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angelhummel · 2 years ago

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*throwing this at my followers and running away*

I Found Myself A Cheerleader

another pezberry fic by me :)

Rating: E

Word count: 8220

Summary: Santana catches Rachel in a compromising position.

Canon divergence, assuming Santana moved to NY and enrolled in classes at NYADA much sooner. Set around mid s4

(Kurt and Tina are mentioned by name but not shown. Brittany, Finn, Brody, Puck, Jesse, and Cassie are referenced but not by name)

read on ao3

~~~

Santana strode down the hallway to her apartment, slowly rolling her head, then her shoulders as she walked. These dance classes were kicking her ass worse than she’d imagined. It was just because she was out of practice, she told herself. A few more weeks and she’d be back to her old self. Things would get easier. Then she could start dancing circles around everyone else in class and make them even more jealous of her than they surely already were.

The thought made her smile as she reached her door. Both roomies were out at the moment and wouldn’t be home til later. She was trying to decide how to spend her few short peaceful hours as she fumbled through her dance bag for her keys.

Maybe do some cool down yoga to help her unwind. Take a nice hot bath afterwards. Hell, maybe even rub one out while thinking about her new dance instructor with the perfect hot older bitch attitude and the abs to die for.

Santana finally made contact with her keys, pulling them out and unlocking the door, letting herself inside. She turned to slide the door shut, freezing on the spot when she heard a noise from further inside the apartment.

“Hello?” she called out tentatively, quickly adjusting her keys so they were sticking out between her fingers, her hand clenched in a tight fist around them. Just in case. She forced herself to step forward, inching closer towards the curtains that made up their three bedrooms. “Kurt? Rach? Who’s there?” She cringed at herself for immediately turning into the dumb first kill girl in every horror movie ever.

She was overreacting, she thought. It was probably just some mutated subway rat the size of her arm that wandered its way in and decided to make a nest out of Berry’s homeschooled chic sweaters.

Actually, she wasn’t sure if that was the best or worst case scenario.

The curtain to Rachel’s room fluttered, and Santana steeled herself to face down whatever was in there. She crept over to it, reaching for the edge to yank it back.

“Hey, it’s just - ME!” Rachel shrieked the last part as the curtain flew open and all she could register was Santana’s fist at eye level before she flinched away and clenched her eyes shut.

“Jesus fuck, Berry, you nearly gave me a heart attack!” Santana groaned, dropping her bag to the ground and tossing her keys on top of it. “Why the fuck didn’t you answer me? I could’ve seriously mangled your face.”

“I - I was about to, I just…” Rachel trailed off, gesturing vaguely to her room behind her. “I, um, was busy with something… Didn’t want you barging in.”

“Right, yeah, glad we avoided that,” Santana shot back, rolling her eyes. “What are you even doing home?”

“My last class was canceled. What about you? I thought you were still taking those extra evening lessons?”

“No, all my instructors thought I was spreading my awesomeness too thin so I’m just taking the regular courses now,” she replied. She looked back at Rachel, actually taking in her appearance now that her little adrenaline rush had passed and her heart rate was returning to normal.

Rachel’s hair was pulled back into a messy bun - heavy emphasis on the mess. Her cheeks were noticeably flushed, she was avoiding eye contact with Santana. And she seemed to be clutching onto the edge of her robe for dear life, keeping it shut tight all the way up to her neck.

A lightbulb went off in Santana’s head.

“What?” Rachel asked, her voice small as she chanced a glance up to Santana’s face. Just to see a knowing smirk quirking at the corner of her lips.

“Oh, nothing…” Santana shrugged. “I just get it, okay? Empty apartment, you thought it would be the perfect time for a little self care. No shame in it.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Rachel replied with a puzzled frown.

“Jesus, fine, you need me to spell it out for you?” Santana asked, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared at Rachel. “Self care? Masturbation? Nothing to be ashamed of, seriously. A little self exploration is totally healthy. Especially for someone as sexually repressed as you.”

Rachel’s cheeks got redder and redder the more Santana spoke. “Okay, you’ve made it clear that you have completely misread this situation!”

“Really? Your hair is a mess, your face is red, you’ve got that robe wrapped around you so tight it’s probably cutting off your circulation… And there’s no guy in sight,” she added, craning her neck to get a better look into Rachel’s room like she had to be sure. “So unless you’ve got Invisi-Billy in your bed, it looks like you did this to yourself.”

“I -” Rachel shut her mouth as quickly as she’d opened it, biting her lip as she fidgeted on the spot. Santana arched an eyebrow, wondering if she was going to say anything else. “Fine, you know what? You’re right. You caught me,” Rachel finally conceded. “I thought I would have the apartment to myself for an hour or so, so I thought I’d engage in a little self pleasure. Are you happy?”

“No, not really.”

“Well that makes two of us!” Rachel snapped. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, you can go take your shower, or whatever it is you do after class, and I will get dressed, and we will pretend like none of this ever happened.”

“Heard that one before,” Santana muttered, letting out a noise of surprise as Rachel actually tried shoving her out of her room. “Jeez, Berry, it’s not worth manhandling me over. Seriously, it’s not that big a d-” Santana cut herself off, her gaze dropping down to where Rachel’s robe fell open. Not like she was trying to get a peek or anything. And even if she had been, she would’ve been out of luck. Because instead of bare skin, Santana caught a glimpse of an all too familiar red, black, and white fabric.

Her eyes went wide, and Rachel blushed impossibly darker as she scrambled to fully cover herself back up.

“Berry, please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Santana said, reaching out to grab the collar of Rachel’s robe. Yanking it open to reveal the bright red WMHS logo across her chest. “What in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers is going on here?!” She took a step back, staring at Rachel in disbelief.

“Okay, listen, it’s not whatever jealousy or psychosexual reasoning I’m sure you think it is, okay?” she asked. She kept her head down, her gaze fixed firmly on the floor as she spoke. Far too embarrassed to even try and meet Santana’s eyes again.

“Well..?”

Rachel took a deep breath before continuing. “Tina sent me a picture earlier. Apparently she just joined the Cheerios,” she told Santana. “And I realized that meant I was the only glee girl that was never on the squad. And I remember you mentioning you brought your uniform with you, to have a reminder of your past life at McKinley. So I thought I’d try it on for a second and see how I would’ve looked, were I ever a member of the team. I was planning on putting it back before you ever even realized it was gone. It was just a little harmless dress up, that’s all.”

“Dress up? I mean if that’s your kink, fine, but you at least could’ve asked me first.”

“Santana!” Rachel whined, her head snapping up to look at her friend with wide, desperate eyes. “Is there any possible way we can move forward from this point without you making fun of me?”

“Hey, come on, who’s making fun of you? It’s just a little good natured ribbing. Friends do that, right?”

“Well it doesn’t feel good natured,” Rachel pouted. “I think I might actually die of embarrassment right now...”

“Oh, come on, me thinking you were finger blasting yourself in an empty apartment was way more embarrassing.” Rachel’s cheeks lit up again, and Santana just laughed when she turned on the spot to go back into her room. “Okay, okay, I won’t talk about that either! But seriously, it’s not that embarrassing. Either of those things. But especially not wanting to try on the uniform. I mean, the Cheerios were pretty much the only group you weren’t a part of in high school, right?”

Rachel stood in her room with her back to Santana, one hand on the curtain like she was ready to close it, but not moving to do so just yet. She nodded.

“Right, so, no big deal that you wanted to see what you’d look like on the squad,” Santana continued. “Seriously, Rach, it’s not a big deal, okay? This isn’t actually high school. I’m not gonna run off and tell all the cool kids what happened so we can laugh about it in a glee club meeting later. I mean, I guess I could go tell Humdrum Hummel, but he’d probably end up giving me a long speech about how I shouldn’t make you feel ashamed of your body or whatever the fuck.”

“That’s probably true…” Rachel replied, a barely there smile on her lips. She let go of the curtain, hesitating a moment before turning back around to face Santana. “Would you, um… Oh, it still feels so embarrassing. Wouldyoutakeapictureofme?” she asked in a rush, anxiously biting her lip again.

“Oh, uh, sure,” Santana replied, surprised at the request. She’d still been expecting Rachel to shoo her out so she could get changed. She didn’t even think she’d get to see the full getup on Rachel. Not that she was dying to or anything. No, obviously nothing like that. But she’d be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t at least a little curious to see how Rachel looked in her old uniform.

Rachel smiled when Santana agreed, pulling her into her bedroom and closing the curtain behind them. “We’ll take the pictures in front of the curtain - it makes a good neutral backdrop. Let’s see… Lighting, we need lighting,” Rachel muttered to herself, going around her room to set everything up.

Santana should’ve known that all Rachel’s embarrassment would melt away when it came to being photographed. But she let the other woman do her thing, until Rachel was handing Santana her phone, already in camera mode.

Rachel took her bun down, her hair cascading down over her shoulders as she walked back around in front of Santana. Santana’s gaze shifted to Rachel’s hands to watch her undo the tie on her robe, shedding it to reveal the full look.

Santana’s throat went dry. The uniform was custom made to fit her exact measurements, which made it the tiniest bit tight on Rachel. But that wasn’t something Santana was going to complain about. She glanced down, realizing Rachel had also put on sneakers to complete the ensemble.

Santana let herself indulge a little, her eyes slowly making their way up Rachel’s toned, tanned legs. It was always a mystery to Santana, how someone so short could have legs that seemed to go on for so long. Those schoolgirl skirts and flouncy little dresses Rachel always wore to school were bad enough. But the Cheerio skirt on her was positively lethal. Santana barely even glanced at the hints of skin peeking through the fabric slats of the skirt before she noticed Rachel’s hands clasped in front of her body, fidgeting together.

“So… What do you think?” she asked. Santana snapped herself out of her daze to realize Rachel was waiting for a verbal response. Seemingly nervous and… shy? That was a new one.

“You -” Santana started, her voice coming out breathier than she expected. She cleared her throat and tried again. “You look good.”

“Really?” Rachel asked, instantly relaxing at the compliment. “Thank you… I was worried I’d look silly. You really don’t think I look silly?”

“God, no, Rach. You look seriously hot right now.”

The blush from before came creeping back into Rachel’s cheeks as she smiled at Santana’s praise.

“Okay, okay, picture time!” Rachel clapped. She backed up to the curtain, facing Santana with her hands on her hips and a bright grin on her face.

Santana smiled to herself, snapping a couple of pictures of Rachel like that. “Very cute,” she commented. “But you have to give me a real cheerleader pose.” She watched as Rachel gave it some thought, then switched poses. Drawing a knee up and balancing on one foot, raising her arms up over her head in a big V. “Ooh, much better. Shake them pompoms, girl,” she teased.

“But we don’t have any - oh.” Rachel giggled, but held her position as Santana took more pictures. “You’re so bad…”

“You love me for it,” Santana said. She lowered the phone, so Rachel dropped her pose. “So, uh, who are the pictures for?” she asked curiously, feeling like she needed a distraction to keep herself from leering at Rachel any more than she already was. Talking about either of the two guys Rachel was somehow still juggling seemed like a good way to bring her down.

“No one,” Rachel replied quickly. “I mean, it isn’t like that. I just wanted them for my own benefit. And I suppose I’ll send one to Tina, since she inadvertently started this. Of course I’ll have to show Kurt - he’ll get a kick out of it.”

“You can send them to me,” Santana said with a slight shrug, hoping that would somehow make it seem like a casual and not at all weird thing to suggest.

“Really? You’d want me to send them to you?” Rachel asked. Her expression shifted from confusion to mischievous as a smirk slowly spread across her face. “Why? Something for your spank bank?” she asked, trying her hand at teasing Santana like Santana had just been doing to her.

Santana didn’t respond, feeling a lump forming in her throat with the way Rachel was staring at her right now.

“Oh my gosh, I was kidding!”

“Shut it, Berry,” was the only comeback Santana could muster.

“Santana, I had no idea you felt this way about me,” Rachel teased, twirling back and forth on the spot and making her borrowed skirt flare out with each move. “It’s nice to know you think I’m so attractive.”

“Berry, if you keep talking, I’m going to throw your phone out the window.”

“Aw, come on, San. What did you just tell me? Something about how this is all totally normal and it’s good to have a healthy sexual appetite -”

“Okay, I warned you.” Santana marched to the other side of the room, Rachel’s phone clutched tight in hand, heading over to the closest window.

“No!” Rachel exclaimed, chasing after Santana and snatching her phone back. “Those windows don’t even open, you know?”

“No, but I bet they break,” Santana replied flatly.

“God, Santana, is that really still how it is with you? You can dish it out but you still can’t take it?” Rachel asked, crossing her arms over her chest and arching an eyebrow at the other woman.

Santana didn’t answer at first, just looked Rachel up and down again to take in her full appearance. She let out a short laugh, shaking her head.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing… You’re just really embodying the whole cheer captain HBIC thing right now. It’s impressive, really.”

“Well I am an actress. It’s what I do,” Rachel replied, distracted from tormenting Santana now that she was being complimented again.

“True… But you’re missing something.”

“What?”

Santana turned to Rachel’s vanity, grabbing a brush and hair tie and waving them in front of her face. “The high pony, duh. You went to all this trouble to try the uniform on, you might as well rock the whole look. Otherwise it won’t be as authentic or whatever.”

She sat back on Rachel’s bed, making herself comfortable against the pillows at the headboard and gesturing for Rachel to come sit in front of her.

“I suppose you make a good point,” Rachel said, joining her on the bed. She settled in between Santana’s legs, her back facing Santana’s front.

Santana took her time in gently brushing through Rachel’s hair and gathering it all up at the crown of her head. Thankful for the fact that Rachel’s back was to her at the moment. She just needed to calm herself down. Stop her mind from racing to dangerous places.

Really, she didn’t know what came over her all of a sudden. Santana was in college. In New York. Santana was a grown adult now.

So why was she feeling butterflies like this was some stupid high school crush?

It was just the uniform, Santana told herself. Obviously it dredged up feelings for her ex and memories of everything they got up to in high school. But even as Santana tried her damnedest to redirect her feelings to a more appropriate place, all she could think about was Rachel. All the times she subtly (or so she thought) checked her out during glee practice, or a group trip to Breadstix or the Lima Bean. She thought about when Rachel showed up to class in her Britney costume, and how it seemed to jumpstart Santana’s whole sexual identity crisis. Even before that, in sophomore year Santana would often find herself staring at Rachel’s legs in those ridiculously short skirts during dance rehearsals before she was even totally aware of what she was doing.

Okay, the little trip down memory lane certainly wasn’t helping. Suddenly all Santana wanted was to get away from Rachel and really calm down. Whatever was going on with her right now, she didn’t need to add it onto the already strained and beyond complicated relationship she had with Rachel.

She wrapped the elastic around the ponytail and tightened it - possibly a little too hard, given the way Rachel hummed in response - and sat back against the headboard. The most distance between them that Santana could manage right now, given the fact that Rachel was practically sitting in her lap.

Rachel turned halfway around to look at Santana, and Santana was sure by the look on her face that she didn’t have the same tumultuous thoughts swirling around in her own head.

Of course she didn’t.

“So… How do I look now?” Rachel asked with a hopeful smile.

“Awesome…” Santana whispered. And then, without thinking, reached up with one slightly trembling hand to try and sweep Rachel’s bangs to the side. “You should wear your hair like this more often… You always have so much hair in your face, like, all the time. Someone could start to think you’re hiding behind it.”

“Maybe I am…” Rachel murmured. “I always thought that pulling my hair back would only serve to highlight my… beak.”

Santana’s hand dropped back down to her side, as her stomach started to twist itself into knots. Of course while she was inappropriately thirsting over Rachel, Rachel was just going through every insult Santana had ever hurled at her in high school.

Because when were they ever on the same page?

“Well that’s rude. And it’s just not true… Who said that?” Santana asked quietly.

“Oh, just some mean girl I knew back in high school…”

“Yeah, well… she’s not here anymore,” Santana whispered. She took a deep breath, forcing herself not to break eye contact with Rachel as she spoke. “Look, Berry, if you tell anyone I said this, then I’m throwing you out the window instead. But you’re hot, okay? Like seriously hot. You’d have to be blind not to see that.”

Rachel blushed - they’d both been doing plenty of that this afternoon, Santana thought - and smiled at the praise.

“Thank you…” she replied softly, her gaze downcast as she played with a loose thread on the comforter. “I was being flippant earlier, but it really does mean a lot that you see me that way now…”

“Not just now…”

Rachel froze, looking up to meet Santana’s eyes again. “Santana…”

Santana shook her head slightly, needing to snap herself out of this little bubble she’d created for herself and come back to reality. “You, um - We can take some more pictures now that your hair is -”

Rachel lunged forward, cutting Santana off with a kiss. Eager but not forceful, almost like she was expecting Santana to push her away.

Santana didn’t push. But she was too stunned to react. Before she really processed what was happening, Rachel broke the kiss herself.

“Oh my gosh…” Rachel whispered, her hand coming up to gently touch over her own lips. Looking as stunned as Santana felt, like she couldn’t believe what she’d just done. “I-I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me… That was very impulsive and I know I should’ve asked for permission first or - or given you a warning but I -”

Santana interrupted her with a kiss of her own. Gentler this time, just a way to wordlessly tell her it was okay, that she didn’t have to work herself into a lather over this.

Trying to convince herself of the same thing.

Rachel looked much more calm when they broke apart this time. She turned around completely, sitting on her knees and facing Santana fully.

“Well… this is certainly new for us.”

“No shit,” Santana replied. Doing her best to hide just how affected she was by the kisses.

Rachel wasn’t thrown by her attitude.

“New is good,” Rachel continued softly, looking into Santana’s eyes. “I mean, if someone told me three years ago that not only would you and I be living together, we’d be genuine friends on top of that, I would’ve thought they were lying. But our relationship has progressed leaps and bounds over the years and, well, here we are now… Who knows? Maybe this was the obvious next step for us?”

Santana just stared at Rachel, her brain still struggling to process their kisses, never mind whatever monologue Rachel was busting out to try and justify what they’d done. All she could do was nod her head once she realized Rachel’s speech sort of required a response.

“Obvious” was the furthest thing from her mind right now.

“We don’t have to have it all figured out right now…” Rachel said softly. “I know it’s a lot, and you don’t seem to want to discuss it at the moment, which is completely fine by me… I don’t know what this means for us. All I know is that I really want to kiss you again…”

“Rach?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever shut up?”

Rachel opened her mouth to answer, but Santana didn’t give her the chance. She pulled Rachel close again, taking whatever response she was formulating and turning it into a soft, muffled moan as their lips met once more.

No longer hesitant, no longer worried about being rejected, they let themselves indulge. Giving in to their desires, and letting the spark between them ignite into a full blown flame.

Santana’s arms wound tight around Rachel, and Rachel pressed closer against the other woman. Shifting so her legs were bracketing Santana’s, and she was sitting in her lap.

When Santana pulled away this time, it was to start trailing kisses along Rachel’s jawline instead. Her hand crept up Rachel’s back, up to the ponytail she’d styled just minutes earlier, getting a firm grip and using it to tilt Rachel’s head back, exposing her neck and giving Santana plenty of new territory to explore.

And explore she did.

Spurred on by Rachel’s soft little hums of pleasure, Santana let her lips wander over every exposed inch of Rachel’s skin she could reach. Paying special attention to each and every noise falling from Rachel’s lips, every shift of her body, making sure she knew what kind of reaction she got from every spot she kissed.

A kiss just below Rachel’s ear earned a sharp gasp in response.

Santana’s lips brushing over the curve between her neck and shoulder pulled a soft whine from Rachel.

An open mouthed kiss to Rachel’s pulse point - Rachel’s body jolted in Santana’s arms, a low moan escaping her lips.

“There we go…” Santana purred, a self-satisfied smirk on her face as she went back in for more. Kissing over the same spot, as Rachel’s grip tightened on Santana’s shoulders. Darting her tongue out to lick over it, making Rachel squirm in her lap. Sinking her teeth in and starting to suck at her skin, causing Rachel to cry out in pleasure.

“Santana…” Rachel breathed, her eyes clenched shut as Santana teased the oh so sensitive spot on her neck.

Santana just hummed in response, not wanting to let up until she knew she’d left her mark. She looped Rachel’s ponytail around her hand, getting a better grip and yanking her head back further, earning another moan from Rachel.

“Santana, please…”

That got Santana to stop. She kissed over the faint purple hickey she’d managed to leave, before looking up at Rachel through her lashes.

“Please what?”

Santana’s grip loosened on Rachel’s hair, so Rachel had enough room to tilt her head forward again. She just stared at Santana with heavy lidded eyes, her lips still parted but no more words coming out.

“Oh, now you’re speechless?” Santana asked, a teasing lilt to her voice. It was slight, but apparently enough to make Rachel blush. “Suddenly you’re shy about making demands?”

“Asking for a solo that I know I deserve isn’t exactly the same as… this,” Rachel whispered.

Santana chuckled at that, shaking her head as she looked up at Rachel. “Is that it? Think you haven’t done enough to deserve a little pleasure?”

Santana wrapped both arms securely around Rachel again, holding her tight as she sat up. Switching their positions, she laid Rachel back on the bed, their legs slotting together as Santana settled herself over Rachel. She leaned in closer, like she was going in for another kiss, but swerved at the last second and brought her lips up to Rachel’s ear instead.

“You want me to make you work for it, Berry?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

Rachel whined softly, shook her head.

“Well you have to tell me what you do want…”

“I - I want you…” she breathed. Santana tried to pull back enough to look down at Rachel, but the other woman tightened her arms around Santana’s body, keeping her in place. “I want you to - to stop teasing me, and kiss me, and - and touch me.”

“Better…” Santana whispered. Still attempting nonchalance to hide the way her heart jolted in her chest at the request from Rachel.

She rewarded Rachel’s bluntness with more kisses and nips to her neck, still making sure to focus on the spots that got the best reactions. Keeping herself balanced with one arm on the mattress, her other hand came up between them to touch Rachel. Running over the stiff material of the uniform, hesitating just a moment before cupping Rachel’s breast.

Santana knew from experience that it was difficult to get any real gratification from over-the-uniform touches, but Rachel still gasped at Santana’s actions. So she kept it at that for a few moments, sucking another mark into Rachel’s neck as she toyed with her. Squeezing gently, then a little harder, rubbing her thumb over her nipple, trying to see if any of it was working for her.

Just when she was about to ask if Rachel wanted to get the top out of the way, she had her answer.

Rachel’s hand came down to the wrong side of the uniform, fumbling for the zipper that wasn’t there.

“Please get this stupid thing off of me,” she said with a frustrated huff, pouting up at Santana.

“Fuck, you’re such a brat…” Santana muttered, reaching up to the right side and quickly tugging the zipper open. Easily ridding Rachel of the uniform top, and leaving her naked from the waist up.

Santana’s eyes roamed over Rachel’s half naked body, drinking in this new sight before glancing back up to meet Rachel’s eyes. Feeling like Rachel was waiting for her approval.

“Still hot, though,” Santana whispered. She moved down a little, kissing all over where she couldn’t reach before. Letting her lips lead the exploration over Rachel’s collarbones, her chest, the space between her breasts. Her hand slowly wandered up Rachel’s side, enjoying the bare skin underneath, but paused just short of groping her again.

“We can stop if you want to…” she told Rachel. Needing more than Rachel’s reserved silence before she was comfortable going further.

Rachel shook her head quickly. “Please don’t stop…”

Santana felt a sense of relief flood through her body, just knowing Rachel was into this. Into her.

She smiled, and leaned up to press a soft kiss to Rachel’s lips as her hand met her breast again. Repeating the same actions she’d done over the uniform top, for a much more enthusiastic Rachel this time around.

Santana kissed back down Rachel’s body, circling her nipple with her tongue before taking it into her mouth and sucking gently.

“Ohh…” Rachel moaned, reaching up to thread her fingers through Santana’s hair and hold her in place.

Not that Santana planned on moving any time soon.

She was enjoying Rachel’s reactions far too much. All the breathy moans, the little mewls of pleasure, the way her body trembled underneath her, how she tugged at Santana’s hair when Santana got the tiniest bit rough with a pinch or a nip.

And how, before long, Rachel started to weakly grind against Santana’s leg that was situated between both of hers. She thought she felt the slightest damp patch rubbing against her thigh.

“Have you soaked through two layers already?” she asked, licking her lips as she looked up at Rachel. “Or did you decide to go completely commando under my uniform, pervert?”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” Rachel whispered, parting her legs in invitation.

Santana happily accepted.

She slid a hand down Rachel’s stomach, bypassing the skirt part of the uniform, and let it disappear beneath the waistband of the bright red spankies.

Rachel whimpered as Santana’s fingers brushed over her sensitive clit, and easily glided down lower over her slick folds.

“Fuck, how are you this wet already?” Santana asked in a low, husky voice, keeping her eyes on Rachel’s face as her fingers teased Rachel with practiced, expert movements.

She could tell Rachel was wearing her own underwear as well, because she wasn’t immediately met with the less comfortable fabric of the Cheerio panties. She could also feel a wet spot against the back of her hand letting her know that, yeah, Rachel had already soaked through two layers of clothing.

That was doing wonders for her confidence.

“Is this all from a few hickeys and a little second base action? Makes sense, it’s probably the most time anyone’s ever spent on your pleasure…” she murmured, kissing over one of the marks she’d left behind earlier.

Maybe it was the lingering mean streak in her that begged Santana to tease Rachel even in this situation. But the way Rachel was moaning and basically humping her hand, Santana was sure she could say anything right now and Rachel wouldn’t give a fuck, as long as Santana kept working her clit the way she was.

“Or maybe you started getting turned on when I was taking your picture…” she continued, biting over Rachel’s pulse point and making her cry out. “I know how much you love that…” She licked over the spot to soothe it, pressing a soft kiss there as well. “Too bad I can’t get to your phone now, or I’d have to take some pictures of you like this…”

Rachel let out another soft whimper, absently nodding her head along with Santana’s words.

Santana had thought Rachel didn’t care what she was saying, but maybe she was wrong.

She was starting to think Rachel was getting off on it.

“No, I know what it was…” she purred, slowing her movements down and just idly circling her index finger over Rachel’s clit to draw things out and keep teasing her. “I bet you started getting turned on because I walked in on you doing something risqué. Caught in the act, and all that. You seem like the type of person who needs a healthy little dose of humiliation to get themselves going. Fuck, if that’s the case, you must’ve been this soaked 24/7 in high school…” she chuckled. “That could explain a lot…”

Rachel whined, her face completely flushed pink again. Santana wondered if it was caused more by her words or her actions. Whichever it was, she wasn’t stopping either one.

“Mm, but honestly, I think I was right the very first time…” Santana said, her hand slipping a little lower as she started to sink two fingers into Rachel’s leaking entrance.

Rachel gasped, her legs involuntarily coming closer together. Santana had to nudge them apart again with her own leg to keep Rachel open for her.

“I think I walked in at the start of a very elaborate masturbation session. I think this game of dress up was just the first step.”

She thrust her fingers in with slow, shallow motions, just letting them fill Rachel a little at a time. Delving deeper and deeper, bit by bit, until they were buried as deep inside as they could get. She held still a moment, her thumb finding Rachel’s clit and working it as she started to pump her fingers in and out.

“I know how much you like to put on a show, Berry, even if you’re the only audience member,” she whispered in her ear, listening to the short, ragged breaths that Rachel took as she rode Santana’s fingers. “And the way your mirror and vanity are both facing the bed, well, you would’ve had the best seat in the house, wouldn’t you? Looking like Cheerio royalty, sitting on the edge of your bed with your legs spread, fingering yourself, with the best view from all angles… I bet you would’ve gotten yourself off in no time.”

“Shut… up!” was all Rachel could muster in response. She shoved a hand into her underwear alongside Santana’s, starting to rub her clit while Santana fingered her.

Rachel’s orgasm hit almost immediately, and her back arched off the bed as she came with a loud, lyrical moan.

Santana worked her through it, fingering Rachel until she was spent and stilled her own hand. She pressed a few soft kisses along Rachel’s neck and shoulder as she slowly pulled her fingers out, and pulled them free from the confines of Rachel’s underwear.

“Even your sex noises are annoyingly musical…” Santana muttered.

“I-” Rachel stopped, staring up at Santana as Santana popped her fingers into her mouth and sucked them clean.

“You..?” Santana asked, but Rachel didn’t respond. Just grabbed her by the hair and pulled her in for another heated kiss. Surprising Santana by immediately licking into her mouth, chasing the taste of herself on Santana’s tongue.

The kiss was as quick as it was dirty, and Rachel pulled back far too soon for Santana’s liking. She laid back on the bed, her eyes closed and her lips parted as she let out a content sigh.

Santana laid there as well, watching Rachel for a few moments as she awaited her next move. When she couldn’t be sure one was even coming, Santana started to feel awkward. She turned onto her back, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

Was that it? One and done? She honestly wasn’t expecting Rachel to pay her back, but at least acknowledging her presence post orgasm would be nice.

Santana rolled her eyes, resigning herself to her long overdue shower, and pretending like this never happened once she left the confines of Rachel’s room.

She sat up to leave, but a gentle hand on her arm made her pause.

“Where are you going?” Rachel asked, her brows knitted together ever so slightly as she looked up at Santana with those deep brown doe eyes of hers.

“Shower. Figured you’d want some privacy to change.”

“But I haven’t even - I mean, you didn’t let me…” Rachel trailed off, pouting a little as she pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Are we done?”

“You tell me,” Santana replied with a shrug. Her icy attitude creeping back in now that there was the slightest possibility of Rachel rejecting her again.

“I… I don’t want to be,” she whispered, sitting up fully now and frowning at Santana. “I just needed a moment to catch my breath. I’ve never - Well, it’s been - That was the best orgasm I’ve had in a while,” she admitted. “I didn’t know it was possible to have such a strong reaction from a little fondling and dirty talk.”

“Yeah, well, it’s safe to say I’m the hottest partner you’ve ever had,” Santana replied airily, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. “That probably helped.”

“I most definitely agree with you there…” Rachel said with a shy little smile. “Which would make it all the more disappointing if you were to leave without letting me reciprocate. I mean, you’re still fully dressed, and I was so caught up in what you were doing to me that I was barely in my right mind to do anything back.”

“Well I guess if this is where you want to start worrying about equality and fairness, you won’t hear me complaining,” Santana smirked.

Rachel reached out to tangle her fingers in Santana’s hair, pulling her into a kiss. She eased Santana back on the bed, and Santana went willingly, letting Rachel crawl on top of her and take the reins for a while.

Rachel made short work of Santana’s dancewear, getting her out of her tank top and shorts, then her sports bra, and finally her underwear. Leaving Santana completely naked, while Rachel still sported the remaining vestiges of the Cheerio uniform.

She sat back on her heels, slowly running her hands along Santana’s smooth, toned legs, admiring the view in front of her.

Whether in uniform, dancewear, street clothes, or nothing at all, Santana was every bit as gorgeous as Rachel always knew she was. She used to envy her for it - hate her for it - but those thoughts were so far away from Rachel’s mind at this moment that they might as well have belonged to someone else.

How could Rachel hate her now? How could she be jealous? When Santana was naked in her bed, baring herself completely for her, and her alone. It was everyone else that should be jealous of Rachel now. Because Santana was hers.

At least for the moment.

A slight smirk tugged at Rachel’s lips as her gaze settled on Santana’s opening, seeing her skin already glistening with wetness.

“And you were making fun of me earlier?” Rachel teased, reaching out to run a finger agonizingly slowly over Santana’s folds. Santana shuddered lightly at the touch, then watched in awe as Rachel immediately brought her finger up to her lips and swirled her tongue around it. “Mm, looks like somebody is a bit of a hypocrite…”

“Take it as a compliment, Berry…” Santana muttered, wrapping her legs around Rachel to try and pull her closer. Rachel giggled - actually fucking giggled - and gently pushed Santana’s legs back down to the bed.

“You took your sweet time earlier, I think it’s only fair you give me the same courtesy,” she murmured. She carefully settled herself over Santana, pecking her on the lips once before starting the journey lower, trailing kisses down the column of Santana’s throat.

She must’ve wanted to repay everything Santana did to her, Santana thought, because it wasn’t long before Rachel was latching onto her neck and sucking a mark, in almost the exact same spot Santana left one on her.

Santana reached up to grab onto Rachel’s ponytail again and hold her in place. Her other hand found Rachel’s, bringing it up to her breast so Rachel could give her a different kind of pleasure at the same time. Rachel didn’t protest being moved like this, no doubt too concerned with her budding hickey to say anything. She just let Santana guide her, and started teasing her nipple like she wanted.

Rachel didn’t pull away from her neck for what seemed like ages, and Santana knew there had to be a nasty looking mark left in her wake. But Rachel seemed proud of it judging by the self satisfied little smile on her face.

Rachel gently blew over the wet patch of skin, and Santana shivered.

“Felt like marking your territory, huh?”

“Maybe…” Rachel smiled, before kissing her way lower.

Santana figured none of Rachel’s past fucks were into nipple play, because when Rachel got to second base, she could tell Rachel was mimicking what Santana had done to her. Which wasn’t really a bad thing. Santana knew what she was doing, so Rachel copying her just made it seem like Rachel knew what she was doing.

So it was oh so upsetting when Rachel pulled away far too quickly for Santana’s liking, and started kissing lower down her body instead.

“Oh, you’re -” Santana cut herself off, licking her lips as she watched Rachel.

“Is that okay?” Rachel asked softly, stopping to look up at Santana with her mouth just a few inches shy of Santana’s pussy.

“Fuck, yeah, more than okay…” Santana replied with an eager nod. “I just - didn’t think you’d go for muff diving right away.”

Rachel wrinkled her nose up at the phrase, but pressed a soft kiss to Santana’s hipbone. “I’ll admit it’s something I’ve always been curious about…” she murmured. She dropped another kiss to Santana’s lower abdomen, then moved down to kiss along her inner thighs. “It’s an act that I certainly wouldn’t mind adding to my sexual repertoire…” she added in between kisses.

“Mm, you make it sound so sexy…” Santana purred, her words dripping with sarcasm.

“As sexy as ‘muff diving’?” Rachel shot back.

“Why don’t you put that mouth to good use and eat me already?” Santana asked, still holding onto Rachel’s ponytail and bucking her hips up slightly.

Rachel retaliated by grabbing onto Santana’s thighs, keeping her spread open and pressed down against the bed at the same time. She leaned in closer, hesitating at the last second like she had to steel her nerves, before just going for it.

Santana moaned at the initial contact, holding tight to Rachel’s hair but letting her go at her own pace. Which, Santana quickly found out, was much more erratic and scattershot now that she really didn’t know what she was doing.

“Fuck, Rach, it’s not a competition,” she breathed, gently tugging on Rachel’s hair to get her to back up a little. “It’s been a while for me, too. I just wanna enjoy the ride, okay?”

“I - Sorry…” Rachel whispered, licking over her lips and avoiding Santana’s gaze. “Do you, um… Any advice?” she asked sheepishly.

“You can start by taking your time…” she replied softly. “Just try to remember how it felt whenever you were on the receiving end of it, and try and mimic what felt good to you.”

Rachel remained quiet, still not looking up at Santana, or attempting to resume her oral work.

Fuck, Santana thought, getting enough information in Rachel’s silence to fill in the gaps of her sex life. Or at least enough to realize that Rachel’s sex life was nothing but gaps. With the guys she’d been with, Santana knew it couldn’t be good, but goddamn. It was way past the point of being even a little comical to her now.

Though Santana didn’t think she could be the best teacher. All her experience with guys was just lesson after lesson on what she definitely didn’t want. With her ex, they got to figure things out together. And in the limited hookups she’d had since moving to the city, there were only women who seemed way more experienced than her.

She took a deep breath, gently running her fingers through Rachel’s bangs to sweep them back out of her face.

“Just think about whatever feels good when you touch yourself, and turn it around on me. But with tongue,” she said. “I mean, use your fingers, too. Don’t let me limit your creativity. Just slow it down a little. And don’t just focus on the clit the whole time, either. That’s like, a total rookie mistake.”

“O-okay…” Rachel nodded. “Sorry for being such a drama queen about all this…” she added quietly, pressing a conciliatory kiss to Santana’s hip.

“Like I’d expect anything less…” Santana murmured. “But don’t worry, I plan on giving you lots of opportunities to practice until you’ve totally perfected your technique.”

Rachel cracked a smile at that, ducking her head bashfully and leaving a few more kisses in her wake as she traveled back to Santana’s center. She started again, working much more slowly this time, taking her time to just savor everything about the experience.

Santana let out a soft hum in satisfaction, going back to holding onto the base of Rachel’s ponytail, guiding her a little but mostly letting her explore on her own. She spread her legs wider for Rachel, folding her other arm behind her head so she could prop herself up and enjoy the view.

“Mm, better already, baby…” she breathed. “Just nice and slow for now. You can build up to more…”

Rachel hummed in response, sending a shiver up Santana’s spine.

Santana didn’t offer too many instructions after that, but wasn’t shy about praising Rachel either. She let her know what felt good, encouraged her to keep going, even told her how hot she looked.

Of course Rachel ate it all up.

But she had to back off after a while just to catch her breath. Feeling light headed, like she’d somehow been forgetting to breathe this entire time. “Still doing a good job?” she asked, tracing her index finger over Santana, following all the same paths her tongue had taken.

“Better than good…” Santana whispered, her hand sliding down to cradle Rachel’s jaw, her thumb brushing over her bottom lip that was slick and shiny from her juices. She raised her hand up to suck it clean and taste herself.

Rachel smiled proudly at that, her attention shifting downward again as she slowly started to push two fingers inside of Santana. Santana moaned, clenched tight around her, before relaxing into it. Rachel watched as Santana’s hips rolled with her movements, fucking herself deeper and deeper onto Rachel’s fingers.

She brought her other hand up to spread Santana open further, making it easier to get to her clit. She swirled her tongue around it, sucking gently, as her fingers started moving faster in and out of Santana.

“Fuck, baby, just like that…” Santana moaned, her hand tight in Rachel’s hair to keep her in place now. Rocking her hips up to press herself harder against Rachel’s tongue, and down again to fuck herself on her fingers. “I’m close…”

It only took a few more moments for Santana to chase down her orgasm, crying out as she came and spilled out all over Rachel.

Rachel didn’t stop. She just doubled down, working her fingers at a rapid pace inside Santana and eagerly lapping at her cunt until she got Santana to cum again.

“Fuck!” Santana cried, pulling Rachel in suffocatingly close and riding her tongue and fingers until her second orgasm subsided. She had to push Rachel back after that, her sensitive pussy desperate for a reprieve.

Rachel popped up from between her legs, a smile on her face as she crawled up the bed to lay down beside Santana. “Still good?” she asked.

Santana turned her head to look at Rachel, just to see most of the lower half of her face shining with her juices. She let out a breathless laugh, leaning closer to plant a sloppy kiss on Rachel’s lips - trying to taste herself more than she was actually trying to kiss Rachel. “You’re a fucking mess…” she mumbled, falling back against the pillows. “You must’ve really been dying to experiment like this.”

“I was. Eager, I mean…” Rachel whispered, keeping her eyes on Santana’s as she spoke. “But not just for an experiment, or experience points. That was nice, of course, but… Well, I couldn’t see myself doing this with just anyone. And you certainly aren’t just anyone.”

“Damn straight,” Santana smirked.

Rachel laughed.

“Imagine if we knew three years ago that we would end up here…” Rachel sighed. “We could’ve saved ourselves a lot of fighting.”

“Nah, I think we needed the build up,” Santana replied. “It was three years of very elaborate, drawn out foreplay.”

“Maybe you’re right…” Rachel chuckled. “Just promise me it won’t take three more years of arguments and insults before we have sex again.”

“Oh, I promise.”

“And hey, since you were so fond of the dress up idea, I’m sure I can dig up some old plaid skirts for you to wear next time…”

“Don’t push your luck, Berry.”

#glee #pezberry #rachel berry #santana lopez #pezberry fic #glee fic #mine #my fics #i THINK its an e rating bc like there is sex and its not totally graphic but its pretty descriptive???#idk man those differences confuse me #but it is blatant and not like flowery-ly glossed over lol so e it is #anyway no one perceive this lol thank you #oh and title taken from that one top 40 hit from like 8 years ago that i fucking hateee

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shehungers · 7 days ago

Text

vampire x reader | 18+ | 16.1k

You're a crime scene cleaner who happens across an advertisement for a mansion housekeeper in exchange for room and board. it's close to work, close to your university, and an easy job. The ultimate package. Right away, you notice the owner's beauty as well as his eccentricities, but decide to commit to it. The spiral into depravity and debauchery begins when you're tasked with cleaning the site of a savage murder, solidifying you as a irreplaceable treasure

story warnings; dead dove do not eat, explicit noncon, major dubcon, explicit sexual details, hypnosis, bloodplay, sadomasochism, cigarette burns, choking, injuries to mc, gun violence, graphic depictions of violence, extreme body horror + gore, murder, graphic descriptions of crime scenes, descriptions of crime scene cleanup may be inaccurate, obsessive + possessive behaviors (yandere), manipulation, gaslighting, religious imagery + symbolism, exploration of morality, dubious morality (mc), allegorical for abusive relationships, very prose + detail heavy.

reposted from my deleted blog theoxenfree.

proofread by @noctis-kingfisher / @ceruleansol-archive

please leave feedback + reblog this piece if you found it interesting!

Another internet search bore fruit.

The image bouncing back at you from your phone had been hastily taken with a tremble in your hand, all the while launching a few too many cautious looks across your shoulder to either end of the dim, long hallway making up part of the second floor. There wasn't any particular rationale for your apprehension and busy eyes but the belief the mansion owner wouldn't be too pleased to see you taking pictures of his valuables rather than cleaning them.

That fear hadn't stopped you from reverse image searching a good couple of curiosities over the widening gap of time you had been living there. Tonight was a chalmette table vase displayed on a pedestal in the hall; brassy gold gilding cradled a somewhat drab white bloom that reached high and sprouted open to a hollow inside. Similar surviving articles went for thousands. You totaled the prices of everything so far as enough to outright buy a house on the more modest side of town.

There was a daring thought that loomed in the back of your mind, an ugly little thing that told you one or two missing antiques wasn't any big deal. He wouldn't miss them, let alone even notice they were gone, because he was the strangest man you had ever met.

Four months ago, he had only ever introduced himself by the name Montague, letting an anticipatory stillness hang in the air while you waited for him to finish. He never did, handsome features lifting as his dark eyes thinned and smile inched higher. He had you in a tight handshake.

"I enjoyed reading the resume you sent in with your response to my advertisement." He had traces of an accent intact but had cleverly adapted to one more common to the area. "You're the first person I've come across wanting the room who's done that. It really stood out to me. A crime scene cleaner? Must be a difficult job."

"I know it was probably overkill, but I think this will be perfect for me." You were led to a suede armchair, his hand anchoring onto your shoulder to lower you into the seat. He sat across from you in something similar, one leg crossing. "I recently had to move out of my other place, and the university will be about an hour closer. My work won't be as far of a drive, either. I—I, uh, clean some gross stuff, so taking care of your house won't be anything."

Even after that spiel, Montague never let his smile slip. Rather, it seemed to widen as though delighted by your oversharing. He looked like a man basking in glee over a rare find, an offer he couldn't possibly turn away.

"All amenities in the house are yours." This was after he showed you to one of the rooms on the second floor: a capacious, well-dressed space behind a red door at the end of the hall. "As long as you listen to a few rules and keep things clean, we should have a very amicable... cohabitation."

You thought it was an odd choice of wording. "Okay. Well, what do I need to know?"

"No guests." It was immediate, his tone suddenly a touch edgy, razored, unyielding. "Not unless I give you explicit permission beforehand. I keep many important valuables; they're very dear to me. Also, do not invite anyone in unless I am there."

Again, odd, but it was his house.

"Sure," you said agreeably, having half the thought to write down these peculiarities of his. "What next?"

He was set on your shoulder, reaching out to pull a thin, frayed thread off of your jumper. "The downstairs—as in, the basement—is my personal space. If I need you down there, I will ask you for you to go down. You can go anywhere else in the house, on the property. None of it concerns me."

"Why the basement, though?" It felt damaging to press a question like that so early on, but you figured it was innocent enough. "This house is so big that we could be on the same floor and hardly see each other."

The muscles around his mouth twitched slightly, only once. You still noticed it. Noted: he didn't like to be questioned. "Sorry, I'm not trying to-"

"It's cold downstairs." he injected, shifting to look around the room as though taking in the newness of it as well. "I make sure it stays comfortable all year, all throughout the house, but the cold suits me best."

With how downright frosty his skin felt in that handshake earlier—on a mild day in mid-spring—you thought that explanation checked out. He must have only just come up to greet you at the front entrance.

You tried to forget the feeling. "Alright. Next?"

"Oh," he restrained an unseemly laugh, using one hand to crowd into a pocket on his dark blazer, "there is nothing else, at least nothing pertinent. It's my understanding that we're both quite busy, so this would be the current arrangement unless something changes."

What changes? You wanted to ask, thwarted to silence when he revealed some sort of silver thing pinched between his fingers with a thick handkerchief. It was a dainty-seeming contraption with chains linking several old skeleton keys at the end. The fabric he used to hold the clip concealed all of the elegant tracery that made up its shape.

"Traditionally, this is called a chatelaine. It’s something I’ve modified for you to get around the house. It’ll be easier to clean." Montague said, fast to force the mess of cold silver and chains into your palm, rubbing down his fingers with the handkerchief afterward. "The smallest key is to your room. The largest one opens the doors to go outside, so don't lose that. One of them is meant for doors in the basement—can't recall which."

He could see the wariness behind your eyes, a worrying crease forming in your brow. "This house has been around for a long time. I've just never gotten around to modernizing the locks."

Other questions came to you, but he hardly acted interested in entertaining them. You let him swivel on black soles, stopping him just as he reached the doorway.

"Why haven't other housekeepers worked out?"

Montague let his fingers rest on glazed woodwork framing the threshold, drumming out a soothing rhythm while considering an answer for all of two seconds. "In short? They couldn't follow the rules. Now, let me show you to the yard."

Afterward, the so-called cohabitation had become a seamless blend for you both. You had learned right away that Montague wasn't one for idle chatter and niceties without purpose. He had deviated from it once, on move-in day, to reassure you that the mysterious nature of your life schedule and odd hours you were called to a clean scene wouldn’t be a source of concern.

Shortly after settling your things around the house, the reason for his amenable attitude was a little more apparent. Several times a month, you would be pulled from your forensics projects to the landing at the end of the hall, piqued by fresh voices always indistinguishable at first, and folded your waist over the railing to see down.

The top of his head, hair short, impeccably styled, and ash-brown, was the first thing you noticed, followed by someone on his arm.

Sometimes a woman, sometimes a man—always conventionally attractive, always utterly enraptured by him. It struck a nerve with you once or twice, finding your thoughts swimming bitterly: Of course a man who looked like him would go for types like that!

Why did he act so much differently with them than you? He wasn't nearly as friendly and affable as he was making himself out to be.

You stopped peeking down on him after an instance where his eyes shot straight up, pinning you where you stood. He simpered at you before leading his companion away to the basement, and that was it. You never saw them leave and never bothered to ask.

Tonight was different, however, both in the way you nearly toppled the two-figure Chalmette vase off its pedestal with flighty fingers and a duster, and the echo of a scream piercing the hollow halls to you. It stayed in one spot on the first floor, luring you down the center staircase with your duster clutched to you like a sword. At that point, your heart bursting in your ears was louder than the agonized cries resonating around the corner.

You looked around, spine wrapped in dread as another scream, weak, garbled, and wet, came from the basement, and then nothing at all. It was soundless in the house. Distantly, one of the clocks mounted in the kitchen archway toned onward. You followed its beat with the shuffle of your feet.

Hello, hello? Those words clung tightly in your throat, yet you were too afraid to announce yourself like that. Still, nothing came as you slowly pulled at the basement doorknob, brass and freezing and unlocked. The stairway plunging down inside was filled with inky black, so dark you couldn't get your eyes to adjust to it.

Is everything okay down there? Hello? Hello? You ran the imaginary chatter through your mind, lips sealed but trembling during your slow descent, the path now illuminated by white glow from your phone. At the bottom, the stone stairs turned into seamless gray marble and red wetness crawling toward the soles of your slippers.

"What—" You gasped, taking a step back while flicking the flashlight higher, deeper into the basement. The vivid red puddle glistened in your light, widening around a motionless figure with pale skin—a blonde woman you didn't know. Her face pointed up at the ceiling, twisted in terror, black tracks of mascara curving along her cheeks.

She was naked on the floor, surrounded by her own blood, something you didn't have to look at twice. Your breaths grew harsh, taking in the sight of her neck, or lack thereof; there wasn't much left of it. Only a few stringy bits of sinew and muscle kept it from a full decapitation, and blood still pulsed out in spurts from mangled arteries and veins.

A motion nearby made your nape prickle. It was like feet padding across wet pavement after a fresh rain, except this smell carried the malodor of rust and something sour under your nose. You settled a pillar of light on the source, capturing the view of Montague standing amid the bloodbath, sickly skin bare and saturated in rich crimson.

Something was wrong with him, came an instantaneous, instinctual reaction the moment his head spun toward you, catching pale eyeshine in the white light. The bones in his jaw cracked as the length of it began to recede into the semblance of something more man to you, rows of jagged teeth retracting into the depths of his throat until only a pair of long incisors remained.

Montague skimmed the tip of his tongue along his lower lip, smiling at you affectedly, saying as though it were some trife thing, "She started screaming."

You were gone and out of the basement after that, clearing the woman's body and kicking away the slippers on your feet when they squelched with blood. Montague said something after you when shrieks ripped out of your lungs and reverberated through the house. You winced as the basement door let out a hollow rattle when he collided with it, heart matching the rhythm of the skin on your feet slapping against old marble, thoughts disarrayed, frantic the closer you got to the front door.

Almost there. Almost there. Almost there. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! You were panting in unison with the vicious chants.

The doorknob was in your hand. The door was open—and it was thrown shut with the force of your body thrust against it, fingers wrenched off of the handle and enveloped in Montague's cold fingers as he pushed himself flush into you.

You felt his palm clamp around your mouth, whittling your screams into panicked whimpers, nostrils flaring with your ragged breaths.

"Ah, no, no." He had to stoop his neck to talk into your ears. "Shh, shh, shhh. Far too loud. I don't like screaming. Shh, shh, shhhh."

Tears seared red behind your eyes, making you think you could follow the warmth down your face as they filled the crevices in his hand. "It's really, truly a pity. She was a pretty one but far too smart. I'm usually decent at picking out the ones who wouldn't suspect anything or, at least, catching them before they try to scream.

"You'll have to forgive me. I swear to you I'm not ordinarily that messy. I prefer to keep everything tidy, especially so you don't have to go down there. After all, you're already so busy. You're already doing so much. I can't recall when I last saw you relax."

The weight of his palm softened, a wordless agreement that you honored with continued silence as he used that arm to lean against the door. His voice shifted around your head to your other ear. "That's it. Just wonderful. There's no need for screaming, is there? It's only the two of us."

"Are—are..." You couldn't get it out, lips and throat suddenly sucked dry. "Don't kill me, please. Please. Please."

His chest quaked while a subdued, eerily delighted laugh hissed through his lips. "Kill you? Oh, no, no, no. Never. How could I ever kill you when you're so remarkable? My home has never looked so beautiful and lived in. I'm enjoying how it looks with you in it."

You wilted away from his lips sinking to a spot below your ear, now taking far too much notice of his erection curving up along your lower back. It felt disgustingly wrong to wonder whether the violence and blood turned him on, or it was you and your fear. The man wasn't even human; that much was clear.

"What are you?" There was no shortage of daring questions in your arsenal. Montague was beginning to find the charm in them.

"That's quite difficult for me to answer." He let his chin lay on your shoulder. "I've been called many things over the centuries. I suppose the closest anyone has ever gotten is vampire, but even that's not quite right. You're free to guess as much as you'd like, though."

He was satisfied when you didn't, freeing the weight off of his arm to slide his hand under the hem of your shirt, fingertips still slick with that woman's blood as he explored your navel. You were too aware of the roundness of his fingernails stepping across your flesh, sometimes pressing deep, and other times a light touch you needed to scratch. His throat vibrated against your shoulder.

"What are you thinking? I'd love to hear it." He wanted to devour your fear in more ways than just feeling you wince. "Well? Tell me."

"I want to go." Go? Where could you possibly go that he couldn’t find you? If he ripped out the side of a woman's neck, he could track you down.

He leaned his cheek into your ear again, relishing the warmth that spread into him. "Where would you go? Who would you tell? Humor me, where is the first place you'd go?"

"The police," you said.

Montague let out a pleased hum. "Of course. It only makes sense to report a terrible scene such as that to them. Forensics and the police play together often, don't they?"

Your nod was weak.

"I know how hard you've been studying, how much stress you're under to commit to your degree, your work—to me." His hand crept along to your stomach, fingers splaying wide across the protective layer of skin and fat. "Let's say they were to find something I left behind. Who becomes a suspect in their eyes when they learn that I have someone who tidies up after me? Who knows the dirty insides of cleaning up anything and everything?"

You were starting to panic, fitfully struggling against his body. It's like he was made of stone. "They wouldn't accuse me of murdering anyone."

"Haven't you seen the news lately? Are you so sure?" he said derisively. "No, perhaps you're right. Maybe you'd be fortunate, and they wouldn't have your head for murder, but they would certainly try to peg you with something else. As an accomplice, maybe? And that's assuming that I don't disappear and let them rip you apart.

"Can you imagine it? Can you feel your heart break at the very thought of losing it all? Your degree? Your job? Safety? The world is cruel, darling. You'd never have another moment of peace or anonymity. Anywhere you'd go, you'd be found, every alias sullied with your sins. All because you decided to speak up about it."

You knew he meant to send you downstairs to do something about the mess, spend hours scrubbing and mopping until what had once been there was a secret that thickened your tongue and made it hard to swallow. No one would ever find out, but you would carry it in every waking thought until, one morning, the cute barista on Market Street had an eerie semblance to that dead woman, and the light roast in your hand suddenly looked so red.

"Thump. Thump. Thump." Montague mocked the heavy thrum of your heart behind your ribs, his cold fingers skimming your nipples before resting over your sternum. "You can go if you'd like, but I'll find you. I'll hear your little heart until it bursts and drag you right back here. You're mine."

The push of his body gradually faded away, giving your chest the room to expand, leaving you to gulp quivering, greedy breaths that didn't stop even as the pads of his feet grew distant.

He called back to you, "Give me ten minutes or so, and then come down."

You were already partway through the front door with your car keys to pop the trunk when, floating like a spectre's moans in still night air, his voice reached out once more, "You may want to clean up yourself first. You have blood all over your face."

༺ ♰ ༻

A damp towel came before your descent back into the basement. In tow on your shoulders were three bags of absorbent, the fancy stuff hospitals liked to use to throw on puke and piss and anything else they just lazily wanted to sweep around. It worked for blood in smaller quantities, blood that was still wet, anyway. The woman hadn't been dead long enough for her body fluids to dry, so you didn't anticipate needing anything except the basics stowed in your car trunk.

You weren't sure what you expected to see down there, noticing the lights were turned on high, fully illuminating the gray marble, the furthest reaches of the blood puddle with your slippers saturated dark red and ruined. What came as a shock was the woman's dead eyes and shredded neck being nowhere in sight. Montague had moved her body but to where?

For some reason, you were drawn to ridiculous spots like the walls, ceiling, and tiny cramped corners that he could have feasibly stuffed her in. There was no sickly trail of blood leading any which way, droplets only reaching as far as the stairs and first landing where you had been pursued—nothing else.

Where did he take her? Part of you was ready to turn a blind eye to all of this because you knew you would have to in order to keep everything. If you kept your head low and groveled a little bit, maybe he'd get bored and leave you alone, biding you the time you needed to finish your degree. But, that'd be two years of this.

You weren't sure you could stomach it.

As you moved granules of absorbent through blood with coarse bristles from the kitchen broomstick—shifting the puddle more than the actual absorbent—you wondered if he could hear your heart now from wherever he was.

You thought about a lot of things while letting your eyes roam the space. It was enormous, taking up the entire underside of the house, outfitted impressively with mahogany accents, sprawling bookshelves, armchairs, and loveseats pulled tight in leather and velvet. Across the room was a disheveled bed, creamy sateen sheets in a luscious heap but otherwise undisturbed.

To the adjacent end of this expanse were two doors you didn't notice at first, one a little taller than yourself in height, about as wide as any normal arm span, and looked old, so old that everything else was too new. Even from where you stood, you knew it'd take a skeleton key. The other door was more coherent with the rest of the basement, cleaner but certainly still part of the house's original construction.

By the time Montague had returned, you already had much of the ordeal pitched into a biohazard bag with some trace remnants putting you on your knees to scrub away. You hadn't realized he was even there until the tips of his shoes—brown leather loafers with a scalloped tassel near the toes—appeared in your peripheral, sending you launching back onto your hocks.

"This work is spectacular. I knew I had a good feeling giving that room to you." he said with a beguiling smile. All of the blood was gone; he was clean in a dark dressing robe with black trousers, a look you hated that you saw as alluring. "Don't forget to clean the floors upstairs. We made quite a mess there as well."

"What happened to that woman?" You were asking your pesky questions again. Montague wasn't so sure he found them as charming now, but you were still a prize.

You leaned away as he crouched in front of you, nearly risking the soles of his shoes in the blood and hydrogen peroxide. For the first time since meeting, you kept eye contact and saw that his reached a depth you didn't think could be possible for a human. He wasn't touching you, yet it felt like he had you caged, trapped in a vise that held you tight.

He did touch you then, grazing the side of your face with a thumb. Suddenly, he brought it to his lips and licked it as he rose to full height.

"You still had some blood just there on your cheek." There was an armchair a few feet away that he dropped into, withdrawing a gold compact from a chest pocket on his way down. "Don't worry. I wouldn't ask you to carry away the bodies. I'm not that Roman."

"That's not what I asked." you rejoined.

Montague tucked a cigarette between his lips, igniting it with a match he kept inside the compact. His first few puffs looked like they calmed him as he crossed a leg and settled deeper into the leather. "You shouldn’t expect answers to things you don’t need to know—or want to.”

But he humored you with a slight lean of his head towards the old door far away. "The original owner of this house was ingenious and built tunnels that were used to shuffle people in and out. Mistresses. Servants. More unsavory things—you must remember the era. At any rate, it stretches beyond the house and some ways off. I do not recommend ever going inside."

You understood now why you never saw any of the dates he brought home leave. And you believed every bit of his warning.

It inspired you to move away from the grim reality dwelling beyond that old door. You hovered over the same spot, drenching the floor with more of the disinfectant, grasping for a distraction. "I didn't know vampires could smoke. Isn't blood enough for you?”

Montague flicked his cigarette over an ashtray beside his chair. "Well, we all have our vices. Mine just happens to be five or six of these a day. Keeps enough of the edge off so you get to sleep at night."

Something about that comment made the entire stretch of the basement feel so confining—claustrophobic, even. Your back was wide open to it, to his ravening gaze and leather toe turning fluid circles as though to pace himself before lunging.

"I have class in six hours." You finished the job, tied the bag, and sprung straight up. "I'd like to get the upstairs done and take a shower."

"Of course. Try to get some sleep, you've had quite a night." He didn't move to see you out. "Oh, and leave the bag. I'll dispose of it."

༺ ♰ ༻

Meredith Nimu died approximately twenty-three days ago after a stroke left her immobilized in her favorite armchair. Her body wasn't peeled away from the murky-green polyester until day twenty-four, following enough neighbor complaints about a bunch of rats dying in the vents.

Getting rid of the chair was half the battle in this case, something that Meredith's overzealous, recently divorced daughter spouted off as sacrilegious. She insisted that the carpet cleaner she used for her obese dogs with raw patches on their legs could do it all. Your supervisor had been inflectionless when telling her it didn't work like that.

One of your teammates, a middle-aged black man affectionately nicknamed “Hoss” had unceremoniously slammed the apartment door shut and flipped the lock so the daughter's rancorous eruptions were somewhat contained outside. The other half of the duo responsible for pitching the chair, T.J., a white man who could never tan, wheezed out a laugh as he labored a hard bristle brush through the gunk left behind from Meredith's decay.

"Boss ain't gonna be happy about that." T.J. couldn't commit to the act of a brownnoser even if he wanted to. A couple more chortles rattled through his respirator. They were infectious, ridiculous sounds that coaxed similar from Hoss when he rejoined the effort to get the job done and over with.

You could still hear the daughter on the other side of the door, never once allowing your supervisor a word in edgewise. A part of you wanted to pity her, perhaps conjure up a shred of empathy for someone so completely enmeshed in the throes of grief and anger. She was clearly spiraling, her entire life yanked out from under her—and she was free-falling with nothing to catch her, no thin wire she could snag in the bend of her fingers and watch as the velocity of that cruelly, cleanly severed white tendon and bone.

Where would she fall after that? You didn't know. You didn't care. She could regain control over her life even without fingers, but what about you? No one understood how disconcerting it was to know that your survival depended on a vampire's good mood. An old woman was meant to expire, but you were young and had aspirations—yet that could be stolen from you just as quickly as a clot could kill the brain.

It wasn't fucking fair.

Hoss had called out to you repeatedly until the hard brushes stopped scratching the floor, and he and T.J. were settled back on their heels, staring at you. You were used to leveraging your commitments in life as a means to get them off your case, but even they could tell this was different.

"You've been real spacey lately." It was enough to gently reel you back to the moment, eyes unstuck from remnants of putrid matter hidden under a deluge of chemicals and soap. Now you were thinking that the landlord would probably have to replace this entire spot in the flooring. It would be an expensive fix.

"Everything okay at home?" Hoss tried again, emulating fatherly concern in his tone and sidelong stare. It was something he couldn't help since you were so similar in age to his adult kids. "I don't think I've seen you eat today. We oughta finish up here up and grab somethin' quick on the way back.”

"Sorry, yeah, it's just the usual things." They didn't know what that meant to you, but readily accepted with dour expressions masked by their respirators. "I think I saw a gyro truck down the street."

As many times as you had regurgitated the same thing when they pried into your well-being, you were surprised they still asked at all. That made it hard to wave after them as you pulled the lever to the trunk, waiting to be left alone once the job was done to stack half your weight in absorbent until the back bowed to it.

It was just past two in the morning when you were locking the front door of Montague's sprawling estate behind you. Every time you did, a part of you hesitated to seal it the whole way, as though if you did, your final traces of freedom would be stripped away entirely.

"Welcome home." Montague came out from prowling somewhere in the shadows, seeming to materialize from the darkest parts your eyes couldn't adapt to. He was in a dressing robe again, this one forest green with gold embroidery and a burgundy handkerchief tucked away nicely in his breast pocket.

He already had a cigarette lit between his knuckles, fussing with the little stick as he went to an open window, sucked in, and expelled pungent gray smoke. "I apologize. There's a bit of a mess for you tonight. It's unlike me to be so untidy, but it shouldn't take you too long—oh, darling, don't make that face."

"Why can't you get blood from other sources, like a blood bank?" It's been on your mind for a while, but Montague had a habit of turning petulant if you asked him too much.

He was in good shape tonight, though, despite still puffing away antsily. "Where's the satisfaction in simply being given what I want? Blood banks are a finite supply, but out there"—he gestured through the open window—"there is an infinite supply from any walk of life that I so choose. Did you know that not all blood is equal?"

You sensed him at your back, awash with that same vulnerability as the night on your knees in the basement. He strolled along with you while you collected your things, examined his leftovers, which fortunately wasn't as sensational as before. It looked like a Rorschach inkblot almost, purple-red and pristine, obviously untouched for some time.

Just like that dead blonde woman, there was nothing left behind of the victim except what Montague was too careless to handle himself.

"The worst blood is what you find in hospitals or on the streets. It doesn't matter their type; it all tastes like shit." he continued, even while you worked. Just like before, he sat himself nearby and observed your process with gross fascination. "In a pinch, though, I do what I must. It doesn't matter if a man is homeless or a woman is looking for a night out. When I hear their hearts dance, that thump, thump, thump—oh, I have to have it. I can taste them through their skin, even before I sink my teeth in.

"The fear in their eyes. The ragged breaths I see in their chests, watching their bellies pulse. I like to think in those moments they know exactly what's going to happen, like little flies in a spider's web."

Montague let more smoke slither out from his lips in skinny, swirling wisps that dissipated once it touched the air. The haze of it remained, just traceable to your eye. "I always find it interesting that they all struggle, even as they're writhing in their own blood. Sometimes I'll count how long it takes for them to die."

These weren't confessions of a madman because that would imply he was human. He was treating you akin to the way an old man recounted the fondness of his flawed, flickering memories. There were sensations of joy and affection in the work he did, a true love and visceral desire for carnage and suffering that made it hard for you to stomach. A few times throughout his soliloquy, you needed to bear your weight on the kitchen broom to keep yourself from toppling from nausea.

You shouldn't have been curious. "Has anyone ever survived?"

The surrounding space grew darker, not from loss of light but from the way his lower face sunk behind the hand wielding the cigarette. You saw his smile widen through sickly appendages and faint smoke.

His response pierced straight through you. "I'm looking right at it."

Suddenly, the urge to run rushed forefront in your mind, an instinctual reaction that you had trouble wrestling over with logic. The broomstick was easily pulled from your fingers and discarded onto the floor with a reverberating clatter that made your spine race with cold needles. Montague stepped into your proximity.

You shivered against the hands slowly climbing your neck to the underside of your jaw, cradling your face as he lifted it to meet his eyes. Something was so wrong with how black they were; you didn't see a pupil, nor did your reflection stare back at you in them. It's almost as though there was nothing there at all, the dark of them growing into an abysmal chasm that made your vision cross and blur, eyelids weighing like lead when you felt him kiss you.

His lips were the same kind of cold as the rest of him but full and unrelenting, never granting you the chance to mold the kiss in any other way. Surprisingly, the taste of stale smoke on his breath was just slight, a mediocre vexation you overlooked the moment his hands started groping you under your clothes.

And you didn't think much of it when your back settled into the clean linens on your bed, skin flushed with the crisp evening air and lips mapping their way south across your stomach and navel, delving lower to your core. It was too dark in your room to see down your body at the top of Montague's head, but you felt him with your fingers, coiling pieces of his ash-brown hair to your knuckles while he pushed your thighs wide open for him.

An anxious patter swelled in your chest, a vague understanding that something was horrible about this, but you were too wrapped up in a dreamy fog to think about it. More than the resounding boom of your heart, you heard your own breaths dissolve into lewd moans and slurred pleas for him to do more, more, more.

It didn't sound like you. It didn't feel like you despite knowing that build-up in your abdomen better than most things in your body. The hands in his hair, the back bending off of the mattress like an archway, the shaking limbs, and the cries begging for more were someone else entirely up until the very moment rapture fluttered behind your eyes in searing white, body deluged in hot release that left your scalp tingling and toes curling and spend on your sheets.

"Give me more." You tasted him again, his tongue pushing hard into your mouth where those salty notes of yourself lingered on your cheeks. His silhouette melded with the rest of the room, tangible only in the way he roamed every surface of you.

Montague had shucked the clothes from both your bodies earlier, preferring to lean into the flush of heat you radiated. Everything was only skin-deep away from him; he could feel your pulse throb on his lips when he teased himself against your carotid, your radial, trailing all the way to the powerful beat of your femoral nestled there in your groin.

His teeth came close many times to piercing you, allowing him a sliver of a taste like a parched king waiting for a drop of golden wine. But half the thrill of having you around was denying himself of you, knowing well that if he were to start, then he'd never be able to stop, and he'd fully hamper your dreams of escaping.

The air smelled like you now, heavy and like damp skin and your fluids soaking into the linens. He watched your face bunch and fall apart when he split you open with his cock, hips colliding, your skin sure to bruise as his thrusts turned savage. There wasn't much left in his heart anymore. Most of it had atrophied over the centuries, and yet the sound of yours spurred him on.

He could follow the path of your blood through your body, an extensive subject he had studied and dissected at length in his lifetime. The most vulnerable spots were gorged and worked the hardest, almost glowing red through your skin for him. When he thrust a little bit harder, a little bit faster, and felt your fingertips pushing against his chest, he heard your heart be the loudest it ever had been.

"That's it. That's it. That's it." His own breaths were ragged now. The sheer exhilaration of pushing his lips deeper, hot sweat leaving a slick layer on them, and that one big artery in your neck pounding out was doing everything for him.

Your frantic pants were a close second. He could feel you unraveling, tightening around his cock until you were soundlessly writhing on the mattress, clutching anything you could bunch together. The final few thrusts he made were purposeful; they were forceful and jolted your body, a show to make sure you wouldn't forget the feeling of him inside of you.

The clean linens were sodden with cum, some still dripping out of you while you lay there, legs splayed enough so you wouldn't feel it stick to your thighs. Whatever haze had been hanging over your eyes before lifted away, leaving you ruined and exhausted on the sheets but not alone.

"You've got class in a few hours, don't you?" Montague said from above, shoulders nestled in your headboard while one leg hung off the side of the bed. He was smoking again, acting the calmest you had witnessed him. "I don't really think you're in any shape for that. Why don't you stay home today?"

You were too spent to respond to him, somehow using the occasional breaths he blew out into the vast room to lull you into a dreamless sleep.

༺ ♰ ༻

Shin Nakamura had been a selfish man in life. Mid-fifties, thinning hair, and twice divorced from women who knew better—his tenants did not. He had built a reputation on the north side of town for hidden costs and faulty appliances that were never fixed. Once or twice in the past four years you had cleaned up scenes, they came out of Nakamura's buildings in the summertime, stuck to the floor and infested with maggots and flies in different orifices.

Everyone had asked at one point, yourself included, how he was able to get away with that level of blatant cruelty and disregard—and the answer was as simultaneously simple, complex, and terrible as poverty. The north end was an area notorious for local crime and violence, but more than that, it was forgotten in favor of gentrifying other areas of the city—pretty little boutiques that'd make a splash on social media and a couple of upscale dining spots, all of those meant to change the online scales deeming an area's walkability, and therefore, profitability.

The blind eye most city commissioners turned to the north end made it an easy life for Shin to do as he pleased without many consequences despite living in the area himself. Most of everyone found it an odd sort of justice when he was discovered in his office, unrecognizable from how badly the dozens of stab wounds had disfigured his face and body. One look was enough to know that it was personal, a tenant who had received their condemnation via a neon-pink eviction letter hastily taped to an off-white door.

Only, this time, Shin chose a person backed into a corner at their breaking point. There wasn't much left to lose, yet Shin had ultimately lost it all. Rumor had it that no one sold out the tenant who committed the crime, something even the more moralistic part of yourself could fathom. These were the cases that painted a grim picture of your future in forensics and often speared to the front of your mind at the worst of times—could you really be part of the reason why a person shattered by the powers of society goes to jail?

Shin Nakamura was a terrible man, but were his crimes punishable by that sort of torture? What about the tenants who probably heard Shin screaming for help, crying in agony—were they any better than murderers themselves?

What did that mean for you? An accomplice who quietly scrubbed clean murders at a monster's behest, you allowed those people to be swallowed up by Montague under a guise of fear, or was it selfishness?

That discomfort lasted you your entire shift, like an incredibly nauseating pill with a bad smell that sat in your nose for hours. You couldn't wipe away the thoughts like you could dried blood on smoke-stained walls or lumps of serrated flesh and fat wedged between slabs of wood on the floor.

"Man, he coulda been cleaner about this." T.J. had his feet planted solidly on the middle step of a ladder, well at work with a long-handled brush pushed flat to the ceiling. The splatter had gone that far, earning a few awestruck coos from him and Hoss earlier. "It would've made our lives easier."

It was a normal joke. You'd laughed at the exact same one many times before, even finessed your own commentary in there on occasion because the dead can't sue, and a murderer had no rights—but now, you thought it'd taste bad on your tongue.

The two hulking men noticed, far sharper than you gave them credit for. Or maybe you were just worse at hiding things than you thought. They didn't allude to anything until everyone was packed up in the van, dried from the sweaty protective suits and summer heat by the AC.

"Listen, it ain't my business, and I swear I've been trying my best not to ask." There was a furtive look linked between Hoss and T.J.; it was something they had talked about when you weren't around. "That guy you're living with. He isn't doing anything to you, right? You used to talk about him all the time in the beginning. Haven’t heard a peep about him in ages. God, you're not living in your car, are you?"

From the outside in, you weren't doing much to try to embellish fancy stories and reasons onto your drastic change over the months. You simply let it be and navigated every day with the hope you'd remember where you were going with your head down. It probably didn't look too good to a paternal man like Hoss, and to T.J., who had several younger siblings.

"No, it's not him—" But, of course, it really was and everything surrounding his cruelty, everything he made you do, and what you never refuted. "I'm just perpetually exhausted. I'm sure you've heard that from Sylvie and Deshaun while they've been in uni."

"All the damn time." Hoss beamed, chest perked a little higher with the mention of his children. It wasn't enough to diffuse the tension lingering in the van, however. "Just know, I'd do for you what I'd do for my babies—put the fear of God in that man. If he puts a finger on you, you let me know."

T.J. gave an agreeable hum, fingers sticking to the steering wheel as he moved them around, making a turn down some street. "We'll catch him by surprise and everything. I'll call in a couple favors, grab a few shovels and bags of cement from my dad's place. It's all good."

For some reason, their entire spiel only spiked your uneasiness, and suddenly you were far too aware of your bladder. It was enough initiative for T.J. to floor the gas and get back to headquarters, giving you the chance to break away and race the remnants of daylight all the way home.

༺ ♰ ༻

It had never happened before, but you managed to catch Montague by surprise when he walked through the front door to find you standing there in the foyer. The kitchen broom wrapped in your hands was a nasty ploy, along with the look you cast between him and a young man not any older than yourself. Again, just like all the others, you didn't recognize him. Montague's victims were fast, fleeting fixations for him, none worthy of names or an identity in his eyes. You suspected this guy was much the same.

Montague's bewilderment was swept away by a smile and laxing posture. He had settled back into his element. "You're home early today. I didn't expect to see you until much later. Not much to the scene, I assume?"

"It was pretty bad." A certain stiffness trailed on the end of your words, letting them echo through the hall and hang in the cool evening air. The young man was fast to perceive that tension: the tightness in your shoulders, fingers subtly wringing against the cracked wooden broom. Montague's anticipative smile climbed higher the longer he looked at you.

Would it be such a bad thing to turn around and pretend you had never seen him come home with that other man? You considered doing it, hiding upstairs and using your headphones until everything seeping through turned into an amalgamation of ambient noise that meant nothing to you, and you willed away the guilt like you'd always done.

In that moment, you thought about Meredith Nimu's apoplectic daughter, a woman so embittered by her own suffering that she was foul and relentless to anyone she crossed paths with. You thought about Shin Nakamura, a greedy, pitiless man who'd rather let coroners scrape up his tenant's remains rather than grant them mercy while they were alive and had been left in pieces because of it.

You thought of them and all their wickedness and edged your gaze towards the young man still standing in the doorway with his hand holding it ajar, clean fingernails picking at chipping paint, just steps from outside. "I think you should leave."

Run! Run! You'd better run away as fast as you can! Nothing would stop Montague from keeping his prey there, if that's what he chose to do. He did the opposite of that, and that was, simply, nothing at all. No pretty blandishments, nor a mouthful of teeth. Rather, now, he was particularly piqued by what you were trying to do.

To the young man, he had meddled into something rather egregious, probably convinced it was extramarital. You battled a surge of pride blooming inside you, shifting your chest a little higher, anchoring your spine back into your body.

"Don't come back here." You didn't need to say anything else. He was gone after pinching out a look of disgust towards Montague, tutting at him with his upper teeth showing through a curled lip.

Nothing happened for a while, not until the front door was secured after his departure. You were left to that responsibility, triple-checking the lock, while Montague ambled deeper into the house, but not too far away as you could follow the leisurely path by his heel strike. There was a rhythm in how he moved. It was deliberate, as though mimicking something.

It took you five paces to figure out he was miming your heartbeat, and he only stopped once it quickened in your chest. He appeared from around the corner, still taking his time reaching you, toying with some trinkets displayed on shelves built into alcoves throughout the lower floor.

You couldn't explain what you were feeling at that moment. Of the thousands—maybe millions—of victims Montague had taken in the previous times, you had just deprived him of one. That man would continue living, and he would tell his friends tomorrow about the weird night he had, and he would never have to be grateful that you saved him from a hellish death.

Yes, oh yes. Even as Montague approached you, carried by his deft gait with both halves of his gold compact open in his palm, you couldn't help but be in complete awe of yourself. A life continued outside of this mausoleum, and it was all because of you. You were entirely different from Meredith Nimu's daughter and Shin Nakamura, and, for once, your hands weren't sullied by bleach, blood, and body matter.

All that heaviness you had been carrying was suddenly so much lighter, and you felt like your chest could open up as wide as the room where you stood. The breaths you took were dry and cold in your throat, yet fresh as though you were walking outside in wintertime.

Montague must've seen something he didn't like on your face because he sucked down on his cigarette for a while, winding his wrist with it at his side once he was adequately calm.

"Did it feel good? I've only seen you this happy while I was fucking your brains out." It was jarring to hear him talk like that. He took another quick drag and let it out slowly as he rounded you. "Truthfully, darling, I didn't think you were the type to break the rules—on purpose, anyway. But I suppose we all get a little wound up every now and then, right? I've already forgiven you."

And then, you watched him drop the cigarette to the marble and snuff it underfoot until the weak ember was turned to soot. A black smear was left behind when he took his foot away. His stare into you was unwavering. "Clean it up."

You figured this was how a frightened animal felt when it wanted something within reach of an observant predator because you were trying to think of all the ways to get close without getting too close. It was a pitiful, humorous sight to him, seeing your steps forward so light and on the verge of bolting. But he showed no intention of doing anything more.

Still with the broom in hand, your knuckles turned stark around the handle while sweeping the remains towards you. It would take more elbow grease to get up that smudge, and he knew that just as well.

He reached for the broom and snapped it to a halt, making you jump, jaw clenching. A noiseless gasp lurched in your throat, his fingers wound tight into the hair at your crown as he yanked your head back to show all the fleshiness of your neck.

"What will you do about it, darling?" His lips were already cold and flush to the artery dancing in the curvature built of skin, muscle, and tendon. Your teeth chattered as the wetness of his tongue followed that intricate, breathtaking network inside of you as far as the neckline of your shirt would let him. "A man has to eat. Have you ever seen it? A man near starvation and the sorts of things he'll do to survive? Why, I've heard stories of desperate, little men eating their own lovers—their children—themselves just to claw around for a little longer. It's inspiring, I think."

He dragged you away then, up the stairs and through the hallway on the second floor to your bedroom, fingers still nested your hair until the moment you were shoved down onto fresh linens. There wasn't anywhere for you to go once he joined you on the mattress, feeling it bend towards his weight.

"Don't be afraid." he said this with all the fond familiarity of a lover, blunt fingernails digging crescents into your thigh through your clothes. In the waning moonlight that filtered through the dusty window over your bed, his pale eyeshine snared you like roots bursting from somewhere within your busy sheets to keep you there—keep you tame. "That's right. Come to me. Come to me."

There was a new drowsiness behind your eyes, one you couldn't stave by blinking. Montague's face was closer now, and you were struck with just how beautiful he actually was. The longer your gaze lasted, tips of your fingers exploring every shape and edge of his exquisite features, the less you were convinced he was a threat to you—that he couldn't have possibly been all that you'd feared up until now.

"I want you." His lips inched up like he expected you to say it. He felt your hands rest on the sides of his face, guiding him down into a soft kiss that he returned, that he kept clean and let you command until he was bored with it. You chased after him, lower lip pulled between both of yours and eventually out of reach. "Don't you want me too?"

"I wish you could understand just how much I do." He rummaged his pocket for the gold compact, losing it somewhere in the sheets, and then busied himself with stripping himself and you of clothes. Each piece discarded showed a greater expanse of your skin, a delight in his eyes because he could see that gorgeous webbing of arteries and veins throughout you, even in the darkness, through every defense your body created to protect you from every bacteria, virus, infection—from him.

He didn't need the breath, but he took one and held it anyway. You withered against his touch, those freezing, lithe fingertips traveling down all the areas where he wished his teeth could be, clear down to your groin. His smile stretched, feeling you search eagerly for a fistful of his hair with his lips smoothing across your inner thigh and then going higher.

There was warmth between your legs, a colorless glisten that leaked out onto the thin sheets, darkening a spot on them that tempted his tongue out for a taste. He came close to entertaining the notion of giving you that glimpse of heaven, allured by your hips leaping off the mattress and against his face.

"You really do think this is all about you." Montague kept you still by pressing down into your abdomen as he rose onto his knees, erection fitting tight between your bodies in the moments before he guided himself lower and hitched up into you. The sharp motion knocked a startled gasp out of your throat, where it quickly dissolved into a slew of filth and breathy panting. Your nails clawed into your palms, a sight he thought to make worse by digging himself deeper into you.

Montague had no issues biding his time this way, looming over the sprawl of your body beneath him, manipulating parts of you until he saw your face flinch and the first moans of discomfort shake all the way from your chest, up, and through your teeth. They matched the pace of his hard thrusts, smothered by sharp slaps of skin that carried in the inky air.

Indeed, I can wait. That thought of his unsatiated hunger melted in the back of his mind with the precedence of arranging the course of blood in your body. The drum of your heartbeat was deafening to him, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't loud enough. He wanted to be able to envision the arteries and veins bursting in his teeth, saturating the sheets and walls and both your bodies in hot red. He wanted it to paint his skin while he fucked you to absolution.

"It really, truly, is all about you in the end, isn't it?" He could still speak clearly, despite you being unable to utter noise beyond the air being forced out of your lungs. "You really are magnificent. How could I ever think to let you go? Not after everything you've done for me, how beautiful you look next to all of my things."

His hand shifted away from your abdomen at last, tracking across the soft span of your stomach and the muscles spasming there under his fingertips. All he would have to do is dig through you a little bit, and he could bury himself in those twitching fibers and insides. But he continued on his path to your pert nipples that he rolled against his palm a few times, higher still to fold his fingers together against your sternum where he felt your heart thundering there against your ribs.

"Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump," came his mocking chant that cracked into raspy moans as he lingered there. It had been a long time since something had made him feel this good. He had forgotten what bliss was truly like.

He reached your neck before long, trapping the underside of your jaw against his knuckles, forcing you to see him as his weight bore down on your throat. You both heard the cartilage and muscle in your neck shift, a subtle crack that sent your limbs flailing. You were thrown out of the rhythm of his thrusts in an attempt to grab at him.

"You really are despicable, aren't you?" He let out a gleeful laugh, letting your fingers turn ashen while you wrung his wrist. You weren't able to do much with your legs except use them to plant your heels into the mattress, vaulting your hips in the air to try to wrench yourself free. His cock slipped out of you, but he was hardly bothered by that. "Does it feel good that you chased off my guest? I could get him back, you know. You're aware of this. I know you are. But righteousness just feels so… rewarding, doesn't it? You couldn't resist. Desperation must've been eating you alive."

Strings of saliva glistened in your mouth, breaking apart the further your jaws spread. You were convinced, in that moment, that you would die like that in a silent scream. None of the words that Montague spoke truly reached you, not as your chest quivered and lungs burned as though swallowed in an inferno.

"Every misdeed in life vastly outweighs the good, you know? The scales have never been leaned in our favor—not I, and especially not for you. If that's the sort of thing you believe in. Isn't that what you're taught? Goodness for the sake of salvation at the end of a short life of inhibitions? How miserable." Montague took his hand off of you and let you breathe. You sucked in crisp air, gasping from your side through wet coughs and the sourness of vomit spat out on the floor.

Your respite was brief, weight on the mattress shifting as the hair on your scalp was used to lever you to your knees, body suspended upright only by his fingers tangled at your roots.

"This is all I can see." Montague loosened his hand from your head, moving south along your spine to your ass. He kneaded the bruised parts of your hips for a while after, lips ghosting their way along your neck up to the ear. "All I can see is what's right in front of me. And how it tastes. All that matters is that I have my fill—and that I feel good."

He smeared slick into the heel of his palm, rolling the head of his cock in that mess as he instructed you with every bit of lewdness how he wanted you to bend against the headboard, how far apart for you to spread your legs for him.

Every bit of it was humiliating for you, while he wished he could memorialize that moment of sinking back inside of you as your breaths broke into stifled sobs, face warped by anguish.

"Does it hurt? Tell me, I have to know, what does it feel like?" He enjoyed the suspense of not receiving an answer, listening as your fingernails dug tracks into the wood headboard and the dark room filled with obscene wetness that grew louder as his thrusts turned wild.

"Mmm—" He hinged forward, bracing his weight on top of your hands with his own. You shied from the surge of coolness that came with his cheek pressing yours. "You and I aren't so different. It makes me wonder if you actually like this. Isn't there something so freeing about it?"

"Mer—mercy, please." It was a coarse whisper from your dry throat, so much of your time having been spent with your mouth agape. The idea of having you that way was as tantalizing as all the others he thought up. "Montague, please—mercy."

Oh, now you were begging.

This was more than what he deserved. He managed a few more thrusts, spilling over into you by the third with a moan that he felt no shame to leave ringing in your ear. "Every part of you, every single part—I'll burn myself into your skin and your bones. You'll feel me in your veins, your blood. I'll make for certain that I'm all you remember—forever."

The vastness of your bedroom had grown warmer, permeated with the thickness of sweat and salt that left your palms slick against the headboard. You let your body slump against it, skin sticking to the wood. It didn't offer you the relief you wanted at that moment: a glass of ice water, all the tenderness of a soft bed to lull you into a blank dream—you just wanted to rest.

Montague knew this just as well, fishing his compact out from a muddled heap of linens and clothes. He checked inside to grab one of the two cigarettes left, making a mental note he'd need to replenish again tomorrow before lighting it and savoring it. At this rate, he anticipated he'd be empty before the end of the night.

For a while, he sat there cushioned on his haunches, admiring the way the smoke coiled towards the ceiling in dainty wisps and mingled with the stench of sex.

"It's not enough." he said, barely eliciting more than a glance from you. His current cigarette was already burnt to the filter, forcing him to pull the last and light that one too. "This is my last one. Such a shame."

You smelled the smoke strongly now, just seconds passing before you were yanked across the bed onto your back, the soreness in your scalp near excruciating as you yelped. Montague made a place for himself between your thighs again, leering down the length of his nose at you.

If he wanted to, he could trace the dread etched in your features with a finger, feeling all along your hot skin, into all the cavernous lines he wished he could preserve—right there, just like that. There had never been a more gorgeous visage than the one you wore right now. Only your gleaming, glowing, pink insides were more beautiful.

He watched your lips twitch while he teased a fistful of his hard cock against your sorest spot. You were swollen and bruised, and he could only imagine what it felt like when he bottomed out in you again.

The curve of your spine arched off the mattress, fingers frantically raking the air at him, reaching for any part you could sink into to get him out. Even your body seemed determined for the same, wonderfully stimulating walls squeezing around him.

It made a shiver roll all along his spine to his tailbone, eyes rolling up towards the ceiling, with his first thrusts feeling positively divine. Especially when you jolted, an almost exaggerated response amplified by jagged cries and wet gasps you couldn't seem to swallow back down into your chest.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" You sputtered around the mucus piled in your throat. "Montague, I'm sorry. Please, stop."

He had burned away half of his last cigarette when he leaned over you, his body eclipsing what poor light had managed to illuminate the room for you. You could only follow the dainty mesmerizing glow that worked away from his mouth—his exhale barely masking a moan that he blew away with the smoke—and towards you.

"Keep doing it." His other hand was crawling up your neck, forcing you to suck in a hard breath. "Beg me again. Keep doing it."

All sound but the steady pulse of the headboard striking the wall had deadened, lasting well until the moment the cigarette touched your skin—and you screamed. Your throat vibrated, suddenly stopping when his palm closed around you again, silencing all your noise, his thrusts sloppy and rough while you thrashed under him.

This time, he kept you pinned by his chest, letting your feet dig for traction and slip and slide on the sheets. The bright smolder turned dark as he twisted it into your neck, taking all the remnants of restraint he had not to drill into you as far as it could go. He curled his tongue behind his jaws, keeping them tight.

Montague let go of your throat to allow you the grace of a stifled wail before that same hand sealed your lips. "Ah, ah. You know better than to scream. Shh, shhh, shhh. It's such an ugly sound."

He rubbed the cigarette into your skin until it crumpled, leaving him to lament for a moment once flicking it away to the floor. For him, it left behind a beautiful burn: raw, mad, red, and enticing. As his hand fell off of your mouth, daring you to do more than whimper and cry, his tongue was already flat against your wound.

"Oh, God," you wheezed, voice hoarse and jarring with the force of his hips knocking into you. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! Stop, stop, stop! I swear I'll never do it again! I swear. I swear!"

Montague caught the wrist you swung at his head, giving the taste of your seared flesh time to settle on his palate before turning towards the pulse in your thumb. He tried to match how he was fucking you out to how it throbbed on his lips.

"Oh, I'm well aware that you won't do it again. That much is a given." His strokes into you were suddenly languid and intentional, so achingly deep that your eyes rolled back. "I've already said that you're forgiven, haven't I?"

You could barely speak over the depth he reached. It didn't feel right. "Th-then, why?"

A smile flourished across his face, but your eyes couldn't pierce that dark veil to see it. You could feel the damp path he left on your wrist, how the muscle writhed all around the sprawl of your veins, going as far as to wind your fingertips before it receded back behind his lips.

"Because I'm enjoying myself." There was a weight of finality to those words before his mouth engulfed the side of your wrist, away from your fragile network of bluish-purplish channels. And when he bit into you, it was the incisors that sank through.

You didn't know what it was. A clamp seized you by the neck like his fist, steeling itself there and robbing you of a scream. The pain was unlike anything else—paralyzing and deep, like a pair of sharpened, narrow skewers made of molten fire piercing you with such an agonizing ache that you could do nothing but lay there.

But you still felt everything he was doing. His thrusts had grown truly vicious, chasing a high that came as the warmth of your blood seeped from a pair of punctures he had created. The steady flow he fed from was something he lapped on at his leisure. Enough of it streaked the length of your arm and dripped onto your bedding, onto your naked, warm skin when he guided the fall over your neck and chest, south to your stomach and abdomen. He let it fill and pool the seams of his fingers while smearing it with the fluids between your bodies.

At last, breaking the trance to speak, feebly, in between intermittent pockets of pain and numbness rolling through you, you asked with some hopefulness, "Are you going to kill me?"

"You? Kill you?" Montague dropped your wrist. It felt like a limp, dead thing that didn't belong to you. He dove at your neck for those drops he teased himself with, nudging your chin high with his nose to reach it all. "Death would mean letting you go. You're all mine, darling. Whatever other existence waits beyond death will never have you."

His tongue wet a trail to your chin, collecting a watery essence of blood and spit that he pushed into your mouth. Your lips were sealed by his ravenous kiss, relenting to the thickness of his tongue swirling the taste into your cheeks and down your throat, a nauseating intermix of iron and stale smoke that lingered and made you pucker.

And then, you heard him back in your ear, craning his neck only as far as to aggravate the cigarette burn with his breath. It gave several angry throbs. The weight of his body was almost flush on you, spreading the blood around as though your skin together was a single canvas.

To his eyes, it bloomed breathtakingly, seeping into every crevice, pore, and scratch that made up your design, an impermanent stain that he could saturate you in again and again and again. The things he whispered in your ear were vile and wicked, all on unlabored breaths while his strokes turned sluggish and stayed seated deep inside you until the final hitch of his hips left you full of him.

"I don't think you should go to work today."

You were only scarcely coherent of him—or anything for that matter—eyes unmoving from the black void above and unfeeling of how he chose to manipulate your body, still, hours later. All you could think about was the flutter of your lashes weighing down heavily over your eyes and how this world only survived on suffering such as yours.

༺ ♰ ༻

A small pile of things was arranged fussily in a duffle bag Hoss had given the day you returned to work after an impromptu leave of absence. It had only lasted three days, just enough time to acclimate to the pain that seemed to synchronize to every part of your body, throbbing everywhere, all at once, and at times with sharpness so great it toppled you to the ground. You could only lay there—wherever you dropped, on whatever cold slab of marble or concrete until it dissipated, unfurling from your limbs and organs to a rapturous wave of relief that melted the tension out of you.

It had only happened once while at work on a scene amidst a balmy summer night and came out of nowhere like an electric shock surging to your fingertips and toes, a hammer landing on your bones and leveling you on the sidewalk leading back to the company van. And that was all it took to incur a ruinous sort of anger in the two hulking men.

"You're going to take this bag, pack some shit, and you're leaving. Tonight." Hoss had to shake out the dust on the old duffle bag he pulled from somewhere in his car. "You ain't gonna tell me the reason, but I know he did something to you. T.J.'s calling in a favor."

"No. Don't—don't do anything. Don't try to come to the house—" There was a bandage around your wrist that you couldn't stop fiddling with. "I don't know what'll happen if you do. Just fucking don't."

"Nah, not us." T.J. slapped his phone back into the clip on his belt loop, eyeing the motions of your fingers on your wrist uneasily. "One of my old buddies—name's Roscoe—said he wants to handle it. Apparently, he and your guy have a history of some kind. He says to be ready to go by three."

The meaning behind what he said was left nebulous and concerning to you, even after you returned home with the duffle bag and started pulling things from your closet. Some ways across your room, high up on the wall and out of your reach was a clock. Its monotonous ticking brought your eyes over to it.

It was just after one-thirty, still enough time to change your mind if you wanted to. There was something so effortlessly easy about following along to the whims of other people. It felt safe, reassuring—their confidence was infallible. Not once in four years had T.J. or Hoss given you a reason to doubt their intentions, but right now, it boiled over in your mind.

But where will I go? What am I going to do? He'll find me. He'll find me. Montague would find you, but he wouldn't stop you from leaving. You could see it with clarity—him perched on the armrest of a chair, watching you walk through the door. He'd give you a headstart, a few days, maybe a few weeks.

You weren't sure you knew what to do without him. There was nowhere else in the world you could go, no one you could confide in that wouldn't be destroyed. He would keep your heart beating all the while breaking you apart until he had his fill, reminding you that this was how it was meant to be. This was how he showed you how you belonged.

And you—silly little you with your consciousness floating on the fringes of inscrutable ecstasy and some personal purgatory built on agony in your bones and blood—would believe him.

"Going on a trip?" His voice drifted to you from the doorway, far sweeter than it usually was. "I wish you would've told me. I can't imagine what it'll be like without you here in this house. You breathe life into it."

He was lured over by your silence, fitting his fingers between your shoulder blades to push along your spine, easing away the discomfort that had settled there. It was hard not to lean into that relief, a misstep that shattered any lasting hold of willpower when he stooped his neck to sweep you into a kiss.

"Why don't you stay instead?" He knew you wouldn't be coming back, not without dragging you back himself. "Stay with me instead. Right here. In this bed."

"Montague, stop—" He pressed down harder on your lips so those words withered into guttural frustration in your throat.

The duffle bag was flung far away, opening space on your bed for him to lay you out and begin to unravel the bandages around your wrist. Once he had access, his mouth was already full against the two puncture sites.

"Stay." He wasn't playing coy now. "I'll take care of you. It wasn't enough before. I can see that now. What can I do? It'd be too easy to break your legs. What if I chained you to this bed? What if I locked you up in this room? I wouldn't mind keeping you downstairs with me, but it would be too cold for you, I think."

"I want to leave." you said, mustering your composure through tight lips while he teased the infected purple holes with his flatter teeth. "Let me go."

He smiled derisively. "I don't think you know what you want."

"I—" You balked at him, reiterating with a stumble, "I—I just want to leave. Get off."

"How will you ever survive without me?" You didn't know if you'd be able to. "You'll be all alone, all alone in a world that's just ready to tear you open and spit you back out. I've told you before: Society doesn't reward virtue over vice—only those who play along. You won't last, not after you've known and tasted me."

You couldn't bring yourself to say anything, whereas he swelled like a man who had salvaged a victory, lying himself down to kiss you again—

And then, the doorbell rang with an immense melancholic echo that you could feel vibrate up your arms and legs. Nearly a year later, you were hearing it for the first time and grasping onto the lapels of his suit vest, keeping him still when you remembered T.J.'s promise.

"Ignore it." you said.

"We have a guest—" Something in his tone made your stomach clench. "It's not polite to leave them waiting, especially at this hour."

Montague had untangled himself from you and was gone before you could stop him. Another wave of pain put you on the floor when you moved. Drool piled from your mouth. An ache so unreal pounded in the wrist he had played with. The crawl to your duffle bag was far, arduous in that every inch felt like carrying stones on your back.

I'm going to die. I might as well already be dead. You didn't have any more time to wait, so you slung the strap over your shoulder and used the wall to guide you along the quiet hallway, bumping into every pedestal and display where Montague's most treasured things had stayed undisturbed.

You were one of them, something he could keep on the second floor with the rest of his stuff, but unlike brittle porcelain and fraying embroidery—he could break you as much as he wanted, again and again and again, and fit you back whole. He could do it forever while you wasted, longing for an end he would never give you.

But as you crept along the bleak wallpaper and all of his curios, you were so gentle with them, steadying any wobbling base or piece as you went. The central staircase was close, voices at the bottom of it faint and unintelligible, drifting alongside you as though part of the house—

The air exploded. Just once. A single gunshot brought back all the alertness to your body, neck and shoulders at full length, pain dulled to where you could shuffle faster and look off the bannister at the landing below.

Montague was staring back up at you from the floor, entirely still and soundless. His jaw was unhinged, askew, frozen in a position that should've been impossible. A black hole gaped between his eyes, but didn't bleed.

"If you're not ready, that's going to be bad news." Another man stood nearby sheathing a gun, unfamiliar and yet with sameness in the way his gaze felt hollow and reached through you. "I'm repaying my debts. I'd like to make good on this one."

You were slow descending the stairs, even slower while you rounded Montague's body and denied yourself the chance to stop. Something invisible wanted to pull you to him, plow your knees into hard marble and weep over his chest. However, your insides bending in disgust and twinges in your bones kept you onward.

This man, Roscoe, was just as sickly-seeming and gray as the other, every slot of space on his arms and neck filled with images of religious iconography and portraits of saints—Mary being the only one you recognized with just a glance. It was tempting to touch him, something he noticed and stepped out of your reach.

"Is there another way out of here?" He made a weak motion towards the front door just ajar, but his eyes were stuck on the wrist wounded and unusable to you now. "We need to go. Now."

You were racking your brain for an answer, turning half-circles in place before pointing to the archway with a clock. "There's a backdoor, but the yard is fenced in and there's nothing but forest for three miles. There's also—"

Roscoe waited expectantly, ushering you to continue when he went for the gun in its holster. "Start moving, we'll figure it out." He unloaded another round into Montague's head, a near indecipherable twitch in the fingers made the hair on your neck shoot straight out. "Silver only keeps him down. It won't kill him. Go!"

"Th—there's, there's the basement." You smacked your lips, trying to swallow around a bulge in your throat. "There's an old door. He said there are tunnels, but I don't know where they go. I don't know if he was telling the truth. I don't—"

He threw a hand into your back, thrusting you forward at least three feet. You almost didn't catch your footing. "Then that's where we're going."

"Not a friend of yours then, I assume, darling?" Montague's voice from the floor was as much of a relief as it was terrible. The silent gaps of air all around were disturbed by sharp snaps and cracking bones as his jaw moved back into place and he sat upright over his thighs. You were transfixed by the silver bullets being sucked into his skull, holes shrinking until they closed completely. "I'm not surprised you're still fraternizing with the wrong crowds, Roscoe. You and that entire Society have always been a fucking eyesore."

Roscoe readied his aim. "Parasite."

Montague laughed all the way to his feet, tugging at the edge of his vest to make it neat again. He opened his mouth just enough to let his tongue roll out, shards of silver bullets tinkling as they hit marble underfoot. "You can't take what's mine."

He looked to you, stepping closer every time Roscoe moved you back with his arm. "Come here. Come back to me, darling. This is where you belong. This is your home. You belong here with me, here with everything that you know."

"He doesn't mean that." Another gunshot snapped you to attention, blinking out of a stupor you hadn't realized you were in. The bullet landed in Montague's forehead, teetering his balance in such a way that his back curved towards the floor, arms hanging like useless instruments, yet he still somehow kept his soles planted. "Time to go. Get to the basement."

Roscoe didn't fail to reach you this time, running tight on your heels through the house to the basement floor. He stopped partway to the old door to help you scour the duffle bag for a key—one attached to the chatelaine Montague had given you the day you accepted to move in.

Your breaths were ragged, heart ablaze and beating against your ribs. In that moment, as you flipped through the assortment of keys with an unsteady, slippery grip, you wondered if Montague heard your blood racing in your veins, if he could follow the suffocating drumbeat your heart made in your ears.

Just above, fast approaching the locked basement door, came a thunderous roar so inhuman and reverberating that it scared the clip of keys out of your hands into a clattering heap on the floor. Time was up.

"Move!" Roscoe shoved you aside, illuminated by the hectic flare of your phone as he fit his fingers through a gap in the door and ripped the entire thing off its hinges. He pulled you by the scruff of your shirt and heaved you inside the tunnel. "Go! Go! Go!"

The first thing to hit you was a putrid smell intimately known but always through protective equipment and a respirator. And as you went deeper into the tunnel, led by a single route and the light off your phone, the dirt packed under your feet turned soft, sinking to the tops of your shoes.

And then, you saw bodies.

Numerous—countless corpses in varying stages of decay with twisted faces reflected your terror and pain right back at you. Most were intact with missing limbs or dark red chasms in their abdomens that had been scraped hollow and dry under the white light. A few had been fully decapitated, briefly reminding you of the dead blonde woman from that night, but most of what lay stacked against the tunnel walls were emaciated figures with skin pulled so taut to their bones you could still make out their faces.

You were doubled over your knees, sucking in fetid mouthfuls of air and retching them back out on the ground. It burned in your throat, in your nostrils, and behind your eyes, but stifled your sobs as Roscoe dragged you alongside him.

"What did he do? What did he do?" You were crying, wheezing out those words on every shallow breath you took all the way to an end just ahead. The more you thought about it, the more you smelled the rot, tasted the bitterness of your own vomit, the more came out. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"

Roscoe had to let you rest in the grass once you both surfaced. One of the exits turned out to be near the house, less than half a mile. But the tunnels kept going and so did the bodies. You suspected that there wouldn't be any reach of that underground labyrinth that didn't have some form of decay along it.

The thought brought the tears back, but now you could relish the sticky summer night humidity and touch dewy tendrils of grass under your hands.

"Can you drive?" Roscoe had a pair of keys hanging from his index finger, giving you a long moment to take them. He saw confusion in your watery stare. "I'll tell you where to go, just drive."

That's how it had been for hours at this point. You kept your hands locked around the steering wheel, one stronger than the other, gnawing the inside of your cheek while ruminating everything—tonight, the night Montague had bitten you, every other night before that, and your decision to have ever trusted him.

"How long ago did he bite you?" Roscoe had the seat reclined, arms over his eyes to shield them from oncoming headlights. "It doesn't look good."

You tested your grip on the steering wheel, but you couldn't do much without a sharp sting in your wrist. "I don't know—a couple weeks ago? I've tried everything short of going to the emergency room."

"That won't help," he said. "Modern medicine can fix a dog bite, antibiotics can kill an infection, a vaccine can protect you from a virus. Those aren't going to do any good."

Solemnly, you asked, "Am I going to die?"

Roscoe didn't sit up but had your wrist in his hands, turning it in little ways that didn't aggravate you. Besides the occasional glare from passing vehicles, there was no light in the car, and the holes in your skin were hardly distinguishable, though they had gotten darker. You weren't able to move it with any ease now.

"What you need to know right now is that he's never going to stop following you." He put your hand back on the steering wheel, careful as he enclosed your fingers around it. "It doesn't matter how long it takes, what you do, where you go—a parasite finds a host, and it latches on. And it doesn't let go."

You glanced between him and the road several times, tongue wetting the dry parts of your lips. "He's a vampire—you're a vampire. There's got to be something—"

Roscoe finally sat up in his seat, now cramped sideways with his shoulders flat to the window. The car veered a bit into the other lane. "You need to understand something. What you're saying would imply he ever had any humanity. Vampires are created." He paused for a beat, waiting for the realization to strike you. "Montague was never created."

"What—what the hell is he, then?" A horn abruptly blared by, prompting you to yank the car back onto the correct side. "He drinks blood. He has teeth. He—he hunts. He doesn't like silver. His eyes are the same as yours."

Roscoe lowered his gaze, but remained in that uncomfortable position. "There's a story I heard about him once. I don't remember the details except for one: ‘If the devil exists, they're one in the same.’"

You kept your eyes on the road, counting every car that flitted on past. They were probably going to work at this hour—green numbers on the dashboard showed it just after four—and they'd be able to have a place to return to at the end of the day. Now, you didn't belong anywhere, and twenty-four hours from now you still wouldn't.

The town where you had lived with Montague for a year was long behind you, backtracking would take hours, and you wouldn't know how to get back from the direction that Roscoe had told you to go. Dim streetlamps and cozy houses with spruced yards had morphed into an endless network of concrete, signs, and off-ramps to places you'd never heard of.

It was scary how everything could change in one night, and how it did. The only semblance of normalcy to you right now were the aches throughout your body, which had returned the moment you fully comprehended that you had escaped that house.

"Why…" Roscoe looked up at you, seeing your lips shake and eyes turn red. "Why do I want to go back to him?"

He fixed himself right in the seat, tousling a hand through his hair while looking out through the windshield. "You shouldn't do that. But you'll never be able to stop running."

You never saw Roscoe again once the car ride ended several thousands of miles later, mentioning something about how he repaid his debt to T.J. and had disappeared from a restaurant you both walked into. When that happened, you sat paralyzed at your little table for most of the day with a soul-crushing realization that you were truly alone with nobody in the world—just like Montague said you would be. And, for the sake of others, you'd never be able to have anyone else in your world.

It stayed that way for close to two years. The hardest part hadn't been the homelessness or constant vigilance, not the door revolving each person to come into your life since, but the fact that you still yearned for what you once had. Everything so awful about what you experienced sometimes looked like heaven when you thought about it, like soft, cloudy nostalgia from a time where the throes of agony were all you had ever known.

You were capable of thinking soberly as well, and with that came the understanding that a part of you would always want that time back—want him back.

He had left you with a permanent scar and neurological damage that could never be corrected. It was anticipated you'd lose that wrist at some point in the future, but for now, you could still hold a cup and brush your teeth with enough conscious effort.

The pain never went away either, but you refused to let it impede your work in the field. And your two roommates were a couple of engineering geniuses who'd managed to make the flat more accommodating to your needs. They'd been patient with you during every step of your transition into a new life, calling you an enigma because you had nothing to your name except a dusty duffle bag and a "strange-looking dog bite" on your wrist when you first met them.

Sometimes, especially on the weekends after clinking together enough shot glasses, they tried to probe your brain for some clue as to who you were, who you had been historically. You had decided it was better that they—that no one—knew about it or what actually existed out there in the world.

And when you returned home from the lab late that Saturday night, you were surprised to find the lights off and the flat immersed in the kind of soundlessness that made your ears feel clogged with cotton.

You were slow in lowering your backpack to the floor, keeping the front door slightly ajar so a slither of light from the residential corridor slipped inside. "Jordan? Felix?"

No answer. You didn't hear anything from their bedrooms upstairs either.

"Jordan?" The nearest light switch didn't work, neither did the one after that, or any others you hunted down with the diffused beam from your phone screen. "Jordan? Felix? Are you guys home?"

It was possible they had gone out somewhere for the night and just hadn't mentioned anything to you, as unsound as that logic actually was, considering it simply wasn't their personality. But as you wandered through different rooms checking the switches, you knew you were rationalizing to keep yourself in check.

The light from the hallway still piled inside like a narrow pillar, raising all the hairs on your neck and arms, knowing that it wasn't a building-wide outage. They had never left you in a situation like this before. Something was wrong.

"Jordan! Felix! Whe—" Your foot nearly shot out from under you when you slid through something slick on the laminate. After a moment to fix yourself, bracing the edge of the countertop with a clammy palm, you steadied the white glow of your phone at the floor.

There, glistening back at you, was the vast richness of blood in a tall puddle that spread like long winding tendrils through grout in the flooring. It looked almost black under your light at a certain angle, estimating it had been there for several hours—untouched.

You held in a breath and grit your jaws together as the more you moved, the more you saw. And when the top of a head came into view, silky hair shining like fine thread before clumping together at the base where the blood had pooled the most, it was everything you could to keep yourself from hitting the floor.

Both of them were there, perfectly out of sight of the front door and completely unrecognizable. Their bodies had been left in one piece, though where their faces had once been were cavernous holes with pale, pink ribbons of flesh and fat left behind. The roundness of their skulls let blood fill inside it like a vessel. What little pieces of brain matter remained had floated to the surface.

You staggered back from them, phone loosening from your weak hand and returning them to the maw of darkness, while groping the wall behind you as far as your arm could reach. This wasn't a result of crude knife work or even bludgeoning; no, it was a slow kill, one meant to steep someone in torment so immense that you prayed to whatever was out there that they succumbed immediately.

"Help…" Your voice was trapped in your throat, barely registering as a whisper even to yourself as you sidled along the wall. "Someone—anyone, please help."

The patter of your heartbeat was torturous. Your every step back to the entrance was leaden with fear. You couldn't get your legs to move fast enough, and the light reaching in through the gap seemed to stretch on forever—further, further, and further still.

You thought back to that day you met Montague and shook his hand, noting how unnaturally cold it had been despite it being a nice day in spring. You remembered the dead blonde woman with mascara tears, and the bodies he used to decorate the tunnels, and the young man who was able to walk away that night believing it was all some shallow quarrel—never knowing he had sealed your fate.

You regretted all of it.

The door was in your reach now, and you could get out, call for help, and go back to running. This time, you wouldn't be tricked into false satiety or let anyone too close. You would see mountains and forests and oceans a thousand times over before you stopped again.

Two years hadn't been enough time for you to accumulate many things, you thought. It wouldn't be hard to leave most of it behind, just like you had before. You would unpack that old duffle bag from the back of your closet, fill it to the brink, and that would be enough.

You had your hand over smooth metal, but that cold reached greater depths in you as the door was pushed shut from behind, light shrinking away through the slot until you were swallowed whole in the dark.

"Hello, darling. I've missed you." He sounded the same against your ear. For a split second, you felt relieved. "Don't worry about cleaning up. We're not staying long."

He clamped damp fingers over your mouth before you could scream.

Some fates are worse than death...

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