Alder Heights you’ve become my ceiling

Winter Break was something Safi had been looking forward to since the end of summer. She had the exact day penned on her calendar, obnoxiously doodled with hearts and flames and a hidden penis that she’d made Lazarus find when she sent a picture of it to him. She’d been sending him weekly reminder texts about how many days were left until he came home.

So when he finally did walk back through their front door, Safi couldn’t bring herself to do anything but spoil him with the love she’d been hoarding for the past several weeks. And spoil him she did.

There was a stack of new vinyls and a book he’d mentioned wanting to read tied with ribbon on the table. “Something for you to unwrap now.”

And a set of white lingerie under her little black dress, which she gave him a peek of with a twirl of her skirt, “Something for you to unwrap later.”

He seemed to appreciate both gifts with equal enthusiasm.

There was nothing Safi wanted more than to lock herself in the apartment with Lazarus and not come out again until spring. But there was a packed suitcase in the closet, and a plane ticket in her email. And try as she might have to pretend they didn’t exist, and just focus on Lazarus at least for this perfect night and reunion, there was no stopping her mind from drifting back to Zoya and the path ahead.

She was horrible for not telling Lazarus as soon as she and Zoya had decided. It was awful to let him come home and expect to spend the next two weeks enjoying being here with her. It was stupid that she’d dealt with all of this alone and not told him about Zoya’s near death experience when it happened.

She didn’t really have an excuse other than complete and utter cowardice. It crushed her. All of this did. But she’d been doing her best to grin and bear it, to take this on without flinching. Because that’s what Zoya needed. That’s what Eventide needed. What Raziyya expected of her.

She didn’t know what she was supposed to be for Lazarus. She didn’t know how to talk her way through this one. How did you tell someone you loved with all of your soul that you’d kept something big from them, and planned to leave town for the rest of the year? Just. How could she pick anyone over Lazarus?

And yet how could she not? She couldn’t rob Zoya of this last thing. The only thing she actually requested out of this whole exchange, other than Safi’s protection from the horror of being a new vampire. Safi knew that it would be impossible to uphold the latter, so she at least had to do this last thing.

There was the option of inviting Lazarus to come. She wanted to so badly. But it was just… wrong. Not the right time or setting. Plus pretty impossible with Lazarus’ stricter deadsleep hours. What would she do? Hide Lazarus in a closet and only bring him out as a dog around the family? That was so weird.

And it would impose something on this time with Zoya and her family that she didn’t think was fair to really anyone.

This was just one in a hundred impossible choices she’d made recently.

But one had to be made. So.

A few hours away from morning, laying curled against Lazarus’ chest on the sofa a piled under a giant blanket, Safi watched the end credits of Spirited Away roll by, staring blankly for a long moment before she finally spoke. “I’m going to turn Zoya on New Year’s Eve.” Said as if she was just telling him a neat fact about her day. She couldn’t look at him yet.

It was good to be home. Hard to say when this place had really started to feel that way, but it did, especially on the long weeks away at school. He could pay close attention in class, and when he did homework or research or papers, he could think of nothing else outside of what he was doing. But in the moments that lulled in between, where he was not reading fine print or finding a neck to sink his teeth into, his mind was here. In this building, with this woman. Under blankets, under skin, where even the longest night didn't sound long enough. Now, he would be here for days on end with her, just like this, and it would be over too soon.

Sooner than he realized, perhaps.

He was watching the movie credits as closely as he'd watched the film itself, always grasping at names and titles. The letters may as well have fallen off the screen when she spoke, and though his eyes remained on the screen, he was no longer watching it, eyebrows furrowing.

Zoya, the sister. Another point of childish jealousy, one that would become inflamed.

"...Oh," was all he said to start, weighing his feelings and his words carefully, preparing to guard what he could from his truth-seeking lover.