“Is everyone nestled in cozily and warm?” I asked my girlfriends. I had taken place in the center, with Em and Ria to my flanks. Since I always turned off the central heating for the night it did quite quickly become chilly so I wanted to make sure everyone was nice and hot.

“Mhmm!” Ria nodded as she snuggled up to me a bit more. Her nose tickled a bit against my arm. She’d sobered up a bit after having been woken up on the sofa, but now she was clearly ready to doze off again.

“I am too, plus I got a Shima.” Em replied. Shima had jumped on the bed just after we got in and was preparing to sleep in between Em and I. That said, she’d probably move around quite a bit during the night.

Ria tried to lift herself a bit off her pillow, so she could see our little cat. She smiled once she managed to sneak in a glance. “If you move, can we get more cats?” She laid back down.

“Hmmm… I don’t think Shima would like more cats, to be honest.” I answered Ria’s question. “Although she is still pretty young, it might work. What do you think, Em?”

“I’m not a cat expert but I do think it might work, it really depends on the cat I suppose. Why do you ask, Ria?”

“I mean… If Rora gets a big house… it would feel a bit empty without cats, wouldn’t it?”

“What about kids…?” Em suddenly shot a question into the group that I hadn’t seen coming.

“Oh.” Ria rolled over so she was with her back against the mattress. “I don’t think I want kids.”

“Me neither.” I replied rather quickly. It’s not like I actively disliked kids, they just are… a bit weird.

“Phew, okay… I don’t want kids either.” Em smiled. “We should probably have talked about that earlier. It can be somewhat of a relationship breaker.”

“I can imagine.” I nodded. “It’s an important decision. Getting a cat is too, but kids are on a completely different level.”

“Mhmm.” Ria nodded in agreement.

“What I do think I might do is continue Alessia’s thing with adopting children to give them a better chance at life, though. I think that’s pretty noble. But maybe just have them live as families under the same roof, not as our kids. But that’s a distant future kind of thing, so we don’t need to worry about it that much for now.”

“We still have plenty of time, and you’ll have Alessia to help guide you through it.” Em agreed. “Speaking of whom, have you gotten any news yet on that plan she was working on?”

“No, not yet, but then again, it has only been a couple of days. She’ll probably give us some news during the weekend.”

“It’ll be interesting what she comes up with.”

“Mhmm, indeed.” I softly nodded. “Isn’t that right, Ria?” I looked over to my right and saw that Ria had dozed off completely. Her battery must’ve been completely drained.

“Is she asleep?” Em lowered her voice a bit.

“Yeah, she is.”

“Probably not a bad plan for us to start sleeping, too, then.” Em smiled at Ria and then cuddled up to me.

“Hehe, probably not. Nini Em.”

“Good night Auro.” She gave me a kiss and then closed her eyes.

I decided to do the same while Shima started purring softly.

Falling asleep as a vampire was still quite a weird experience, as it constantly felt like I could wake up at any time while still being able to dream and having the notorious sleep time-skip. I guess you could describe it as a very fluid kind of sleep.

“Roraaaa.” Ria woke me up gently and with a very low voice. When I opened my eyes, it was still pretty dark.

“Hmm? What’s wrong, Ria?” I rubbed my eyes with my right arm and then slowly sat upright. “Can’t sleep anymore?”

She shook her head. I doubt that she could see much in this darkness.

“I tried to but I’ve already been awake for an hour.”

“Hm, did fall asleep during the movie yesterday, so that’s probably why… Want me to go to the living room with you?”

“If you don’t mind…”

“Of course I don’t.” I gave her a head pat. “Let’s just be silent so we don’t wake up Em, okay?”

Ria nodded and cautiously crawled out of bed. I followed her out shortly after and put on a hoodie while taking another one with me towards the living room for Ria. As I didn’t want to turn on the light here for Em’s sake. Shima in the meantime had found a spot on top of Em’s legs and didn’t make any advances to leave her cozy sleeping place.

“Want some chocolate milk?” I asked when we reached the living room. But before I walked over to the kitchen’s countertop, I handed over the hoodie to my girlfriend.

“Mhmm.” She nodded. “It’s a bit cold here.”

“Right, I’ll turn on the heating as well.”

While Ria pulled the hoodie over her head, I first walked over to the thermostat and put the temperature around 20.5° C. After that, I took out a pan and started to heat up some chocolate milk. The only kind of milk I allowed near my fridge.

“It’ll be ready soon.” I then joined Ria on the couch with her hot cup of choc.

“Thanks, Rora.” Ria still looked like she had it pretty cold, so I took a blanket from the blanket pile and threw it over the both of us. Ria almost immediately leaned into me after I did so.

“Are you going to be fine during the winter?” I asked, putting my arm around her so I could rub her arm. “It’s not even that cold yet.”

“Mhmm. I’ll just need some more Rora and Em cuddles to keep me warm.” Ria smiled and rubbed her head against my cheek.

“I think that definitely can get arranged. But for school, you might want to make sure to dress up even more warmly than you already are.”

“I’ll just wear another pair of leggings. And maybe an extra shirt or two.”

“Hmm, make sure not to put on too many layers, tho, or you’ll look like that tire guy from the commercials.”

“Awh, but that was what I was going for.” She softly giggled.

“Well, you would definitely be the cutest tire-guy look alike around, so there’s that.” I smiled and booped her nose with my index finger.

“Yay, I wonder if I can win a prize with that.”

“Em and I’s eternal love.” I gave her a kiss, which she leaned heavily into, although she was incredibly careful not to spill any chocolate milk over the two of us.

“That’s all I ever wanted.” She said when we finally pulled back from each other.

“Hehe.”

We spent those early morning hours doing pretty much nothing. Ria was just looking over my shoulder why I browsed some internet fora about news and memes, but there was nothing that interesting going on. We did find a couple of funny cat memes, though.

Around 9 in the morning, we finally heard some movement coming out of my bedroom. And sure enough, a minute or so later, a somewhat tired Emma made her way into the living room, bed hair included and with a Shima in her arms.

“Have you two been awake for long?” She rubbed her eyes with her free hand before she put it back around our kitten.

“An hour or two.” I said. It probably was a bit longer, but I didn’t check the time when I got out of bed.

Ria nodded at my reply. “I asked Rora to come with me because I couldn’t sleep anymore.”

“Ah.” Em yawned and then smiled at us. “You were asleep pretty early yesterday.”

I chuckled, as it was practically the same as what I had said earlier. Em must’ve picked up on that, as she didn’t question why I laughed.

“Do you want something to eat or drink as well, Em?” I offered, gently removing the blanket from on top of me.

“Hmm… I think I’ll take a shower first so I can wake up a bit. I feel pretty tired.”

“Oh… I should take a shower too!” Ria commented as well. “I’ll go after you’ve been, Em.”

“‘Kay.” She smiled.

“Okay, while you two get ready, I’ll go by the baker’s then so we can get some decent breakfast.” I stood up from the sofa. “Any special requests?”

Em waited a second, she’d already started moving towards the bathroom. “Just some bread is fine, but I wouldn’t say no if they had a little rice cake as well.”

“Bread is fine.” Ria nodded. “Do they sell tomato soup too or do you still have some here, Rora?”

“I still have a couple of cans.” I nodded in reply. “So just some bread and a rice cake?”

“Yep.” Ria and Em said at the same time, after which Em continued towards the bathroom. Ria stayed behind in the living room for a bit longer to await her turn, still underneath the blanket.

“I’ll just go and grab some money, after that I’ll be right back.” I gave Ria a quick kiss before I went over to my big coffer of obscene amounts of money to get a bill of 50 euros to buy bread with.

-I hope they have some change…-