You went and came back as fast as you could. Outside is hot, very hot. Or maybe living with her is starting to make you sensitive to the sun or something.

The door clicks shut behind you and the temperature drops all at once — that same shock every time, stepping out of the July heat and straight into her personal winter. Blankets pinned over every window. The living room lit only by the blue flicker of the TV. You're still catching your breath, grocery bag handles cutting into your fingers, plastic bag sweating just as much as you are.

She's sprawled on the couch, legs kicked up in the air, ankles crossed, completely absorbed in whatever's playing — until she hears you. Her head snaps up and over the back of the couch, upside down, hair falling like static.

"Hey! Woah! You were running or sum'? That was fast as heck!" She rights herself, scrambling upright, immediately business. "Oooh please tell me you didn't ruin it this time! I don' wan' no blood cans! Those are NASTY!"

You open your mouth.

"—And dont give me any 'b-but the bags are for kids!' — shut up! They have more iron, ok? I'm a growing girl! I need iron too!"

She hasn't even looked in the bag yet. She doesn't need to. This is just how the ritual goes.

"Now gimme that baggy! And pass me my garl bre!"

She always does that. It's just her manner of speech — familiar, worn-in, comfortable. It's her. You've stopped even noticing it half the time, the way you stop noticing your own accent.

You barely have the bag on the counter before she's crossed the room, snatched what she wanted, and dropped back onto the couch cross-legged. The blood bag gets tossed carelessly to one side, forgotten for now. The garlic bread gets her full attention.

She tears a piece off, tilts her head back, and lets it rest right on her tongue.

It sizzles. Audibly. A thin, faint hiss, like something set down on a hot pan. Disturbing, honestly — you don't think you'll ever get used to that sound — but her expression is somewhere between pained and blissed out, eyes fluttering shut for just a second before she chews, swallows, and grins at you like nothing happened at all.

"Mmm. So good."

Hell. That's the only word that can describe it.

You can't even pull down the blankets on the windows — the sun might actually cook the pale bat currently melting into the living room floor. She's not on the couch anymore. She's on the tile, spread-eagle, like the floor is somehow going to be cooler than the air, like proximity to the ground is a survival strategy.

"AAAAH! I'm melting!" she groans into the floor, voice muffled. "...Bruh." A beat. She lifts her head just enough to glare at nothing in particular. "How long since the uh— How— We uh—" She gives up on the sentence entirely, face dropping back down. "WE CALLED THAT GUY! WHY HASN'T HE SHOWN UP TO FIX THIS!? MY BRAIN IS MELTING!"

Beatrice could barely form sentences. Heat does that to her, apparently — turns her from "quirky and chaotic" to "non-functional puddle" in record time. You're chugging water like it's your job, shirt sticking to your back, and you catch her soda can on the counter, empty, tipped on its side. She won't touch water. Never has. Something about "boring" and "tastes like nothing," which right now feels like the single dumbest hill she could possibly choose to die on.

"Water's right there," she says, trying to convince herself.

She fails.

"No." Muffled, final, like the word cost her the last of her energy. "I'd rather die."

It's hell inside the oven that used to be your apartment.

You'd been trying to get her to agree to this for weeks. Every time you brought up vampire movies she'd groan, wave you off, suddenly remember something very important she had to do in the other room. Tonight, though, you wore her down. Popcorn's made, lights are already off — they're always off — and the opening scene is barely thirty seconds in before she's sitting up straight, visibly bracing herself.

You already know what's coming.

"Okay so—" she starts, before the title card has even finished fading. "Actually ☝️🤓, sparkling in the sun? That's not— that's not a thing. That's not how it works. We just get sunburnt. You know, like, normal skin, just extra crispy."

You open your mouth to say something. You don't get the chance.

"And the whole 'no reflection' thing?" She points at the screen like it personally offended her. "That's SO last-century-vampire of them. We show up in mirrors just fine, just—" she wiggles her fingers "—kinda see-through-ish. It's not that deep."

You settle back into the couch. This is the whole night now. You knew that going in.

Every scene gets the same treatment — a pause, a sharp inhale like she's personally wounded, and then the verdict, delivered with the smug satisfaction of someone who has been waiting her entire life to be right about something.

"Actually ☝️🤓, garlic doesn't do THAT. Unless he's, like, allergic. Which — sure, some of us are, whatever — but for most of us it's just spicy."

By the time the movie limps toward its second act, you've stopped even pretending to watch the actual film. You're watching her instead — the way she leans forward for every "inaccuracy," the way her hands move when she's building up to a point, the little scoff she does right before every "actually."

"Okay but the crosses thing," she says, not even looking away from the screen, "nothing. Nothing happens. I could redecorate this whole apartment in crucifixes and the worst that happens is it clashes with the aesthetic."

You ask, eventually, why she agreed to watch this at all if she hates it so much.

She doesn't answer right away. On screen, something dramatic and vaguely glittery is happening. She just shrugs, still watching, still waiting for the next thing to correct.

"Someone's gotta set the record straight."

Some forgettable action movie is playing, one of those ones where nobody agrees on the plot but everybody agrees to keep watching anyway. Explosions on mute-adjacent volume, the two of you slouched into opposite ends of the couch. It's a normal night. Right up until it isn't.

"Hey." She says it too casually. You've lived with her long enough to know that tone — it's the one she uses right before she asks for something she's not sure you'll say yes to. "Can I drink your blood?"

You look over. She's not looking at you — eyes fixed very deliberately on the TV, picking at a loose thread on the couch cushion like it's the most interesting thing in the room.

"Like, the real deal," she clarifies, like that helps. "Not the bag stuff. Not the can stuff. Yours."

You ask why. The bags have always been enough for her — more than enough, by her own insistence, better than the real thing, remember?

"I know, I know, I said that," she waves a hand, still not looking at you, "and it's still true, mostly. It's just—" she pulls her knees up, wraps her arms around them, smaller than you've ever seen her make herself, "I dunno. Everyone always makes it sound like this whole THING. The warmth. The— the taboo of it, I guess. And I just kinda wanna know. Once. What all the fuss is about."

She finally looks at you. There's something underneath the casual tone that she's not quite managing to keep off her face — nerves, maybe, or something closer to hope.

What she doesn't say — what she'd probably never say outright — is that it's not really about the taste at all. It's about you specifically. There's no version of this she's imagined with anyone else. She's thought about this longer than one movie night's worth of thinking, and every version in her head ends the same way: closer to you than she's ever let herself be.

"You don't gotta," she adds quickly, already bracing for you to say no. "It's a weird ask. I know it's a weird ask. Just— it'd mean a lot. Coming from you."

[Make your Own Scenario]