In which someone who's just as messed up as the Membranes joins the party. And who doesn't love a good healthy dose of unrequited love in fanfiction, am I right?

Trigger warnings: Mention of suicide and self-harm.

The Right Words

Professor Membrane was a lot more shy than he let on, especially around members of the fairer sex. He had been so since he was a boy. His Mama and aunts used to tease him. You won't get a girl hiding your face like that, Nico.

His wife been dead for seven years. His new object of affection was not what anyone would suspect that the world's important scientist would yearn for as a companion. Her name was Vivian Pierce. She wrote vampire novels. Not the syrupy, romantic ones so in vogue, but dark and gritty tales in which vampires were portrayed as the ruthless and heartless predators they were meant to be. She did her research. She didn't hold back on the gore. She wrote with daring, and with surprising grace, considering the content. She had a cult following, prestige, a reputation, busy book tours. And she had just moved to the city to stay. Dib, taking the rare night off from monitoring Zim's house, waited an hour in line at a bookshop, just to get her autograph.

Evidently, the two hit it off. "Dad, can I invite Ms. Pierce over for dinner?!" A shock wave went through the Membrane household. Dib had never invited anyone to the house before. What could Professor Membrane do but agree?

"Pigs are gonna start flying soon," Gaz remarked.

"It's scientifically impossible for pigs to evolve to flight without genetic modification, honey. But I'm very pleased your brother has, at long last, made a friend." He instructed Foodio to make a special dinner for their guest. He was determined to be welcoming to this writer with whom his son was so besotted, despite that fact that this very same person was spoon-feeding Dib's paranormal obsessions with nonsense literature. Oh well. Nothing was perfect. Except for his work to improve humanity through science, of course.

Of the night of the dinner party, she rang the doorbell, and he answered. His son, enraptured by Vivian Pierce's mind, had mentioned nothing of her beauty, and Professor Membrane wasn't prepared when he found himself standing before a slim, strikingly pretty woman in her early thirties, dressed simply but elegantly in a plum purple dress, bearing in her arms a large box of pastries from a Portuguese bakery. She had olive skin, tanned a shade darker from recent travels, and jet-black hair cut just short of her jawline. But her most striking feature was her eyes. They were, in lieu of a better word, piercing. Brown and bold and brazen as they took in the star of "Probing the Membrane of Science."

She'd only even seen him on billboards and magazine covers, as she didn't own a television set. Professor Membrane, on his end, had never seen eyes like hers. They were round like saucers, and their hue made the scientist think of the cups of warm, spiced chocolate that his mother had set before him at breakfast every morning, when he was a little boy. He blinked at that memory, evoked so suddenly and so strangely. He hadn't drunk hot chocolate, a properly prepared Mexican hot chocolate, in years. In America, it came in packets and it was revolting. He had to console himself for the loss with tea.

"Traditionally, vampires need to be welcomed into the home before they can cross over the threshold," she joked as he stared. Those were the first words Membrane heard her say, and there was something about the breezy and eloquent way she delivered the line that arrested the words "Vampires don't exist" before they could escape from his mouth. Then Dib poked his head out from behind his father's legs.

"You can come in, Ms. Pierce!" His boy child reached out to take her hand and pull her inside, while Professor Membrane inwardly scolded himself. Where were his manners? Where had his voice gone? And what, in the name of Darwin, was wrong with him? His Mama had taught him better than to gawk at a lady like that. If she were still alive, she would've clipped his ear.

Meanwhile, Dib had stepped easily into the role as host, taking his father's place as he showed her around and introduced her to the rest of the family.

"So this is Foodio, our cook, and Clem, our…um, cousin. He lives with us." Clembrane grinned dumbly and waved. Foodie relieved Ms. Pierce of the burden of the heavy pastry box, carrying it off to the kitchen. "And this is my sister Gaz."

"Hello," Gaz grumbled.

"I've heard about you." Ms. Pierce smiled down at the perpetually grumpy Membrane girl. "Did you beat level thirteen in Transylvania Massacre 2 yet?" Gaz looked up in surprise. "I have a friend who can get you the cheat sheet, if you're interested."

Gaz blinked at her. "I…uh…no thanks. I prefer the challenge."

"I'll show you my room!" Dib announced excitedly, tugging on Ms. Pierce's arm. "I'll show you that footage I was talking about! Come on!" And up they went, up the stairs, out of sight.

"She's okay," Gaz said to her Dad, who was still struggling to locate his lost vocal chords. That was the best compliment Gaz had ever granted a stranger.

At the dinner table, Ms. Pierce presented the family with her full life story. She was renting an apartment in the city, above an antique shop. She earned her way as a wordsmith, and dabbled in sketching, painting, and photography on the side, for fun. She wrote using a typewriter instead of a computer, to stay focused and not get distracted by chatrooms. She struggled with insomnia and more often than not stayed up most of the night writing. She'd travelled around the world, and had gone as far as Chile in South America, where she'd miraculously survived a recent, horrendous earthquake and returned home unharmed, unlike many less fortunate tourists. She wasn't married, and had never even been engaged. She was estranged from all her relatives except for an older cousin, also banished from the family sphere, for the crime of being homosexual. He lived in France with his partner, and Ms. Pierce stayed with them once a year, a three-week vacation in which, she joked to the Membranes, she shamelessly overindulged in high culture, wild company, and decadent desserts.

The whole time she spoke, both father and son stared. Dib's eyes were sparkling with lovestruck adoration, while Membrane's were clouded over with astonishment. How could a woman so worldly and bright squander her intellect penning monster stories? She could have been a lecturer at one of the great universities! She could have been a professor, of literature or history. She could have had an office, titles, a plaque on a cafeteria wall. But she had become a horror writer instead. The Professor just couldn't understand it. That, and the smell of her perfume, whatever it was, was making his head spin.

She was full of little tidbits of information that peppered her dinner conversation. "Did you know that Mary Shelley thought of the idea of Frankenstein during a dream? It was during a thunderstorm, right after she and her friends had stayed up most of the night discussing the most controversial scientific innovations of their day, like Luigi Galvani's attempts to bring dead frogs to life through electric shock. Perfect circumstances for sparking a work of classic literature, wouldn't you agree, Professor?"

"But wasn't she also inspired by the myth of Prometheus?" Dib spoke up before his father could say anything. "Not to mention the devil getting his butt kicked out of heaven in Paradise Lost."

"Pretty darn weird cocktail of inspiration, isn't it?" Ms. Pierce replied, smiling at the boy, clearly impressed by his wide range of knowledge.

"Yeah. All that's missing is an 'edgy' mix tape," Dib said.

"It was the eighteenth century. What do you think Beethoven's job was?" she asked.

"I dunno. Having a funny accent?" They both laughed. For the very first time, the Professor felt a spark of jealousy towards his son, for the ease with which he and Ms. Pierce conversed. He felt left out, as he had as a child, when the other kids wouldn't talk to him at lunchtime because they didn't want to listen to his ramblings about quantum physics or flesh-eating viruses. Talk about something normal, freakshow, they'd spat. But he had nothing else to talk about. He had nothing else, period.

Ms. Pierce soon became a regular guest at the Membrane table, and with each visit, the bond between her and Dib solidified even more, while the polite, civil distance between her and his father expanded. When Ms. Pierce's typewriter broke, it was the son she asked to fix it, not the father. When she had a new idea for a written or visual composition, it was Dib whose opinion she sought first, not Membrane's. It was Dib's friendship, Dib's conversation, Dib's store of knowledge of the morbid and grotesque that kept bringing her back to the Membrane house. And it was into Dib's bedroom she disappeared after dinner, and they would stay in there for over an hour, studying his paranormal research, flipping through his magazines, discussing theories, laughing over jokes no one else in the household understood. Meanwhile, Professor Membrane suffered in resigned silence.

"Dib, stop hogging her to yourself," Gaz scolded Dib in private. "Dad likes her too."

Dib had been so absorbed in the euphoria of having a real friend who shared his love for the supernatural that he hadn't noticed. "Too bad," he snapped, but then Gaz growled at him, and Dib relented with a squeak of terror.

Reluctantly, after yet another family dinner, he went to bed early so that his Dad and Ms. Pierce could have a private late-night chat over tea. From upstairs, with his ear pressed to the floor, Dib listened to his father brutally botch the opportunity he'd been given. Out of social ineptitude, or just plain nervousness, the Professor failed to engage his guest and instead launched into an hour-long, nonstop rant about his latest projects at the lab, rarely pausing for breath, rarely allowing Ms. Pierce an opening to offer any input. At the table, Ms. Pierce uncomfortably clutched her mug of tea while sneaking glances at the clock on the wall. Upstairs, Dib cringed and silently pleaded for his Dad to please, please, please just stop talking. His plea was ignored.

"Thank you for the, uh, invigorating conversation, Professor," Ms. Pierce said later, one foot already out the front door. "Have a good night."

"Y-You as well, Vivian. Have a good night." Gaz and Dib watched her leave from Gaz's bedroom window.

"I told you," Dib whispered to his sister. Meanwhile, Professor Membrane stood awkwardly in the doorway, watching Ms. Pierce's retreating figure right up until it disappeared around the street corner. He hit himself in the head when he was sure she was out of hearing range.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid—!" The tea date had not gone as he'd hoped. Not as he'd hoped at all. He couldn't help himself. Once he started talking about science, it was like a volcanic eruption. Impossible to stop. It left little room for his true feelings to be made known.

Things hadn't been so difficult with his wife. Like their daughter Gaz, she'd been a woman of direct action. No beating around the bush, as the saying went. She'd approached him first, kissed him first, and taken charge during all their, ahem, private time together. He still remembered how frightened he'd been on their wedding night, how he'd sweated and shivered under his tuxedo jacket as her hands reached out to unbutton the high collar that concealed his quivering mouth.

"Relax, Nic. It's just me." As if that little fact made the whole experience, and the prospect of disappointing his new bride with his inexperience, any less nerve-wracking. But it became easier, and far more pleasurable, over time, and they'd even gotten inventive with it…before the pressure, and failure, to conceive a child put a damper on things. She'd wanted a big family, at least four children. He'd made her two in his lab with their combined DNA, when all their natural efforts fell flat and every month brought bitter disappointment. He'd wanted so badly to make her happy. And he'd wanted them to enjoy themselves between the sheets again, too.

Professor Membrane, a proper gentleman in mind as well as in manners, tried to force himself not to imagine such carnal intimacies with Ms. Pierce. They were not married, nor were they courting, so even thinking about it was highly inappropriate. Still, beneath the scientist's garb, he was a hot-blooded man like any other, and it had been a long time. It was impossible not to notice the way her skirts hugged her hips, or to not lick his dry lips every time he passed by a flower bed. He'd found out from Dib that Ms. Pierce dabbed rose oil on her wrists and neck. That was the perfume that so intoxicated him. That's how she smelled, earthy and rosy. He wondered how he smelled to her. He wondered other things as well, like whether she preferred coffee or tea to wake herself up first thing in the morning, and if she wrote her stories at a desk or in bed, propped up by pillows. He wondered if she towel-dried her hair or used a hairdryer. He wondered if she arranged her clothes in her closet by color, as his wife had done. He chided himself for these foolish, dangerously intimate little curiosities. Your focus should be on science, not a woman's daily domestic routine! Get a hold of yourself, man!

But he couldn't stop thinking about her. The cries of his lonely heart were louder than the demands of his brilliant mind. For hours on end he tormented himself trying to find the right words to express his affection to the famous authoress. He practiced while he mixed chemicals.

"Ms. Pierce…Vivian…if I may speak freely, I believe that you and I are like two halves of one brain. I am the left half. Scientific, analytical, rational, while you are the right half. Creative, intuitive, and spontaneous in your craft and manner…"

His team of technicians and other members of staff were beginning to notice their boss's distraction. He dropped things. He made mistakes. He was more on edge than usual. They perceived that his attention was on something else besides the next big scientific breakthrough. They rightfully guessed it was a lady.

"About time," someone remarked, and the others chuckled. The Professor had been a widower for far too long. The man should have put himself back on the market long ago. They all wondered who it was, the dame who was finally luring Membrane out of his lab and his shell. She had to be something special, whoever she was.

One day, while he and his team were working, the Professor heard one of his technicians gasp. "WOAH! Who. Is. That?!"

Heads shot up, and another technician wolf-whistled appreciatively. The Professor looked up as well, and his goggles nearly cracked when he saw it was Ms. Pierce, in a blood-red sundress that made her pop out on the security camera screen. She was talking to the guard.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," the guard was saying snottily, sniffing at her. Clearly, he wasn't charmed by the dress or its wearer. "But Professor Membrane doesn't have time for—AHHH!"

Professor Membrane had zoomed to his lab's entrance at the speed of sound, shoving the guard aside, into a bush.

"VIVIAN!" He chuckled awkwardly as he quickly straightened his coat, adjusted his goggles, smoothed back his antenna-like hair. "What a pleasant surprise!" Meanwhile, his employees were watching everything on the screen. At once they all guessed who the Professor's big crush was, and they sniggered and nudged each other.

"I'm sorry to bother you at work, Professor—" she began.

"Oh, no, no, no, don't be sorry! My work can wait!" He cleared his throat. "What can I do for you?!"

"This is, uh, a private matter, Professor. Something I've been meaning to ask you." She had her hands clasped behind her back, and she swayed her body slightly, almost flirtatiously, making the skirt of her dress swish around her knees.

The technicians watched intently in anticipation. Professor Membrane was perspiring under his coat. "Y-Yes?" His wife had initiated their relationship this very same way, to ask him to be her date to a dance. Back then, the Professor, just plain, gawky Nicholas Juan Membrano at the time, had left behind a puddle of sweat on the school hallway floor for the janitor to mop up.

"It's about Dib," Ms. Pierce said.

Professor Membrane's elation crashed like old software.

"Dib, my…son?" he asked, quietly, as his brain cells hurriedly reassembled themselves after such a striking blow.

"Well, yes, unless you know someone else named Dib," Ms. Pierce joked. Seeing the scientist's bewilderment, she began to explain. "You see, it's like this. I'm…no longer interested in continuing my First Bite series. I'd like to begin a new novel, centered around aliens." And here she smiled. "Your son's inspired me. I'd like him to help me, as my assistant, after school and on the weekends, of course. I'll pay him fairly for his time."

Professor Membrane blinked behind his goggles as he struggled, simultaneously, to process this information and digest his tremendous disappointment. She wasn't here to express any romantic interest in him. She was here to offer his son a job.

"Oooooo. Tough luck, prof," one of his technicians remarked. The others sighed and shook ther heads. "Poor guy," whispered someone else.

"I think this project would be good for Dib," Ms. Pierce was saying now. "He seems like the type of kid who loves a project."

The Professor gulped down the lump that had formed in his throat. "I-I agree," he stammered. "He is…"

"I know you don't approve of paranormal studies, Professor, but this is just fiction—"

He waved a gloved hand dismissively. "It's fine. It's perfectly fine. It will take his mind off that silly school rivalry with that foreign student."

"You're a good father," Ms. Pierce said, and Membrane's face burned behind his lab collar. "I wish my Dad had been like you. When I was Dib's age, he—"

She stopped herself, those splendid eyes of hers suddenly tearful. She didn't finish. She didn't have to. The Professor understood at once. The Professor could have told her then that at twelve-years-old he'd gotten beaten up in his town by some older boys, and they'd stolen one his prosthetic arms and hung it from a phone line, where he couldn't get at it. People were so cruel when children were at their most tender age. He could have told her that, as he'd told his son many times before.

But his tongue lost all feeling in his mouth. He wished he could build himself a better tongue like he'd built himself better arms. He wanted a tongue that could convey to Ms. Pierce how completely and utterly smitten he was with her, a tongue that would ask her if she wanted to have dinner sometime, at a nice restaurant, just the two of them, with no children and no robot help present. A tongue that would assure her that his intentions were entirely honorable. A tongue that would confess to her outright that he wanted to marry her, someday, sometime in the near future, and make her happy. Make her proud to be Mrs. Membrane. Make her forget whatever unspeakable things her horrible father, and family, had done to her.

"I'm sorry," was all he managed.

"Don't be," she answered. "You had no part in it."

"Is there, uh, anything else you wished to discuss?" he asked hopefully.

She shook her head. "Nope. Nothing at all. I know you're a busy man. I won't take up any more of your time." He wanted desperately to tell her that all his time was hers to take, if she wanted it. "I have to scoot, anyway. I'm doing a reading at the coffee shop on Main Street at three-thirty." She gestured to herself. "What do you think? It's from a flea market in Paris." Before he could answer, she smacked her own forehead. "Ugh, what am I doing?! Asking a world-famous scientist what he thinks of a dress! You've got rockets to build, diseases to cure, yadda yadda yadda!" The Professor's knees were weakening beneath him. "I'll tell Dib the good news the next time I come to your place for dinner. I'm sure he'll be thrilled!"

He was. Dib bounced off the walls when she invited him to help her write her next book. "I'D LOVE TO, I'D LOVE TO, I'D LOVE TO—!" Professor Membrane had to get him off the ceiling with a broom. He flew straight down into Ms. Pierce's arms. "Thank you, Ms. Pierce! Thank you for choosing me! I won't let you down! I'll be the best writer's assistant ever—!"

Professor Membrane's smile was strained behind his lab coat, though of course, Ms. Pierce and his family couldn't see it, nor could they see the hurt in his goggled eyes. His Mama had been right. His lifelong habit of hiding himself was costing him dearly. It was costing him what could have been his second chance at love. Meanwhile, his lucky boy child was getting his first, and he was embracing it fully.

That evening, once safely back in her apartment, Vivian felt very tired as she dropped her bag to the floor and stripped off her jacket. She checked her answering machine. You have three new messages, the robotic voice droned.

One was from her publisher, to confirm a meeting they'd made for that week. The next was from her cousin Eduardo in France, asking how she was settling into her new place, and if she wanted him to send her anything, and the third was from Dib, exuberantly thanking her for the hundredth time that night for the opportunity to work with her. She would answer them all later. As usual, her typewriter at her desk beckoned her invitingly, but she wasn't in a writing mood, nor did she have the energy to tackle her usual pile of fan letters and correspondence from friends abroad. She wanted, more than anything, a hot bath. Within minutes she was climbing out of her clothes and climbing into the full tub of steaming water.

She sighed blissfully as she sank in. "God, I would kill for a cigarette," she thought. But she felt too lazy to get out of the tub to dig one out the desk drawer. She wanted to stay like this forever, submerged in this beautiful warmth, cut off from the outside world.

Her mind foggy and wandering, she ran her fingers lightly across the bite marks on her bare thigh. They used to be red, but the years had diluted them to the purplish hue of a bruise.

"He'll show up soon," she sighed to herself, resigned to the inevitable. Naturally, as if on cue, the giver of those marks chose that night to come visit her, while she was busy at her desk, tapping away on her typewriter. Her bath had grown cold, and now, so was her apartment.

"I'm not inviting you in, Luc," she said. She didn't even turn to look at him. She knew he was there, at her window, watching her. She could feel him. "Not tonight. Leave me alone."

Lucas floated there, frowning. He couldn't enter her home without her permission. That was the rule. He could hover there all night, until the dawn, where he would have to vamoose if he didn't want to be burnt to a crisp like a piece of unattended bacon in the frying pan. But then he would just show up the next night, and the next night, and the next night, until she gave in, which she always did.

"Haven't you missed me, my love?" he beseeched her in his usual cooing way.

"No," she blatantly lied.

"I have new material for you," he offered. "Some interesting stories to share. Don't you want to hear them?"

Typical. Trying to bribe her like she was a child. "Keep them," she replied. "I'm not writing about vampires anymore. I'm done. I'm tired of it. I'm switching to aliens."

His soulless, ink-black eyes widened in disbelief. "You're joking. Tell me you're joking."

"I'm not."

"You can't be serious," he insisted. "You're the only writer who portrays us properly. We need you to be our voice."

At last she turned to look at him, leaning her elbow on her desk, serving up her hardest warning glare. "I said I'm done. Read my lips. I'm done."

Her history with this creature was long, dark, and complex. She'd first met him at age twelve, when she'd accidentally summoned him rather than a demon meant to put a curse on her abusive father. She'd recited the spell wrong, one syllable off. Apparently, that made all the difference.

"I wanted a demon!" her twelve-year-old self had sulked, stamping her foot. "You don't look like a demon!" He was too handsome to be one. He looked like a prince, with those perfect chiselled features, those fancy clothes. A different type of little girl would have swooned right away. She, however, felt betrayed.

"Appearances are deceiving, my girl," he'd told her sweetly. "My name is Lucas. What is yours?"

"Vivie," she'd answered.

"Short for Vivian?"

"Yes."

He smiled at her, his pointed teeth gleaming. That smile had chilled the room. "Then you must call me Luc."

She'd refused his kind offer to make her father suffer on the demon's behalf. She wanted her father cursed, not drained of his blood. That was too quick and merciful a punishment, for everything he'd done to her, her mother, and siblings. Stubbornly, she recited the spell again and got it right that time. The hideous demon that appeared was, luckily and coincidentally, an old friend of Lucas's.

"Do something for this poor girl, won't you, as a favour for me?" Lucas had asked. The demon was more than happy to curse the desperate child's father and make him believe he was being haunted by the vengeful spirits of every chicken he'd ever decapitated with his axe. The demon also made every sip of alcohol taste like chicken blood. Her father had drank like a fish, so that was a far worse fate than the nonstop clucking of poultry ghosts.

This was what Vivian had wanted. She wanted her father to go mad. And he did. She thanked the demon with a box of Laffy Taffy. And the vampire she…thanked, again, politely, hoping to never see him again.

But the vampire kept a close eye on her from that point on, from afar, like a guardian angel, or a predator stalking its prey. He'd sensed the fiery spirit that reigned in that odd, deeply troubled girl-child who spent most of her time hiding from her family, scribbling gruesome fairy stories in her notebooks. He wanted to fan the flames.

At age fifteen, he showed up in her life again to help her run away from home, after her family—minus her father, who'd died from a heart attack shortly after going completely insane from the curse—had discovered her involvement in the dark arts and had locked her in the cellar, where she was meant to stay until the town priest got confirmation from the Vatican to perform an exorcism on her.

Vivian had considered suicide, at the time, but then Lucas's voice, whispering through the vent, as he could not enter the house without a resident's permission, offered her freedom instead. In exchange for his assistance, she'd had to let him bite her thigh and taste her blood, which marked her as being in his debt for life. She'd agreed. It hadn't hurt any more or less than her father's beatings. It hadn't hurt nearly as much as slashing open her wrists with a piece of broken bottle glass she'd found would have. In fact, she'd enjoyed the pain. She enjoyed freedom from her family even more.

Lucas had the courtesy to wait until she was a nineteen-year-old bar waitress—and, occasionally, when she was short on cash, an artist's model— before seducing her fully. She'd let herself be seduced by him. She'd submitted herself body and soul to his masterful mouth and hands. He, in turn, put forth a significant amount of effort to ensure Vivan's success as a writer, as she would not accept any monetary help from him.

"You have a gift, darling. Don't squander it," he'd told her.

"What am I supposed to write about?" she'd asked.

"Why, what you know best, of course. Me." A strange, nonsensical, disorganized relationship developed between them after that. Friends, lovers, collaborators, a pain in one another's backsides…it depended on the night and the mood in the air. What was solid was that he was her ticket to the vampire underworld, her doorway to an archive of useful information. By his side she attended Satanist meetings, sacrifices, initiations, parties in seedy nightclubs, and masquerade balls in decrepit mansions. She carried around a pocketbook with her wherever she went and took diligent notes, like any good student. And from those notes came a first draft, then a second draft, then a final draft. Then, a spot on the bestseller's list, and more money than she knew what to do with. Then came more research and more notes and more books, all revolving around vampires, and the adventures of a young human woman trapped in their dark realm, unable to decide whether or not she wanted to fully succumb to their evil and let her vampire companion bite her neck, thus transforming her into one of their kind for good, and dooming her to cursed immortality. The critics called her work "deliciously fearless." Young fans like Dib Membrane called her a genius.

Everything she saw and learned and actively participated in made it into her books, one way or another. And she kept on falling into Lucas's arms, into bed with him, one way or another. He was an addiction, one that was harder to shake off than nicotine, and that she'd attempted to do several times. She knew that he had others, other women whose innocence and trust he'd struck a hard bargain for. Asking loyalty from a vampire was like asking a thief to limit himself to stealing from just one venue. She found herself not caring that much, and she'd never been faithful either. There had been other men, other forgettable dalliances that had come and gone. But on the nights that he was hers, he was hers, and she was devotedly, blissfully, regrettably his.

It had been exciting and fun in the years of her early youth, not knowing when or where he'd appear. Wherever she went in the world, for a vacation or for work or both, he found her, haunted her, possessed her, took her out and about, disappeared with the sunrise, and then reappeared another night of his own choosing. Now, after over a decade of playing the game, it had become just plain exhausting, and annoying. She wanted out, but wasn't sure if there would be anything worthwhile to get out to.

A few years ago, she'd made an attempt to break things off with Lucas for good. She'd made her sentiments clear. I need a long, long break from you. He'd respectfully left her alone for a while, and she thought she was finally free, but then he'd shown up in Paris, and tricked Eduardo's boyfriend into letting him into the townhouse. She'd come back dead-tired from a draining evening of arguing with other writers in a café and stopping a drunken, heartbroken acquaintance from throwing herself in the Seine—a typical Parisian night on the town—to find him lounging on her bed, smoking one of his gold-rimmed cigarettes and waiting for her.

"Bonjour, Vivie. You haven't published anything in awhile. Is Paris 'inspiring' you, or do you need my help again?"

If she'd had a bottle of holy water on hand, she would have dumped it over his head. But she only had wine, which they ended up drinking together, because despite everything, she'd missed him.

And she appreciated how he'd saved her life during the earthquake in Chile, four months later, when she'd gotten tired of Paris's snobbery and hopped on a plane to South America. Like a hero from a novel, he'd shown up in the nick of time to carry her out of the way before she was crushed to death by a statue of Pablo Neruda. A writer killed beneath the weight of another writer. That would have been an ironic way to go. It made some damn good material for her next book, though.

The downside was that the incident only made it even harder for her to refuse him. Now, through the window glass, he was looking at her in that way that made her mouth dry and her skin break out in goosebumps.

"I'll keep my stories preserved for you, darling," he purred provocatively. "They are yours to accept at your will, as am I. I crave your company sorely this evening."

Vivian swallowed hard, and her willpower abandoned her once again. Would she ever truly be free?

One more time, she promised herself. Just this one more time. And then I'm done with him, and vampires. She reached out to unlatch the window. His smug grin was expectant, victorious. Lustful. He knew he'd won.

"Come in," she said.

Twenty minutes later, Vivian lay in bed, naked as the day she was born, and worn out from the mind-blowing sins against God they'd just committed together, and from the crippling guilt and self-hatred that always hit her hard afterwards. Lucas sat on her windowsill, smoking, his pants and long coat hastily thrown on to cover himself. He stared at Vivian's languid form with an expression equal parts affectionate and mocking.

"Am I really such a terrible vice?" he asked. "Do I not satisfy you?"

"Yes and yes," Vivian spat furiously, not turning to look at him. She hugged her pillow instead. "And I hate you for it."

"What would you do without me, though?" he teased her. "Marry that buffoon of a scientist?"

It didn't surprise her in the least that he knew about the Membranes, and the Professor's blaringly obvious feelings for her (she wasn't stupid, or blind). He was always spying on her. He chuckled lightly at her scornful glare.

"I can just see it now," he began. "Vivian Rosetta Pierce, a TV star's smiling little trophy wife. You'll be an alcoholic dying your grey hairs within a year." He took a long drag of his cigarette, his dark eyes never leaving her. "That's not you, darling." The words came in a cloud of smoke. "And you feel nothing for him."

He knew her too well, and he was right. She didn't. To her, Professor Membrane was Dib's father and nothing more. She liked him well enough as a friend, but she found him mind-numbingly boring, to be perfectly honest, and self-absorbed, though what else could you expect from someone who only travelled from home to work and back again? It was a shame, considering how imaginative his son was. As hard as she'd tried over the past few weeks, Vivian could not picture herself as Mrs. Membrane at all. Not as easily as she pictured herself as Dib's mother, though she couldn't ever be one without being the other.

Irritably, Vivian shifted in bed until she was sitting upright. "Pass me my typewriter," she demanded.

Lucas waved his hand, and the typewriter floated gently from the cluttered desk to the bed. As soon as Vivian caught it and set it in her lap, she began to pound furiously on the keys. Her vampire lover grinned with approval.

"See, this is you, Vivie," he said. "Hardworking and visionary—"

"Quiet," she snapped, eyes glued to the sheet of paper. Her fingers moved like lightning, flying up to shove the roller to the right after each sentence. Lucas took another puff of his cigarette and peaked out through her curtains.

"Hmmm. There's your little friend, coming up the street. Quite a big head he has. Is it a genetic defect?"

Vivan's finger froze in the middle of typing the word smiling. "Dib," she breathed. "Go away. Now."

He raised a questioning eyebrow at her. "You're not going to introduce—?"

"NOW!" Lucas obliged and vanished into thin air. Meanwhile, Dib was pounding on the door of the antique shop.

"Ms. Pierce!" Dib's voice called up to her. "Are you there?! It's me!"

Vivian quickly snatched her sweater off the floor, splashed some water on her face, and tidied her damp hair with her fingers. She prayed that when she stuck her head out the window, she'd look like an ordinary woman who'd been enjoying a quiet night in on her own, rather than a dirty floozy who'd been up to no good with a monster at least two centuries older.

"Hi, Ms. Pierce!" Dib greeted her, waving his arm and grinning from ear to ear. He held up one of her notebooks with his other hand. "You left this at my house, in my room! I brought it for you! I figured you'd need it right away, since you write at night and all! Also—!" He dug around his bag. "I brought some notes of my own for the alien novel project—!"

"Hold on, I'm coming down!" she called down to him. "Give me a minute!"

"Can't I come up?!" He wanted so badly to see where she lived, how she lived.

"Not now!" she exclaimed. "My apartment's a mess!" She scrambled to change into proper clothes, and snatched up her purse and keys. Then, she hurried down the stairs.

When she'd first met Dib at her book signing, she'd sensed in him the very same loneliness that plagued her own life. He must have sensed it in her too. They were kindred spirits, the pair of them, though he at least had a family that hadn't fully turned their backs on him. The last time her mother had made contact with her was ten years ago. She'd sent her daughter a scalding letter in which she called her a witch and the devil's whore and cursed the day she'd given birth to her. Lucas had called the letter "hopelessly melodramatic and unoriginal" and remarked it was a miracle Vivian had inherited any writing talent at all from such an insipid woman.

"What I inherited from her was her weakness for horrible men," had been her response. "She still loved that bastard." They'd been in bed together at the time, in a cold rented room made colder by her mother's hateful words. The letter had wounded her deeply. I put the curse on him for you, Mama. He hurt you too. There was no sense or gratitude in this world.

Well, maybe there was, a little bit. Dib hugged her when she made it downstairs, and she hugged him back, lifting him off the ground to spin him around on the street as they both laughed.

"Did ya miss me that much?!" she teased him, ruffling his hair after setting him down. "It's nice out. Let's go for a walk."

It was a half moon that night, a perfect Cheshire cat smile looming in the sky. It grinned down on Dib and Vivian as they wandered the empty streets, bouncing ideas off each other for the book they were going to write together. Dib was bursting with enthusiasm, his arms flailing wildly as he pitched plot lines, characters, elaborate settings. He invented entire new planets and worlds off the top of his head. Vivian listened attentively, though sometimes he spoke so fast that she missed a word or two.

"You need your own pocketbook," she told him. "You need to write this all down." She would give him one, she decided. An early Christmas present.

Dib suddenly stopped in front of a lamppost, and his mood flipped from excited to mildly embarrassment as he leisurely swung around it. "Hey, uh, I wanted to talk to you about something else…"

"What's that?"

He stopped and looked at her. His expression was apologetic. "My Dad."

"Ahh."

"You know, don't you? That he likes you? Like, really likes you?" he asked.

"I suspected," she confessed.

"I'm confirming," he replied. "He's crazy about you." He'd overhead his Dad's cringeworthy "two halves of the same brain" speech. He prayed to whatever deity was listening that Ms. Pierce would never hear it.

"Hoo boy." Vivian sighed, and her mind scrambled to come up with the right words to explain to this boy she was growing to love that it was very unlikely that she would ever grow to love his father too. For one than one reason. "Dib, honey, listen—"

Dib raised a hand to stop her. "You don't have to say a thing, Ms. Pierce." Vivian blinked in surprise. "I know he's really weird and full of himself. But he's super sensitive too, so if you could let him down gently, my sister and I would really appreciate it. That's all we're asking."

Thoroughly relieved, Vivian smiled as she put a hand on Dib's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "I hope this doesn't affect our professional relationship in any way."

"No, no, of course not. We're cool." Together, the writer and the writer's assistant continued their walk, and their animated conversation, down the street, with only half of the pair aware of the shadow that followed them. Lucas, perched on a rooftop, smirked when Vivian scowled at him over her shoulder, and mouthed go away, before turning her attention back to Dib.

"Aliens," the vampire mused to himself, shaking his comely head. "Garbage. Total garbage. This won't last."

And with that, he faded away into the night. He was confident that his lovely little Vivie would come to her senses soon, and remember her debt to him, which, as he would have to remind her, one way or another, was for life.

The End

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