Asking A Lot

[Trillian]

Decker didn't want to say her address so he'd had the driver drop him off halfway up the street. It wasn't the kind of suburb that usually had muscle cars ripping down the road but he couldn't do anything about that. He'd rolled out of the back of the car, noticing that the car's light grey leather seats in the back had been coated in red. His red. He'd barely had time to slam the door shut when the car screamed away in a blaze of burning rubber. Idiot.

Decker gritted his teeth and growled the pain out instead of roaring, not wanting to attract attention. It was close to eleven he suspected - he didn't bother taking out his phone and checking. His hand pressed against his side, keeping the wound contained as much as possible. Red leaked between his fingers, sticky and hot. He could feel himself weakening with every step but he was determined to reach the one person he knew in this city - the only one he could ask for help.

He would be asking a lot and he might prove himself more trouble than he was worth. What was he to her beyond a romp or a pleasant distraction? They didn't really talk to one another. She was still as mysterious to him as the night they'd met. He had the impression she hadn't looked in his mind but maybe she had, he had no way of telling. She'd not drunk a lot from him but he'd also not shoved handfuls of blood in her face. Why had he come here? It was here or his place.

He walked the length of her driveway in a light-headed daze. He was surprised he was moving so straight, but his legs felt heavy. His eyes felt heavy too, ready for a nap, but he couldn't sleep now. He had to get to her. Maybe say sorry before she finished him off. At least he would be with her instead of alone.

He stumbled on the final step to her door and landed hard against it. That'd do for his knock. As he waited for it to be answered, he positioned himself against the doorframe so he wouldn't go sprawling when the door opened.

Anna, forgive me.

[The Cedar Witch]

A pity her staff were dismissed for the evening, or someone would have rushed out to meet Decker well before he got to the house. Sonya was in the midst of a large painting in the Grand Room, a cityscape she had been commissioned to do for an old friend.  She hadn't been paying close attention to the sounds outside the property line despite her superb hearing, and the peel of tires against pavement barely registered.  It wasn't uncommon for the youth to race down the straightaway in front of her long, private driveway. 

It was the smell of blood that drew her attention, and she paused to listen, her mind feathering out to see what was approaching her home.

Decker.

Anna smelled him before he reached the door, and rushed to open it just as he'd finished sitting.  Her eyes were wide with alarm, nostrils flaring as she took in the scent of his blood pooling around his fingers.  Too much blood. 

Concern--perhaps anxiety--flooded hot within her.  An unfamiliar feeling but there was no time to dwell.

As smooth as she could manage she picked him up and carried him into the dining room just to the right of the foyer and placed him on the table.  In one swift motion, she moved his hand, tore open his shirt and placed her hand over the wound to apply pressure better than he could.  Mouthwatering.  Her jaw quivered.  Had she been younger this would've been difficult to resist.

"What happened?"  Her tone was direct, but not cold.  If he couldn't answer she'd search his memory instead.

[Trillian]

It was a weird sensation, floating through her house. When she set him down on the table he realised she must've carried him. He grunted when she replaced his hand with her own, the sensation of it pressing against him like a hard ice-pack.

"Amateurs," he replied to her question, but that wasn't what she was really after. "Shot. Twice?" he asked, because he couldn't recall if there were two holes in his side or one. It felt bad either way. He had to get rid of his gun, he'd put down four of them before they'd hit him and only then it was because he'd made a run for the car. No point making a stand when outnumbered and outgunned.

Fucking amateurs. They'd led him into an ambush.

[The Cedar Witch]

She sighed sharply through her nose, not out of anger but frustration.  What the fuck did you get yourself into?  Her face felt as though it would've been hot had she fed recently enough. 

Anna moved her hand and leaned in closer to examine, fighting the urge to lick his blood off her fingers.  The wound was a ragged looking thing, but she could make out two entry points barely distinct from one another.  She couldn't tell exactly where the bullets had ended up, or how close they were to important things.  With another sigh, she returned her hand to continue pressure, mind spinning. 

"I have to get them out before I close the wound."  She looked at his face to see if he understood.  There were options on how she could approach removal.  Manually with her fingers digging into him, likely causing more damage and accelerating bloodloss.  A memory was attached to this, digging metal fragments from someone's back with a smile on her face.  She roughly shoved the memory away. 

The second option was without touching him physically, her telekinetic skills impressively developed.  It could take longer but she could do it more accurately than with her fingers.  Though, the longer it took the more the Thirst would pull at her. 

[Trillian]

He understood, though he couldn't help but quip: "You gonna... suck them out?" before he laughed. The laughter caused a flare of pain in his side and it stopped after a short moment. The pain was sharpening his senses at least. It dispelled the dizziness. "Yep," he said after taking in a shaky breath. He was ready.

[The Cedar Witch]

She raised an eyebrow and scoffed.  "Don't laugh--"  She meant to warn him against moving too much, but he'd finished quickly enough that it wasn't needed.

With her eyes sliding shut she could focus better on her other senses.  It was similar enough to sight where Looking provided a kind of visual map in the darkness of her mind.  Admittedly, it wasn't anything like actually seeing and more akin to feeling.  Blood, flesh, nerves, bone.  Everything rushed together in a chaotic web that took a beat to acclimate to in order to untangle.  It was like scanning a crowded room for the multitude of presences that were within, each entity singing out with equal importance.  Metal stood out in his flesh in sharp contrast, though the paths cut were less obvious in the frayed and swollen surrounding tissue.  Harder to see while still applying pressure, at any rate. 

Retracing the path would be the best.  If that couldn't be managed she could make new paths, avoiding anything major.  The swelling was problematic--would she be able to widen the path and move a bullet at the same time?  It probably wasn't worth the effort at that point. 

Her eyes opened again and she removed her hand.  Slowly, with laser-sharp focus, she moved one of the bullets, backing it out of the path.  She did her best to widen the space in front of the bullet, her hand moving back to the entry point once it was close enough to physically pluck out.  When the first was removed she'd return pressure to his side, then set to work on the second.  Closing the wound would be much more straightforward.

Thankfully she kept blood packs stocked in her refrigerator--she'd need a couple after this was finished.

[Trillian]

He was grateful for her helping him. He’d taken a risk coming here, testing their bond, testing her willpower. He was testing a lot of things, not by choice but by necessity. He could’ve gone to a clinic or a vets, taken it at gunpoint, got help that way, but he didn’t think he could do it single handedly and he wasn’t going to trust the goon behind the wheel to help him. The most he knew about the driver was that he’d been self-serving enough to run away. Because of that assessment and reaction, Decker was alive.

So now he lay upon Anna's table like a fool, bleeding everywhere and humiliated that he'd proven himself incompetent. Risk. He hated risk and he’d done it anyway. He’d been out of the business for too long. He'd broken so many of his own rules; don’t work with people you don’t know, don’t take a job you haven’t personally scoped, don’t take a job if you need it but only if you want it. Desperation was a sour judge.

His mind wandered through these assessments and realisations  as Anna mentally drove the bullet out. Decker clenched his teeth and made noises in the back of his throat, sweating profusely. He wasn’t going to pass out though... he would feel it all. The bullet was just as painful coming out as it had been going in, reopening the line of flesh it had carved through his insides.he felt her cool hand even though his entire side had gone numb. Numb skin, burning innards. He would’ve prefer if the other way around.

[The Cedar Witch]

A sense of urgency to speed through the process grappled with her need to slow down and maintain a level head in the face of so much blood.  The smell was simple enough to deal with--Anna merely ceased her breathing.  A primal part of her burned to bury her face into the oozing wound, to take what was left of him and come away with a hot, bloodied maw.  The impulse curled against her mind like a familiar lover, with vibrant and seductive imagery, threatening to distract from the delicate process.

The extracted bullet clanked against the surface of the table just above Decker's head and she pressed her hand firmly against his side.  Her expression was dark and with hard eyes she assessed him.  She took a moment to impress a feeling of reassuring calm into his mind, wishing she had the capacity to do so during the process but she didn't want to spare an ounce of her focus on comfort.  The sweat beading like dew slicked his flesh and she was glad to have not bothered with a manual extraction--slippery and infinitely more painful.  Her gaze lingered over the blood seeping through her fingers, fixating on the warmth and viscosity.  With a quaking jaw, she steered her attention back to extract the second bullet.  Again, she removed her hand from his side but this time it moved to her mouth--a whisper away from her lips--before she realized what she was doing. 

The act of resisting the desire to pop her fingers into her mouth one by one and suck the blood from her skin left her lightheaded.

Focus.  Map the path again.  There's blood to be had in the kitchen after.

With the success of the first removal giving her a sense of confidence, she pressed on with the second at an unintentionally quicker pace.  The eagerness to be done, to close the wound, rush into the kitchen and tear into a bag (or two), tightened the base of her throat and made her movements sharp.  The second bullet did not come out as smoothly as the first, but when finished it went beside the other on the table.

Everything inside of her simultaneously screamed Hurry and Feast.

Trembling, she slashed the wrist of her gore-slicked hand and held it over his wound so her blood could pour into it.

[Trillian]

The second bullet was more painful than the first and instead of making that small growl in the back of his throat like with the first, he growl-roared to vocalise his pain. It helped a bit... and then it was over. He felt weak. Exhausted. But alive.

The knitting of his skin as the bullet holes closed quickly was maddening; an itch demanding to be scratched. He gripped the edge of the table and squeezed it clumsily to stop himself from reaching up and tearing away as his wound. It was over and she dashed away for a reason he didn't know but wouldn't question.

Sighing in the midst of his heavy breath, he pressed his palm where the wound should be but all he could feel against his palm was closed skin and slickness of whatever blood had seeped out. The pain had lessened but was fading as her blood circulated inside of him, not only curing but energising him with its vibrancy.

He didn't just feel better, he felt good.

Taking care to move slowly and pay attention to his body, he sat up. No flares of pain. No hurts or twinges. He still felt a little light-headed, but nothing like the dizziness from before. His gaze sought Anna, to see what she was up to.

[The Cedar Witch]

Anna detested bagged blood more than anything.  Clinical with an aftertaste of whatever additives they contained to stop the clotting.  In her opinion, it was even worse warmed.  She squeezed one against her teeth and tore a larger opening with a flick of her head.  One was enough to quell the need and she sighed into the plastic, eyes slipping shut.  She couldn't get the scent of his blood out of her mind, nor the desire that came with it, and it made the bagged blood taste even worse in its lack of him.  Squeezing every last bit into her mouth, she walked over to the sink and dropped the spent plastic into the basin.  Her hand was steady now as she turned the faucet on, allowing the water to run hot over the bag as she washed his blood from her hands and arms.  The clothing she wore was another matter, but she'd change later.

Switching the water from hot to cool, she opened one of the overhead cabinets to retrieve a glass to fill for Decker.  Anger bloomed at the thought of him, now that the urgency had passed.  What had he even done?  Had the attackers followed him here?  Would she have to dispose of them herself?  That would mean making a phone call to handle bodies.  Another risk for her, more than he could have known.  Her jaw set firmly in a scowl, she walked back into the dining room with glass in hand.

When the scent of her blood mingled with his filled her senses anew, she stopped in her tracks, watching him sit up on the table.  A flurry of feelings rushed all at once, the most prominent a possessive rage.

"Who did this."  She hid none of this feeling from her tone as she approached him and extended the glass of water.  Her eyes were glued to him as she focused on a single word.

Mine.

[Trillian]

He could see her ire even as he took the glass. He held her burning gaze, really too hot for him to handle but he couldn't pull away. The peculiar itchy feeling was back in his side and his fingers twitched to scratch it but he believed it was psychosomatic now. He'd already healed, his skin was flat and new.

His hand went to it anyway, rubbing lightly.

"I did," he said, taking the blame. Likely his answer was confusing so he expanded without being asked. "When I took a job I shouldn't have."

He could've said more - a lot more - but that wasn't his way. What he'd said was enough for her to deduce that he'd performed an illegal task and suffered the consequences. One criminal group were robbing another criminal group, ensuring that the robbery wouldn't be reported and police would remain out of it. But someone in his group had either made a stupid mistake or it had always been a trap. Ambushes didn't just happen. There had to have been forewarning somewhere.

[The Cedar Witch]

Another flare of anger, but she set it aside.  She chewed over his phrasing a job I shouldn't have.  Clearly, he did more than record audiobooks.

"Do they know how to find you?"  There was obvious concern, but it wasn't expressed sweetly due to her bristling defensiveness over him.  Unconsciously she was moving closer, staring with a barely controlled intensity.   

[Trillian]

"No," he said. There was no address available for them, neither his nor hers. He'd walked a long way to get to her driveway, and then another shorter walk to reach her house. It had been a marathon, then. It was a distant memory, now.

A tiny smile flitted at one corner of his mouth as he watched her approach. Smoky, sexy, he couldn't believe he was horny. He'd almost fucking died and he was turned on by her right now. She'd given him something good to fix him. If she was close enough, he would reach out for her, otherwise he watched her intently, desiring her.

[The Cedar Witch]

Her shoulders relaxed at his answer, gaze softening only slightly.  She was prepared to kill for him.  That knowledge should have bothered her, but instead she followed his reach, closing the distance between them.  Her hands went into his hair and she touched her forehead to his.  A sigh hissed from her nose.

"Don't do something stupid like this again."  Humans were so fragile.  She pulled away from him after speaking, only because her insides churned.  Humans were disposable.

Don't get attached.

She went quickly into the kitchen for a hand towel, wetting it at the sink before returning to him.  It was for the blood on his hands, but she expected he'd want to shower when he was feeling up for it. 

Still at a close proximity, her eyes moved over the blood on the table and floor.  She'd place a call to get that taken care of later.

[Trillian]

Decker took the towel and wiped his hands as she expected, then he swiped it down his side. Watered down redness dripped along his torso and pooled on the surface of the table or on the floor. What was 'like this' supposed to mean? Getting shot or taking the job in the first place? She wasn't clear so he chose to interpret as 'getting shot'. He wouldn't break his rules next time.

He followed her gaze. "I'll take care of it," he said. It was deeply ingrained in him to look after his own mess. He lifted his eyes and searched her face, unable to put into words his gratitude. She'd become more to him than a fascination or obsession.