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versipellesh · 1 month ago

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whistle in the dark || b. mears.

series concept drabble

summary: nature always has a way seeking to balance herself out, when a vampiric outbreak clouds a small town she sends a fur covered blessing

note: so at the moment this is stand alone and just a need for me to get concept out of my head,, im a big all things werewolf (it's my tism interest) but a ben mears x werewolf!reader fic // i wrote this to blood upon the snow by hozier because it's a vibe. also no beta reader, i just went apeshit with this

word count: 1278

The unsteady creak of the old stairs of the house echoed in the unfinished basement. Ben’s footsteps were a bit unsteady, the eerily silence that had been turned into the sound of flesh being torn into filled the cellar as he continued downwards. He had left Mark at the top of the stairs, the upper part of the house had been torn to hell and back. It was clear a struggle had taken place, blood spattering floors and walls was the first tell to them that they had gotten to you. But the sudden chunks or patches of what looked like skin coated in a slimy substance paired with claw marks that almost looked like a bear that followed a trail of blood and wet epidermis painted a far more concerning picture.

The flashlight in his hand shook slightly, the faded light barely illuminating the basement that’s only other source of light was from the small basement windows. Golden hues had been slipping in casting long shadows over the walls and shelving. There wasn’t much that seemed to be stored away, boxes that hadn’t been touched in sometime that were left to be claimed to be dust of time. He had been down here once with you when he had stopped by, it was far more organized then. Whatever struggle had occurred upstairs looked like it had gotten worse down in the cold basement. Boxes were strewn and memories scattered about, blood painting sections and metal shelves bent and snapped in ways they should have been.

Ben almost stumbled on the last step, his boot slipping on a particular slick part. It was a mixture of blood, membrane and skin like something had almost shed. “Fuck.” Was the only word that had left his lips the moment he almost ate it, his free hand reaching out to steady on the railing but was only met with the sticky residue of blood. His hand recoiled, blue eyes glancing at the dark red stain on his skin. He could feel the bile raise in the back of his throat but he pushed it down. He haphazardly wiped it on his jeans as he did his best to step out of the bio-hazard of a mess at the bottom of the stairs.

His flashlight scanned the wide and mess torn space. The sounds had gotten louder now he was down there. He didn’t know exactly what it sounded like but there was that sickly sound of flesh being torn from thew. It did nothing to settle the pit in his stomach as the sounds of something growling and grunting followed the sounds of flesh being torn away for whatever had been the poor creature to be attacked. He swallowed quietly, almost jumping out of his skin when he heard Mark whisper yell down the stairs.

“Is she here?” The boy asked.

Ben’s blue eyes flickered to the basement then back up the stairs at Mark. He wasn’t sure what to say, he knew he couldn’t lie to the boy. He was smart and probably would have figured it out if he had said no.

“I’m not sure. Just stay up there.” Ben told him. He watched as the boy nodded, pushing his glasses up his face as Mark settled to sit at the top of the stairs.

Ben re-centered himself as he flicked the flashlight around. He felt a sense of dread boil in his system as he made his way through the carnage that covered the basement. He wasn’t sure if it was the anxiety that you weren’t alive and one of those bastards had gotten to you but it felt different. Like staring into the unknown and seeing the void blink back at you. The writer moved quietly through the broken and shoved over shelves, the warm light of the flashlight flickering over the steel bars of the shelves. He could see bits of skin caught on areas, blood was painted about like some gothic picture and then the clothing. He had stopped halfway when he had caught sight of that flannel shirt that he had often seen you wear over thinner t-shirts.

It was tattered and blood soaked, some of the fleshy membrane clung to it. The bloody slim touched his skin and he stumbled back. It was still warm yet so foreign. In the process of stumbling back, his long legs tripped over one of the toppled shelves and his world was suddenly tipping to the side. He didn’t have much time to brace himself as he hit the cold concrete floor. He cracked his head against it and the world blurred for a moment. Everything became dizzy for a moment as pain flooded his body. Ben let out a groan as he slowly flipped himself around. His large hand met the warm substance. It took a brief moment for him to realize what it was, the tangy smell of blood assaulting his senses.

A primal fear flooded his body as he began to shake. The sounds of something eating were crystal clear now and so were those animal-like noises. As his vision focused again, what he had been expecting was to see your lifeless corpse being drained of your blood, blank eyes staring back at him and that the blood he had touched was yours. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t even close to what he had been thinking to see.

There was a body, it was definitely someone from the Lot that had turned. Pale skin that was stained with crimson and bloodshot eyes wide in horror. Their chest cavity had been torn straight through and their head was barely attached at the spine. It was the thing that was hunched over the body that he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He couldn’t call it human, elongated limbs that ended in long paws and a wiry body as a blood streaked maw ripped into the chest of the vampire. The fur was the color of your hair, most of it was semi long until it got to the head of the beast where it came down in drapes covering half lidded eyes as the beast partook in its kill. A short tail long loosely as the beast was crouched, a large human yet canine-like paw held the body down as it ripped at the viscera of the corpse.

The flashlight had fallen out of his hand and it had seemingly been knocked loose somewhere as it was off before it had started flickering. The dim light caught the eyes of the beast, those eyes that were all to human like but also animal at once widened and the beast stopped. Ben’s icy hues caught the beast's stuffy moment of staring each other down filled the room. The beast made a low growl as it lifted its maw, slick with blood and meat as it stood up. It was almost the size of a horse, muscles ripping and the remains of clothing still clung to its form. The only indication that it was you was that charm that you always wore around your necklace, a worn bronze pendant that now seemed to be more a collar than a necklace.

It was at that moment the chilling realization hit Ben. If vampires existed then surely other things had too, it was hard to swallow the first truth but it was another to realize that what he was seeing in front of him was another creature of legend.

A werewolf.

All he seemed to understand was two things, that it was you and that what you were seemed to be something natural that could fend off a bloodsucker.

tags: @delopsia @lewmagoo @rhettmotel

#salem's lot #salems lot #salem's lot 2024 #ben mears #ben mears x reader #lewis pullman #lewis pullman x reader

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crushribbons · 12 days ago

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𝖘𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗

summary: Ben Mears is new in town and just trying to work on his latest novel.

cw: 3.3k words, some fun flirty fluff, light smut (18+), dry humping, allusions to actual sex lol, i researched one '70's thing and got tired, fem!reader/oc.

a/n: they bred this boy in a lab to make me need to chew drywall. HAPPY HALLOWEEN MY CHICKIES!! have a fun and safe night!! 👻 xx laney

The record spun tirelessly around the turntable, echoes bouncing off the cavernous library ceilings.

“Mmmm…” Donovan hummed. The guitar cushioning his voice strummed in full force. “Must be the season of the witch…”

“Is it, now?” the night librarian asked, one eyebrow cocked. She reached around the man hunched at the microfilm machine and picked up the dust-laden books he’d already cast aside. He glanced up at her, surprised.

Pulling the thick reading glasses from his nose and rubbing the bridge, he apologized. “I didn’t know anyone was still here! Mabel–Ms. Wertz–said I had the place to myself this evening.” The man stood and crossed to the tiny travel case turntable he’d brought with him, making to remove the needle from the vinyl, but she held up a hand.

“Oh, no, don’t stop it on my account. It’s nice to have something filling up this spooky old place, for once.” She watched the man smile and settle back down at the reading room desk. He was tall and lean, well-dressed, like the men from Boston she saw when she visited her sister at the university. His dark blonde hair fell into curls nearly to his shoulders.

So this is the Ben Mears that everyone can’t stop talking about.

He affirmed the thought for her. “I’m Ben,” he said, with a small, polite smile. It was several seconds before she realized that he was extending his hand for her to shake, not for her to hand back the books she’d cleared away from him. She took the hand and shook. His palm was a bit dry but still soft.

There was a notebook filled with messy scrawl that she couldn’t read in the quick glance she took next to the microfilm, a pen resting on top that looked like it was trying to catch its breath after its user’s furious scribbling. “You’re the author, right? Mr. Big Time,” she grinned, hoping she was coming off cool and worldly, not just another hometown girl who had never left Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine. Population: about ten.

Ben looked down, bashful. “I don’t know about ‘big time.’ I manage, ma’am.”

“Well, anyone who’s managed to leave this town is big time to us, sir.” Ben smiled again, and she decided it was more wistful than anything. The tight proximity and lack of prying eyes around them emboldened her at the same time it made her nervous.

Things had been…strange ever since this outsider had pulled into town in his fancy gold car. The air was chilling the way it always started to at the beginning of October, but it had a different smell to it than usual. No longer did the scent of candied apples, of hay bales and pumpkins and dry cornstalks float past her on her daily afternoon walk to the library; now, it had an acrid tint, almost sanguine at times. Everyone noticed it. The bloody hue that the sky took on at night, crimson against the bright yellow waxing moon, had mothers instructing their little ones to be off the streets hours before the posted curfew.

She had conjured up an image of a big, scary stranger in a long black coat, wearing a hat that concealed his face (and mouthful of fangs, perhaps?), based on all the whisperings and gossip that had followed Mears since he arrived. The actual man looked far less threatening.

But no less intriguing, she thought, as she watched him from behind the circulation desk. He returned to his research and his mug of black coffee, the presence of which would have sent Mabel spinning in her grave prematurely. The night librarian said nothing, though. Just watched him leaf slowly through the volumes to his right and peer through his thick lenses at the microfilm that had only been purchased last year and was already spectacularly behind the times. Just like everything else in the Lot.

Two more hours dragged past, during which she pretended to be working. The radiator in the ancient building picked and chose when to turn on and when not to, and it had not deemed this evening significant enough to be a warm one, so her teeth clacked together while she moved some books aimlessly from one shelf to another. She pulled her cardigan tight around her body. The gentle scribbling of Ben’s pen filled the whole space with nothing else to dampen it. He must have been quite a prodigious author, given the speed with which he was writing.

She was just debating telling him that she generally closed up and went home about half an hour earlier when he saved her the trouble. “Hey, I think I’m all set for the night.” Her head shot up from the book she’d read one line of in the past twenty minutes. Ben was standing at the desk in front of her, arms laden with his research.

“Oh, great! Just about ready to shut things down here,” she replied. Ben thanked her for letting him use the facilities after-hours, then he paused for a second, and she felt a cool thrill run from the base of her spine up to her neck as his eyes locked on hers.

He chuckled and looked away. “What’s, uh…so, what’s fun to do around here at night?” he asked, and a wicked little vision snapped across her mind’s eye that she tried to banish as quickly as possible. Ben’s voice was gravelly with disuse and the lateness of the hour. She tried not to imagine what it must sound like in the morning. “I think I need a beer after trudging through all this.”

“Well, Plymouth Rock’s the only bar in town, if you can even call it that,” she sighed.

“Plymouth Rock?” he laughed, eyebrow cocked. “Last time I checked, that was down in Mass.”

She buried her face in her hands in exasperation then looked up at him with a sheepish grin and said, “You know how they love their pilgrim shit around here.”

Ben’s jaw rolled side to side while he considered something. Nervous tick or absent habit, it wasn’t clear. “You like it there?”

“I do.” A hopeful wick caught flame in her chest, then was snuffed out just as fast when he nodded and started moving towards the door.

“Well, thanks again. Have a good night, miss.”

The poster taped on the inside of the front library doors as Ben pushed through them said, Come back any time!

He stayed late the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that, and went on in that way for weeks. Truth be told, she lost count of how many evenings they spent in relative quiet side by side, Ben diligently reading and writing about God knew what while she hummed along to his records and tidied the library beyond recognition (there was nothing else to do; her closing duties usually took her about fifteen minutes). On her days off, she missed the scratch of his pen on paper, and prayed that she might bump into him on the street.

The moonlight pouring in through the window tonight was the reddest it had been yet. It cast everything in a bizarre bloodbath. Even Ben, sitting at his usual desk with his collar unbuttoned and glasses slid down to the end of his nose, looked a little bit sinister in the colorwash.

He had brought her a steaming paper cup of apple cider when he had arrived. “Seemed like a good night for it,” he had shrugged as he passed it to her and took a sip from his own. “Oh, and happy Halloween, I guess!”

She wandered over to him, swirling the dregs of her cider, trying to make it last. Ben glanced up and smiled. “What are we working on tonight?” she inquired and perched on the edge of his desk. He huffed.

“Not sure I know anymore,” he muttered. His eyes were locked on the microfilm, scanning through articles at lightning speed. She hummed in interest and kicked her legs back and forth gently. Ben sat back in his chair and removed his glasses, then rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes with a groan. She tried and failed not to look at the length of him, stretched out before her. He’d worn a soft-looking green plaid flannel shirt and corduroy pants that could have fit less snugly. “Doesn’t a pretty lady like yourself have anything better to do on Halloween night?” he asked, and a stupid blush crept across her nose and cheeks despite her efforts to not react.

“Nothing so interesting as watching you,” she teased back, and Ben grinned. She had quite gotten over her apprehension towards the stranger. No, he wasn’t a stranger anymore, he was Ben, who had overnight gotten her excited about her podunk little job in this podunk little town, who came to her for any questions he had because he knew that she wouldn’t gossip about it later on. They got on well. Real well.

“About as interesting as watching paint dry,” he said wryly. His eyes ran over his usual mess of books and notepads and pencils on the desk, then drifted over to her legs. She almost missed it, but she couldn’t help feeling a flick of heat as his gaze raked down the brown tights she was wearing. Her skirt had ridden up to the middle of her thighs, and she fought the urge to fiddle with the hem.

A moment of silence where they both smiled at the ground was broken as she cleared her throat and said, “I read that book you told me to.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mhmm.” She nodded proudly. “It was painful, Mears.”

Ben faked being aghast. “What?! You didn’t like it?”

“You’ve got some pretty dull taste, mister. A guy moaning about his loving wife and perfect life for two-hundred and forty-seven pages?” She stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed outright. “Give me Vonnegut and some colorful fucking insanity any day of the week.”

“Never read anything except Slaughterhouse.”

“Well, fix that!”

“Yes, ma’am.” His chin was propped up on one hand as he winked up at her. He loved calling her “miss” or “ma’am”–it drove her crazy, because, as she had told him one night with a swift whack to his head with a stack of newspapers, she wasn’t one of the dowdy old matrons that made up the rest of the library staff. She scolded him once more and he took it with a smile, unphased.

God, the way he looked at her, sometimes. It was enough to make the head of a much more urbane, cosmopolitan woman spin, let alone a girl who hadn’t dated anyone that she hadn’t also graduated from high school with. She sighed exaggeratedly and continued swinging her legs back and forth, hoping he’d be enticed to glance at them again. “I’ll probably be off soon, but you’re more than welcome to–”

“Oh, no, come on, stay with me,” Ben suddenly pleaded, throwing down the pencil he had just picked up and swiveling his chair to face her. “It’s so nice to have company in this place…it gives me the downright creeps when you’re not here.” Heat rushed through her whole body, lips pressing together to suppress the beam of pleasure she wanted to show him.

She cocked her head to one side. “How ‘bout we lock up and you buy me a drink and we talk about Vonnegut, instead?”

He balked. “I already bought you a drink,” he reminded her, reaching out to tap the cup still clutched in her hand. She scrunched up her nose at him.

“And it was good, but it didn’t cause me to make any bad decisions, so not quite the type of drink I’m after.” The boldness in her words surprised her even as they were leaving her mouth. She prayed they had sounded casual, non-specific.

Ben rolled his chair closer still to her, until he was almost between her legs, though they weren’t parted far enough to reveal anything her skirt couldn’t cover. Her back straightened involuntarily. Snatching up his glasses from beside her, he put them back on and regarded her through them.

“I’m right in the middle of this fucker of a section,” he began, and she snorted at his disdain for his own creation. “Give me half an hour and I’ll gladly close up shop with you.”

She wanted to say, Ben Mears, what I’d do to give you a half an hour, but she opted for, “Deal. Clock’s ticking, though! We can’t let it hit midnight, or all the spooky ghosties will come and get us.”

“Is that how that works, miss?” The sweet crinkles at the corners of his eyes appeared again with his amused grin. She nodded gravely and he shrugged, turning back to the microfilm and cranking the dial.

Quiet minutes ticked past, during which she did not move from her position next to him. She picked up books that he had been using and flicked with mild interest through a volume of Maine history, 1782-1800. Very mild interest. After about ten minutes, Ben slammed his hands down on the desk and scared a yelp out of her.

“Sorry, sorry!” he said through a laugh while she clutched her heart and glared at him. “I can’t do any more. My brain is melting into something unrecognizable. And so is this book.” She tsk’ed.

“That’s not true. Read me the last line you wrote,” she instructed, and he sighed, but complied.

She didn’t catch a single word of what he read to her, though, because as soon as he began reciting the beginning of his final paragraph, his hand absently slid across the few inches of space between him and her leg. He started rubbing his thumb over her knee while he read, clearly unconscious of what he was doing, and it made the sparks that shot through her leg shock her all the more. She looked down at his hand, her body frozen by the casualness of it all.

Finally, she managed to make her lips work enough to squeak out, “Ben.”

“It was during that year that a record twenty-thousand–what?”

He turned to her. His hand was still resting on her knee like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Nothing.” It was barely a whisper. Then, Ben seemed to notice that he was touching her with more familiarity than either of them had yet exhibited with each other, and he made to withdraw it quickly, but she had the presence of mind enough to shoot out her own hand and clasp his in place.

Her hand closed over his, shackling it to her leg like she’d let it remain there for all eternity. They gazed at each other.

She considered how the rumors would fly if Mabel caught even a whiff of something improper going down in her library.

Oh, what the fuck. It was her library, too, after all. And Ben’s eyes were boring into her and he was swallowing thickly, like he was trying to stop himself from saying something.

She said it for him. In one fluid motion, she hopped off the desk and slid easily into his lap, legs straddling either side of his hips, then Ben grabbed the back of her neck and brought her lips to his. They crashed together with a fury, all the weeks of flirting and kindness and shiny-newness that having a crush brought swelling and bursting out through their mouths as they kissed, desperate, hungry. His tongue pushed against her bottom lip and she gladly welcomed it, licking it with her own and tasting the cider that she no doubt carried traces of, too.

“Jesus,” Ben breathed as she pulled away first, both of them panting slightly. His arms had circled around her back, one hand still holding her neck and the other resting right where her bra clasp was. She would have giggled if she wasn’t so desperate to be pressed against him again.

With abandon, she grasped the sides of his face and pulled their mouths together. Ben groaned into the kiss, his hands traveling down her back to rest at her hips and pulling them more flush with his. He was already starting to stiffen, she could feel it, and it alleviated some of the embarrassment she felt at already being so aroused she could scream.

They muttered each other’s names through gasps and moans while she hurriedly fumbled with the buttons on his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders. The soft cotton of his undershirt still felt like too much fabric for him to be wearing, but her efforts were halted when he interjected with his own and pulled her thick sweater over her head. Static electricity shot through her hair as it came off and Ben gave a small “gah!” when his fingers were shocked.

“Totally electrifying,” she giggled at him, and he rolled his eyes, but his unwavering smirk betrayed him.

“We aren’t gonna…” He glanced around the empty library. The only light source now was the small lamp illuminating the desk and the blood-red moonlight outside. “...in the library, are we?”

She pouted. “Oh, aren’t we?” Ben’s grin was more devilish than she’d ever seen it. She could almost believe that he was concealing something supernatural and malevolent with that grin.

“I don’t want you to lose your job.”

“They won’t know.”

“Yeah, but I’ll know.” Ben wrapped his arms around her again and stood, lifting her back onto the desk and slotting himself fully between her open and waiting legs. He had to bend at the waist in order to be at eye level with her. “And I’ll never be able to get an ounce of work done here again if it’s the first place we ever fuck, ma’am.”

Every body part of hers that could tremble, did. She briefly considered whether or not they could go to her place, but then she thought of her three housemates, and how much scandal would be generated if she pulled the handsome newcomer in through the front door by his shirt and up the stairs.

And his accommodations were out of the question. The boarding house landlady famously did not allow visitors into her rented rooms. “Dammit,” she muttered aloud. To buy more time, she kissed Ben and slid her hand down his abdomen until she reached the bulge in his pants. He moaned in pained lust when she grasped it and stroked gently over the clothing.

Swatting her hand out of the way, he leaned forward until their hips were flush with one another’s, deepening the kiss further. “Ben!” she gasped. He started bucking his hips into her now aching and fluttering core, and the friction from his trousers and her thin tights and underwear made her bury her face in his shoulder and cry. They kept it up, grinding desperately on each other, her legs locked around his waist so there wasn’t an inch of space between them.

“Fuck, God, keep doing that,” Ben moaned into her mouth. His cock was straining hard against the khaki-colored corduroy.

Whatever record had been playing quietly in the background had long since ended, and the gentle “sch, sch, sch,” of the rotating vinyl was the only other sound echoing around the room. At least, it was, until the old clocktower let out a startlingly loud “GONG”, followed by eleven more. They jolted apart, panting, both of their hearts racing from the sudden noise as well as the fevered humping.

Their eyes were locked for the entirety of the bell’s tolling, and when it had finished, Ben smirked that suggestive, evil smirk and said, “Midnight on All Hallow’s Eve. Think any ghoulies or ghosties are gonna come get us?” She bit her lip and smacked his chest lightly. Then, her eyes widened.

“It’s Halloween.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ben had leaned back into her and was kissing, more languidly this time, from her collarbone to just behind her ear.

“My housemates are at a party across town right now.”

Never in the history of their publication had unshelved books been tidied up faster.

masterlist

#neeeeed to write a longer ben one and actually explore the vampire motif i.e. i want to bite him #ben mears fic #ben mears x reader #salem's lot fic #salem's lot 2024 #laneywrites

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