#severen x reader

[questionablefruitsalad]

PROMPT:

-You're feeling bratty: you get DESTROYED-

[A good deal of 💀🕊🚫🍽 so like......be a hoe like me, and disfrutar?!?! I tried to branch out and make each one different, pero....I write better for some, than others!? Lo intento!! 🤷🙏]

~Bo Sinclair~

🛠 Finds it cute when you think you can sass him. You see the twinkle in his eye as the gears in his head turn- picking out the perfect punishment for you. He let's you tease for a while- building up a false sense of confidence and control in you. All the while he sits back: plotting. When he's finally had enough- he snaps into daddy mode. You're yanked off his lap by your hair, shoved down on to your knees. He drenches you in insults while shoving his throbbing cock down your throat- using the hand in your hair to control the speed. You're a gagging, pleading mess. He pulls out of your mouth, wiping his dick across your face to catch your tears, then spins you around, stands you up- and shoves inside you- keeping your arms bound behind you while he rails you into a drunken stupor

~Vincent Sinclair~

🕯 Tilts his head in confusion when you start to tease him. Is unfamiliar with the concept of being a brat- but catches on quickly when you playfully ask him to punish you for being bad. He's gotta warm up to it, and you teach him a few concepts. After a few minutes he's deep in the part- and you. His strong fingers coming to grab your chin- forcing you to keep eye contact while he spills a length of hot wax down your chest. Once you're covered, he holds you down, using one of his decorative knives to scrape the hardened wax off your skin- sending shivers across you. You shift lightly- afraid of getting nicked by the razor sharp blade. He pushes his hard cock into you while continuing to carve. You're a shaking mess now, trying to control your breathing

~Lester Sinclair~

🔪 He's a blushing mess. Initially not wanting to go too hard on you. You did everything you could- teasing him, tugging lightly on his hair, mocking him when he asked you to stop. It wasn't until you picked up one of his favorite knives- you saw the switch. His voice got more stern- telling you to put it down before you got hurt. You didn't of course. You twirled it between your fingers, squeezing your chest together and blowing him a kiss "make me". And that was it- he was on you in an instant, your free arm pinned behind your back, bent at an angle that stung to move. You gasped, immediately dropping the knife. "Pick it up" he growled- the abrupt sound of his zipper coming undone. You slowly bent forward, hand shaking as you reached out for the knife. In one slick movement, he was inside you, hand still crushing your arm behind you- you were stuck mid bend, unable to move in any direction. You tried to choke out words as he pounded into you, his free hand coming to strike your ass. "Pick it up" he snarled again.

~Bubba Sawyer (TCM2)~

🥩 Very confused as to how/why you are "bad/naughty" because from what he can see, you're extremely nice and well behaved! You explain the concept to him- smothering him in praises when he spanks you so he understands it's all in good fun. Your yips and moans excite him more and more, and before long he's an excited mess: spanking and rubbing your ass. You playfully tease at him, coming up with roleplay scenarios to get him to scold you- he's having fun with the game you've made. Before long he has you hogtied with a dirty rope (found, who knows where....)- rag stuffed in your mouth, gagging your moans while he ruts into you. He's so enthusiastic, and has lost any sense of rhythm: you're a drenched mess. You're just hoping no one hears your sounds from inside the barn. You hushed him, worried for his own exposure. A thick finger moves to your mouth: sushing you instead. You blush, impressed by his sudden bout of confidence. He pressed himself deeper into you, leaning forward to clamp over your mouth with his hand: you felt like you might pass out- hot breath ticking your neck as he kissed it

~Thomas Hewitt~

🍽 While he's not big on the idea of punishing you (he's got plenty of hangups about bringing any force against you, even in the bedroom) he's quite easy to fluster. While sending you out to do chores- you purposely mess up (in addition to dressing WAY TOO inappropriately for the job). It's not long before he makes his way over to you, realizing you've done nothing but made a mess of everything, and yourself. Poor, dumb you- got tangled in the hose and drenched in your tiny, white shirt. You playfully glance over your shoulder, catching Thomas' eyes widen at the site of your now seethru shirt. You bounce over to him, feigning stupidity: asking if he can help you. His breathing deepens as calloused hands grab your arm, wrapping the hose around you, binding your arms to your sides. He leaves enough spacing between the layers to lift your shirt, freeing your bare chest- of which his hands make quick work of. Despite his mask, you can tell he's a blushing mess underneath- your self deprcating dirty talk only makeing it worse while you bounce on his cock. Before long, your legs are exhausted from the work- you coo at him- hoping for a reprieve from being on top. No such luck- his hands are glued to your hips- jerking your body around at his whim like a rag doll.....

~Reggie Morgan~

🥕 He's so gentle and passive- it's hard work to figure out what'll get him into 'dom' mode. You've found, however, that ignoring his requests outright- gets him heated under the collar. He'd asked you several times over to help with moving things on the farm- instead, you stood against the wall in the shade complaining about the heat- refusing to lift a finger. After hours of pushing him off, you saw his jaw tighten, holding back whatever it was he wanted to say, as you eyed him up and down- devilishness in your eyes. He'd finally had enough of your insubordination. He stormed over to you: mocking you for complaining about the heat. "You think it's so hot?! Fine then...." His voice trailed off as he mindlessly reached for your shirt, yanking it over your head, partially- trapping you inside. While you fumbled with your shirt, he yanked down your shorts, underware along with them. Your shirt covered your heated face (hiding your embarrassment), panic setting in as you felt his hands on you- grabbing and grouping all over. Nips and slaps at your exposed skin made their way across every inch of your body, while Reg reprimanded you- while his voice still had reservation to it, his hands did not.....You had almost found your way out of your shirt by the time you heard his belt unbuckling.....

~Lindsay Morgan~

🍆 Lindsay was no stranger to your preferences. He knew you liked it rough, and you exceled in being a brat. Shockingly enough, you had done nothing out of sorts on that that unusually slow day at the farm, but you felt him stalking you. You struggled to keep busy, finding odds and ends to work on- all the while knowing he was in your peripheral. Your patience grew thin, knowing what he was planning, and wanting him to have his way with you already. You stood in front of him, hands poised on your hips, while you unleashed your best insults on him. (It was part of your usual foreplay to chalange him). He kept an absurdly large vegetable in his hand, amused smirk plastered to his face as he looked you over. You raised your voice at him- demanding that he answer you. He kept a silent composure- letting you carry on, while he slowly stepped towards you. His stature and demeanor had you flustered in seconds, but you couldn't let him know that......Frustrated woth yourself, you threatened to leave all together- if he wasn't going to fuck you, then why bother? As you turned to leave, his baritone voice sent shivers into your body- instructing you to drop your pants. You felt the slap of what he was holding, on the cheek of your ass. You face flushed hot while your brain struggled to comprehend what he was insinuating. His lips came to meet your ear- tongue teasing at the lobe. Your body tensed as he yanked your underware down, his fingers digging into your sopping hole....

~Rusty Nail~

🚚 Tears tickled your cheeks on their way down your face- eyes blurred by the sting of salt. The light of the camera adding to your blindness- giving you the slightest head-ache. Or maybe it was dehydration.....and the booze. Either way, you didn't have the ability to think straight, let alone process what Rusty had asked you. You blinked, dumbly, bound mouth huffing a confused sound as you searched the room for the imposing man. While you couldn't see him (due to the poor lighting), you could hear the cracking plastic of the camera: his giant hand squeezing the "rec" button to make sure it was steady on your face while he zoomed in. He repeated his question, other hand coming to yank the dirty sock out of your mouth to allow you to speak. "I asked you a question" His voice boomed, and it sent a wave of shiver thru your lower end. Now you remembered....You were supposed to be begging......and apologizing. And he wanted it documented.....on camera. Your bound, naked, and soiled body: the evidence of what he had just put you thru, visible on camera. You sniffled back tears, looking straight into the camera, to make him happy. "I'm sorry" you wept

~Severen~

🩸 Most people would probably have fainted by now. You were covered in so much blood, it would have made an ER doctor sick. But you were stubborn, and wanted to win his bet. You maintained eyecontact as he slit the throat of another bar patron: spraying their CBC directly onto your, already soiled, body. You shrugged, trying your best to control the shake in your voice. The joy on Severens' face was indescribable: a bacchanalia of sick emotion: to him, you were a well marinated cut of prime steak. You swore it didn't bother you- none of it did. As his eyes lingered, you found your hands mindlessly unbuttoning your shirt, rubbing some of the drying viscera into your own chest. His eyes glazed over with the hunger of an apex predator while your dirtied fingers found purchase in your mouth. "It don't bother me, babe" you teased. While you had no idea where this bet was going, you hoped you'd at least get a filthy fuck out of it.....

[bonsoir-oiseau]

Severen Van Sickle Fluff HCs

Need a brain break so HERE WE ARE

Warnings for blood, gore, guns. General vampire cowboy bullshit.

Divider by @/saradika-graphics

You will always be greeted enthusiastically. Doesn't matter where you are or what condition either of you are in.

You round the corner, foggy breath puffing out before you, and scan the wet, empty street for any sign of your family. You're just passing under the first streetlamp and wondering if you made a wrong turn when a familiar high-pitched crow echoes off of the empty buildings behind you. You wheel around to see Severen standing in the middle of the street, stance wide and one hand pointed straight at you. To any onlookers, the blood coating his lips and chin would be frightening, but to you, he looks adorable.

"There's my baby!"

He lets out a long howl that makes you grin despite how embarrassing the gesture is. You shake your head at the cowboy and mutter, "Oh, christ," as you start the long walk toward him, boots clocking on the pavement. Sev bends at the waist and opens his arms, and you oblige him by breaking into a run. He catches you easily, both of you letting out winded grunts as you collide with him, and spins the two of you in a haphazard circle.

There's no time to catch your breath before his lips are on yours, smearing blood across your chin and nose. You grin, teeth clacking against his, and the arms around you tighten a fraction as Sev starts to giggle like a madman.

Caleb may get a spur once he earns the cowboy's trust, but you? You get the hat. It's a dusty brown "boss of the plains" with a hand-woven hatband made of natural turquoise and bone beads. His name is stitched into the inner band, and when you run your fingers over the lettering, he murmurs, "Bought it after I got home from my first roundup. Mama did the letterin'."

It is legitimately from 1885. He wore it and regularly had it restored until the end of the Depression when the style went out of fashion. It's been sitting in a box ever since, and he reasons that it'd look cuter on you, anyway. Will poke a finger on the bottom of the brim and tilt it backward to kiss you.

HUGE on PDA and physical affection. Prepare to spend every night with him fully on top of you, arms wound tight around your stomach and his face buried in the crook of your neck while he snores. You are his gigantic teddy bear, and he is your smelly greasy lap dog.

Unless you're driving the Winnebago, your ass is never gonna make contact with a chair or couch ever again. Before you can sit, a hand will shoot out. Fingers will hook through one of your belt loops and yank you backward until you plop into his lap, and he's quick to sling an arm across your thighs to keep you in place. He always ends up with numb, shaky legs by the end of the night, but he insists it's "more comfortable this way."

Loves to hunt as a couple. Pose as hitchhikers, pretend your car's broken down "a ways down that road, there," seduce a barfly into being your third meal for the night. Doesn't matter the plot- he loves the performance.

"You clean up well." You snort as you reach out to straighten his bolo tie.

The turnpike is buzzing with late-night travelers. Some poor sod is about to pick up a nice-looking "lost" couple and wind up in tomorrow's obituaries.

"Yeah, but you like 'em dirty," Sev drawls, cigarette bobbing as he speaks, "Don'tcha, baby?"

"Just you."

The cowboy makes a show of looking left and right before he points a finger at his own chest and gasps, "Jus' me?"

You nod, and two warm arms snake around your waist to pull you against Severen as he lets out a long, low whistle.

"I'll show you dirty soon as we get dinner outta the way."

Hoots and hollers when you make a kill. Crows, "You see that? Hooooo wheeee!" and grins like a cat who got the cream. He's always gonna be your biggest fan.

The kind of smartass who'd snark, "Well, why didn'tcha bring a coat, then, sweetheart?" if you mention you're cold, but if you glare at him, he's scrambling to rip his jacket off and drape it over your shoulders.

Not the jealous type at all. Hunting involves all sorts of trickery and deception, and the most effective method by far is seduction. This doesn't mean he won't step in for you, though. All you have to do is give him one meaningful look and he's stalking toward you with inhuman speed, ready to throw an arm around your pesky company's shoulders and become an unshakeable distraction.

If that doesn't work... Someone tried to throw him off and reach for you once, but it's real hard to get a grip on much of anything when the top half of your hand's been shot off.

Will teach you how to shoot. Then he'll teach you how to shoot with flair. Twirling guns on your fingers, shooting from the hip, quick draws, shooting from behind your back. You'll learn it all, and even if you never bust out one of Sev's fancy tricks, he's just proud of himself for teaching you "the essentials."

Making him weak in the knees is (un)surprisingly easy. Wipe blood off of his lower lip with your thumb and stare him down while you clean the digit off. Give that obnoxious bolo tie a tug when he makes a bad joke. Smile at him from across the bar while the two of you hunt separately. He's got that reputation as Jesse's guard dog, but when all is said and done, he's just as loyal to you, if not more.

The sun is barely visible above the Rockies, casting the valley in fiery orange light. The shadow of the mountains keeps the two of you from burning as you nestle further against Severen in the Winnebago's passenger seat. Sev's feet are up on the dash, and he's leaned his seat back as far as it'll go to give you enough room to sit between his legs. Two warm hands dip beneath the hem of your shirt to rest on your stomach while the two of you watch the sky fade from red to purple.

"Y'think we'll be together forever?" He muses, breath ruffling the hair on the top of your head.

"The fuck kinda question is that?" You scoff, craning your neck to look up at him, "I'm not plannin' on dyin' anytime soon."

The cowboy's lips stretch into a soft grin that emphasizes his dimples. The hands on your torso start to knead your skin in languid circles, and as he leans his head forward to nose at your temple, you're suddenly reminded of a very large, very satisfied house cat.

"Well, good. Neither 'm I."

[venus-haze]

Last Call (Severen x Reader)

Summary: Kinktober Day 17 - Messy Sex. After a rough day, a slick-talking, dangerous-looking man in a bar is the last thing you need, right? | AO3 link.

Note: Female reader, but no other descriptors are used. That’s gross! the fic.

Word count: 1.1k

Warnings: Sexually explicit content involving blood play, period sex, oral sex (f. receiving)

The little bar you found just off the highway was incredibly easy to mope in. Shrouded in dark save for some neon lights, you nursed a beer, feeling sorry for yourself while silently raging at the happy couples that danced to the twangy jukebox hits a few feet away. Just your fucking luck that you ran into two of your exes while running errands after work, neither of whom you ever wanted to see again, to put things mildly.

You sniffled, smoke and cheap cologne clouding your senses. Didn’t pay much attention to whoever took the stool next to you until he started talking.

“Jesus, this dump must really suck if it’s got a pretty face like yours lookin’ like that.”

“Like what?” you snapped, turning to look at whoever was stupid enough to join you.

Except he didn’t look stupid so much as dangerous with his beat-up leather jacket and razor blade smile. You weren’t sure you could tolerate stupid that night, but maybe you could poke around dangerous for a little while.

“Like someone shit in your cereal,” he said, a wild gleam in his eyes.

You scoffed. “Yeah, something like that.”

Patsy Cline filled the silence that fell between you for a moment, her familiar, tragic voice floating around your head until the man by your side sniffed loudly, almost exaggeratedly. “You wouldn’t be on your monthly now, would ya?”

“I—I am,” you answered, disturbed and perplexed by his question, equally so at his reaction—he licked his lips.

“Then we can have one hell of a time together, you and me,” he said. “What d'you say? Release a little tension?”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Why? So you know what to scream in a few minutes?”

Your eyes flicked down to his mouth. Fuck it. Why not?  “Maybe.”

He grinned. “Severen.”

An odd name, but you soon found Severen was utterly shameless, the way he grabbed and groped at you, sliding his hand up your skirt, pushing his way between your thighs as he devoured your throat, your skin burning with every open-mouthed kiss he claimed you with.

He would have dropped to his knees right then and there if you hadn’t insisted on bringing it to the bathroom. It amused him, for some reason, your insistence on maintaining some level of decency—but Jesus Christ, did the guy really expect to go down on you in public and not cause a scene? Could’ve gotten you both banned, or even arrested, if the bartender were feeling particularly vindictive.

When you saw the sorry state of the women’s room, you almost wished you’d stayed seated at the bar and just let it happen. He threw your purse into a grimy sink and ushered you into one of the empty stalls. You moved to close the stall door, but he blocked you, giving you a teasing grin. 

“Ain’t nothin’ to be embarrassed of. ‘S all natural,” he said, kneeling on the floor without a care.

You nearly choked on his words. Instead, your breath caught in your throat as he pushed past your skirt and seemed to tear right through your panties, by the sound of it.

"Free bleedin', that takes guts," he growled in appreciation.

You barely managed to utter a confused, "Thank you?" before he dove right in, his hands holding your thighs apart so you couldn't even close your legs if you wanted to. No second thoughts, no backing out, however much his ferocity might've concerned you, the way his tongue lapped at your pussy as if to not let anything go to waste.

Anyone who might’ve made the grave mistake of walking in would get a show—be witness to a massacre, a public execution. It couldn’t have looked like anything else, but it felt like heaven with his face between your thighs.

"Severen, I'm close," you managed, though that didn't seem to matter to him, as for all of his slick talk leading up to this, he hadn't moved his mouth from your pussy since the moment he slipped his tongue between your folds.

Digging your fingers into his messy hair, you grabbed at it, tugging slightly when his tongue brushed your clit. His name echoed in the enclosed space, your desperate moans intermingling with the sound of his devouring you, a cacophony of lewdity that would've left you mortified any other night but this one. And what were the odds you'd come upon someone so shameless, the perfect man to lift you back up with his unbridled want for your sex after unwelcome reminders of inadequacy earlier that day.

Your eyes fluttering shut, your nails raked against his scalp as you neared your orgasm, an amalgamation of every emotion you felt that day pressurized in your gut and ready to burst at any moment.

And when it finally did, you cried out in an almost animalistic roar that you didn't even know you were capable of. All of the tension in your body chased away by the overwhelming pleasure that made your nerve endings burn like a dying star. Your muscles nearly gave out on you, and you weakly held yourself up against the stall, Severen showing no signs of letting up—you weren't even sure he'd come up for air.

But then the bathroom door slammed open, banging against the broken tile on the wall and making you jump a bit.

“Severen!" an older man's voice echoed. "Hurry the fuck up in there!”

That was what it took for him to pull away, and you whined a little when he did.

“It’s been fun, darlin’,” he said, his blood-stained grin making your stomach turn, "but I’d get outta here fast if I were you.”

“I need my—" You could hardly manage words as your skirt fell back into place, settling just above your knees. "You have my panties.”

“Consider it a parting gift.” He tucked your blood-soaked panties into his jacket pocket. “Now get the hell out. I mean it. Find a backdoor or somethin’. I ain’t normally this nice, so don’t make me change my mind.”

“Bye,” you said lamely, stumbling out of the stall, hardly able to keep yourself standing if not for the fact that he didn't seem to be fucking around about his warning. 

Your purse was still in the sink, your keys, too, at least. Managed to find the service exit and got to your car, ignoring the inferno that blazed behind you as you booked it down the road.

The following day, the local news reported on the incident and said there were no survivors. You weren’t sure how to feel about that.

[officiallybound]

BLEED ME AN OCEAN

severen x gn!reader

You steal an Oldsmobile from a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately for you, it belongs to Severen. What starts as a highway chase through the desert turns into a very long night involving threats, blood, kidnapping, and one extremely pissed-off vampire.

contents: blood, corpses, murder, kidnapping, being shoved around, being tied up, threats, guns, highway chase, vampires doing vampire things, Severen being an insufferable bastard, reader being equally insufferable,enemies to lovers in the future, forced proximity, horror, canon-typical violence, unhealthy attachment, possessive behavior, arguing, swearing, emotional slow burn, dead desert towns,

Notes: Muahaha! I’m back… long time no see, Near Dark community. I know I abandoned an entire slow burn fic that was meant for you guys…and deleted my old tumblr…But I’m here to present another, better fic. And this is only the first little bit! Woohoo! Also, you should definitely listen to acid bath while reading this.

The desert felt endless tonight. It spooked you slightly. It looked dead and empty. Flat stretches of black highway cut through miles of dirt and scrub brush. Many telephone poles were leaning crooked beside the road, exhausted from weather, usage, and definitely broken. Every few miles, you passed the glowing remains of some dying little town—one gas station, maybe a bar, a busted motel with its letters burned out. Then nothing again for another twenty miles.

You had been driving through it for hours, and it grew boring.

The air conditioner in your car had stopped working sometime around midnight, leaving the inside of the vehicle smelling like hot vinyl seats and cigarettes. The bottom of your left shoe was sticky from a soda you spilled about three days ago. Every station on the radio faded into static before you could get a full song in, which pissed you off. You were driving from what would’ve been a county jail cell you’d narrowly avoided, and a shitty, burnt-out life you had no intention of returning to.

By the time you saw another station sitting alone beside the highway, you were running on fumes.

The place hardly looked open. There was one old sign that buzzed over the pumps, attracting clouds of big moths. Beyond that was empty desert stretching out black beneath the moonlight.

You pulled in for the bathroom and the possibility of an ice-cold Coke. Gas would do you no good with the state your car was in.

The cashier inside barely looked awake. Some old man with reading glasses hanging halfway down his nose stared at a tiny television near the register while country music crackled quietly through mounted speakers overhead. You grabbed a very much-needed bottle of Coke, then spent nearly ten minutes pretending to look at snacks while trying to decide what the hell you were gonna do next.

You didn’t have enough money for another motel, and you definitely didn’t have enough money to stay in town long enough for the pigs to start recognizing your face. Honestly, you probably should’ve felt more afraid than you did. You really just felt exhausted.

You fiddled around with some Playboy magazines while gazing outside the large windows. You felt a little dazed, thinking about how badly you needed sleep, until your eyes caught sight of another car outside that had slipped your view entirely.

An Oldsmobile sat empty beside pump number three with the driver’s side door hanging slightly open. The engine was still running. Headlights on. Nobody around it.

At first, you figured somebody had just run inside. Then five whole minutes passed, and nobody came back out.

You looked toward the cashier, still staring at his television… then back toward the car. It was still running.

Your brain supplied several reasons not to steal it immediately. Most of them were pretty valid. Unfortunately, exhaustion and desperation were the more reasonable voices in your mind.

You walked outside before you could talk yourself out of it, and the desert heat hit you like opening an oven door. Gravel crunched beneath your boots as you approached the Oldsmobile carefully, half-expecting somebody to come around the side of the building with a shotgun.

Yet nobody did.

The inside of the car smelled terrible. Stale old cigarettes, sweat, beer, and something rotten. You nearly backed out right there, but instead, you looked around one last time, slid into the driver’s seat, and pulled the door shut behind you.

The engine coughed when you shifted into drive. Then you pulled your ass onto the highway before anybody inside could notice.

For the first few miles, everything felt almost absurdly easy. Wind blasted through the half-open windows, carrying dry dirt and a little bit of fresh air into the car. The radio actually worked, which brightened your mood ever so slightly. You loosened your death grip on the steering wheel little by little as the gas station disappeared behind you.

Things almost felt peaceful until something slammed softly against the back of the passenger seat, causing you to freeze.

You rationalized it as junk rolling around in the floorboards. There were enough beer cans back there to build a small house. But a second later, it happened again, heavier this time.

You glanced toward the rearview mirror and noticed there was a blanket covering something stretched across the backseat.

One pale hand hung limp over the edge of the seat.

Your stomach dropped instantly.

“No,” you whispered.

The car drifted toward the shoulder before you jerked it back onto the road. Your pulse hammered as you stared harder into the mirror, trying to convince yourself you were seeing things wrong somehow…

But you weren’t.

Blood had dried dark around the fingers and wrist. More of it soaked through the blanket beneath the body in ugly patches. The smell finally made sense now.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

Your mouth went dry. The body rolled slightly when the car hit a bump due to your lack of focus on the road. The blanket slipped just enough for you to catch a glimpse of a man’s face beneath it. Grey skin. Open mouth. Eyes half-lidded and concave from the loss of fluid.

His throat looked torn apart. Not cut or sliced…

It was torn. Ripped.

You swore violently under your breath and tightened both hands on the wheel. Every instinct screamed at you to stop the car, but you were already stranded in the middle of nowhere, driving a stolen vehicle with a corpse in the backseat. Nothing about the situation could realistically get worse.

Then headlights appeared behind you.

They were small at first, but they gained quickly, and your chest tightened immediately.

The lights grew larger in the mirror with every passing second until they flooded the inside of the Oldsmobile completely whenever the road straightened. Whoever was behind you was driving way too fast for these roads.

“Nope. FUCK no,” you muttered instantly, pressing harder on the gas. The Oldsmobile rattled in protest.

The headlights kept gaining anyway, and soon you could make out the shape of another car tearing down the highway behind you, dark paint flashing under moonlight. More than one person sat inside. The horn blasted suddenly, long and aggressive, causing you to jump.

“Ohh, fuck…”

The pursuing car swerved closer. A figure suddenly leaned halfway out the passenger window. Medium-length dirty blond hair whipped violently in the wind. Even from this distance, you could see the grin stretched across his scarred face.

He wasn’t angry-looking. He was excited, like this was the best thing that had happened to him all week.

He shouted something you couldn’t hear over the engines. The sound carried across the highway clearly enough to make the hair rise on the back of your neck.

The car pulled alongside you with terrifying ease. The blond man looked old, maybe late fifties. There was something wrong about him up close. His grin looked unnatural somehow—skinny, pale, and full of reckless amusement.

He stared directly at you through the open window.

“Well now,” he shouted over the wind, his voice suddenly serious with a Southern drawl. “Look at this shit.”

You stared at him for half a second before yelling back, “You left your damn car running!”

Inside the other car, somebody shouted angrily from the driver’s seat, but the blond man ignored them completely. He leaned farther out the window, one arm hooked over the roof.

“Turn off the car.”

A man’s voice came from inside the other vehicle, ripping straight through the noise of the engines and wind. His tone was loud. He sounded pissed.

The blond man finally pulled himself back into the vehicle, speaking to the other man beside him.

He just sat there in the darkness of the other car with one arm resting outside the open window, watching you.

He had dark hair, a couple rings on his fingers, and a leather jacket covered in different pins and patches from what you could see. His presence intimidated you. As much as you didn’t want it to, it did.

“No!” you shouted back without thinking, because being defensive was apparently the only way your brain would function now. Your grip tightened on the wheel hard enough to cause an ache. “No, I’m not shutting it off. This is mine now.”

You could visibly see the blond man shake his head with a laugh in the other car. The man next to him, however, didn’t react. His eyes stayed on you.

Then he shouted again.

“You’re drivin’ a dead man’s car.”

“Did you kill that man, you sick fuck?!” you snapped back, forcing your eyes onto the man through your mirror.

His gaze flicked briefly past you toward the backseat, then back to your face. Something in his expression tightened, like you’d just stepped on something of his without asking.

The pursuing car drifted closer again, riding your blind side now, matching your speed exactly.

He leaned out of his window slightly.

“You stole it.”

“Yeah, I did!” you spat angrily.

“That’s brave,” the blond added, looking smug.

Severen ignored him, speaking out to you.

“You saw what was in it.”

“Yes,” you replied.

“And you’re still drivin’.”

“Yes,” you said again, louder this time, because at this point the alternatives weren’t any better.

That got a small reaction out of him.

The cigarette in his hand burned down a little further before he flicked ash out into the wind without looking.

“You’re gonna stop that car,” he scolded as they began to drive perfectly parallel to you.

“I’m not.”

The highway stretched ahead of you in long, empty black. No exits. No lights. Your headlights carved a narrow tunnel through it all, and for the first time since you got in this car, you realized how completely alone you were out there.

The cars stayed locked together for another stretch of road, engines screaming in parallel. Your knuckles ached from how hard you were holding the wheel. The corpse in the backseat shifted again, the sound of something heavy rolling slightly against the upholstery making your stomach twist.

You tried not to look at it and failed.

The blanket had slipped further now. Enough that you could see the outline of a shoulder, the unnatural angle of the neck. Whatever had been done to him was brutal. It made your stomach churn.

“Okay,” you muttered under your breath. “Okay, okay, okay.”

He noticed the way your eyes flicked back.

He saw everything.

The driver of their car cursed immediately as the man in the leather jacket reached across him. A second later, a revolver appeared at the edge of the window.

He didn’t point it directly at you. He just held it low, resting it casually against the window frame like he had all the time in the damn world.

“Last chance,” he said, rather annoyed.

You looked at the gun, then back at him, then back at the road.

And made the worst possible decision you could’ve in this situation, purely out of spite and exhaustion.

“No.”

Jesse let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

“This is going great, Severen.”

Severen..?

The fuck kind of old-world name is that? you thought to yourself.

Severen didn’t answer him. He lifted the gun slightly, aiming it toward your left front tire.

Your entire body went cold.

He fired his gun, missing the tire and hitting your door.

Your mind went dizzy, nearly losing control of the car. You snapped your head toward him and then back toward the road, stepping on the gas as much as you possibly could, but they only sped up with you.

The cars stayed locked together, both of you speeding through the dead desert night like the world had narrowed down to this exact stretch of highway and nothing else existed outside it.

Severen leaned closer to the window. His voice dropped just enough that it felt like it was meant for you alone now—not the driver, not anyone else.

“You’re gonna lose control of that car, and I’m gonna blow your brains right across that pretty old dash in front of ya.”

He spoke seriously, aiming his gun at your back tire.

Your foot hovered over the pedal, and your hands refused to let go of the wheel.

God, you were a fool.

Severen fired.

The shot cracked through the night and punched into your rear tire with a violent snap that tore the rhythm of the car apart instantly. The Oldsmobile lurched hard to the right, tires screaming against asphalt as you fought the wheel with everything you had just to keep it from rolling.

The pursuing car surged forward immediately.

Laughter and loud hollering cut through the air as you lost control of everything around you.

You fought the wheel so hard your arms shook.

“Shit—shit—shit,” you hissed through clenched teeth, forcing the car back toward the center of the road as the highway blurred under you.

The pursuing car didn’t slow down.

It surged forward.

Inside your car, panic finally started to mold itself into survival and adrenaline. You had tunnel vision. You needed out.

You finally forced the car to a hard, rough stop.

“You’re doin’ exactly what I said you’d do,” he called out from their car as they also came to a stop, and you could hear Severen get out of the vehicle.

The highway ahead was still empty, much to your lack of surprise. Your stomach did flips as you regulated your breathing, preparing to exit the car.

“Oh, crap! I shot you! Yer bleedin’!”

Your stomach dropped, and you glanced down instinctively.

There was no blood on you, nor was there a wound.

Before you could react, Severen slammed into your window, unlocking your door. The impact made the glass spiderweb instantly and sent your entire upper body jolting away from the force.

Severen ripped your door open, grabbing you by the collar before you had time to resist.

You slammed on the gas, and the wheel jerked out of alignment again while the car veered.

Severen swore under his breath, refusing to let go, causing your shirt to rip open.

“You’re gonna kill yourself, if not me,” he said, grabbing you once again, right in your face now, his eyes locked onto yours.

Severen forced you out of the car, pinning you back against the space between the front seat and the back where the corpse lay completely uncovered.

“You’re dead meat,” Severen spoke roughly, shoving you harder against the body.

Your back hit something soft, and you felt a wetness soak through your shirt completely. The smell hit a second later.

It was blood…

Your stomach rolled so violently you thought you might actually throw up.

“What a goddamn mess…” he spat as he yanked you up from the body, shoving you against the other car.

The man still inside the vehicle had tossed some sort of rope at Severen, which he instantly used to restrain you. The steel tips of his boots dug painfully into your heels as he forced you still.

You should’ve just gone to jail.

[msookyspooky]

🥀 Severen's Valentine 🫀

Fluff ♡ Old Couple Kinda Flirting ♡ GN!Reader x Severen Van Sickle ♡ Not Proofread ♡ 1k Words:

"Ta-Da." He grinned and held out the red roses to you as your eyes lit up. The fragrant petals wafting towards you like a heedy perfume as you gently took them from your lover. He smirked that signature cocky grin of his and added, "Did ya really think I'd forget my baby on such a mushy disgustin' ass day?"

Your heart melted as you took them gingerly from him like they were the most precious thing. It wasn't every day Severen showed this more romantic side. He was all about action and lewd banter rather than traditional romance.

"Oh Sevy, you shouldn't hav- Ouch." You hissed slightly as a thorn got you.

"Sorry 'bout that darlin'. Those roses are as prickly as me." He sheepishly joked while running a hand behind his head to rub his neck.

"As pretty too."

He chuckled at that, "To think I almost got ya some guys bloody heart and put it in a box."

You shook your hand a bit to rid the slight sting and cringed, "Mmm...I'll take the flowers."

"Damn right." He drew out nodding his head in approval before gesturing his hand outstretched towards you, "C'mere." He took the hand that had been pricked by the roses thorn. He held it up in the dim light and saw the pindrop of crimson on your finger. Almost reverent as he eyed it before bringing it to his lips.

Closing his eyes to kiss the tiny injury with a deep inhale and a low, short moan while planting a firm wet kiss. You eyed him while butterflies pooled in your belly and your chest heated as his tongue darted out. One of the few parts still warm on him in contrast to the rest of him from the chill air and supernatural flesh. He lolled his tongue almost seductively over the mark. Savoring the metalic taste that was his whole existence and yet yours was both the Devil's fruit; fighting to not give into the temptation to just chomp down and drink gluttonously and also a gift that was special just from you that he cherished dearly.

Sucking the skin like it was the sweetest taste on his tongue and you could do nothing in his iron grip so powerful it could break your hand yet so gentle it was like he was holding a delicate flower.

"Baby..." He groaned low as he finally released, his lips making a sloppy plop as he stopped sucking all the blood flow from your index finger. Blue eyes fluttering open to gaze at you. Head bent and lust and love and mischief in his stare. "Swear ya do this shit to me on purpose."

You tried to regain some dignity and huffed, "More like you did that on purpose." Wiggling your finger for emphasis.

"Maybe." He smirked as he gave your digit one last kiss then stood up fully with a grin. "Don't act all huffy like ya don't get a lil hot a bothered by ol' Severen kissin it better, now." He teased while tilting your chin up. "Got you all weak in the knees. Don't deny it, suga."

You didn't have a retort for that. He made you feel things no human man ever could and he knew it. Acting like some cocky dog with his tail up and chest out preening from knowing he could get away with a lot of shit. And sadly, you'd probably let him if he kept making you so damn flustered.

However, your eyes lingered on how cut up his hands were. The calloused masculine skin scrapped and still had some dried blood on them. "Hey..." You gently reached out to cup his hands. Your warmth evading his chilled flesh and making him sigh contently. "What happened? Looks like these flowers gave you Hell." You mumbled as you sat the flowers down on a table nearby.

"Oh quit." He chided with a wry smirk, "That's fuckin' insultin' babying a no good bastard like me over a few cuts. Ya just saw me hurled through a wall last week."

"Yeah and I didn't like it." You grumbled in reply.

He sighed in mock exasperation at you, "Go on and git those damn flowers in water before they wither. Don't let my battle scars be in vain." He sarcastically joked but you just eased him to sit nearby in a motel chair.

"I will just let me clean your hands up a bit." Slipping a few of his rings off and pocketing them to clean a bit in the bathroom.

He didn't even argue with you even if he groaned and rolled his neck like this was an awful chore to appease you while you went to the small bathroom. Just flopped down in that chair, his spurs jangling and jacket rustling as he shifted. Ruefully smirking at your insistence on mother henning him even when his cuts were almost completely healed. Skin knitting together as fast as days of healing for a regular human.

You reckoned he secretly adored you fretting over him. In fact, you knew he'd milk out his injuries just so you'd kiss him and sympathize and the relic of a vampire just sat that eating the babying right up even if he'd never admit it and he most definitely got into it with the others when they caught on and started poking fun at his expense.

You took a warm wet cloth of soap and water soothingly over the cuts. He hissed slightly and you smirked, "You ate a bullet in the stomach and laughed bout it last month."

"Tsk, shit. Ya caught me." He gave that devilishly charming lopsided grin at you. "Is it a crime to want some extra lovin'? A lil pampering? A bit of frettin' from my sweetheart?"

You couldn't hide the smile or warm chuckle in your throat if you wanted to. After getting the dried blood and dirt off his hands, you finally asked. "So where did the roses with thorns and dirt come from?"

He scoffed lightly but relented pretty easily, "...Found em." He sniffed in gruff indifference.

"Where?"

"Some old bitty's yard."

You gasped in faux outrage, "Severen-"

"Oh don't 'Oh Severen!' me." He mocked your voice, "She ain't gonna miss em! She probably don't even know she had em. She looked old as dust."

"YOU are old as dust."

"Watch it." He growled with no heat under it and pulled you close to be in his lap. His inhuman strength and enduring muscles under his skin made him able to carry just about anything or anyone. "Ya want me to put em back or somethin'?"

"Pft no." You snorted at the idea of even attempting it and trying to make it look normal.

"Then stop bustin' my balls then." He playfully huffed as he held you close with a mock glare that always made you simultaneously roll your eyes yet want to kiss him hard.

"Alright, alright!" You tsked but a warm smile crept up your lips. "Thank you."

His gaze softened to reveal how he really felt. A tiny gesture reserved only for you in the protective embrace and solitude together. "Anything for you, baby." However, a more devious smirk etched on his face as he gave a low whisper, "Although..."

You cut him off with a chaste kiss and smiled against his lips. "Already planning to. Think I'm leaving you in a cold motel bed on Valentines day?"

"Better not." He teased and kissed you back.

You pulled away with a grunt, "Oh the flowers-" All before gasping as he scooped you up effortlessly no matter your size with strength that could bend a metal pole in half.

"Fuck them flowers. I got my own flower to tend to right here. Right now." He gave in that silky voice that made most people swoon as he tossed you gently on the bed and crawled over top of you. "Gonna be a long sweet night jus' you an' me, darlin'."

[askthehookerclan]

Howdy. Recently someone asked about a short blurb where the clan arrives at a bar and the waitress is also a vampire. Do ya think you could expand on that and maybe make a part 2 that’s kinda in an X reader style? Like the reader is the waitress type thing. Thanks!

(Howdy there! Not a problem at all. I tend to portray Severen in a different light, so hopefully this still hits the spot! Severen doesn't let his guard down and jump into romance quickly, partly due to his past which does get mentioned briefly.

Gif may be a bit misleading, but that man does not trust easily. Caleb solidified his trust issues even more.

Cheers!)

----------------------------------------------------------

Severen x Vamp!Waitress!Reader Part 2

The waitress kept her hands folded around the chipped mug like a talisman. Her eyes flitted from Severen’s mouth to Jesse’s steady stare, to Diamondback’s cool appraisal and back again. The bar still hummed with the aftershocks of feeding...low voices of the clan making their next plans, the metallic tang in the air...but for a moment it felt like everyone was holding their breath, waiting to see which way the night would break.

Severen tilted his head, half-smile curling his mouth in that lazy, dangerous way.

“Ya know...You keep lookin’ at me like that, sweetheart, I jus' might think you’re tryin’ t'get somethin’ started.”

Her jaw tightened. “You’re the one starin’.”

He huffed a laugh, sharp and humorless.

“Don't flatter yourself there, Sugar. Nah. I’m just makin’ sure you don’t bolt before the boss says what to do with ya. Nothin' more, nothin' less.”

Severen watched her with a kind of wariness that wasn’t amusement and wasn’t aggression either. He’d been playing the same angle all his life...charm...menace...the two braided together. But the smile he offered her now was shorter and more practiced. No one who’d been with him long called it an honest one.

“You look rough. Like you’ve been sleeping with your eyes open for a mighty long time,” he said, the voice softer than it had any right to be. “Anywho... where ya from?”

She swallowed.

“Town over...couple hours east. Been…driftin’.”

She kept her answers thin, the way someone learned to protect themselves around knives. That was the right instinct. It made him watch her more.

Mae edged closer, curiosity still clinging to her.

“How long?” she asked gently.

“Two weeks,” the woman said. “Maybe three. I—” Her fingers tightened on the mug until the porcelain squeaked. “I don’t remember much. I just woke up on a stretch of road and my throat hurt like hell.”

Severen chuckled with a smirk. “Can't say I haven't heard that story before.”

Mae tried to ease the tension with a soft smile. “Don’t mind him. He just likes actin’ tough. That's all.”

Severen’s eyes flicked to her — one sharp, narrow look. “Ain’t actin’.”

Homer groaned, leaning back on his stool.

“He’s just pissed ‘cause last time we found a stray, he actually liked her. And we all know how that ended.”

The air went heavy for a second. No one looked at Severen.

He laughed, but it was a dead sound, not like his usual full bellied laugh. He bared his teeth as he cast Homer a glare.

“Careful, kid. Yer startin’ to sound like you got yourself a death wish.”

Homer just rolled his eyes and muttered something about “touchy old men,” but the damage was done. The waitress looked between them, confusion and curiosity mixing in her gaze.

Severen saw it and he hated it. That look people got right before they started caring. Before they started asking the kind of questions that got you killed.

He pushed off the counter, stepping closer. The bar lights caught in his eyes, making them glint like a wild animal’s.

“Listen, darlin’,” he drawled, voice dipping low and smooth like honey. “Don’t go readin’ too much into this. You look at me, you see a man ...I get it. But that’s long gone. Ain’t nothin’ left worth fallin’ for. Nor 'm I open for business, so get the thought right on out of yer noggin.”

Her breath hitched, like she hadn’t realized that was what she’d been doing until he said it.

He smirked. “Whatever’s left in here,” He thumped his chest once, the sound hollow as bone. “ain’t somethin’ you’d wanna find.”

Jesse gave him a look, one part warning, one part understanding. He didn’t have to say anything. He knew Severen’s story same as the rest of them did. Knew how the outlaw with the charm and the silver tongue had once tried to make a life with someone before the turn. Before the blood. Before he woke up covered in the pieces of what he loved most.

Diamondback broke the silence. “He’s right, sugar. We ain’t the kind that get happy endings. Not in this life. This ain't no fairytale from the books you read.”

The waitress glanced between them, clearly fighting between instinct and the kind of curiosity that could still kill her. “So… what are you looking for then?”

Severen chuckled.

“Ain’t lookin’ for a damn thing, Honey. Got everythin' I need right here. Blood, a road, an' no one I gotta bury.”

He stepped back, his grin turning back into that cocky smirk everyone knew so well. The mask slipped right back into place.

Jesse stood and looks around at the others before looking back at the girl.

“She comes with us. She learns the rules? She lives. She don’t? She dies. Simple as that.”

The others moved to leave, but Severen hung back just a little longer, staring at her. She had that fragile, new look to her. Too soft... too alive. She hadn’t yet learned that being one of them meant losing everything that made life sweet. That loving, hoping, trusting...those were luxuries for people who still had souls. Those who still had their humanity in tact. If one wanted a traditional, white-picket-fence kinda life? This sure as hell wasn't it.

When she looked up at him, he forced a smirk.

“You keep your distance, darlin’. Don’t make the mistake of thinkin’ I’m some kinda protector 'r' provider of sorts. I don’t save folks, an' I sure as hell don’t love ‘em.”

She gave a small nod, gaze affixing into a glare towards him.

“Didn’t plan to.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Good girl.”

And then, as he turned to follow the others out, his expression dropped. All the charm gone, face suddenly drawn and hard as he lit a smoke.

Under his breath, just quiet enough no one could hear but maybe Jesse, he muttered to himself.

“Already buried that part of me a long damn time ago.”

[halfadeckofcards]

Needles and Pins

Trouble saunters up to your workplace in a gas station in the middle of Nowhere Special, Southern U.S.A. Night after night, it comes armed with a charming smile and bared teeth. And despite knowing full well it's a bad idea, you just can't keep yourself from being lured in.

Rating: Explicit, NSFW 🔞 Fandom(s): Near Dark 1987, Abigail 2024 Pairing: Severen x AFAB!Reader x Frank/Adam Barrett Word count: 9.8K Content warnings: Canon divergence, DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, dubcon, vampires, alcohol consumption, manipulation, hypnotism, physical assault, biting, blood drinking, making out, brief gun violence, reader makes some dumb decisions because of hypnotism and/or blood loss, threesome, grinding, blood kink, cunnilingus, vaginal fingering, handjobs, implied reader death, reader is AFAB but gender neutral AO3 Link: Here

Author's Note: Ohhhh baby this idea's been blooming since I saw a gifset comparing Near Dark's Severen and Abigail's Frank. They're so alike but so different it's insane, and the idea of getting tag-teamed by them was too fucking good to pass up. Plus it's Multi-May, an event run by my lovely friend @bisexual-horror-fan, so I figured - why not? Hope y'all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!!

It didn’t occur to you that the harbinger of your little town’s demise would be an old RV that was one pothole away from shuddering itself to pieces. You’d seen plenty of them over the years. Most folks who weren’t local were just passing through on their way elsewhere – stopping for the night to stretch their legs, to sleep, to grab gas or a drink or a pack of cigarettes, whatever. It’s just how it was living in a snoozy little town not far from a major highway. Plenty of people stopped for a while, but few ever lingered. So it was strange when they did. It made you suspicious.

But on the surface, there’d been nothing to suspect.

You’d been at the gas station counter just past midnight, scrolling through your phone, when they’d pulled up in a dirty RV that had to be decades old. A family of five. Had come from some other part of the South, judging by their accents. Three of them had come inside – an older man, a woman who seemed to be his partner despite being about twenty years younger, and a young boy you assumed was their son. The man had been the one to speak to you. He was perfectly polite, friendly, charming even. He’d introduced himself as Jesse. He and his family were roadtripping across the U.S. and had stopped to get gas, stretch their legs, and spend a couple days not cramped inside an RV.

You’d nodded politely as he’d spoken. Had rung up the gas and a couple magazines the kid had grabbed – none of the brightly colored kiddie ones. You hadn’t commented on it, kept your face as pleasantly friendly and neutral as possible. When Jesse has asked if there was a motel in this town, you’d given him directions. They’d paid in cash and left. And you hadn’t thought much of it, because it was the kind of story you’d heard about a hundred times. They’d stay for a couple days, realize there was fuckall to do here outside of sitting in a bar or sitting in a church or going to the grocery store, and they’d leave.

So what if their stares, hard and intense and glimmering with an unfathomable something, piercing like they could see through your skin to the veins and muscle and bone beneath, had lingered in your mind for the rest of your shift? So what if the kid glared at you with a simmering hostility and a calculatedness that felt distinctly wrong? So what if something in the back of your mind told you something wasn’t right about them?

You’d met plenty of folks passing by in this job. You’d met plenty of the friendly kind, and a few of the shadier kind. And you’d made a habit of listening to your gut when something felt off. Someone like you working largely alone in the dead of night couldn’t exactly take chances. So you paid attention to that prickle on the back of your neck, that curling unease in your stomach.

But the kid…. they were a family with a little boy. You’d brushed the unease off and gone back to scrolling through your phone to pass the time.

Then they’d come back around the next night, again past midnight. This time it was the kid and the two who’d stayed outside – a blond haired girl and a man wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket, and the kind of grin that set you on edge as soon as you saw it.

“Hey there.” You said the words with calm friendliness. “Can I help y’all?”

“I’m sure you can.” The man swaggered up to the counter with the confidence of someone who owned the place. You resisted the urge to cringe away.

You weren’t exactly the type to scare easy. What was wrong with you?

The girl and the kid were wandering, eyeballing shelves of candy and snacks without touching anything. They were siblings, maybe. Both blond like the woman from yesterday. Not like Sunglasses. He looked closer in age to –

Your attention snapped back to him as he stopped in front of you and propped an elbow against the counter. “What kind of ah…. fun do y’all get up to here? Got any bars, clubs…” His gaze flitted up and down your body. “….Strip clubs? Or is this more of a ‘grannies at town hall’ kinda place?”

You schooled your features back to neutrality despite the rising discomfort in your chest. “No clubs, adult or otherwise. Sorry.” You weren’t really. “There is a bar, though. It’s just down the road from the motel, actually. Surprised you didn’t see it earlier.”

“Well, yknow how it is. Kiddie-winkies keepin us busy n all that.” Sunglasses gave a vague wave toward said kids. The boy shot him a look of cold fury, while the girl seemed engrossed in reading the label on a packet of Nerds.

You gave him an obligatory nod. “Sure.”

The man studied you for a moment. After a beat of uncomfortable silence, he tipped his head and pulled off the sunglasses, then studied you again. His eyes were blue.

“Don’t suppose you’d be willing to show me round town, would ya?”

You blinked at the whiplash of this family’s oddness and Sunglasses now apparently coming onto you. Because that’s only what he could be doing. Ladies-man type. Alright. Sure. Not the first time it had happened.

“I don’t get off till seven a.m.,” you said apologetically. You’ll probably be gone by then, and I’ll be heading home to pass the fuck out, you didn’t say.

“Aw. Shame.” He tilted his head, eyed you up and down again. Like you were a strange little puzzle to figure out. Or a particularly interesting piece of meat. His smile turned cheeky and, if you were being honest, just a little bit strangely charming. “Don’t suppose I can convince you to skip the rest of your shift?”

Well. The idea was certainly tempting. “Not if I wanna pay the bills,” you answered instead.

He nodded and made a little hum. “Right. No mercy for the lil guy, huh? Well.” He straightened, flicking his sunglasses back on. The grin was sharp and feral again, and it poked at some ancient prey animal instinct far in the back of your brain. “Thanks for the directions, sugar. See ya round.”

And then they were gone.

You really hoped the kids hadn’t pocketed anything while you were distracted.

They were still in town days later, long after you’d expected them to leave. You only ever saw them at night, and even then, it was glimpses. Maybe that should’ve been strange to you, but you were something of a nocturnal creature yourself. Sleep all day, wake in the afternoon, work the night shift, come back home as the sun was rising and pass out soon after. Maybe they worked the night shift too, whatever it is they did. Though that didn’t explain the kids’ sleep schedule. It occurred to you that they should’ve been in school but hey, maybe they were homeschooled. It wasn’t your business. Maybe it should’ve set off alarm bells, but you knew better than to stick your nose where it didn’t belong.

But apparently Sunglasses had never learned that.

You’d been intending to grab some groceries and take them back home before your shift, but as soon as you stepped up the curb to head into the Harris Teeter, someone called your name and on instinct you turned around. And were met with a familiar face.

“Fancy meeting you here!” Sunglasses sidled up to you but notably didn’t make any physical contact. Points for that, you supposed.

“Well,” you said dryly, “I do live here.” You weren’t on the clock and didn’t have to have your customer service face on. You were free to say what you like, leave any time you like.

“Really? Thought you mighta been stuck haunting that place.”

“Stuck haunting a twenty-year-old gas station in this town? No fucking thanks. I’d rather drink myself to death,” you scoffed.

A delighted look sprang across Sunglasses’s face. “Sounds like a plan to me! How bout it? I’ll buy you a drink.”

Whoa whoa whoa, wait. You mentally backpeddled. “No – that’s not what – I have stuff I need to do before I clock in–” You weren’t exactly eager to get to work early, but neither were you eager to let a strange man buy you a drink.

“Aw, c’mon now.” He took off those sunglasses and met your gaze. “Just one drink. It’ll be quick.”

….He was pretty good-looking. He was the posterboy of tall dark and handsome, with the pale blue eyes, mussed black hair, and jawline. The leather and chunky rings gave a rougher edge to that prettiness. And there was something else about him – an erraticness, an unpredictableness, that was as enticing as it was unnerving. And really, how many other guys had tried to come onto you before, invasive and unappealing? How many of them had actually been truly tempting? Exactly none of them. And now that a guy like this, strange as he was, showed up and offered you a drink, were you really about to say no, even when you wanted to say yes, deep down? Were you really about to shoot down the only decent chance you’d gotten in this middle of nowhere Southern hell?

“Alright.” It just slipped out. It slipped out so easily it startled you.

Why would you say yes like that?

“Alright!” The man threw an arm around you and tugged you away from the grocery store parking lot – and towards the bar on the other side of the road. The bar you’d pointed out to him just days before.

Your head whirled. What the fuck? Why did you say yes? What had possibly compelled you to say yes to this stranger?

“I don’t. I don’t even know your name,” you stuttered.

His grin turned cheeky as he glanced down at you. “Severen. Feel free to wear it out much as you like.”

It was an astronomically bad idea to get involved with a total stranger. A total stranger whose smile gave you bad vibes. A total stranger who’d probably be leaving within a couple days. A total stranger who’d been so very eager to have your attention. There were red flags. He probably wasn’t involved in some drug or sex trafficking scheme, but you still didn’t know a damn thing about him. Severen. You wondered if that was the name he’d been given, or if it was something he’d chosen himself for the punk-cowboy thing he had going on.

And yet, despite your reservations, here you were. You weren’t usually so swayed by a pretty face, but something about those blue eyes had compelled you to say yes. And against all odds..... you were enjoying yourself.

Severen was engaging, to say the least. Intense. Energetic. Constantly in motion, even when he was sitting – moving his arms and hands animatedly as he spoke, bouncing his leg, fiddling with his sunglasses or his un-drunk glass of alcohol.

The longer you sat there and listened to him – the more you stared at him – the more you found yourself loosening your grip on caution. The more your reservations wilted away. You couldn’t even blame your drink, since there was no alcohol in it. He was just…. kind of fascinating. And energetic. He made you laugh. And despite your earlier misgivings, he was kind of sweet. He told you about his family. Apparently Jesse and Diamondback, the blond woman, had found him at a low point in his life and taken him in, provided him with food and shelter and company he hadn’t had in a long time. And they’d done the same with the two kids, Mae and Homer. They were a patched-up family who stuck together and took care of each other when no one else did. It was sweet. It brushed against something lonely and untouched in your heart. To have that kind of family, that kind of reliability…. you shoved down the pang of sheer want it stirred up.

You could not start wanting and getting attached like that. Not when they were just passing through.

Still. You couldn’t stop meeting his gaze. You quickly stopped minding how often his arm brushed against yours. And you very quickly started to idly wonder if there was room for a sixth in that beat up RV.

When your phone alarm pinged at 10:30 p.m., you didn’t want to leave the comfort of the bar and Severen’s scorching attention. You could hear the reluctance in your own voice as you said, “I should head to work.” But God, you didn’t want to. You almost hoped he’d ask you to skip out on your shift, like he had last time. You weren’t sure you’d be able to say no.

But instead he just fixed you with a smirk and said, “Prolly.” He waved you off as you reached for your wallet. “Don’t worry bout it, sugar. Drink’s on me.”

You hesitated. “Well. Thanks. This was actually really nice.” Please give me a reason to stay.

“Course.” His gaze flicked away from yours, down your figure, sizing you up again. Did he see anything different from the first time he’d done that? Did you…. feel something different from the first time?

You forced yourself to say, “See you round.”

“I sure will.”

You left the bar in a haze, as if slipping out of a dream. By the time you were clocking into your shift, reality had fully settled back in and left your body oddly heavy, limbs buzzing with the faint sensation of pins and needles. Doubt had come back in full force. About a dozen questions whirled around your mind all night. What the fuck had you been thinking? Why did you say yes to him? Why did you so desperately want to head back to the bar and find him again?

You kept a wary eye on the door for the entire night. But there wasn’t a single damn sign of life, even if you felt like something was watching you from beyond the bleached lights of the gas station. You were almost relieved as the sun peeked up from the horizon at the end of your shift. As if it would protect you.

As if it would shield you from whatever went bump in the night.

You kept running into Severen. You kept making bad decisions. He would take you to the bar or walk to work with you or come to the gas station and hang around like it wasn’t a public establishment you were supposed to be running. Every time you wanted to tell him to fuck off, every time you wanted to ask why he was still here and why he was stalking you, he’d make eye contact and the words would die on your tongue. He’d draw you in. He’d say something that made you smile or laugh or, God forbid, that made your face warm and your breath come a little too quick. Things were moving far too fast far too soon, and you knew it. Whenever he wasn’t around, you snapped back to reality and promised yourself that he wouldn’t reel you in again. You had to cut him off. Whoever he was, he was trouble. You could sense it. But then he’d pop up again and your resolve would instantly burn away – you’d forget why you wanted him to stop in the first place. He was hypnotizing.

Even now, eight days after they’d first come to town, you just couldn’t bring yourself to care that Severen was perched on the gas station counter, teasing you and making you giggle like a schoolgirl with a crush and completely distracting you from what you should be doing. Which was acting professional while there was a customer. Which you most certainly were not doing. He was making you fucking stupid, and you couldn’t care less.

The customer kept eyeballing you from out the side of his glasses. Embarrassment burned in your stomach. But you just couldn’t drag your attention away from Severen for more than a few seconds.

“Anyways, like I was sayin – Diamondback took one look at this sucker and just bout knocked his block clean off.” He whistled and you jumped when he snapped an arm out, as if punching an invisible attacker. He laughed at your reaction. “Knew from then on never to mess with that bitch.”

“She sounds pretty badass,” you admitted. You wondered what she’d think of you. After the initial meeting with Jesse, you’d spotted her wandering around the town at night, sometimes laughing and with her arm around a young blushing guy who’d moved to town a couple years ago. You wondered about that. Didn’t ask.

“Yeah, she ain’t half bad. Ole snake’s got one helluva bite, that’s for damn sure.” Severen paused, as if considering, then leaned over with a mischievous look. His lips brushed the shell of your ear. “I been told I got a good bite too.”

Oh you could not be thinking about that at the cash register. You ducked your head and furiously looked for something to do with your hands. Severen’s self-satisfied laugh – it was more of a giggle, really – just made your face warm more.

A magazine smacked down against the counter. You snapped your head up. The customer was staring at you with an unamused expression. The slicked-back hair and chain necklace and obvious impatience all just screamed douchebag, as if the words from his mouth didn’t say it loud enough. “If you lovebirds are done – can I check out?” Oh, and a Yank to boot. New York or New Jersey, if the accent was anything to go by.

“Sure thing,” you said with forced niceness.

“These too.” He tossed down a packet of spearmint gum and a bottle of iron pills. You nodded and rung them up.

You didn’t have to look at Severen to know he was sizing the customer up; the dirty look the customer was giving him in return was indication enough. You grit your teeth. Please don’t say anything. Please don’t start a fight. Please don’t –

“Got a problem?” Severen asked. The cheerfulness in his voice felt like the warning rattle of a snake. You sucked a breath in from between your teeth.

“Yeah, actually. Think you can fuckin move?”

For a second, you were certain Severen was going to just tackle him and start a fight then and there. But instead he hopped down from the counter and clapped a hand onto the man’s shoulder. That grin was still fixed on his face, but it was thin and sharp like a razor. “First come first served, Yankee.”

Something like disdain or anger flickered across the customer’s face, but you jumped in before he could say anything. “That’ll be twenty-four dollars and seventy-eight cents.”

The customer’s gaze bounced between you two, something unreadable in his shockingly blue eyes. He gave an annoyed huff, shoved Severen’s hand off, and rifled around his jacket pocket for a wallet. He tossed a twenty and a five down. “Keep the change.”

“Alright. Would you like a receipt?”

“No.”

You shoved the items in a shitty plastic bag and thrust it over the counter to him, accompanying the motion with a blithe smile. “Here you go. Have a nice night.”

“Uh-huh.” He paused before heading out, giving you a weird raised-eyebrow look. “Don’t let the fuckin bed bugs bite.” He said it obnoxiously, knowingly, like it should mean something. Your face heated as you recalled what Severen had whispered in your ear. Fucking asshole.

You waited till he was out of sight to turn your disapproving frown to Severen. The urge to melt and let it go was near overwhelming, but you shoved it aside. “What the fuck was that about?”

“Yankees ain’t got manners, that’s what.” Severen said it dismissively, tossing his head like a dog shaking off flies. Then he sprung over the counter and landed with a jostle of leather and buckles and spurs, and he popped up to full height with an expression that promised nothing good. The same expression he’d been wearing when he first set foot here. You startled back. He followed you.

“Since when do you care about that sort of thing?” Something rung in warning at the back of your mind, even as that fuzzy contentedness that came whenever you looked at Severen tried to smother it. Something was off.

“Aw, don’t be like that. Lookit me.”

Rough fingers curled around your jaw and tilted your head up. As soon as you made eye contact, the warning in your head went silent. The tension in your jaw and your brow and your body unspooled. You went limp, letting Severen herd you against the back wall and cage you in with his arms and his body. His head blocked the sterile glow of the neon lights, casting you in shadow. His breath settled against your lips.

“Now, aren’t you a pretty lil thing?” he murmured, all soft honeyed tones and Southern charm. You would’ve liked to have thought you were immune to that sort of thing, being in this business and all, but your heart hammered so loud in your ears and your throat that you couldn’t think straight. “Thought that since I first saw you. Thought to myself, ‘oh, well I could just eat this lil sweetheart up.’ Wouldn’t I be a lucky man?”

He laid a hand on your chest, just below your throat, fingers curling against your pulse as his thumb caressed your skin. The edge of his mouth twitched up in a smirk. “You scared? Excited?”

Your tongue felt heavy. Everything did, heavy and weightless at the same time. “Yeah,” was all you could get out.

“You weak in the knees for me? Lil heart aflutterin?” The hand at your neck had climbed to join the one at your jaw. He cradled you like something delicate. “You sweet on me?”

You managed a weak laugh. “Y-yeah.” That was one way of putting it. One way to describe whatever the fuck was going on with your body.

He smiled. Brushed his nose against yours. “Good. That’s good.”

“Severen.... please.....” You weren’t quite sure what you were pleading for. What, exactly, you wanted him to do. “Please.”

“Don’t you worry sugar. Imma make you feel real good.”

Lips pressed to yours. Slightly chapped and cool, but firm and relentless, a sweet moving pressure that had your head spinning even more than it already was. His body pinned you to the wall and his fingers tilted your head to the side, moving you how he pleased. He pressed his tongue into your mouth sooner than you would’ve expected. A helpless noise came from your throat. Heat shuddered down your spine. He kissed you deeply, languorously, as if he had an eternity to explore you.

A thought bubbled up from the back of your mind – what if a customer walked in on you? But then Severen was slotting a thigh between your legs and biting at your lower lip and you stopped thinking much at all. Your hands slid under his jacket, racking up his shirt and dipping along the curve of his spine as you explored smooth, cool skin. Or maybe you were just burning so hot that he felt cold in comparison.

You whined when he pulled away, only to sigh in relief when his mouth latched onto your neck. Wet, open-mouthed kisses and scraping teeth and one hand cradling your cheek as you tilted your head away and gave him better access. Fucking Christ he needed to stop being a tease. You squirmed and dragged his hips closer, sliding yourself on his thigh and biting back a sound of pleasure at the friction. One of his hands dropped down to brace your hip. He huffed a laugh against your skin.

“God, please Severen,” you breathed.

He hummed and pressed a kiss to your pulse. His fingers dug into your skin.

And then he bit you.

Not a playful nip. Not a hickey. A full-power clamp of jaws like a dog or an alligator biting down on its prey. Teeth tore through your skin, punctured clean through like you were butter left out in the sun. It knocked the breath right out of you. Pain exploded through your veins. Your body thrashed of its own accord. Your mind screamed awake.

A gunshot rang out. Severen yanked away from you, teeth ripping back out your neck. A cry of pain unlodged from your throat and you stumbled away, sliding down against the wall. Severen swung around and snapped bloody teeth at something beyond your line of sight. “What the FUCK–” Another gunshot. Severen yowled and his body jerked and buckled. He collapsed to the floor. You scrambled away from his body as his words ricocheted in your own mind. What the FUCK....?? Your breath sawed in and out from your chest far too quickly. Your head buzzed.

What the fuck had just happened?

There was the crunching of broken glass – when had one of the window panes been broken? – and a head peeked over the counter. Slicked back hair and glasses and ice blue eyes.

The customer from earlier.

You stared at him with what was probably a panicked, bug-eyed look. He stared back at you. Then his gaze drifted slightly to your left and his eyes darkened. “You’re uh. You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah.” Your voice came out raw. “He bit me.”

“Must’ve been one hell of a bite.”

“Yeah.” Was this really the time or place for this conversation?

You weren’t sure if you’d said that last part out loud, because the man grimaced and leaned over the counter, offering you a hand. You took it and tried not to think about the fact that yours was shaking. He yanked you up with ease then helped you clamber over the counter. There was a pistol in his other hand.

Your head swam.

“We should, uh, get you out of here.” The man shoved the gun into his waistband and glanced around. A hand snaked around your upper arm. Normally you would’ve pulled away, but you weren’t exactly confident in your ability to stay upright. Not when you were shaking and fucking bleeding from your neck as if you’d been bitten by a vam–

“Holy shit.”

The man gave you a look that was halfway between annoyed and alarmed. “What?”

“Did I just get bitten by a vampire?” you blurted. He grimaced again. You realized how that sounded. “No, I’m not – shut the fuck up, don’t look at me like that–”

“Oh come on–” For a guy who’d gone out of his way to save you and shoot the maybe-vampire-maybe-crazy-guy who’d fucking bitten you, he seemed pretty fucking fed up. “Here.” He grabbed a bottle of orange juice from one of the drink shelves and shoved it into your hands. “Drink the fuck up. We’re leaving.”

“We can’t leave the scene of a crime. There’s a fucking dead guy!”

“Yeah, unless he’s a fucking vampire, in which case I don’t think a bullet’s gonna do much to stop him.” He practically dragged you out of the gas station with him. You couldn’t exactly argue with his logic, even if the world was tilting around you and you were lightheaded and your thoughts wouldn’t stop sloshing around like soup inside your skull.

God, how the fuck was this even happening?

“Got somewhere we can hole up?” the man asked.

You almost blurted, Who’s we? Trusting a stranger was what had gotten you into this mess. Then again, he’d gone out of his way to save you. And even if a bullet didn’t do much to stop a vampire, you had to admit you felt marginally safer with a human shield. As awful as that thought was.

“Um.” You tried to collect your scattered brain. Took a gulp of orange juice and cringed at the bitter taste. “There’s a church that isn’t too far from here.”

“That’s not–” The man cut himself off.

You glared at him. “What?”

He gave you another annoyed look. You again debated yanking your arm away from him and walking yourself. Instead you took another sip of orange juice. You probably weren’t putting enough pressure on your neck.

“That shit probably doesn’t work. Hallowed ground and crosses and all that religious BS.”

“What? Why?” You frowned. “Don’t tell me your name is Van Helsing.”

He scoffed. “It’s Frank. And your little vampire buddy didn’t need to be welcomed into that shithole to get to you, so that’s probably a myth. And who the hell knows what else is a myth too, right? We could be wasting our fuckin time in a church.”

You strained to remember whether or not there had been a welcome sign on the door of the gas station. Working there for so long had made you blind to the details of the place. You tried twisting around to catch a glance of the gas station receding behind you, but Frank was pulling you along too quickly and had you in an iron grip. Shit, maybe he was right.

Another thought hit you. “Oh fuck,” you said aloud.

“What now–?”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” you snapped. “Severen, the fucking vampire, came here with four other people he calls family. I only ever see them around at night. They’re probably fucking vampires too.” A whole pack of vampires. Right under your goddamn nose. Then again, how were you supposed to expect something that wasn’t even supposed to exist?

“Oh, well that’s just peachy.”

You were walking down a cluster of buildings now, passing by the grocery store and the bar. Warm hazy lights cast an orange glow on everything and reflected off Frank’s glasses, obscuring your view of his eyes. His mouth was set in a flat, grim line. You couldn’t get a goddamn read on him, or why he was here, or why he was helping you. You didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but after Severen, your guard was firmly up.

But….

You sighed. “We can hide at my place. I never took Severen there.” Of course, there was always the possibility that he’d followed you at some point. But then why wouldn’t he have attacked you there rather than in public? You twisted around, trying to get a look behind you again. You didn’t see any angry leather-clad blood-stained guys tailing you. You didn’t see any bats. Did vampires even turn into bats? Fuck, who knew? At least at your place, you’d have kitchen knives. And garlic, if that worked. Did you have anything that could be used as stakes? Did that even work? You’d heard decapitation was a sure way to kill anything, but you doubted you had the physical strength or mental fortitude to cut through someone’s spine, even if the bastard had tried to kill you.

Ultimately, you did end up going to your place. Your hands were shaking hard enough that you had trouble getting your keys into the door, and Frank glancing out into the open empty night didn’t do anything to ease your nerves. Especially not when his hand was resting on the grip of his pistol. It just made you want to start scanning the tiny neighborhood too. But once the door was unlocked, Frank ushered you in, slipping in right behind you before you slammed the door shut and locked it again. And hooked up the extra chain lock too. Not that it would protect you from vampire super strength. You assumed that one was real.

You flicked on the lights, but Frank immediately shut them back off. Only half a protest escaped your lips before he interrupted. “Nope. As far as anybody else is concerned, no one’s home.”

“Fine. Just give me a second.” You flicked the lights back on long enough to check the analogue clock hanging in the living room. “It’s just past three-thirty. We still have a few hours before sunrise. We can stay here until it’s light out, assuming that one’s real.” You hadn’t seen Severen or any of his pack out in the daylight. You were pretty sure that one was real, but now Frank had you second-guessing every bit of vampire fiction you’d ever seen.

But Frank just said, “Yeah. I’d say that’s a pretty safe bet.”

“Yeah. Okay.” You nodded dumbly. Stared at the faint outline of his face in the darkness. Christ on a stick. You were stuck with this guy until then. Another stranger. A stranger with a gun, no less.

Fuck.

“Alright. You close the blinds. I’ll do something about this.” You gestured to your neck. It had stopped bleeding, but you were damp and sticky with your own blood. “We can, I dunno, rub garlic around the door and windows afterwards?”

“You really think garlic’s gonna work?” Frank said doubtfully.

“I don’t fucking know!! You figure something out, Mister fucking Van Helsing! I’m gonna go deal with the fucking bite on my fucking neck.” You beelined for your bedroom and left him to his own devices. Hopefully he’d trip over something in the living room, the fucking douchebag.

You grabbed a change of clothes then stepped into the bathroom. There were no windows in the closet-sized space, so you closed the door, locked it, and flicked the light on. Through your squinting at the sudden brightness, you caught a glimpse of your reflection.

Jesus Christ, you looked like a walking corpse.

Okay. That was fine. That was expected. Whatever.

You stripped and dumped your bloodied clothes onto the floor. Jumping in the shower probably wasn’t the best move when you had a possible vampire thirsting after you and a stranger with a gun in your house, so you went with a dampened towel instead. When you’d cleaned up most of the blood, you dropped the towel onto the pile of your soiled clothes. You tried not to wince at the idea of throwing them away. The shirt and towel probably weren’t salvageable.

Not that that mattered right now. You were busy examining the bite mark on your neck. Miraculously, it had stopped bleeding on its own, though blood welled if you poked it too roughly. It had hurt at first. Now it was just weirdly, worryingly numb. The teeth marks were deep and torn, hadn’t pierced through cleanly and had probably been jostled as you’d struggled against Severen. But it was definitely a bite mark. And it definitely wasn’t a normal human one. The thought made you a little woozy, to be honest. You crouched down, and the rush of blood being forced back up made your head spin.

This couldn’t be real. This could not be real, and it could not be happening to you right now specifically. This was fucking insane.

You reached for the small medical kit under the sink. How the fuck any of this worked, you couldn’t be sure, but cleaning the bite mark and slapping a plaster on it couldn’t make things any worse.

Vampires bit humans to turn them into vampires. But they usually had to feed the human their own vampire blood to actually turn them. That’s how it went in Interview with a Vampire and Dracula, right? And that hadn’t happened to you. So you were good. Right? Probably? The feeding blood thing was something vampire fiction generally agreed upon. That was probably real.

But wait, Dracula was actually able to go into the sun in the original book. It only weakened him. Shit, what if the bursting into flames in daylight thing was made up? Your heart dropped at the thought. Although, no, you hadn’t seen Severen or the rest of his pack during daylight hours. And an RV could be a pretty good place for vampires to hide if they blocked out all the windows. Okay then, that one seemed like a safe bet. You weren’t so sure about garlic. That one sounded pretty silly. And as much as you hated to admit it, Frank was probably right about vampires not needing to be invited in. So you couldn’t count on that to protect you. And what about religious iconography? You weren’t sure you had anything in your house for that anyway. Fucking hell. You’d been thrust into a world you didn’t understand and didn’t know the rules to. And you had to keep yourself alive because of it. Well, yourself and Frank.

Even if the garlic seemed silly, it couldn’t hurt either. And surely you had something around the house that could be used as a stake. Unless it had to be wood.... did it have to be a particular kind of wood....?

“Fuck,” you muttered to your reflection. Maybe Frank would have some ideas.

You finished cleaning up and getting dressed, and then you headed back out. “You see anything weird?” you asked as you opened the bedroom door. And stopped. Squinted in the darkness.

The living room was empty.

“....Frank?” Your heartbeat thumped in your ears as you peered into the kitchen. He wasn’t there. “Frank? Are you–”

Something grabbed you from behind. A hand muffled your shriek before it could leave your throat. You thrashed and kicked and bucked like an animal as you were dragged. Your elbow jammed against something solid. A grunt of pain hit your ear.

Then you were tossed onto the bed. The mattress softened the harshness of the fall, and you jerked upright immediately. You scrabbled for a weapon as a figure filled your doorway. Tall wiry gleaming glasses outline of a jacket –

“Sev–”

He pounced onto you and you shrieked again. Clawed and writhed and–

It wasn’t Severen. It was Frank. With a mouthful of sharp teeth baring down at you. Oh fuck.

“Now what are the chances of that, huh?” he sneered. “Getting attacked by two different vampires in one day? Talk about bad luck.”

“GET OFF!” You renewed your struggles, but that brief moment of shock had given Frank all the time he’d needed. He had you caged against the bed, grabbing your arms and pinning you down with his bodyweight. “No!!”

“Fraid this just isn’t your day.” He said it so cruelly, so carelessly, like you were little more than a beetle under his shoe. Tears pricked your eyes. God, you were so fucking stupid, you’d fallen for the same fucking shit again.... “Tears? Really? Now? We’re just getting to the good part.”

“Fuck you,” you gritted out.

He laughed softly. You jerked under him again, but he remained immovable. “Maybe in another life. Now. Hold still.”

He leaned in, teeth bared and breath puffing against the other side of your neck. “NO!” you screamed. You threw every ounce of energy in your body into heaving against him. One of your knees hit his gut. The air rushed out of him and he doubled over. You yanked a hand out of his grip and blindly grabbed something from the bedside table and smashed it against his head. He toppled to the side. You shoved him off and bolted.

You didn’t even make it to the bedroom door. A hand was on your arm and you were spinning and then you were on the mattress again, this time with Frank shoved up behind you and pinning you to the bed, your back to his front and your face pressed against the sheets. You hollered, half-muffled. He wrestled with your flailing arms.

“Not so fucking fast, bitch,” he spat in your ear. “I haven’t eaten in weeks. I’ve been buying my time on fucking gas station iron pills, but now that I’ve got live, squirming prey? You’re not getting away from me that easy.”

You snarled some combination of words at him. You weren’t even sure what. But you writhed and jerked and flailed and didn’t let up for one second, even as he pressed against you and swore at you.

“Yknow,” a familiar voice drawled, “it’d be easier if you hypnotized em. Right?”

You both froze. You turned your face to stare at the bedroom entrance.

Alive and well, leaning against the doorjamb with one leg crossed in front of the other, mouth and shirt smeared with blood that looked black in the darkness – Severen. Sunglasses and all. Very much not looking like a man who’d been recently shot.

Your heart plummeted. Despair like nothing you’d ever experienced washed through your body, cold and stinging like alcohol.

“The fuck you mean ‘hypnotized’?” Frank said. He didn’t sound smug anymore. Just pissed.

A disbelieving laugh burst out from Severen. “You don’t know about that? Ohhh I get it now!! Well I’ll be damned!!” He took a step forward, practically sauntered. “You’re a newbie, aren’t ya? You ain’t figured out all the perks yet! Yknow what else you ain’t figured out yet, newbie?” Another step forward. A sliver of light from the bathroom – you’d forgotten to turn the light off you’d just closed the door you’d been in such a rush – hit his sunglasses and illuminated the edge of a smile and blood-splattered skin. His voice turned sharp and low like you hadn’t heard before. “You don’t steal another vamp’s prey.”

Frank flinched behind you. You saw Severen move, but it took another second to figure out what else you were seeing. A pistol, gleaming and old-fashioned, aimed at Frank. It might’ve brought you relief in any other circumstance, but here, now, aimed at a vampire....?

“This might not kill you, but I can assure you, it hurts like a bitch.” Severen flashed his teeth at the both of you. “So how bout this, son? I’ll be the bigger man and let you go, and you fuck off into the night and never cross my way again. But first, and here’s the fun part – we share this lovely lil sweetheart here between the two of us. And if you say no, well,” he laughed cheerfully, “I’ll shoot ya and drink up by myself, and then I’ll make you regret stumblin into an elder.”

You couldn’t breathe. Two options. Neither of which ended with you still having a pulse.

“So!” Severen wiggled his free hand through the air. “What’ll it be?”

The following pause was heavy and lasted far too long. Please say no. Please refuse him. Please fight him or try to disarm him or fuck up and give me a chance to escape, please, God, please....

Frank sighed through his nose. “You know what? Fine. Fine! Whatever. As long as I get something out of this clusterfuck.”

The words triggered something in your brain, that primal drive to survive. You yelled and thrashed, hoping to catch him off guard and fling him off. He just hissed and squeezed your arms till your bones felt like they were about to snap. You cried out in pain. Tears blurred your vision.

“You wanna help me out here or what?” Frank asked Severen.

“Sure thing, partner!” The words dripped with saccharine venom. He neared the bed and reached up to his sunglasses. Hypnotism. Cold fear doused you.

“NnnNOOdon’tyoufuckindare!” You squeezed your eyes shut and turned your head away. Severen’s laugh twisted your insides unpleasantly.

“Aw now don’t be like that!” You heard shifting fabric, the creak of leather and jingle of a dozen pins and badges. Fingers forced their way under your chin and tugged at you, trying to coax you towards him as rings dug into your cheek. You struggled to resist. Clamped your jaws together and strained your neck muscles so hard it felt like something was about to pop. “I said, don’t be like that.” Nails dug into the skin at the back of your neck, piercing and hurting and lancing pain through your nerves. It shocked you into relenting, and Severen twisted your head towards him with a noise of approval. You screwed your eyes shut tighter. He tsked at you. “C’mon now, open up for Sev.”

“Here, let me,” Frank said from behind you. He yanked you away from the bed and clasped your upper arms in a near bone-breaking grip. You had no time to recover before he bit you and agony ripped through your neck and shoulder. On instinct your body arced, strained, tried to pull away from the pain as your eyes snapped open of their own accord. And then there were fingers around your chin, roughly yanking you down, forcing you to meet eyes the color of the afternoon sky –

“Relax, sweetheart. The three of us’re gonna have some real fun tonight.”

The effect was instantaneous. Something fuzzy and hazy wrapped around your thoughts. Even as you struggled, your body loosened, and your thrashing weakened to a soft writhe. You bit down on your own tongue till blood filled your mouth. Focused on the pain, the hurt, the agony radiating from your tongue and your jaw and your neck and your arms, and refused to let yourself get swept up in the stupor. You were not doing this, you were not letting this happen, you were not going down without a fight. If they wanted you, they’d have to fight tooth and fucking nail, you swore it to any God that was fucking watching.

“Jesse likes to go on about how this sorta thing is really more the power of suggestion than actual hypnotism. Accordin to him, hypnotism ain’t even real.” Severen said it casually, as if commenting on the color of the walls or the softness of the pillows, even as the dog-like tilt of his head revealed the predator in human skin. “Which is real funny comin from the walkin talkin livin dead. But point is, lil sweetheart’s still gonna be struggling if you don’t do it right. Get off newbie.”

Frank unlatched from your neck. You whimpered in pain, tried to pull away, but your body responded only weakly.

“What?” He sounded almost as bleary as you felt.

Severen cackled. “Don’t know how to make it feel good yet either, huh? Whoever vamp daddy is did a piss poor job at teachin you the ropes. Scoot over. Let a professional handle it.” He cupped your neck and ripped off the plaster you’d placed over his bitemark.

A bitemark on each side, you thought through the fuzz. Now you were all evened out.

Teeth pierced through your flesh for a third time that night. It hurt. It hurt. You tried to put up a struggle despite the weight of your limbs and the lightness of your head. Pleading words and cries fell from your mouth. They went unheeded. Severen sucked at your skin and lapped up your blood – yes, this was really happening, this was what they were going to do to you – and your head swam. Your shoved at him weakly, but you might as well have been shoving at a brick wall.

This was it. End of the line. A lamb to the slaughter. Bottom of the food chain.

Your thoughts and emotions tangled together, fueled by the rush of pain and adrenaline and blood loss. Something crept through your veins. A chill spreading outwards under your skin. Death. This is what it felt like to die, you were sure of it, and all you could do was wait for it to overtake you.

.....Except.

It wasn’t. It didn’t. It was something else. Something started to replace the pain and the despair, something that was warm and liquid and buzzing. It filled your senses and glowed in your chest and trickled further down, dangerously down.

It felt.... good.

Awareness flooded your senses, hyperawareness of every little detail and sensation. The light spilling from the bathroom, casting the scene in lurid suggestive shadows and slivers of amber. Severen’s teeth buried in your neck, his lips closed around your skin as if working a permanent hickey into your throat. How he cradled your head so sweetly and dragged a hand down your side. Frank’s breath on your ear and your cheek and your neck, the proximity of his lips. Both of them solid and pressed against the length of your body, immovable and caging you in and supporting your body weight as your legs buckled beneath you.

How could you have been afraid? How could you have run and cried and screamed when it felt like this? You shifted against them, searched desperately and half-mindedly for some sort of movement. You might have whimpered. Or moaned. You weren’t entirely sure.

Severen unlatched from your neck but didn’t go far. You could feel him smiling against you. “Didn’t I tell you it’d feel good? All that struggling for nothin.” You mm-hmmed as enthusiastically as you could, despite the intoxicating headiness unfolding in your body and making you dizzy.

Frank’s exhale brushed against your ear. You shuddered. “How the hell did you do that?” he murmured. Some distant part of you wondered the same.

“Ain’t rocket science.” Severen licked at the gouges of your bitemarks. Sparks of pleasure flew under your skin.

At some point you’d started squirming. You wanted that feeling, that friction from when Severen had pushed his thigh between your legs at the gas station and you’d ground against him. That felt like a lifetime ago. Like a dream. You wanted it back. You wriggled your hips and got a response from the both of them. Frank made a low choked noise in the back of his throat and one of his hands flew to your side, nails digging through the fabric of your shirt. Severen sucked in a breath and tipped his head back. His throat worked enticingly as he ground back against you. Oh fuck that felt good. You gasped and grabbed Severen’s shoulders to steady yourself. And tried desperately not to sound like a dog in heat as you writhed against them.

You were too warm, burning up. Aching and struggling to breathe. Hands slid along what parts of your body they could reach, mouths and tongues and teeth pressed against your neck.

The thought of being consumed no longer seemed so terrifying. The mental image of them tearing into you, bloodying and messing themselves with you, teeth gnashing and throats working and tongues exploring your veins and arteries and snapping them like rubber bands was so visceral, it made you clench around nothing.

Eat me alive eat me alive please God devour me.

Between one moment and the next, you’d been dragged to the bed. Frank was behind you still, holding your back to his chest. He grabbed your waist and pulled you flush against him, and when you rocked against the hardness pressed to your ass, you were rewarded with a stuttered groan. You couldn’t even remember why you’d been annoyed at him. He was making such delicious little noises because of you, was grinding against you with the desperation of a man who hadn’t been touched by anyone else in years. How long would it take him to cum in his jeans just from this?

Your attention was abruptly, fully drawn away when Severen dropped to his knees in front of you. Enough light bled out from the bathroom to let you see the fresh blood smeared across his face, overlapping the dried splatter from before. His eyes glinted in the dimness. He looked like a predator. He was a predator. But you couldn’t find it in yourself to be afraid, not when he was pushing your thighs apart and running his fingers up to the hem of your jeans. He thumbed the button. At this angle, the way he looked up at you through dark eyelashes was absolutely obscene.

“How bout this? He drinks you, and I eat you. Sound fair?”

Lust hit you like a physical force.

Frank dropped his head down to your shoulder and licked at the bloody bite mark he’d made. “Yeah, alright. Sounds fair.”

You had enough time to catch a flash of teeth from Severen before he was undoing your jeans and dragging them off you and taking your underwear with them. It took a tangle of limbs and wandering hands to maneuver your body, but then you were bare and exposed and you suddenly realized how wet you were. How wet you’d been the entire time they’d been manhandling you. Heat flared in your cheeks and deeper in your guts.

“Well, lookit this,” Severen purred. “All this for lil ole me?”

“You?” Frank muttered against your skin.

“Was my idea.” And then his mouth was on your exposed cunt and Frank was sinking his teeth into you and it was so much, it was too much, it was near overwhelming. Pleasure shot through you so intense it made your body jolt from the force of it. Your heart pounded in your throat where Frank’s mouth met your skin. He kept grinding against your ass as he drank. He pushed your shirt up and explored the expanse of your body, every dip and fold, teasing and testing every inch of sensitive flesh. All while Severen’s tongue lavished your clit, warm and wet and fucking relentless. He drank up your arousal like that alone would sustain him. His tongue swept tight little circles over your clit and then dipped down between your folds, back up to your clit, and he did it again and again until your thighs were shaking and you were twisting your fingers into his hair. The hot pressure of his tongue and his fingers digging into your thighs and Frank clutching you and sucking on your neck was all too intense. You shuddered and jerked and panted from the pleasure. You were burning, coiling tight, about to shake apart from it all. You had no idea what you were or weren’t saying.

Fuckfuckfuck, it needed to stop but you didn’t want it to, please don’t stop fuck oh God please –

Frank pulled his teeth from your neck to press sloppy open-mouthed kisses to your skin, smearing the blood already drenching you. His lips were slick, the prick of teeth a promise. “Fuck, you taste good,” he slurred, words barely more than a growl. He rolled one of your nipples between his fingers. It was all you could do not to cry out.

And then you did cry out as Severen’s teeth pierced your inner thigh. Fresh blood joined the slick mess between your legs. You rolled your hips forward against the fingers Severen had shoved into your cunt and the thumb he’d pressed firmly to your clit, and then you continued the motion backwards to grind against Frank’s still-clothed bulge. It hit you so perfectly you wanted to cry, and maybe you did. It was impossible to tell with the onslaught of sensation. Half-blind, you grabbed Frank by the hair and yanked him up. His protest was cut off when you slammed your lips against his and swallowed the noise. He opened to you with a broken moan. You ran your tongue along his teeth. The coppery tang of blood made your insides curl with disgust just as much as it had you riding Severen’s fingers. You pricked yourself on Frank’s teeth. Sharp pain, the taste of blood, and then he was grabbing the back of your neck and devouring you, teeth and tongue and frenzied need, kissing you like it was his salvation and your demise. It probably was. And God, you wanted nothing more.

A new hand at your neck urged you away from Frank. You turned your head. Severen was leaning up, eyes-half lidded. “Oh, you sure fuckin do. Blood and pussy taste like heaven.” He pulled you in and you kissed him too, tasted your blood and arousal and you moaned into him. Frank nipped at your neck, dragged his hips against yours. Severen’s fingers were still curled inside you.

You were going to explode. You were going to die. You were going to irreversibly shatter apart and it was going to be messy and it was going to feel so fucking good that you wouldn’t even mind.

The sound of a belt and a zipper shot through you like lightning. You were pulled up onto your knees and they both came up with you, Severen in front and Frank behind, pressed against your bloody and sweaty and spit-soaked body. Frank shifted behind you and his tip pressed against your aching cunt. Between Severen fingering you open and the fluids coating your thighs, he was able to slide in with ease. You choked on the feeling, the relief from the emptiness and the fullness of him inside you. An experimental thrust had you doubling over against Severen, which just made his thumb rub harder against your clit. The next thrust hit you even deeper.

You felt sick. Sick with desire, in pain from arousal.

You only belatedly realized you’d reached for Severen’s belt, shaking hands pawing at the clunky metal buckle. He laughed at you but helped anyway. When you curled your blood-slickened fingers around him, his eyes practically rolled into the back of his head and his jaw went slack. He thrust into your hand with barely-restrained desperation. The dual motions were uneven, jolting and frenzied, but then you slid into a rhythm and the three of you writhed in tune. Moans and huffs, cries of pleasure from you and a tear-dampened face. You jerked Severen off as he punished your clit, as Frank fucked into you, as you lost what was left of your mind. You kissed them and they switched between kissing and biting and sucking and licking you. There was so much blood. All of it yours. You couldn’t care.

You seized in pleasure when they bit you at once, teeth buried in either side of your neck, four hands playing you like a finely tuned instrument. Sobs wracked your throat from how good it was. They used your body like a doll, kept moving until their own release was spilling into your hand and filling you up. Kept moving after that, chasing every wretched bit of pleasure in your bodies until the pain had returned and you could no longer tell it apart from the pleasure.

When they finally blessed you with mercy and released you, your body fell limply to the bed. Your limbs were dead, useless, body entirely wrung out. Your head swam and muffled ringing filled your ears. Colored dots danced along the ceiling, nearly obscuring the two bloodied faces peering down at you.

“Thanks for the fun times, sugar.” The words were muffled, as if coming from underwater. You couldn’t bring yourself to respond. Couldn’t make yourself get up, move, do anything. Why was that bad....? You were so tired. Too hot and too cold and impossibly tired. The bed was heaven underneath you.

The faces were saying something, but you couldn’t hear them.  Didn’t want to.

You let your eyelids slide shut.

The darkness was a blessing.

[cherry-coffin]

Late night thoughts: Severen holding you in a vice grip and pawing your ass while slowly lapping the blood off you from your chest up to your lips as you grind against him in his lap trying not to moan

(The ovulation demons are already whispering to me chat I need to be SEDAT-)