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The room was identical to the way it appeared in Calliope’s dream, but the bed was somehow softer. Even so, Cal couldn’t fall back to sleep, she had other priorities right now.
If she heeded her family’s teachings, she would have sat bolt upright, anxious about being in a house full of Legacy vampires.
Her girlfriend assured her that no one would enter without knocking, however, and she believed her. As for the big bad Legacy vamp lay out beside her, it was difficult to be intimidated at all.
The small form snored, her mouth open to accommodate the fangs that sprang out in the middle of whatever she was dreaming about. It should have been a disgusting thought to Calliope, but it was just too cute.
Besides, Juliette promised not to hurt her and she believed her.
It was times like this when she was truly baffled that her family could think that she could be so dangerous and almost wished that she could send them a picture of this. Of course, that would involve providing incontrovertible proof that she snuck out to the Fairmont estate. As far as they were aware, she was currently dutifully asleep in her own bed like the good little hunter they believed her to bed.
She sank into the pillow and softly cupped her girlfriend’s cheek, her thumb experimentally crossing to brush over the fang, expecting it to be much sharper than it was.
A particularly loud snore had her retract her hand hastily.
Juliette finally resting peacefully after their eventful week was too good to interrupt, even if a part of her was tempted to wake up her girlfriend just because she was having problems closing her eyes, no matter how peaceful the entire atmosphere of the vampire’s bedroom was.
It was this peace that had Cal grabbing her phone and cuddling up to Juliette, taking the opportunity to look through the notifications that went unattended since her family arrived in Savannah.
One particular email caught her attention, an announcement that ‘Searching for the Lyon’ had received an update and her interest was officially piqued.
Despite that her family long since figured out her sexual orientation before her, she’d inexplicably felt the need to hide her lingering interest in SwanQueen fan-fiction from them.
Glancing at Juliette to make sure that she was truly asleep, she burrowed further into her and opened up the link in her email, setting in to read the 4000 words of Olympian turmoil, her eyebrows getting higher as she hit the cliffhanger and tapped onto the comments section. She made short work of typing out how eager she was for another update before locking the phone, deciding that even if she couldn’t sleep, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to lay against her girlfriend until the alarm rang to warn her to rush home in time to be ‘woken up’ for her morning training session.
A dinging from the bedside table had her flailing hand reaching back for the device, not realising that it wasn’t her phone when she was faced with a Gmail notification.
It wasn’t too out of the ordinary to get an email in the middle of the night, it was probably some market or something, but there was a possibility that had her curious.
She didn’t second guess the passcode, figuring that a single glance would be enough to prove her wrong and, if it were something personal, she wasn’t going to get much from the subject line anyway.
[AO3 ] comment on Searching for the Lyon.
Cal’s mouth dropped open.
After the week they’d had, it shouldn’t have felt so strange to learn that Juliette Fairmont wrote fan-fiction, but she couldn’t move passed her shock,
This meant that they’d had a conversation in the comments long before they’d met, and there was something about that fact that had her stomach-churning.
The coincidence was not the first thing she fixated on, however, as her arm flew across the bed to hit her companion, who shot up.
“What’s wrong?” Juliette breathed, but winced, “ow!”
Her hand clasped her mouth as her tired mind slowly registered that her fangs must have come out during her sleep again. A blush rose to her cheeks and she inspected her girlfriend, determining there was no immediate danger, so she retracted her fangs.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice still muffled by her hand, though the tinge of embarrassment somehow got through the barrier, sure that she’d been woken because the hunter had been freaked out by sleep fangs.
Cal dragged her hand down to reveal the blood on her lip, the superficial wound already healed. She was about to wipe the blood away, but hesitated, remembering how long the paralysis took to go away last time. That would take away from the barrage of questions she had.
Juliette understood, grabbing a tissue to wipe her lip herself and said, “I’m sorry, Cal, I didn’t mean to…”
“I don’t care about that, it’s cute,” Calliope said flippantly and the vampire’s cheeks blazed crimson.
She coughed to recover and replied, “Then what’s with the assault?”
“Did you write this?” the hunter demanded, trusting the device over, not really sure who's phone it was at this point.
Juliette’s eyebrows knit together before her eyes widened, “I…how…did you…”
“Because I waited a month for an update!” Cal said, accusatorially, “why didn’t you tell me?”
Juliette’s frown morphed as her confusion became amusement, only a member of the fandom could be this intense about this.
It was something that they oddly had in common.
“It didn’t seem like the most interesting thing about me,” Juliette said, pointing up to her mouth to punctuate the explanation.
Cal shook her head, making short work of clicking into her profile to discover what else she needed an update on.
“Can you at least tell me what happens next?” Cal asked, eagerly.
Juliette cringed, torn.
On the one hand, she was admiring how this was the best reaction she could have gotten from the first person who knew about her hobby (she didn’t think she could bear a lecture from Elinor telling her that there were better things she could be doing that befit a Legacy), on the other hand, there was a problem:
“I don’t plan the stories,” she admitted and Cal released a huff, resisting a hit of frustration.
It was important to remember that this tiny vampire was still her girlfriend.
“Where’s your laptop?” Cal demanded.
Juliette squinted but pointed vaguely at her bookshelf, “why?” she asked as the hunter slipped from the bed to collect it.
“‘Cause we’re going to figure it out,” Cal replied, leaving no room for argument, coming back to lay next to her a second later.
Juliette rubbed at her eyes as her girlfriend leaned into her, placing the computer on her lap.
Her hand circled her waist and she typed in her password.
As early in the morning as it was, she was woken up by a burst of excitement.
They had something they could share that had nothing to do with vampires or hunters.