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us3rnam3-r3dact3d · 3 months

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i assume you'll be coming for blood (that makes two of us)

Chapter 1

Ao3 | 1.9k words | Sweetheart's POV

You'd never even heard of shades when the file slid across your desk on Monday morning. - Fooliverse Sweetheart faces off with that first shade. They already know Milo, but things are a lot more complicated than they might have been, not least because of their own stubbornness and pride. Hopefully that pride won't get them killed. Hopefully.

TW: violence, mentions of sex, the Department

You’d never even heard of shades when the file slid across your desk on Monday morning. The Quinn Fox case had left you with a week’s worth of paperwork despite the nice little bow that Milo’s help had tied on it for you. The Department didn’t like the Vampire Council, and the concept of Sanguine Primero was contentious at best with Department officials. The stamped and sealed paperwork you’d been provided with was only good for telling you who was involved. You’d been forced to interview nearly every person involved, including the intimidating Talbot Pack Alpha.

In the end, Asher, which he insisted you call him, was actually quite nice. Once you’d gotten past his intense demeanor, he had a quiet sense of humor that you appreciated. He’d given you the details, answered every question, and promised you statements from every pack member involved. He did sternly refuse to allow you access to them, especially the wayward wolf that had been the catalyst for all of this, Quinn’s true victim. He wouldn’t even give you their name, just an acknowledgement of how difficult he knew that would make your report. That famous wolf possessiveness on display.

Just as Talbot- as Asher- promised, the statements were delivered to your work email by end of business that day, including an anonymous one from Fox’s victim. You’d filed them dutifully, along with Milo’s and a heavily edited one from his clan-mate Porter.

All of that had taken the wind out of you surrounding the case. You’d almost been naive enough to believe that you’d get to take in a wanted criminal on your first case, adding a bit of clout behind your title.

You were the least impressive member of your class, at least by your instructor’s standards. Being a stealth was useful as an investigator, but not when apprehending suspects, not in a physical test, not when trying to show off to your new captain just how useful you could be. The Department was a good old-fashioned boys’ club. Sons of enforcers and investigators crowded your academy class, and their attitudes surrounding your size and power and physical ability clouded their judgment about you. It didn’t matter that you were the strongest stealth in your family in generations, that you could phase cloak for nearly an hour, that you could run mental circles around most of those assholes in a second. Your power wasn’t one they could see or be intimidated by, so it simply didn’t exist.

So they gave you shit like Quinn Fox, shit that would either get you killed or leave you with nothing impressive to show for your work. All while your peers hauled in suspects and bagged cases left and right.

If you weren’t so stubborn, you’d have left this stupid fucking job the night Milo talked you down from a goddam panic attack in the middle of an investigation. If you weren’t so determined to prove everyone around you wrong, you’d have taken him up on his sugar-baby adjacent offer and live off of vampire money while receiving the best fucks of your life.

When you told your father that you were going to be an investigator, his face had twisted into something like pity. You couldn’t stop until you replaced that with sheepish guilt and impress.

Of course, you weren’t going to do it with this case. Shades, as far as you could tell, were a fairy tale. The Department resources on them were nearly nonexistent. You’d found a few reported sightings of the ghost-like things, but the only real answers you’d gotten were from Cam.

Camelopardalis was your favorite coworker. You rarely crossed paths in actual work, but your break rooms were adjacent to each other, and he was the only person who smiled at you unprompted on your first day. You drank coffee together in the morning, you complained quietly about the assholes in each of your departments, and you shared lunch on a bench in the large, green courtyard outside of your building every day.

Cam didn’t strictly need to eat, but he liked what you cooked. You went from cooking for one to two, making sure there were enough leftovers to feed you both the next day. Over re-warmed shredded beef tacos, Cam recalled everything he knew about Shades.

“They come from Death,” he had explained, the word taking on the sort of capitalization that important places got, “and they’re very dangerous to humans. We don’t know much about them, just what they do. There’s only been a few confirmed cases of them in human history.”

“What do they do?”

“They’re not living things.” He said. His star-dotted eyes looked up, considering the clouds like they had answers for him. “They’re incorporeal when they first slip into Elegy- Terra-” he corrected. Some humans didn’t like it when demons used their names for things. He must have learned to edit what he was saying as he spoke. “-and they need the life force of humans to gain a physical form. Usually that means draining it from unknowing victims. Most of them are drawn to heavily populated areas, feeding a bit from a lot of people. Once they’ve gotten enough life force, they gain physical form, they often become violent. They have claws that are particularly deadly.”

“Are they... ghosts?”

“We don’t know.” Cam shrugged, tucking a corkscrew curl behind his tall horns.

“How do they get here?”

“We think they slip through the cracks of demon’s rifts.” He sighed. “Of course, it’s impossible for us to rift directly to Death. It’s a sort of... cosmic glitch. Sometimes the rifts get crossed over the wrong dimension, and that’s how we assume they find their way here.”

“It must be confusing for them.” You said. Cam cocked his head. “I just mean... if they are ghosts, and they’ve spent forever in Death, and then suddenly find their way here... I don’t know, it’s like when you back an animal into a corner. They must be pretty freaked out.”

Cam smiled at you before waving a hand. With a flourish of his pretty, turquoise magic, the Tupperware you’d brought from home was gone. When you got home, it would all be washed and put away in your cabinet.

“You have such an interesting perspective.” He grinned, standing and offering you a hand. “You always see the best in everything.”

You certainly didn’t think so charitably about the shade when you faced it for the first time. It was a ghastly thing. Barely visible, it looked like a skeleton wrapped in thin, black smoke. It’s mouth opened into a horrible, gaping maw. You could smell the decay on it, even from your distance.

You had backed it into an alley, a secluded corner just off Dahlia’s nightclub district. It had been feeding on college students, drunk kids who couldn’t see straight enough to know to run. You knew to run, but instead of away from it, you’d chased it. God, you were an idiot. When most people ran away, you ran to.

Your magic was useless against it. It hadn’t taken physical form. Your fists passed right through it when you tried to fight it off. It framed your throat with two boney hands, drew your face towards its own, like it was going to kiss you. Instead, it sucked the life out of you.

You came to cold, shivering on the damp ground of that alley. Nobody had seen you, or at least, nobody had stopped to help. The shade was gone.

Making your way home was more difficult than you had thought it would be. Your phone was dead, so no Uber, no call to the Department, no call to Cam since you were truly desperate. The nausea was overwhelming, and your knees were weak. You remembered, giddily, Milo’s comment about not locking them in stressful situations. It only did you so much good, and you had to stop at every bench and a few curbs to not keel over.

Somehow, you managed the three mile walk and the two flights of stairs up to your apartment. You barely made it to your bathroom before you emptied your stomach of the day’s contents, your vision swimming and body finally giving out on you. By the time you’d dry heaved your throat to shreds and your stomach finally settled, you were shaking all over, broken out into a cold sweat. This felt like a particularly brutal flu, the memory of stomach bugs lingering in the back of your head.

“I want my mom,” you whispered to no one, your head pressed into the cool white tile floor. That childish instinct reared its head like it did every time you were ill. You wanted someone to brush their fingers through your hair, press a cold cloth to the back of your neck, make you soup and nag you about getting plenty of fluids.

Eventually, you dragged yourself off of the bathroom floor. You stripped out of your sweat-soaked clothes and crawled under the covers of your bed. You fumbled with your phone charger, your hands shaking, and waited with drooping eyelids as it came back to life.

You didn’t know why you called him of all people. You had plenty of others who you should have called first. Your supervisor, for one, who would need a report of your injury. Your father was twenty minutes away and would have been there in a heartbeat, with his sorry glances and muttered admonishments about this job being a bad fit. Your older brother and younger sister both lived a handful of blocks away, but there wasn’t a caring bone shared between them.

“Is this the kind of three A.M. call I’ve been waiting for, Sweets, or-”

He must have heard your ragged breathing, because he stopped mid-flirt, his tone faltering. Milo’s flirty facade was always sort of amusing to you. It was so clearly an act, a cover for the insecurity or angst or whatever he was trying to keep down. Sometimes, especially when you required some sort of care, it fell away without him even noticing, and you were left to stare at the naked truth of him.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, his voice jumping a few pitches in concern. You smiled absently at that.

“I-” your voice was wrecked, ruined by strain. You cleared it a few times, trying to sound a bit more presentable. “Nothing.” You lied. Milo would know, but you didn’t have the energy to explain. “The flu.”

“Uh-huh.” Milo replied. He went silent.

He wasn’t your fucking boyfriend. You weren’t in a relationship. He was a fuck buddy at best. You wouldn’t even go so far as to call him a friend with benefits. He wasn’t your friend.

“I just-“ you repressed the urge to cough. “I won’t be there. Tomorrow night. Because of the flu.”

“Are you-“ Milo seemed on the verge of asking you something dangerous like ‘are you okay,’ which would take this fun, casual thing you had going on and add feelings to it, something neither of you wanted. “Right.” He finally settled; his voice still suspicious. “I guess um… just let me know. When you’re better. Or if you need… soup. Or anything.”

“Soup.” You repeated.

“Fuck off.” Milo growled. “I haven’t been human in years, remember? I don’t know what sick people need.”

“I don’t need anything.” You said quickly, defensively. “I’ll… text you next time. I don’t know why I called.”

“It’s okay,” Milo said, “I don’t mind a call.”

“Right.” You said. “I‘ll call you in a few days. When I’m better.”

“Okay.” You could hear him deflate, his tone settling back in that façade. “I’ll see you soon, Sweetness.”

“Yeah.” You replied. You didn’t know if you managed to hang up before you passed out.

#redacted asmr #my redacted content #redacted sweetheart #redacted milo #redacted milo rebane #milo rebane #milo greer #redacted fooliverse #fooliverse milo #my redacted writing #I realized I never posted this here

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