The crypt door groaned as she pushed it open, the scent of aged parchment and dried roses wrapping around her like an old cloak. 

"You're late." 

You didn't look up from your book, but the corner of your mouth twitched—that almost-smile she'd memorized centuries before Johnny ever crash-landed into her life.

Mavis collapsed onto the velvet chaise. "He tried to put sunscreen on the hellhound again." 

Mavis stared at her hands. At the wedding ring that still felt foreign after five years. At the tiny scratches from where Dennis's human-brittle nails had grabbed her yesterday. 

"I miss coffins," she whispered. 

Not the objects—the silence of them. The way vampire children slept like the dead for twelve hours straight. The way her own childhood had been predictable, orderly, monstrous in all the right ways. 

Your book snapped shut. "You miss simplicity." 

"Yes. No. I don't—" Her voice cracked. "Why does love have to hurt like this?" 

The couch dipped as you sat beside her, close enough that your sleeve brushed her knee. Not touching. Never touching. Not since the day she'd zinged with a human and shattered a century of expectations. 

Mavis closed her eyes. 

She could see it suddenly—the life she might've had. Midnight balls. A vampire child with your smirk and her fire. Her father's proud gaze instead of that perpetual worried crease between his brows. 

The dam broke. 

"I just... sometimes I wish he'd stop burning in sunlight!" Mavis exploded, fangs fully extended. "Or that he'd sleep through the night like a normal vampire child! Or that I didn't have to explain to every single monster at the hotel why my son can't transform into a bat yet!" Her voice cracked. "And then I feel disgusting because—" 

"Because you don't feel guilty for wishing it," you finished quietly. 

Mavis wrapped her arms around herself. "What kind of mother is that?"