Bite Me.

8.

The first thing that Eren noticed when he woke up was that he was completely starving. His stomach was practically eating itself. The second thing he noticed, with great joy, was the fresh change of clothes at the end of his bed. He was feeling disgusting in his current state. His room had an ensuite, and he decided to finally work up the courage to use the shower. What if Levi wanted to feed on him while he was in there? No, he needed to. There was no getting round it- he stank. He managed to keep it under five minutes and wrapped a towel round his waist as he came out to find that Marzia was lounged across his bed.
'Hi,' she barely even looked at him, not seeming to be fazed by his partial nudity. 'I thought I could do something fun with you today, since Levi's out all morning.'
'He is?' He couldn't help his face from falling- why was it doing that? Surely this was a good thing- no feeding and no fear of death?
'He does have a job, you know. Remember the whole vampire head of London thing? There's been some trouble with a food source somewhere. Anyway, let's do something.'
'Like what?' He pulled on the shirt, obviously one of Levi's as it barely covered his torso and he couldn't do up the top two buttons. Honestly, they probably weren't used to being done up anyway.
'Like... Hey, we can bake a cake! There's probably all the ingredients here and if not we can go to the shops.'
'I'm not allowed to leave,' Eren pointed out.
'You can if I'm with you. I doubt we'll need to go anywhere, anyway. There's always so much food in this house...'
'Wait, can't you not eat food? You are a vampire.'
'We can eat any human food, drink any human drink, and it'll taste exactly the same. It just has no nutritional value whatsoever. It's like delicious cardboard.'
'Sounds really nice. Can I get changed now?'
'Yeah.' She didn't make a move.
'Are you gonna leave?'
'Nah. Why would I?'
'Because I'm not wearing anything under this towel.'
'Chill. I'm, like, ten years older than you.'
He awkwardly pulled the pants on as quickly as he could, laughing when they ended up as three-quarter lengths. Thankfully they were much baggier than Levi usually wore, or else they wouldn't have fitted at all.
'You look like a twat,' Marzia commented, standing up and sashaying out the door. 'Come on.'

The kitchen was huge, but slightly ruined by the fact that it now held a disturbing memory for Eren; that of seeing Karim almost being killed. It was now spotless and so clean it wouldn't have been out of place in a show home. Marzia darted to and fro, gathering ingredients and equipment and poring over the recipe books, pulling them from the shelves with great gusto. At last, she found what she was looking for. She slammed the book down on the island and pointed to the recipe. 'Chocolate brownies' it read.
'That's not a cake,' Eren informed her gently.
'I know that,' she snapped. 'But I wanna make them! Crack some eggs and let's do this.'
He chuckled, surprised to find that he was actually quite enjoying himself. The eggs refused to cooperate and he managed to break four before he finally cracked them. Each time he broke one, Marzia hit him over the head with a spoon. His hair was still damp and kept getting in the way of his face, which caused great irritation when he was trying to to stir the mixture.
'Here,' she handed him a clip from her own hair. 'Do something with that. It's annoying to watch.'
'I... Don't know what to do with this,' he admitted, and she laughed and clipped his fringe back for him.
'Thank you,' he grinned and got back to work, slightly overstirring the mixture. They poured it into a baking tray and switched on the oven. While waiting for it to heat up sufficiently, Marzia quizzed Eren about his life.
'Do you have any siblings?'
'Nope.'
'Where do you go to school?'
'Park Hill.'
'Ooh, same as Levi! So have you ever talked to him at school?'
'He's in the year above me, actually. And funnily enough, he's always got those bodyguards around, so no.'
'Are you happy?'
He gave her an odd look; what a strange question. But a thought-provoking one. Was he? At that moment, judging from the buzzing in his chest from conversing with a semi-normal person for the first time in a while, and doing a normal person thing for the first time in two days, he presumed that he was.
'Yes. I'll be all the happier for getting out of here, of course.'
'Just you wait, Jaeger. Place grows on you like a mould.'
'Nice expression. So, you've never told me anything about you. Where are you from?'
'Italy,' she surprised him by saying.
'Really? You don't have an accent or anything...'
'I've been in England since I was twelve. So fifteen years.'
'You're twenty-seven?'
'Rude that you calculated that, but yes. Forever frozen at 16- such an awkward age, too. I look like a damn child and I never get served anywhere. That's actually a little of the reason why I'm here- I don't get treated like a child all the time.'
'Oh. So, how does a girl from Italy end up a vampire maid in London?'
'Well, would you look at that. They're done!' She grabbed the oven mitt and pulled them out. The smell filled the kitchen instantly, and Eren started salivating. It almost distracted him to the point where her brisk change of subject went unnoticed, but not quite. It might have worked with someone else, but to him it just seemed far too artful and convenient. She was yet another mysterious presence within the house... It was as if he was in a detective novel.