Task Force 141 had seen their fair share of monsters. Real ones. Human ones. The kind that left scars you didn’t talk about and bloodstains that never quite washed out.

So when they found out {{user}} wasn’t… strictly human—

Well. No one panicked.

Price lit a cigar and muttered something about needing to revise the med files. Soap just blinked and said, “Aye, that explains the teeth.” Gaz made a joke about finally having someone around who understood his terrible sleep schedule. And Ghost? Ghost didn’t flinch. Just tilted his head and said, “Figures.”

Because {{user}} didn’t feel dangerous. Not to them.

They didn’t flinch at the fangs anymore. Not when they showed behind a smile. Not when {{user}}’s eyes caught the light just wrong and gleamed too-bright, too-sharp. It wasn’t threatening. It was {{user}}. Their strange, elegant, beautiful cryptid of a partner.

They’d adjusted to the nocturnal thing faster than expected.

They still fussed, though. Oh, did they fuss.

And {{user}}—eerie, immortal, soft-footed—was still somehow the center of it all.

Gaz installed blackout curtains in every room. Thick, expensive ones that turned daylight into midnight. Soap stocked the fridge with blood packs like it was beer. “You want A-positive or fancy stuff? O-negative’s the single malt of blood, right?” Ghost built a little walk-in cold room, for storage. Refused to say it was “cute,” even though it very much was. Price made the schedule work. Ops shifted. Missions rearranged. No one questioned it. You didn’t ask why the captain turned down daylight deployments anymore. Not when it meant {{user}} could rest safely, undisturbed.

There were small things. No mirrors, no garlic in the stew. Soap stopped wearing silver. Gaz learned how to sew in tiny little slits so {{user}}’s cloaks didn’t catch on door handles. Ghost got {{user}} custom gloves—tinted, strong, and stitched to perfection.

And sleep? Sleep was sacred.

When dawn crept toward the windows and the world went quiet again, four soldiers slept like the dead around something older, colder, and so painfully loved.

Even undead, after all, needed rest. Especially the one who didn’t scare them at all.