Heartthrob

Once they were inside, hot drinks were served up. Kell sat at the main table in their makeshift mess hall, the same dingy, grimy break room that they had converted into a living space. She perked up as the trio entered, Esper James held tightly by the pinkette's arms as they walked side-by-side, her hand opposite the club darling held in a similarly steely grip by Esthrielle. Kell said nothing as she saw them - her mouth opened in a grinning void to speak, but seeing how somber the three of them were, she thought better of it. Things seemed too tenuous for a snarky comment welcoming them home.

Instead, she pushed herself to her feet and walked over to the hot plate plugged in on the breakroom counter, going to brew up a pot of something reddish-brown and cloudy: the crassly-named Bludd Mudd. It was a mixture of dried, powdered pigs' blood mixed with cocoa powder and synthetic stimulants. Coffee had a diminished effect on the second-living, their adenosine receptors barely working as it was, so some muddled, lab-produced cathinones did the trick. It was quite the wake up, and the blood in it prevented too feral a reaction, but it was still just as addictive as the caffeine and drugs it was meant to replace.

While Kell put the pot on, the three broken women wandered over to the lone, must-rich couch that the breakroom held. It was far from the best place for the trio to have their proper reunion, but as they sat - Purity first, pulling EJ onto her lap possessively, but making a show of not being so possessive that Esthrielle couldn't hold her too - it was everything they needed. A cushy, comfortable place to rest and relax, even if it did smell like a dead person's attic and had gone years without a proper cleaning.

Purity buried her face into Esper James's neck as the trio sat, giving her an additional squeeze strong enough to push some breath from EJ's lungs. EJ did anything but pull away; her free hand went up to caress her lover's cheek, holding her in return, a soft whine escaping her as the weight of the night fell upon her fully. She was covered in blood, wearing a sheer nightgown, body a roiling inferno from the blood of humankind. She had killed someone, again. For the second time in a week's time. This one they'd be able to fix, for sure, but... It was still a grim reality.

She felt no better about the murder if it condemned a new party, free of undeath's cruel grip and savage proclivities, to an eternity of torture. A hell worse than could be described in words alone. A forever-life of feasting on meat, guzzling the blood of the living, gargling pills every night and sleeping like a corpse in the morning. The spectre of one's own inner, feral nature always loomed over those who had their true deaths denied.

Tsang was, of course, the reason for all this. For every moment of heartbreak. For every sliver of pain so cruelly, maliciously hammered into one's flesh. Everything, in her mind, led back to Tsang in some way. Burn a meal? A Tsang subsidiary made your oven, and had fucked it up. Break your leg? The supplements Tsang peddled you left you void of the necessary calcium, making your bones weak. Pet died? Tsang supplied the majority of the pet food in Vitus, and surely it was tainted.

Etcetera, etcetera.

It was tiring in its own way. She had worked for Tsang for thirty fucking years. She had contributed, in whatever small way, to the oppression of the people of Vitus, and the tyranny that led to their massed suffering. Sure, she had only been a secretary... Just setting up appointments, forwarding documents, making phone calls, penciling in visitors, but even then. What if she had left? What if she had just quit?

A breath against her neck, warm and full of true, genuine life from Purity told her what would have remained for her in that case. She did her work willingly, and she was allowed her own little sanctuary, a slice of life carved from cement and sorrow in the Kehler Complex. If she had denied Tsang? Judas would have chained her to her desk at best, feeding her scraps like a dog and beating her when she spoke up. She would have been in the same neo-slavery that Purity had been indentured to.

More out of impulse than thought, she pulled on Est's hand - tugging the Wayward closer, pulling the triplet of them together. Esthrielle's eyes briefly flared in surprise, but she wasn't averse to the offered closeness - and as she fell over from where she sat to lean against Purity and rest her head upon EJ, she was caught off-guard yet again as Purity removed an arm from her little ghoulette lap-companion and slung it around Est. There they sat, silent save for breathing, in some grim approximation of a cuddle.

The nearness to one another was ambrosial, however awkward it may have felt or seemed. Est found herself sinking into the embrace as moments went by, and Purity's initially firm, terse arm about Esthrielle became soft and comforting as the seconds passed. They three were in need, desperate need, of one another but also of peace. And in one anothers' arms, peace is exactly what they found, if only for the night. No words needed to be said, nor would they have helped in any sense. All semblance of communication was provided by flesh-to-flesh vocalization, Est's synthetic flesh on her arms feeling, for a brief while, as organic as the rest of her beneath the blood.

After some time, Kell walked over with small Styrofoam cups - each steaming-hot, filled a safe distance from the brim with a fluid the colour of rich pelagic clay. It smelled in equal parts sanguine and succulent, chocolatey and carnivorous. EJ would have drooled, had she not already supped on another this evening; Purity and Est, both still living, were more hesitant to take their respective cups in hand.

"It's pigsblood, Est. Don't worry. No human in this; we won't make a cannibal of you yet, eheh..." Kell smirked as she made the remark, but with the way it trailed off into nothingness, it was more than obvious that it had been little more than an attempt to break the silence. Her heart wasn't in her words, and she was blameless for it - the silence that hung in the air was a Herculean task to even broach, much less disrupt.

Est nodded, flashing Kell a smile that looked as half-faked as it felt to make. The other two women at her side each took their own cup in hand, Purity drawing herself back from EJ to ensure no spills occurred. They all stared at Kell, waiting expectantly, three little lambs waiting for the guidance of a trusted shepherd. Kell would have to do.

"Alright, ladies... Cheers, yeah? A toast to, uhh... To... To this." Kell gestured around at the interior of the breakroom, having been mildly repurposed from a corporate-sponsored escape to a living space for four. It wasn't much. Purity screwed up her face into a jokingly-disapproving expression, raising a pink brow at the terrorist. "To this? Was that a toast? The hell does that even mean?" She went to raise her white foamy cup, careful not to jostle her lap-warmer, before continuing on with a hint of laughter in her voice.

"You raise a glass to your family, your friends, the hot bitch you snagged at the club... But, 'to this'? It doesn't say a damn thing!" She rolled her eyes in a performative gesture, Est and EJ feeling the beginnings of their own grins form. When Purity mentioned the 'hot bitch', she gave EJ a squeeze, light enough to not disturb her, but strong enough that EJ couldn't help but notice. "Augh, fine. To this." She gave her cup a little flourish, and the other women followed suit - Est and EJ echoing the toast, the four of them clinking their cups as best the material would allow before each had a strong gulp of the substance.

The effect on the two true-living of the four was nearly immediate. Where the exhaustion of the night had previously weighed heavily upon them, Est found a new strength in her core that stretched each tendril through her body like the roots of a great tree, individual veins flowing with the enhanced lifeblood of another. Purity, too, was affected: her solemnity and morose fugue were pierced by the cathinones in an instant, begging her to drink more, pleading with her to snuggle closer to the other women at her side. Stimulants required touch, and while touch was offered, it was never quite enough.

They each drained their respective cups in naught but a few additional pulls, the mortals now wired, the undead simply buzzed. The drink was, in ways beside the proffered energy, exactly what EJ needed. It was warm, it was comforting... And the flavor was, in some ways, far and above superior to that of human flesh. Chocolate came through in heavy, potent waves, seeing to drown one's tongue in decadence... and beneath the waterline of that luxurious ocean, the sharpened, jagged rocks of red delight protruded from a nearly imperceptible chemical baseline. Chocolatey, heavy, sweet, with a sanguine aftertaste that tingled the tastebuds and scratched at the brain.

Stimulants were ubiquitous in Vitus. What else got you through the day? It wasn't the protein-rich diet, though there was something to be said for that - at least muscular atrophy wasn't common from the sedentary lifestyles most lived. But stimulants were easy to acquire, legal and illicit, with rumours that Tsang themselves were funneling less-than-legal narcotics into Vitus's cultural spheres simply to ensure workers were awake and alert at their jobs. But for Purity, constantly drunk at nightclubs to attract her marks, and Est, unused to the Vitus lifestyle?

They hit hard. Not so hard as to be detrimental, but to say they were more than awake was an understatement. Once the cups were filled once more, drained once more, and taken away to be trashed, the trio on the couch cuddled and nuzzled with more vigor than before. Energy which had been sapped in their flight was renewed, and was renewed in a serious way - the previously funereal atmosphere of the breakroom had been replaced by the belated joy of reunion with one's lover, which Esthrielle was graciously invited to partake in as a guest.

It took some time, but amidst all of their cuddling, the three women eventually found themselves sprawled out atop and beneath one another upon the couch. Nothing too amorous - the three of them had had enough of such activities for a lifetime, it sometimes felt - but the intermingling of bodies and the entwining of limbs left each of the three far too entangled to possibly pry themselves free. That wasn't an issue, though; between the soft breaths, the gentle whines of comfort, and the distant sounds of Kell watching anime on her phone, it wasn't too long before the stimulants started to wane and with this absence came the crash.

Delayed exhaustion gave rise to present, pressing exhaustion, to be dealt with immediately and judiciously. The sun, far and above, had started to peek over the horizon line as much as it could be allowed through Vitus's perpetual miasma. It was time, finally, for bed. And when the three women were too caught up in one another to hope to get up and return to their respective sleeping bags, Kell - a devious smirk gracing her otherwise elegant visage - laid an unzipped bag over them to be a makeshift blanket. And thus, there in the derelict ruins of the factory, in a decaying breakroom made home for fugitives, the quartet of them fell into a restful, well-deserved sleep.

In a way, it seemed, God had returned to his heaven. And again, all was right with the world.

The subsequent days were uneventful. Esper James was gnawed at by hunger, slowly but surely, but found new strength in its suppression - with more experience in the act than most second-living were allowed, and in its satiation, she found it as a looming devil on her shoulder that grew by the day but not so much an immediate, needful thing as before. Regular infusions of living blood from Purity, and sometimes even Est, assisted in the flesh-hunger's delay.

The first time EJ drank from Esthrielle was a new experience for the both of them. From Purity, it was most often her arm which was offered - something forgivable to damage, something freely given to abuse and steal from for necessity's sake. But, living in such conditions meant that chores were delegated, and while EJ was exempt from any ventures into the more populous parts of Vitus for any reason, Purity was not so blessed. That Sunday night, it was Purity's turn to go buy food and drinks, and so she left, armed with Kell's credit card and a mission to acquire sustenance. Kell, in turn, needed to attend a meeting with her own people - Eddy and their co-conspirators in this sector of Vitus - and so she, too, left.

And then there were two.

EJ's hunger had grown strong and deep, not yet to the point of needing any true quelling, but she couldn't help herself from licking at her fangs whenever she caught scent of Esthrielle's organic anatomy. The natural scents of sweat, body oil, breath, and deep beneath the skin, her blood... They chipped at Esper James's defenses slowly but surely, until finally, a solution needed to be met. Est was playing a game on her own phone, barely paying attention to her surroundings, when Esper James sidled up beside her. A tap on the shoulder from the blonde made the Easterner look up.

"Hm? EJ, what's up? You look, uh... Needy, I guess. Puri ain't here right now. You're gonna have to wait for her to get back, I'm not hiding any snacks or anything..." Est gave EJ a wry smile, looking up at the doe-eyed and desperate-looking ghoulette. EJ, in turn, fidgeted with her hands and bit her lower lip, now unable to look at the other woman. The pressing question in her throat knocked like an insistent guest, though even then, it took her some seconds of awkward silence to pose the burning question.

"Hey, uhh... Puri... She's gonna be gone for a while, right? A-And, uh... Well... I need something. Now's around when she'd usually let me have a little of her blood... So... I-I, uhm... I was just thinking..." EJ rocked back and forth on her heels, side to side, staring a hole into the floor. How had she gotten so casual with Est? How had she become so casual about her own cannibalistic tendencies? Perhaps actually engaging in it willingly had worn down her defenses and the taboo it had been encased in, that razor-wire cocoon stripped away to simply being a form of intimacy, rather than outright forbidden.

Est sat up straighter in her chair, taking her right foot off of the table where it rested, now instead used to keep herself upright in her seat. Her smug, wry expression was replaced with one of deserved apprehension. EJ was, at her core, a predator. Not in the social sense, but in the true root of the word: she predated upon others to survive. Without a way to get FixAte, since true-living couldn't buy it without a permit, she was left to slowly but surely struggle against an impulse for flesh that would, unbound, see her kill and eat without restraint.

Est felt vindicated in her initial resistance to the idea. "You thought what? That just because I'm made of living meat, you can leech off of me like you do Purity? Look, dude, that's... I mean..." She cut herself off; she realized how she sounded, how harsh she was being to a woman she shared a bond with that transcended words. EJ had saved her life, hadn't she? Twice now, at least... And... And she was good. She was kind. For a cannibal, she was more palatable than most. And she would never have asked if she wasn't desperate, or so Esthrielle told herself.

So, with a deep sigh, Esthrielle stood up and began to walk towards the couch, beckoning for the meat-eater to follow her. Once she got to what was barely more comfortable than a bench with cushions, she made a show of laying down upon it, gesturing for EJ to get down beside her. She didn't have organic arms like Purity did, or even organic legs, and so her options for helping the blonde feed were few and far between. As she watched a wide-eyed Esper James kneel obediently, Est sighed again, a more performative gesture than her first, and took her tank top in hand. The HATEFUCK logo was rolled away to reveal what, to EJ, seemed an irresistible tract of caramel-coloured flesh, unblemished and warm with the comfort of true life.

The tank top was drawn up to just below Est's breasts, her ribs and midriff on display. She hadn't the hands free to gesture at herself like a server presenting a meal, but she was thinking it - the Wayward choked back any snark about 'your dinner, madam', though it wasn't easy. EJ hesitated - surely Esthrielle didn't want her to just sink her fangs in, did she? But as the seconds whiled away, eventually, that's exactly what came to pass. The kneeling EJ put one hand on Est's thigh and the other on her collarbone, steadying herself as she leaned in, mouth wide...

And as she sunk her fangs in, just enough to draw blood initially, she let go just a bit and plunged them in to the root. Est gasped in a hazy mix of sensations at the sudden pain in her midsection, but when the blood came, and the hungry ghoul began to drink and lose herself to the blood, Est let go of her tank top and put a hand on the back of EJ's head to hold her close. A bitter sense of affection sprouted in the Wayward's heart as she watched EJ's throat move with every swallow, and when it was said and done and EJ had begun to pull away, the affection that had blossomed anew wasn't nearly sated.

It had been nice, in a way. And while it was only the first time, it certainly wouldn't be the last. She was really starting to notice what Purity saw in the blonde.