Remember the wampa attack? Carver and Stevie fused to form Starver. When they unfused, however, Stevie was accidentally corrupted into a vampire. Carver helps Stevie
adjust.
⚠Vampires, so mention of blood.
The battle was done and the smell of blood was thick in Starver’s nose. Most of it was from the yetis, and while Starver wouldn’t have turned it down exactly, they weren’t hungry. Starver didn’t think too carefully why that might be the case.
They looked around, noticed there didn’t seem much left to do, and frowned.
“So I guess this is it, huh?” Carver’s boots were tight on Starver’s feet anyway. The discomfort had been easily ignored in the heat of battle but… Starver made one last attempt to look for an excuse; someone in trouble, something that needed to be done that only Starver could do. There wasn’t anything that struck Starver, and they weren’t the kind of fusion to stick around just because. I mean, maybe they could, but…
*POP!*
There was a brief flash of light and the two fell backward from where Starver had stood. Stevie landed forward on her hands. The way Peter had looked at Starver made her wonder if she’d scared him with her ability. Fusion was weird, but it was also great and a pretty important part of her life and the fact that she and Carver could…
Something didn’t feel right.
Stevie collapsed.
She wanted her arms to lift herself up, but even her breathing started to become labored. Her mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out at first.
Then she stopped breathing along with her heart.
She wasn’t sure what happened after that, or for how long, only that at some point, Stevie woke up. When had she fallen asleep? And she was ravenous. The scent of blood was thick in the air, and before it hadn’t had a huge appeal to her as Starver, but in that moment, in her confusion, it suddenly did.
Stevie snarled. It wasn’t like her, more like something else had made the sound, a beast she wasn’t fully cognizant of, and she sliced her tongue on something sharp in her mouth. Fangs.
Carver fell backwards and landed on his ass with a grunt. He rubbed a hand over his forehead. "What the actual fuck-" He couldn't even begin to wrap his mind around what had just happened. Or how it happened. He assumed it was a Gem thing, but that's about as much as he could figure out.
And before he could even ask Stevie, she collapsed. Carver crawled over to her, confused. "What the fuck-" he reached out for her, pressed a hand on her forehead. It was clammy and then it was cold as her heart stopped. There were a lot of people around, but usually Carver could close his eyes and focus in on one heartbeat. When he tried with Stevie, there wasn't one.
"Stevie?" He looked down at her helplessly. She wasn't badly hurt. There was no obvious reason for her to be dead and yet. Carver looked around their immediate vicinity, trying to find someone useful. Before he could call out to anyone, Stevie woke.
But her heart still wasn't beating.
Carver recognized the look in her eye, the way she snarled. "Oh, fuck." He sat back and rubbed his hands over his face. Just what he needed. An accidental childe.
Congratulations, Carver! You’re a father. (Again.)
Stevie had felt this angry before. Not often. She tried so hard not to allow herself to be so angry. But she pushed herself up and noticed her hands hadn’t turned pink. The ground hadn’t cracked beneath her. Her snarl hadn’t sent a powerful concussive force like a thunder clap rippling through the air.
Her confusion pulled her in opposing directions, both fueling the beast that wanted to lash out and keeping the logical part of her mind still trying to piece together what was happening.
Being Starver hadn’t felt like this. Not exactly. (But Starver had Carver’s experience in vampirism. Stevie didn’t.)
“What’s wrong with me? Why am I--”
Stevie’s eyes locked on Carver. She didn’t know if she wanted to fight him or run from him and find something warmer to attack. She sat up slowly, not fully trusting herself, trembling slightly, balling her hands into fists.
Carver watched her and knew the feral, bestial instincts she must be feeling. He remembered them like he was Embraced just yesterday. He quickly got to his feet and held out his hands to Stevie in an effort to calm her down.
"You're alright. You're just…a vampire." Carver cringed when he said the words out loud. "I don't really know how this happened, though. But we should probably get you something to eat. Then we can talk." There were humans bleeding nearby as well as whatever these creatures were. Carver could smell the metallic ordor of human blood and it made his own beast claw inside his mind. He'd used a good deal of vitae in the fight before the fusion. Not enough to put him on the edge of Frenzy, but he could certainly eat.
Carver reached out and gently put a hand on Stevie's shoulder. "Come on."
“But that’s impossible,” Stevie protested, even as Carver pulled her to her feet. “You didn’t bite me. Don’t you have to bite people to change them? Like in the movies?”
Not that Stevie liked scary movies in particular, but she’d heard enough scary vampire movies as a kid from behind the back of the couch to have a general pop culture knowledge of how vampires worked.
The beast flinched at the hand on her shoulder, but she felt some of the tension ease in the rest of her body. “I have healing powers, even if you did bite me--”
Stevie’s voice trailed off and the expression she made. The fight with Jasper, when Stevie and Amethyst fused for the first time. Jasper had fused with a corrupted gem and…
“--Oh.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“Do I have to bite people now?” Stevie kept inhaling the scent of blood around them. When she did, her body tensed slightly as just waiting for an excuse, a reason, to chase the scent.
"Uhh normally you do have to be bitten to be Embraced. But I don't know what the fuck we just did, so maybe that was an exception to the rule." Carver thought for a moment and brushed a hand through his mohawk. "Actually, you're supposed to be on the brink of death before you become a vampire. So this is really beyond me." He shrugged and looked around them. Just the smell of blood made him hungrier.
"We should…go somewhere else. Somewhere less people-y." He moved his hand down to her lower back to guide her away from what had become a battlefield.
"You don't have to bite people now. I think you might be a little too young for that." Carver was a little unsure of the extent of her knowledge of vampires. "We'll get someone to fill up a cup or two."
“We fused,” Stevie said, as if that explained everything. Fusion was supposed to be an experience, an expression, the bond literally personified. It should have been something worth celebrating.
Her mind’s eye kept replaying images of Jasper as the gem was overtaken by-- don’t say corruption, don’t say corruption-- it wasn’t Carver’s fault. Neither one of them knew this would happen. She didn’t want to make him feel bad by panicking. Stevie could do this, and Carver lived as a vampire every day and he was fine.
She let him lead her away from the battlefield, but Stevie couldn’t help but glance backward. The blood and leftover violence might have affected her once, but now it was something she couldn’t quite pull away from. The attraction should have disturbed her but shouldn’t.
“It’s something I can do with people I’m close with, friends or family. Starver is, they’re both of us, but they’re also their own person.”
Just don’t call vampirism ‘corruption’ and it’ll be--
“I’ve seen something like this happen before. There were gems who were transformed into something different. I watched a gem fuse with one of the transformed gems once, and when they unfused, she transformed too, even though it shouldn’t have been possible. Vampires are sort of transformed humans, and I’m half human, so when we fused…”
Stevie looked up at Carver.
“It probably did the same thing.”
Carver nodded as Stevie spoke, as if he actually understood what any of this meant. The idea of fusing with another person and creating a third separate person was wild. And a little more intimate that he was prepared for today.
"Well. I guess at least you know for future reference not to fuse with a vampire again." He wasn't exactly sure where to lead her, where to get blood from. He just herded her in the direction of the dormitory.
"You'll be fine after the reset. You should really just need one good meal to last you until then." Of course, Carver didn't even like begging for blood for himself, but feeding a newly born and probably ravenous vampire was more important than keeping himself in check.
“I didn’t mind being Starver,” Stevie said. The further they ventured into the dorms, the less her attention was distracted. The beast, that feeling Stevie couldn’t quite name, was still present but not as loud. Instead she glanced at Carver looking for his reaction, trying not to make it obvious she was searching for possible approval?
He didn’t have to say anything. Not if he didn’t want to, so Stevie hedged and changed the subject back to an earlier point of discussion: “So… do you need like a vampire license to bite people? How does that work?”
She really had no idea. Just that she was hungry. Close to frenzy or not, her mind was focused on food.
Carver only glanced at Stevie in response to the statement. He needed to process everything that just happened before he could say how he felt about Starver. He had a feeling fusing was something Stevie had done before, but it was a strange and foreign concept to Carver.
When she brought up biting people again, Carver let out a small laugh and stopped walking so he could look at her. "Listen, I'm going to be straight with you Stevie. Biting someone and feeding directly from them is like having sex. And I don't just mean because drinking someone's blood is intimate, I mean that it's the most pleasurable thing a vampire can experience." He was quiet for a brief moment before adding, "it's basically vampire sex."
Stevie stared.
She, thankfully, was incapable of turning the beet red that she felt. Her eyes grew. Her lips became suspiciously tight. And without meaning to she thought of a few people who she might have been curious enough to bite. Which required her to keep her mouth shut, on pain of death, for fear that she might blurt something out or worse-- Carver might look at her and know, the way a strict parent could look at their child(e) and determine they were up to no good.
The quiet lasted a little longer, before Stevie found her voice.
“...So no biting people. Got it.”
Not that she had anything against that. People were free to bite or be bitten by whoever they wanted! But Carver was right in assuming that Stevie wasn’t really in a place to consider that yet.
No matter how--
Well, she was hungry. Now something felt off.
Stevie frowned.
The food she’d eaten as a mortal was still there, and, as her body continued to finalize the changes to full vampire, violently wanted out.
Stevie covered her mouth for a moment, made it about three steps and turned, before violently expelling anything not blood from her system, bent over, feeling more than a little unbalanced.
Carver frown and stepped back when Stevie bent over to vomit. He didn't even try to conceal his look of utter disgust. But he pushed past it enough to awkwardly pat her on the back as she expunged everything from her stomach.
"Sorry, I forgot about this part." The reset kept him from getting sick after a week of eating while he was a human (and a werewolf). He still looked like he was about to get sick right beside her, but he tucked a bit of hair behind her ear.
"How are you feeling?"
The nice part about projectile vomiting is it was over relatively quickly. Stevie stood there, crouched over, and realized she wasn’t breathing or panting.
“I’ve never been sick before,” she said, before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and standing up straight. “Better, now.”
Stevie held out her arm. Nothing happened. She blinked and held out arm again. Still, nothing happened. She lifted the hem of her t-shirt to reveal the large first sized pink diamond where her navel should have been.
Again, nothing happened.
There was no faint glow of light, nothing.
“...I can’t summon my shield.”
Her mouth felt dry. Everything felt different. Carver wasn’t wrong to describe himself as a corpse. Stevie just didn’t understand it until then.
“I’m still really hungry even though I just threw up. Like, really hungry.”
Stevie looked at Carver. He’d know what to do, right?
Carver was only mildly surprised that Stevie didn't have access to her powers. He just wasn't sure if that part of her was dead or cut off by the Kindred part. All he could do was hope that the reset would fix this.
"You don't have a digestive tract, so you can't eat proper food. You can't have anything in your body except blood or you'll throw up." He looked at the puddle of sick and grimaced. Surely someone would clean that up, right?
"Let me see if Julia will donate to your cause. She's a good go-to." Carver pulled out his phone to send Julia a message explaining the situation.
Julia was, unfortunately at that moment, hanging upside down and unconscious in a wampa’s cave to be eaten as a snack for later. She was a millennial at heart, not answering her phone within five minutes was unusual for her, but at least she wasn’t to be found among the wampa corpses.
Stevie had thrown up outside. Maybe the snow would cover it eventually? Stevie didn’t seem too concerned about cleaning it up, but then, her beast gave her plenty of other things to think about. Walking away from the sick and into the dorm was probably okay, right?
Without realizing the strangeness of the thought, Stevie wondered if Julia would taste good.
At least it was a little warmer inside Butler Hall.
“You like being a vampire right?” Stevie said. Starver didn’t seem to mind, though maybe Starver hadn’t been around long enough to have a very deep opinion on the matter. “Did you want to be a vampire? Before you were turned?”
The last thing Stevie wanted to do was complain, or make Carver feel bad about turning her on accident. But, she also didn’t really know how Carver felt about being a vampire, or who made him. Stevie was equally curious, and hopeful that the answers might be reassuring?
Stevie really didn’t know anything about vampires.
Carver’s confidence may have skewed that slightly.
There was a lot going on in this frozen tundra hellspace of a planet that Carver figured Julia was too busy to answer him just yet. He tucked his phone away and walked into Butler Hall with Stevie.
"I don't hate being a vampire," he said. He didn't really give a lot of deep thought to it anymore. "I never wanted to be one. I don't think most people do. But we have a bad habit of not giving people a say in the matter. My sire did it to me and I did it to Annabelle." He shrugged. "We're kind of selfish like that I guess. And the Brujah clan, well, we care about the cause more than anything else and I knew Annabelle would be a boon to the clan."
He pulled his phone out again to check it. Still nothing from Julia. He'd have to find someone else who'd be willing to donate.
"But, you know, I've been a vampire longer than you've been alive. I've had time to get accustomed to it. It takes a lot longer than a week to adjust to unlife. Hell, the first week is usually spent just trying to control the Beast." He rolls a tongue over one of his fangs as he thinks.
"You'll be back to normal before you know it anyway. Just, uh, try not to cry. It's a real fucking horror show that's hard to get used to for some people."
That got Stevie’s attention. She stared at him, wide eyed, similarly to Carver’s vampire ‘birds and bees’ talk, but slightly more anxious. Stevie knew herself. She was no stranger to crying. At all.
“What happens when we cry?”
Which then prompted an inner monologue in her mind that went: Don’t think about snakes not having arms. Don’t think about snakes having arms. Don’t think about snakes… Which on the brightside, seemed to confuse the fuck out of her inner beast. On the less bright side, Stevie’s face was easy to read. She was simultaneously trying not to think sad thoughts while absolutely thinking about sad thoughts.
She was very sensitive about snakes not having arms.
"Blood is the only fluid in a Kindred's body," Carver replied. "So we cry blood. Real horror movie stuff, you know."
If Carver could sigh he would as he put his phone back into his pocket. There was a lot going on for everyone, especially after that battle. It seemed like a terrible time to try to find anyone who could spare some blood for a fledgling vampire.
"I have an idea." It wasn't a good one, but an idea none the less. "Let's head back to our quad."
“Oh,” Stevie said. She didn’t sigh with relief. She didn’t breathe anymore, and yet the tension still left her shoulders. “Yeah, I guess that would look pretty scary if someone thought your eyes were bleeding instead of just crying.”
Then Stevie frowned. She’d never seen Carver cry, but did that make him feel bad about crying? And that thought made her sad, but for the moment it was a frowning sad thought and not a crying sad thought.
“Is your idea about how vampires should be better about sharing their feelings and asking people to be vampires with them before changing them?” Stevie knew about Annabelle, at least what she’d heard from Carver. She wondered about her. She wondered how much Carver missed her.
Once they entered the quad, Stevie walked over to the couch and sat, wrapping her arms around her stomach. Her hunger wasn’t in her stomach, it was bigger than that. But she felt better keeping her hands tightly to herself, as her thoughts slowly converged on thinking about blood again.
"Uhh no that's not my idea at all. Although I guess those are some good points." Not that most vampires would do either of those things, least of all Carver.
Once they were in the quad he watched Stevie for a moment as she settled on the couch. It was weird how different she was and yet how much she stayed the same. Her smell was different. She smelled like the rest of his clan. Maybe that should've been pleasant to Carver, but it wasn't. Stevie shouldn't be like him or any other dickhead vampire he knew.
Carver found a cup and popped a vein in his wrist open with one of his fangs. He squeezes some of it into the cup and hands it off to Stevie. He wasn't an old enough vampire to be sharing his blood and he was much too low on it himself to be giving any away, but it would tie her over for now. He rolled his tongue over the wound on his wrist and it quickly healed up.
"It's a little more potent than human blood so it should hopefully tie you over for a bit until we can figure something else out." It put him in greater danger of losing the battle to the Beast, but he was better at fighting it than Stevie would be. It was worth risking his own humanity to help her maintain her own.
Case in point, Stevie was too hungry to ask him if that had hurt. To be concerned. To think about how much he might have needed that blood. Instead, she grabbed the cup quickly as it had been offered, and drank from it deeply. And when that was done, Stevie licked the insides of the cup clean, desperate to get every drop available.
No questioning, no hesitation, not the least bit concerned that she’d been a vegetarian before this point. When she looked back up at Carver when she was finished she only barely avoided asking him for more.
But she might have stared at him a little too long waiting for him to offer. (Or offer someone else.)
“...Did your friend get back to you yet?” she asked.
Carver had witnessed the hunger of a fledgling before, aside from his own, but somehow seeing it in Stevie was strange. It seemed so antithetical to who he knew her to be as a person. He dropped down beside her on the couch and slouched down.
"No, she hasn't yet. I know you're still hungry but that will be enough for now." He looked down at his wrist. There wasn't a trace of the skin having been broken. "I can't give you any more of my own. I'll end up on a rampage if I do." Of course he didn't want Stevie to rampage either. He wasn't sure she'd ever forgive herself.
Carver turned toward her a little and grabbed one of her hands. "You have trouble controlling your emotions sometimes, right? If you have any tricks up your sleeve for reining it in, now's the time to use them. You couldn't stave off transforming into a werewolf, but you can fight the Beast. I know you're strong enough to keep it under control for the week."
Stevie’s face fell. “Is this what it’s like for you? You have to control a beast all the time?”
It seemed unfair. But she was also amazed. Carver had to be a lot better at controlling his emotions then he was given credit for. (Than she had given him credit for.) If he felt like this? All the time? And he was still able to be around people and still show kindness? (Or just not constantly try to eat people?)
“I mean, I’ll try,” she said. “I can’t really do breathing exercises anymore…”
Too soon? She smiled weakly. It was kind of funny.
Carver offered her a small half–smile. "Breathing exercises are overrated. Just remember your humanity. It feels better than blood tastes."
He purposefully avoided her question. It was like this for him all the time. It was like this for every Kindred, except the ones who didn't care that much about clinging to the remaining shreds of their humanity. But Carver could never be that cruel.
"This week will be over before you know it. And you should only have to drink blood maybe once or twice more, depending on how much we can get for you." He figured it would be a lot easier than being a werewolf.
Stevie’s expression softened. She was learning a lot about Carver, more than when they were fused. Starver was different. Starver was still half gem, and had all of their combined confidence and experience. But this? This was more like learning what it was like to really be him.
Could she really control her emotions?
There was a tension she wanted to release. Something had to give. Stevie turned her body toward Carver and hugged him. Everything was confusing. The fact that Carver mentioned only having to drink blood once or twice when it was what Stevie wanted was only the tip of the iceberg.
But latching onto Carver made it less so.
“I don’t regret being Starver,” she said.
Carver stiffened for a moment and then relaxed into the hug, wrapping his arms around Stevie in return. For this moment, between just the two of him, he allowed himself to be vulnerable enough to accept and return affection.
"It's nice you don't regret it, but we probably shouldn't do it again. Not if this is a side effect."
Accidentally turning Stevie into a vampire certainly gave Carver a different perspective on Embracing people. He'd only Embraced one person and she was dying anyway, but he still robbed her of that choice. To die or to live forever.
Carver planted a soft kiss to the crown of Stevie's head.
"You're too good a person to be a vampire."
“Maybe if it were an emergency? Or at the very end of the week?” Stevie closed her eyes. She tried not to study Carver’s expression too closely, worried she might see something there that would hurt.
What if he hadn’t liked fusion?
“Amethyst and Pearl only fused for emergencies. Not because anything happened afterward. They just didn’t always get along.”
She wanted to explain to Carver what it meant to her. What fusion meant to the Crystal Gems. It was hard to put into words. It was vulnerable to admit or share that part of gem culture, how views on it had evolved.
What if he didn’t appreciate they were able to do that in the first place?
So instead she talked around the subject. She let go of the embrace slowly, but stayed close to him on the couch.
"Starver was pretty cool," he admitted. It was a strange experience that he still didn't understand, but he had to admit it was useful in that situation.
"In the case if emergencies, we can. If you're sure. I just hate seeing you like this." Carver wasn't sure if it happened more often, if Stevie adjust to it. He didn't really want to know. He didn't want her to adjust to being a vampire. It was damnation.
"If there was a way to prevent this side effect, that would be even better."
Stevie relaxed, her smile truly brightened her face the moment Carver admitted Starver was cool. Starver was literally the combination of both their cool, along with everything else. Cool was a good word for it. Smokey Quartz was funny. Rainbow Quartz was compassionate, but big on rules. Sunstone was … a lot. Steg? Stevonnie? Each fusion had their own identity, their own feeling.
“I don’t think there is. Maybe if we had my healing tears on hand before fusing? But I don’t know if they would work on a vampire. You’re not really injured or dead.” Stevie frowned thoughtfully, and then looked down at herself. She flexed her hands, pale and cold. The cold didn’t hurt or bother her, however. Not like it would if she were still living.
“My friend Connie and I stayed as Stevonnie for a few weeks once. We stole a spaceship and it crashed on an alien planet and it was easier to stay that way to survive.” Stevie’s look turned distant as she remembered the details. “But... that probably wouldn’t work here.”
"I'm pretty dead. I'm mostly dead. Some magic bullshit curse allows me to get up and move and think and speak. But only if I have blood. Without it, I'd just be a bloating corpse." He didn't know the ins and outs of her healing tears, if they did anything in response to ancient curses. Probably not. That seemed too easy.
Carver glanced at her, only briefly. "I guess if we ever end up in an extreme survival situation, we can fuse again." But the fact was, Carver didn't want to not be himself for any extended period of time, even with all the emotional baggage that came with it. But fusion seemed important to Stevie and he didn't want to rule it out entirely if it assured his survival. Their survival.
Stevie wrinkled her nose at the bloating corpse comment, but then she imagined that made her mostly dead, too. It didn’t seem all bad. Some bad. Not enough to convince her Carver was bad. (Who was she to judge?)
“It’s pretty hard to do,” Stevie said. “The only non-family member I’ve ever fused with was Connie, but she’s my best friend, so…”
She didn’t look up at Carver just then. She wasn’t sure what she was trying to say. They were friends? Close friends? Family? It felt more like family to her.
“...But fusing for a long time is hard. You have to both be in agreement and if you aren’t, you unfuse. Or sometimes you hallucinate, mostly you unfuse though.”
Carver's brow creased in confusion and curiosity. "It seemed like it happened really easily," he remarked. "I didn't even know it was a thing that could happen and it just…did." He leaned back into the couch and glanced at her again, noting her lack of eye contact but not saying anything about it.
"Does it always just happen or do you normally have to concentrate or will it to happen?"
“I mean, it did, sort of,” Stevie conceded. “But, we know each other, and we had a common goal, and the fighting was happening around us, and we were probably worried about each other. I was reaching for you when you were reaching for me…”
Stevie wished Pearl were here to explain it. It was something that seemed so normal to her.
“Sometimes it’s easier to fuse in the middle of a fight than on purpose. Gems also use dance to fuse, but I think it’s harder, especially if it’s your first time. I mean, I did fuse on accident my first time when I was dancing with Connie, and I feel like I’m not really doing a good job of explaining it, but it’s kind of complicated and there’s a lot of variables but it is something you can get better at with practice.”
Stevie frowned thoughtfully, but in rambling she seemed a little more like herself, the beast was a little quieter.
"Oh, I see." He sat quietly for a moment, mulling over the information. "So it's harder to do it intentionally then? Duress kind of makes it easy if accidental." Carver's brow was still furrowed as he tried to understand. Stevie had a lot of interesting abilities, things that went way beyond anything Kindred did. It was a lot to take in and try to comprehend.
"You're very powerful." Which he was sure she knew, but he was often still in awe of it.
“Kinda,” Stevie said. There were variables, and part of her wanted to ramble on about her family back home, and part of her didn’t want to think about them. Her shoulders moved as if to let out a big sigh, but nothing came. Right. Because she didn’t breathe.
“I’m not even sure if I’ve discovered all my powers yet,” Stevie said with a frown. “I keep discovering new ones. It’s a lot sometimes.”
Stevie looked at Carver.
“Even with them, they’re not as important as friends or family. Being part of a team is way more powerful. I wouldn’t have made it this far without the Crystal Gems or my dad.” Stevie motioned with her chin toward Carver meaningfully.
Here at Derleth, he was part of her team.
Which was probably why he regularly got stuck with a bunch of teens when anything crazy happened.
"I've never been much of a team player," Carver confessed, even though he assumed everyone could guess that about him. "I've never let myself trust anyone. Not in a very long time." He only glanced briefly at Stevie before fixing his gaze on his scuffed up combat boots. "Not even for survival." But Derleth was gradually becoming a whole different thing.
"I couldn't be open with humans about what I am, and Kindred aren't trustworthy in general. Actually, nobody is. I've been fucked over too many times in the last however-fucking-many years to believe anyone is really trustworthy."
"But there have been some recent exceptions to the rule. Admittedly." As hard as he tried to keep everyone at a distance.
“Mal seems alright,” Stevie said. But she wasn’t trying to debate Carver or invalidate his feelings. It was more of a stray observation. Her brows knit together, wondering if she spoke out of turn. At least being a vampire, she couldn’t feel that same spike in anxiety, or her blood pressure rise. It was more like her inner beast was taking an interest, looking for an opportunity to come out. It was a different kind of pressure.
She felt the beast stir and she half shivered, half twitched. It was a lot to learn how to deal with.
“I trust you. You’ve always been there to help me. Like now. I think you’re a better team player than you think. I know it’s weird to say because this place is weird and sometimes it’s dangerous but… I’m glad you’re here.”
Carver remained quiet for a long while after Stevie spoke before he turned to look at her, with the faintest hint of a smile.
"I'm glad I'm here too. In a weird way." Sometimes it was more dangerous than a brewing vampire war, but a small handful of people made it worthwhile and it was more than he had at home.