Carving a week from the Unova League's off season to visit family was something Shauntal had put off for years. The off season just never seemed like an excuse to slack off, especially when working two jobs as both a member of the Elite Four and as a novelist. But she'd at long last done it, mostly at the urging of Grimsley, who promised to tend to her cats while she was away, which had always seemed one of the most troubling of elements when it came to whether or not she could actually leave for a week. Seven whole days staying with family in Nimbasa, doing touristy things and leaving behind all the pressures of work. In hindsight, it was just what she needed, pushing her from the stubborn insistence that she continue just working herself dry, and she decided to take another vacation to come visit when she could.

But now Shauntal was back home, and ready to spend a long time just adoring her feline Pokemon before hitting the word processor hard and using all the high spirits to really hammer out something good. Though there were no feline ghost-types, the specialist kept a myriad of them as pets, unable to resist the utter adorability of anything cat-like, as evidenced by the many embarrassing things she owned without a shred of shame or irony. In fact, as she opened the door, the first thing she called wasn't to her house-sitter to see if he was there, but for her Meowth. "Brontë?" she asked as she stepped through the doorway, hauling her luggage clumsily through the frame. "Shelly? Byron?" She called for her Meowstics next, and heard nothing from them. "Gibson?" Her Espeon finally came strutting toward her, staring for a moment before noticing that her hands were occupied and thus unable to give him any kind of affection, at which point he just turned back around and ignored her.

Sighing, Shauntal finished walking in, setting her luggage aside and not even bothering to call for her three other cats, knowing that the second she flopped down onto her bed they'd all come rushing to her anyway. Instead, she looked around the apartment, having had doubts about letting Grimsley house-sit, for fear of the mess he would leave or the damage he might inflict upon her Netflix recommendations. He said he would drop by a few times each day, feed the cats and give them some attention; he was only a few blocks away, so it was hardly a problem for him considering his day consisted of doing nothing except falling ass-backwards into money he'd lose come Saturday when he hit up the casino and overestimated his alcohol tolerance. Such a cycle was so consistent that she set her watch by it, and claimed Palkia itself had ordained some universal calendar that his back-and-forth mess of a fortune just so happened to coincide with.

But there was certainly evidence he'd been there for longer than a spell or two each day. Cardboard and styrofoam takeout containers sat in a pile that looked more precarious than the mountains of books that seemed to line every surface of her home, making it feel rather cramped when it was in fact incredibly spacious. It indicated he'd certainly been around for longer than it took to just fill up her food bowl, which was fine, but the sheer volume of them made it seem like he had instead camped out in her house instead of his own for a whole week. It was an unsettling enough thought that she couldn't even admire how well stacked it was and the cosmic coincidence that had to go into none of her cats knocking it over when her mountains of battered paperbacks occasionally formed massive, room-wide avalanches as the laws of physics reigned supreme.

A peek into the living room found the coffee table crushed under such a downfall.

She was about to head to her bedroom when she heard a voice, the first instinct being one of terror before she realized that it was Grimsley's, that he had indeed stuck around her apartment, but worryingly had not chosen the living room as his haunt. It wasn't words, just a low hum of understanding, but in the silent house she picked it out just fine. Walking over a fallen hardcover, she moved quickly toward the bedroom. "I know you can't afford socks, but if you did anything to my Netflix just because you're too broke to-"

All of the bluster of her snark, which by that point was the summation of their entire interactions, was interrupted by finding Grimsley sitting not only on the edge of her bed, but holding open a notebook she would have much preferred nobody ever see ever. On its cover was the innocuous sounding "Scribbler 17", and it was where, during long periods without challengers, she would start hammering out the first drafts of her stories, passing time before she could go home and type them up, the words already there on the page instead of having to be found in her mind. None of her colleagues or friends actually knew what she wrote, and she shirked around the issue constantly for very, very good reason.

"Oh good, welcome home," he said, his voice dipped into the low smugness that already had her balling her fists. He looked up from his book, which he held like the high society twit he still pretended to be, tilting it down as his other hand scratched behind the ears of her Purrloin, Austen. "I hope you'll pardon the intrusion, but for a home with so many books, so few seem worth reading that I haven't already gotten to, at least until I found these in your bedroom. And I have to say, I have found these writings far, far more fascinating than any old paperback detective story could ever be."

Shauntal tried to find words through the stammering fury. She would most certainly not pardon the intrusion, but she could barely find an adequate amount of venom to properly relay just how angry she was, and she refused to speak until he understood loud and clear just how deep that vein ran. While she didn't keep her published works and drafts particularly hidden, it was her bedroom, and there was no reason for him to be in there. But before her mouth could open to at least scream at him until she was red in the face, he began to read.

And it was even worse than if he just continued talking, and she knew few things in the world as bad as that.

Jasmine clung tightly onto Volkner, moving slowly as she ran her hands through his short hair, peppering his jawline with kisses. He preferred to let her move, to let his slight girlfriend set their pace as his hands ran softly along her tender form, lifting higher the loose dress that had become her trademark look. She clearly had something to say; it lingered on the tip of her tongue and he could almost feel it whenever he returned her kiss, but he let her get to it on her own time. It was his casual approach to just about anything; he was fine going at whatever pace she wanted, so long as he could hold her close and feel her warmth.

She waited until she was at a good pace in his lap before asking. It wasn't an easy question to ask, but she had to; it had been lingering for so long in her mind, a thought she couldn't shake, an experience that seemed so undeniable that she couldn't pass up the opportunity. Once she was there, shifting atop his cock enough that his head was craned back and she could hear him sucking in ragged, quivering breaths, she asked him clearly. "I know this is a little forward, and we haven't been dating very long, but can I join you and Flint tomorrow?"

The question seemed so strange to Volkner in how much she had to muster up the courage to ask. "Sure," he said, furrowing his brow as he looked at her, his hands gripping her hips and helping her along as he kept a serious face and addressed her question. "We're just hanging out, nothing you can't join."

"Oh, okay then maybe not. Well, I probably should. I want to get to know him first. But do you think he would be okay with letting me join?"

"In hanging out? Sure."

"No, I mean like a threesome. You two have a side thing going don't you?"

"I was so disappointed to find that you left off there," he sighed, looking back up at Shauntal, who was red in the face by that point. "I assume the rest is on your computer, but you took that with you, and I imagine it has a password. Smart girl; you never know what creeps out there might want to invade your privacy."

"You're unbelievable," she spat, striding forward as she stared him down, the higher ground doing very little to make her seem more intimidating. Nothing about her purple bob cut or her ovular glasses made her look threatening, and the black shawl meant to resemble the outline of a cat's head completely undercut any threatening nature her appearance may have had. "This was why you did it for free, wasn't it? So you could snoop around and find out what I write?"

"No, I did it because I can't afford Netflix," he said, lips curling into a teeth-baring grin as he looked over toward her bedroom TV, which had the main menu up. "I kid, I kid. I'm a compassionate and generous friend, Shauntal, I did it from the bottom of my careless heart. And speaking of careless hearts..."

He flipped twenty pages back with such speed that is finger must have been ready to change to it at a moment's notice. Had he been waiting here the whole time, pages chosen for the maximum amount of torment upon her? She would have accused him of having too little of a life if not for the fact she was suddenly very aware of the fact she was surrounded suddenly by cat Pokemon all named after her favorite authors, who now peered curiously at her as she fumed.

Grimsley continued.

Hilda needn't ask for anything in return as she moved up from Cynthia's quivering snatch to her breasts, seizing them ample flesh and kneading it as her lips pressed hungrily against them. She needed no return, no fair play; she was in bed with her idol, with the woman who had inspired Hilda and taught her through her long tenure as Sinnoh League champion that girls could kick ass, gave her a goal to aspire to as she too went to challenge the Unova League. All of the terrible, long nights in shitty tends suddenly seemed worth it, because she could leave kisses along every inch of her idol's gorgeous body.

And as much as Cynthia would have liked to return the favour, to part the tomboy's legs and give her oral so good she would be unable to form her lips around coherent words for a while, she was content with the worship, almost used to it by now. At some point Hilda would tire or take a break, and then she could strike, repay the favour to her even if she stubbornly insisted that this was to be her night.

The opportunity presented itself before long, Hilda pulling up from one of her nipples, having sucked firmly on the hardened nub for quite some time, a little spent and ready to take a minute just to rethink her game plan, to find somewhere else on the beautiful blonde she could kiss. "I never thought I'd be in bed with Cynthia," she said, thrown off her game in starstruck awe that, once again, Cynthia had grown used to, and Hilda seemed like she would be good company once the initial shock faded, and Arceus knew she could use some compelling companionship in her Unovan villa, all of her friends rather busy, and she did want more from the girl and just sex.

Not that it wasn't high up on the list.

Leaning forward, she pushed Hilda down, smirking as her baseball cap flopped up a little, exposing her forehead as Cynthia seized her toned legs, licking her lips and smiling wickedly. Hilda did nothing to stop her, and was actually rather certain she had no power to, as she felt the Sinnoh champion's tongue take its first lick up her primed folds; she hadn't touched herself this whole time, and the need had steadily risen within her, finally coming to its sweet peak as she surrendered to Cynthia, moaning and grabbing the blankets as from that very first touch, she realized that nobody had ever eaten her out quite like Cynthia was about to.

"I wonder how Cynthia would react to knowing you've been writing her having risque dalliances with our new champion," he said, toothy smile back up toward Shauntal as he milked the situation for every smug drop possible. He had no intention of stopping, because in the endless snark war between the two trainers, he had finally found the edge. The perfect weapon, so incriminating and without justification that she was left to boil over with no response, likely buying him a few days' ceasefire while she planned her next vicious move, but no backlash could make the absolute golden look of rage on her face not worth it, so he soaked it in while he could before escalation stepped in viciously.

"She's the one who told me," she said, more shameful than anything as she loosened up. There seemed no point in being angry if all he'd found was notebook seventeen. So many of her other notebooks and even her currently published stories, which sat on the shelves of the room amid everything else. Maybe he hadn't found the ones she would really regret. Hoping to distract, she continued the conversation, swallowing nervously as she tried to walk the tightrope of self-incrimination and secrecy. "Sometimes over coffee, Cynthia will tell me stories about her exploits. A few other friends will as well; the ones who trust me with their stories, that is."

"Even knowing you'll novelize their sex lives?" His fingers fiddled with the corner of the notebook. It was incredibly cheap and flimsy; he would have invested in something a little more durable himself, but then he also wouldn't have been chronicling the sex lives of everyone he knew.

"It's inspiration. They give me their stories with the knowledge I'll use them. A good writer seeks out new experiences and learns about their subject matter, but I'm not the kind of girl who'll go around sleeping with everyone just for 'research', so I have to get some experiences from my friends. I know it sounds strange, but then again I'm sure that the mere concept of friendship is foreign to you." She made a play for the notebook, grabbing it from his hands and pulling it free from his grip. She tossed it carelessly behind her, letting it hit the wall with a thud, then the carpeted floor with a duller one. "Is that enough ritual humiliation for one day, now? I'd like to relax a little, but my bed is infested by a bigger pest than a hive of Joltiks."

"Just one more question," he said, wearing his shit-eating grin like a badge of honour. He'd saved the best for last, and if her reaction was this good already... "I've read a couple of your published works, but you don't use the names of real people in those. Are these just things you write for fun?"

Seeing no way out, Shauntal surrendered the information to him, intent on dragging him by the throat out of her house afterward if need be. "I use their names as placeholders. It lets me ascribe faces and personalities to them, and then I can go through and change all the names and specifics about them later. It's lazy, but especially when I'm writing from peoples' real experiences, it helps me visualize the scene better. Now can you leave?'

"Well then that would certainly explain this." He pulled a nearly pristine paperback from behind him, and Shauntal nearly fell to her knees in agony. Moonlight Rapture was her bestseller-or rather, that of Paige Phantasm-and of everything she wrote, it was the absolute worst thing he could have pulled off her shelf. "I have never read a piece of vampire literature so compelling before, but then again I don't feel like I've ever fully identified with a male lead in one quite as well as I do with 'Greg'."

"No," was her sole reply as he opened up the book, but she already knew he was going to do it no matter what she said.

The stake finally fell from Sharon's quivering grip as the vampire embraced her. He was all the colours of a roulette table tailored into one perfect suit. Fitting, considering the experienced witch was tempted to go all in on the gamble of accepting his advance as he showed off his teeth, as much to rile and frighten her as to add a dark charm to his comment. "One of us will be impaling the other tonight, my darling, but it looks like you've already decided who you want it to be." She shouldn't have enjoyed the line, so corny and terrible, but there was something in his voice, in the faintest of accents from a noble line long since fallen into ruin and faded from history like the ink that originally chronicled its old line. It compelled her to press in harder against him.

"You've done no harm to any innocents," Sharon said, trying her best to keep composure as she did a terrible job at being a monster hunter. Only two weeks into her work and she was already being charmed by a vampire; whether or not it was one who deserved a stake through the heart mattered little in regards to her will, which was apparently not so iron-clad after all. "I have no reason to kill you tonight."

"Tonight," he said, letting the word, with all of its pride and implications settle upon his tongue. He savoured it like fine wine, upper lip lifting off of his teeth once more to remind Sharon that to Greg, she was fine wine. "Oh, that is a wonderful attitude to have. I've met so many people over the centuries who simply don't have the courage in themselves to have goals, but you clearly have one, mage. As it so happens, I am another such driven individual, and I've a goal that is of great interest to me right now. Would you like to hear it?'

She wanted to be defiant, wanted to call up the primal forces of creation and drive him off of her even if it meant burning him to cinders. He may not have deserved it, but magic was a potent force, firing up every self-preservatory instinct in her bones, telling her to fight back against his charms, because if she could fall so easily into the arms of a vampire who didn't kill innocents and meant little harm, what would happen when she went up against one who could? One who had lived for so long due to their craftiness and ability to seduce even the fiercest of hunters? This wasn't the message she wanted to send, and everything about his smug, insufferable demeanour said that word of this conquest would quickly reach the rest of the supernatural community, that the fresh-out-of-her-studies mage who ran the secondhand magic bookstore and fancied herself a monster hunter had succumbed to him. Her story would not be one of her sexual follies.

But then his body tightened against hers. So firm, so warm. How was he so warm? He was a vampire, he should have been cold and repulsive, his every touch so chilling and lifeless that it shunned anything the sun could touch. And yet it radiated heat throughout her as he stroked her cheek, slipping his fingers up to push the bridge of her glasses back into their rightful place at the top of her nose. And before she could pull up some incantation and rain thunder down upon him, she found herself saying, "Yes," with all the desperation of someone who may as well have been tossing their head back as far as they could and scratching open their own neck to give him a head start.

"I want to taste the warm, intoxicating blood of a mage. I've never tasted one before, but I hear the flavour is like nothing else in this world. That the magic tingles and surges through you as you feed on it, that you find a little bit of strength from the pure power you're ingesting. And here is a gorgeous little mage who can't get enough of me, who stumbled back into my lair after realizing I wasn't a threat, and I have to wonder if maybe she's just looking to be my fix. You're so gifted with words, how would you like to describe what kind of addiction you want to be, my dear? Are you heroine? Anna Bolica? Nymphetamine?"

Sharon's jaw quivered as his words sank deep into her. She wasn't even sure how much of this was vampiric charm and how much of it was heated lust threatening to boil over. There had been no reason to return to the vampire, there had simply been something about him she had to look into more deeply. It was perhaps that same something that guided her, no corruption or magic clouding her mind as she leaned her head back wordlessly. The rapid beat of her heart thudded in her chest, and even if he wasn't flush against her she knew he would have been able to hear it.

"Pick wisely," he purred, leaning forward and kissing her neck. He sought her pulse, sought that throbbing, juicy vein to drink from like a junkie in reverse. "You have until I find your pulse to come up with a clever name and prove you're more than just a pretty snack."

"You wrote vampire porn of us."

Grimsley put the book down, and the shit-eating grin across his face was indomitable. Shauntal had her head hung in shame as she stood there, knowing that whatever was coming next was what she deserved. He'd found her secrets without much trying, and she could actually buy the innocent mistake of him finding it while simply looking for good reading material in her bedroom under the logic that if a book truly took her, it would be next to her bed, unable to be put down until the absolute last minute. Loathe as she was to admit it, she probably would have done the same. But now any indignation she had came undone as he showed to her proof that he knew not only of what she wrote, but that one of the stories was so thinly-veiled a reference to the two of them that she'd left the first two letters of their names lazily intact.

"You know," he said, and she dreaded whatever it was he was about to tell her what she knew, "There are easier ways to ask for a date than to publish this and then proceed to not tell me about it for..." He closed the book and looked at the back to where the copyright information was. "A whole year and change, remarkable. And this is a series, as I understand it, given the remark in the back about the soon to come sequel where Sharon and Greg encounter a Fae princess locked in eternal slumber, and I can't imagine for the life of me who Caitríona could be."

"Put the book down," she sighed, defeated and embarrassed, realizing that Grimsley had remained only so that he could mock her before leaving, drawing the agony out. And if he was going to leave, she wished he just would instead of making such a production out of her shame.

"I read all the way through of course; call me a narcissist perhaps, but when somebody puts to paper four hundred pages of a complicated masturbation fantasy about me, it seems remiss to not at least humour it and discover what the writer has imagined me doing for her this whole time. And I have to say, of all the many things you believe me capable of in this book, which delve into some rather dark and lurid places whose implements I know no reputable stores to buy from, you at least succeeded in getting the details of my interests absolutely correct."

"Is there a point to this?" she asked, resigned to this face but refusing to play his game. "You had your fun, now you can go rub money all over yourself before you get too shitfaced to not bet it all on a pair of fives tomorrow night."

"Oh, there is quite a point, my darling."

"Fuck you."

"You seem to think I'm only here to mock you for what I found. While it is always the greatest of treats to win one of our little exchanges, I could well have marched indignantly out upon making my point, could I not have?" His fingers slid between each other, hands settled down into his lap as he drove further home his mockery, the portrait of smugness. "It would be very flattering to assume that you merely wrote 'Greg' in my image and demeanour because you, as many others have given my illustrious love life, recognize that I am the epitome of a dark and tragic romantic hero, in the face of whom women can hardly control-"

"If you have a point, then get to it, before we skip to the part of the story where the tragic romantic hero 'accidentally' falls into traffic." Shauntal was up close now, conflicted by what exactly she ought to feel and how best to express it. Anger and shame were the primary two, circling in confusion around one another as they tried to win out.

His smile shifted from the one she knew, from the unbearable self-satisfaction and pride into something more genuinely charming. It was a rarer sight, but a powerful one, making Shauntal grit her teeth as she tried to keep her mind focused on the issue at hand. "Well, simply put, if you're still not going to just ask, then I will do it myself. Shauntal, you shambling wreck of a human being, will you go out with me?"

Shauntal expected more mockery, some stinging remark with some real finality to it, one he'd likely spent several hours thinking up before cackling to himself for several more. But this was something else. Something heavy and startling, making her gasp and nearly stumble back in confusion as she wondered if he had actually asked that question. There was no way he had. "W-what?" she managed to spit out, the woman who used words as her tools suddenly at a total loss for them.

"My point exactly." He leaned forward, the charm dialing up even further as he watched the furious and quivering red in her face give way to an embarrassed pink. "You can write a novel about your feelings for me, but it took looking for good reading material in your bedroom-which I promise was my intention-to discover how you feel about me. So, I'm making the first move for you, to alleviate some of that distress."

"A real date? With you?" Shauntal felt like she had been transplanted into some bizarre world where somehow the most embarrassing things about her life could suddenly propel her toward her desires in ways she never had the courage to work toward. Had she angered any trickster spirit Pokemon on the way home from Nimbasa?

"Well, I wouldn't call what I had in mind a 'real' date. Real dates are for women I seek to impress, rather than ones who already know all the disappointing truths about me. So perhaps instead, something more to your pace; I could pick up a nice bottle of wine and some Kantonese takeout from around the corner-that you kept that incredible place a secret from me is something I will never forgive, however-and we shall simply stay in and watch movies. While we sip nice and fairly expensive wine from the cat-themed mugs whose handles are tails, which seem to make up the only things you have in this house to drink from."

"That actually sounds wonderful." Shauntal shouldn't have been able to speak. Her chest was tight, her heart was pounding, head raced in panic and joy and possibility all at the same dizzying and exhausting time. Words should have failed her, as evidenced by the fact she didn't even notice she was leaned back against the wall until she tried to look back over her shoulder to see if her audience of cats were still around. Grimsley had indeed inspired the hero of her story with good reason, and it was hardly just that he so clearly modeled his look after that of a vampire and a roulette wheel. All of her fantasies and feelings were poured into that book, and now it had driven him to ask her out on a date so simple and appealing to her that she half-expected him to add that when the movie was over, he would give her a massage while reading to her.

She was so terrifyingly close that it frightened her.

"There is one catch, of course. I would like you to read a segment of your story to me. In my lap, preferably. Whatever you change into, you had best not be wearing anything beneath your pantyhose. That scene in the book store inspired me."

He was up before she could respond, before she could give him a piece of her mind or even settle on exactly what her mind was at that moment. She was a mess and he had played it all perfectly, leaving her to squirm in agony as he strode out, promising to be back in the evening, leaving her with about four hours to settle in and clean up, particularly the mess of books covering the couch. Speechless and stammering long after she heard the door close, Shauntal had little idea what to do about any of this or how to respond, even if he was already gone. There was so much to say, so many things to address and probably apologize for given the circumstances, and her mind could barely register just how much there was to process.

Had Grimsley seriously asked her out on a date?