Unlikely Romance

CHAPTER THREE

When I awoke, I found a note by my matteress. You are allowed to roam free within the walls of the house. Do not step outside, or they will get you.

I understood what he meant. He was referring to the scary men from the day before. They honestly seemed more dangerous than the hooded man. When I stepped into the living room, I saw fruits on the table; blueberries, raspberries and apples. I wondered where he got them. I looked around for him but he wasn't there. "Um... B-Brian... sir?" I called.

Nothing.

I took a blueberry, but a hand smacked it away. I yelped, and looked up to see Brian. He wasn't in his mask or his regular clothes. He was Brian, a brown haired man in his twenties with black eyes, wearing a black tee and jeans. He handed me an apple. "Berries go after." He walked off without another word, and disappeared as he went outside the house. I obeyed him, though I wanted the berries more.

Throughout the day I simply wandered around the house, keeping my interior designer instinct at bay whenever I looked at the unkempt house, even though I cleaned up sometimes. I found a pencil and a notebook on the coffee table, and I decided to go for it. I liked to draw, and there was nothing to do. I only hoped that the hooded man wouldn't mind me touching his notebook.

Thankfully, there was nothing inside it. I sat on the couch drawing none other than my captor, drawing different versions of him in different styles like fanart. Except, it wasn't fanart... it was that I had no idea what else to draw.

I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to hear Brian in the kitchen. He was mixing something in a glass. I walked into the kitchen and saw that whatever he was mixing was a deep red, and it was thick. Is that my blood?

He stopped mixing the liquid... and drank it. When he moved the glass from the counter, I noticed empty bloodstained vials. He was drinking my blood. But why? What kind of thing was he? I gasped and blushed when he turned around, still holding the glass. He blinked and, without tearing his gaze from me, he set down the glass.

"I-I'm sorry, I came for water and..."

"Be quiet." I shut my mouth and watched as he broodily walked to the living room. He picked up the notebook and flipped a few pages, and then handed it to me. I took it and realized that he had seen the drawings I did for him while I was asleep, because on the page he had turned to was a drawing of me, sound asleep.

He had disappeared by the time I looked up from the notebook. I looked back at the drawing. It was pretty good, even though it was just line art. He had somehow succeeded in making it look like me. I smiled and set it back down. The hooded man was getting used to me, and it even seemed like he was becoming fond of me. I didn't know if to use this as an advantage, or if it was something more.

A couple weeks had passed, and I had given him blood with a sincere smile in regular two day intervals. He still didn't talk much, but his tone was much less hostile than in the beginning. I looked at him by the kitchen as I thought this, and found him already looking at me. His mask was off, and I looked into his tunnel like eyes.

"Sir... may I ask you a question?" I found it funny that, a few weeks ago, I wouldn't dream of calling a criminal 'sir'. I used to be so sassy, and a strong minded feminist. And now, I was a victim to a man who didn't even seem completely human, and I was dependent and obedient to him.

He nodded and I looked downwards. "I just wanted to ask you... what is your condition?" I looked up at him for approval. He looked away and folded his arms in response. I rolled my eyes. "I understand." I was beginning to walk away when he spoke.

"Epilepsy," he said. "I am half demon. My human body... it's weak." He was looking at the pill bottle that he always carried.

I walked to him and sat on the counter next to him. "I don't think you're weak for having seizures," I told him. He didn't answer, but he put back the pill bottle in his pocket and looked away. "Were you born this way?"

He nodded, and then looked at me. I smiled meekly and did something I never thought I would since I met him. I reached out, and I held his hand in my two small ones. At that point he looked at me with furrowed, confused brows. He looked down at his big hand in mine. "You're an extraordinary man, Brian. Thank you for treating me better." I thought he needed to hear something nice.

He swallowed hard, I noticed, and then he clenched his jaw. I bit my lip as he scoffed and pulled away, and walked back into his room. I looked at the small freezer he left open, where he kept my blood vials. I realized that he had forgotten to take them before our exchange.

I found myself preparing the blood for him, in the same way he would do. I emptied the contents of each vial into a glass, heated a small amount of water, and mixed it into the frozen blood. It didn't faze me at all, since I knew that he needed it to survive. It was no different to a patient that needed a blood transfusion. It's just that Brian needed to ingest his. I was thankful that he didn't drain people daily because of his needs.

Before long, I was knocking on his door. I needed his room to access mine anyway. He opened it and I offered him the warm blood. "You forgot to take this," I told him. He stared at me, then at the glass. He softly took it from me, and I watched as he set it on the shelf near us. Then it was his turn to do something unexpected. The hooded man touched my face. I was shocked at first, but it felt good to be touched so gently. I hadn't been treated gently by a man in years before that.

When I leaned into his hand, he awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "You... can have my room... for tonight." I smiled at him and nodded. "Night." He grabbed the glass of blood, and was about to go to the other room, but we collided. Some of the blood spilled onto my robe (I had been changing between the tracksuit and the robe, washing my stuff every day) and Brian's shirt.

"Oh no! No, I'm so sorry I didn't mean to be in the way," I started. "I'll get it out of your shirt, I promise."

He shook his head slowly. "I'm accustomed to bloodstained clothes, Lizzy."

I tilted my head. It was the first time he called me by my name. And it was the first time in weeks that I heard my own name. "Oh... well..." I looked down at my robe. "I gotta go get this out." He silently sipped the contents of his glass as I hurried to the bathroom. Knowing that he had seen me naked before, I was comfortable being in my bikini scrubbing out my robe. He'd never tried to do anything to me.

But, the blood wasn't coming out. I sighed and held it up sadly, as it was the only thing of my own that I had with me. I wrung it and hung it on the top of the shower to dry. As I turned around, though, I noticed some clothes on Brian's bed. Brian, however, didn't stick around to see my reaction. "Thank you!" I called over to him.

He'd left his own clothes for me, I saw. But he'd never worn any of them around me, and they looked almost new. There were three shirts, and they all fit me like shirt dresses. I decided to sleep in the one that fit me cosiest, a white one with a big blue number nine on it.

When I got into his bed, it was so comfortable that I instantly became sleepy. It smelled like him, and I wrapped myself around his big pillow. I missed the stuffies that I kept by my bedside at home.

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A/N: Isn't he just cute when he's not mad? Well, it's about to get even cuter!! Click that button!!