runaway vampire prince and plant gf

[mercuryhatter]

Because teenage me isn't the only one with wacky OCs.

“They didn’t tell me this place came with the creature of the black lagoon living in the basement.”

Lea sighed softly, the small puff of air crackling against her lips. While she’d been slowly absorbing the growing light and humidity for several days now, she still wasn’t nearly hydrated enough speak, let alone move, or deal with loud people in her nest. Whoever was speaking spoke far too loudly, and they were slurping something as well. The liquid sounded thick, and occasionally was accompanied by squishing noises, like footprints in mud.

“Okay,” the speaker said, after a few minutes of quiet aside from the slurping and the squishing through which Lea stayed silent and immobile. “But I’m claiming the basement in a few months.” The speaker dropped something heavy on the floor, which by the sound it made as it hit was the source of the squishing, and tromped back up the stairs. The thing on the floor smelled rich and damp, and Lea’s slowly waking tendrils crept out to it, pushing through its soft bits and anchoring on the hard ones.

With this sort of treat, she might be awake by March.

---

If she was being honest, Horatio had totally forgotten about the guy she left in the basement, not to mention the sleeping-or-possibly-also-dead plant creature she’d found there. Even in this subtropical helllhole, the nights were still long and cool in late February, and the itch of summer’s approach under Horatio’s skin had her half-manic to settle in before the days lengthened and the heat set in. She made near-daily excursions to the local campsites and forests for snacks, and the rest of the time she spent exploring her new town.

Technically, she’d only bought the one building-- three stories and a shallow basement, faded brick with a painted “pharmacy” sign still visible on the side-- but the rest of the town was totally abandoned. The buildings were falling down and the medians were overgrown, the Georgia forest encroaching on the margins. An interstate still ran through downtown, but it was so infrequently used that Horatio could consider it the occasional convenient takeout. No one lived here, no one knew Horatio lived her, and she could kill anyone who found out, which filled every one of her needs. She’d even killed the realtor as soon as the papers were signed, which brought her back to his body in the basement.

Well, she’d expected his body in the basement. Instead she found a few stray bones and a slowly waking sentient plant.

The plant woman had been brown all the way through the last time Horatio had seen her, looking like nothing so much as a pile of dead leaves aside from the tracery of a face-- open-mouthed and snoring slightly-- and limbs curled in the center. Now she was almost entirely green, practically lush, and sitting up, which revealed that in fact most of the plant matter had not been part of her body, but just a sort of nest that she’d been sleeping in. The woman herself was thickly built with curly fern-like tendrils sprouting from her head, shoulders, and arms. Her limbs and fingers seemed more like vines than human appendages, jointless and twining. Caught in her hair and her fingers and scattered around her were the dry white remains of Dan the realtor, reduced to bone in the two months that Horatio had been busy completely forgetting about him.

“Cool,” she said appreciatively.

Lea didn’t have enough elasticity in her face to raise an eyebrow yet, but she somehow managed to convey the general expression anyway.

“I’ve been surprised coming out of dormancy before but that’s not usually the response it gets,” she said.

“Well, it is cool,” Horatio said, slightly defensive. “What kind of weird thing are you, anyway?” Lea sniffed, annoyed.

“The creature from the black lagoon, wasn’t it? I know who you are. Very loud, you are.” Lea ran her fingers through her hair, removing stray phalanges and a few teeth. “Anyway, you’re one to talk.” She motioned, using a broken ulna as a pointer, at Horatio-- red eyes, near-translucent skin, fangs.

“Hey, I don’t eat people.” Horatio paused, clearly reevaluating her statement. “I mean, you know, actually consume their fleshy bits. I drink people.” She cocked her head. “That’s better, right? That’s totally better. Anyway, I’m Horatio. I own this building now. You can stay, but I’m kicking you out of the basement in a month or two. Only one window to cover.”

“‘You can stay’?!” Lea mimicked incredulously. “I was here first.”

“Ah, but I’m here legally,” Horatio said, lifting a finger triumphantly. “I knew doing this above-board would pay off. I didn’t think this was how it would pay off, but I knew it was going to somehow.”

“Horatio?” Lea asked, after a pause while she disentangled a metatarsal from somewhere in the region of her leg, and stood up. Horatio nodded, expression bright. Lea sighed. “I’m Lea. You can have the basement. I’ve got to photosynthesize.”

“Better you than me,” Horatio snorted. She started to pace the basement, unwinding an industrial tape measure with a zing of plastic and metal. Lea edged out of her way, looking skeptical, but Horatio appeared to be ignoring her completely now. Lea took that as a blessing, gathered up as much of the pile of leaves and organic matter that had been her nest as she could hold, and brought it with her up the stairs.

---

Horatio wasn’t actually at all sure how she felt about the photosynthesizing roommate she had accidentally acquired. If Lea had been a human squatting on the property Horatio would have eaten her without hesitation. As it was, the plant girl most likely wasn’t edible-- she certainly didn’t smell like food-- and Horatio got the feeling from how she moved that killing her wouldn’t be as simple as snapping her neck. She’d probably just regrow her head, maybe two just so she could level her grumpy sleepy-eyed glare on Horatio by double.

And that was the other thing. Horatio had never met anyone like Lea, and she’d met a lot of other weird paranormal creatures in her life. She didn’t know anything about Lea-- whether she was part of a species that had stayed remarkably hidden or whether she was some abandoned science experiment, whether she was always carnivorous, how she could die, if she could die. It was intriguing, and all alone out here in the rural wasteland of forgotten Georgia Horatio felt she could use some intrigue. As long as Lea stayed in one place, Horatio could be fairly sure that she wasn’t going to tattle on their location. Hell, depending on how long she’d been asleep, it was possible Lea had no idea what was going on in the paranormal world at all, which made her the safest possible roommate.

Horatio absently listened to the sounds of Lea bumping around upstairs. She’d gone to the top floor and it sounded like she was opening windows.

She’d just need to keep tabs on her, that was all. If Lea tried to leave, maybe then Horatio would find out the answers to some of her questions about plant-person physique. Until then, there was no reason they couldn’t coexist for the time being.

Horatio let the tape measure zip back into its plastic case and tucked it away. There was three months left until the official start of summer, and she knew that in this climate she’d be feeling the effects even sooner. Before that happened, she was intent on getting this place livable, and she knew from all the Google-Mapping she’d done before she passed out of wifi range that there was an Ikea in Atlanta three hours away that would still be open for a couple hours after sunset.

“Hey, Lea!” she yelled. “Do plant people have driver’s licences?”

Lea’s voice floated back as she started down the stairs, meeting Horatio on the second floor.

“What,” she asked flatly.

“Can you drive?” Horatio said, slowly this time, thinking maybe all the sleep had clogged up whatever sort of plant matrix Lea had for a brain. “Atlanta’s three hours away and Ikea is only open til nine.”

.