up in an abandoned house, selling small valuables for coin, and pickling myself in the local tavern wasn't exactly what I'd call "living".

It was more of a holding pattern as I tried to pull myself together, really.

She tapped my nose. "I can see how uncertain you are, that desire to truly live in the mortal realm. I'll wait to take your life -- one way or another -- until you've offered it to me three times. And you won't see me again until your life is more together."

I laughed. "Do you think I'll be so foolish as to offer you my life three times?"

"Yes." Her fingers trailed along my cheek, then my lips. "You think I'm pretty, and if I judge correctly, you've done many foolish things to romance pretty girls."

I licked her fingers and smiled. "...do you really think I'm going to get my life more together?"

She raised an eyebrow. "There's not much to go except upwards from your current point."

It was hard to argue against that.

She removed her clothes and straddled my face, and I remember little else of that night but breathing her fragrance and driving my tongue into her, and her sweet moans, my body writhing against the earth and vines as my cock was hard but unpleasured under my skirt.

Maybe it was a performance, but I liked to imagine I really did bring her to orgasm countless times as time told still underneath that dusky sky.

...I mean that bright sky. We're pretending it's bright, for poetry, right?

Look, I'll be honest with you: I'm going to skip over a lot of stuff, and romanticise other parts. But these little lies are going to make the story closer to true, closer to real.

Just like her little illusions covering up her true, horrifyingly beautiful form that I only felt or glimpsed for almost imperceptible moments, just made her more real, realer than real.

If someone wears a mask every day you see them, after all, which is true: their mask, or the face beneath it?

There's no real answer, but I choose the better story... the more beautiful, the more romantic, even if it's foolish and dangerous, and, from a technical standpoint, more fabrication than not.

The world is so much wider and more strange and impossible than you imagine, and the little arbitrary rules of society are merely rituals that could be disrupted so easily let you live your entire little lives around them... you need bigger stories, ones that widen your mind beyond your current possibilities, and let you seize hold of the world as it could be, because that is so much more powerful source of change than the world as it is.

Unfortunately for you, this is a pretty small tale of a rather cute vampire (me) and the fae princess/abomination/whatever it is they/she are that she fell in love with (Aurelie) ((Not her real name, but you know that)).

So just pretend it's a real account of true things, and I think you'll enjoy it more.

...or maybe it'll disturb you more?

Either way, please feel stronger emotions. Everything flows from emotions... including this story....

...where was I?

Right.

So when I woke up, I was in a ditch, my tongue tired, my crotch aching from lack of release, feeling utterly crap and hung over, and my coinpurse was missing.

After all, there had been a ditch there by where she had been dancing, not a river. In the "real world", at least, as they called it.

As I struggled up into a sitting position, I felt like crap, and my body ached all over, and I winced as I saw the sun beginning to peek up over the horizon... not that it'd kill me, but it wasn't pleasant to look at after so much drinking.

We'll pretend I didn't puke, and just say I crawled back to my little abandoned house.

But there was a little smile on my face.

Despite it all, I had seen a touch of the sublime.

Despite it all, I had fallen in love for the first time in decades.

I shoved her up against the wall firmly, rubbing my cock between her thighs, wedged up against her pussy, and she moaned needily, trying to entice me with her voice that she needed me inside her.

Of course, she had earlier suggested that if I put my cock inside her that would count as some sort of hospitality, so I couldn't do that, and merely held her in place and mercilessly thrust my cock between her thighs again and again until I came over all the dirty subway wall in front of her.

I pushed her down between my legs, holding onto her hair cruelly, and she licked my cock clean and looked up at me submissively.

I tugged on her hair just a little, and she winced and struggled back to her feet... only for me to shove her against the wall again, unlocking the cuffs from her and putting them back inside my purse.

She pouted. "Aren't you going to kidnap me and make me your prisoner? Torture me and use my body and break my wings and... I don't know what you mortals do with them, actually."

I kissed her nose. "We just do catch and release, you know that. And I think it's for alchemy? ...Do you even have wings?"

"Even you have wings... how do you think some vampires fly?" I'm like, ninety percent sure that was a lie, but let's pretend it was true.

Vampires can fly, if they only realize they have wings...

It felt romantic.

I pulled my lipstick out of my purse and fixed her makeup a little... it was a similar enough color to pass at a glance.

"Wanna go out for brunch?"

"Oh, god, yes please. Some asshole just took advantage of me and fucked me for her own pleasure."

She smiled, and I laughed as I tucked a strand of her hair back into place.

I wished she actually liked me.