Chapter Text
Lee hesitated a moment at the wooden door to Hawthrone Demeure. He had entered and exited this exact door countless times in the past year, never paying it much mind. His thoughts had always been focused on the characters inside.
He had taken the weekend off to go on a trip with his friends, Derek and Anders. They did the same trip every year, and Lee had announced this before he left. Though, now that he really thought about it, he couldn’t remember if he had actually spoken aloud or simply thought it. Lee tended to mess those two up when in residence. (Leading to one too many confessions, or reading a text that he hadn’t thought were audible.)
Back to his original train of thought, the Demeure had become a bit of a second home to him. Guillermo, Vera, and Ambrose specifically. Being an employee to essentially immortal beings with immense power that can change forms at will really fed into his complex of needing to be helpful at all points in time. They weren’t helpless, not by any means, but certainly couldn’t go out and do chores during the day or even get into a gas station without a difficult conversation with someone working. (Vera once spoke about not being able to be invited into a dry cleaners and just throwing her clothes on the ground in a fit of rage.)
Lee pushed the door open.
As always, the home was shrouded in a blanket of darkness that took his eyes a shorter and shorter amount of time to get used to. Now, it was almost instantaneous as he closed the door behind him, the nearby candelabra’s flame flickering with the gust of wind caused by it. He listened as at least two sets of footsteps rang out through the house.
“My love! You’re alright!” Ambrose shouted from the top of the stairs, vaulting off and switching quickly between his human and bat form to make it down the stairs 0.5 seconds faster than if he would’ve just ran down them, but Lee found it increasingly endearing anyway.
Ambrose turned humanoid again, closer inside his personal space than Lee’d been expecting, then took Lee’s hand and brought it up to his own mouth, letting his warm breath cascade over fingers. It was strange, especially since Lee was used to nothing but a simple hand on his shoulder (that increased his heart rate an unreasonable amount) when he happened to be in the way. Lee also couldn’t fucking breathe anymore, if you find that sort of information interesting.
“I uh- of course I am,” he put eloquently. “Just visiting my friends, y’know.”
“You must be weary from your travels,” Ambrose chided, guiding Lee to the sitting room. (A fact that shook Lee to his core for the first week. A fucking sitting room. What does that even mean?)
“Not really,” Lee admitted, thinking back to the two hour car ride, of which he spent most of listening to the playlist Derek had set up and avoiding questions about the “DILF” (Anders’s word) that he worked for.
“I won’t hear another word of disagreement, sweetheart.” Ambrose pushed Lee’s shoulder lightly into a chair. That movement combined with the numerous pet names, Lee was sure his face was flushed. (How had he survived working here for an entire year?) “Thirsty too, I imagine.”
The double entendre apparently lost on the centenarian, he walked to the doorway to shout at the rest of the house, “Guillermo! Come sit with Lee while I fetch him a drink!”
Lee opened his mouth to argue that he did not, in fact, need a drink, but knew it would be useless to fight.
“Oh, Lee, welcome back.” Guillermo smiled and moved to the couch across from Lee, “your trip turn out well?”
“It was great. Cracked open a cold one with the boys, became emotionally vulnerable, swam in a lake, the usual. How was your weekend?”
Guillermo sighed, leaning his weight back on the couch he found himself sprawled upon, “Nandor and I were supposed to fight at midnight last night but he never showed up.” He glanced back to Lee, looking especially heartbroken. “‘m starting to think this whole rivalry thing means more to me than it does to him.”
To be fair, Lee tried really hard to not laugh.
“Hey! It’s not funny,” Guillermo complained.
Lee thought back to the one and only interaction he’s had with the ‘Great and Powerful Nandor’, and how he would just not shut up about Guillermo. “He pro’ly just got busy.”
“But he never misses a fight.”
“Perhaps it was something of great importance to his continued survival,” Ambrose was standing in the doorway, two drinks in hand. He had approached silently, something that Lee had grown accustomed to. It still didn’t make the image of the vampire leaning against a doorframe, his hair falling around his face beautifully, any less distracting. Ambrose handed him the drink, which he sipped carefully.
“Lee, your face is red.”
Lee quickly found an excuse, finding the drink in his hand would be the easiest, “must just be the alcohol.”
“That’s apple juice.”
He blinked once, “…Huh?”
Ambrose smiled kindly with a hint of condescending, a look that Lee had grown particularly used to. “The drink I’ve handed you is apple juice. You bought a container before leaving for your trip. No one here can stomach human drinks, so I figured you must’ve procured it for yourself.”
Lee had no idea what ‘procured’ meant, but knew that Ambrose had deciphered whatever had been on his mind when he had chosen to buy apple juice. The vampire had a way of doing that. When Lee’s mouth refused to cooperate or function properly and communicate ideas like it was supposed to, he found Ambrose vocalizing them perfectly, with his posh language that didn’t make perfect sense but did at the same time.
Speaking of condescending posh language, in walked (though a more accurate description might be the term ‘waltzed’) Vera. “Ah, the pet’s finally returned.”
“Vera, do not refer to him that way. He’s my familiar, not yours.”
“Right, I forgot you’re being possessive now,” she cast an apologetic look to Lee, “he wouldn’t shut up about you the whole time.”
“Now that’s simply untrue, Miss Markinov.”
“It very well is the truth and you know it. He kept going on and on about how, ‘oh, I do hope Lee is alright.’ and ‘who is to spend time with me oh I’m so sad.’”
“Do not go spreading such falsehoods about me or you will find you will have no home in the Demeure any longer.”
Vera and Guillermo shared an eye roll. That tended to be Ambrose’s favourite threat, so it had lost a bit of it’s sparkle since it’s first use.
“Now make yourselves scarce so I can speak with my dear in peace,” Lee wondered if Ambrose had emphasised the ‘my’ or if it was his imagination.
Regardless, the term made him feel wanted, more like a treasure worth hunting for, a prize to be won and admired. (Geez, self insert much, Max?) Point being, the look Ambrose was giving him was doing a lot for his ego and confidence, meaning his mouth started speaking before it could pass through his brain.
“I missed you.”