Heartthrob

The stares dug into EJ's skin like the scalpels of a morgue-tech.

Everyone felt like they were fucking staring at her all of a sudden - everyone at the table that EJ was sat at, at least. Luca continued to eat, though his expectant gaze never left the blonde. Est and Purity, too, had taken notice of the fucking soup bowl their shared loved had been served - Est looked like she wanted to say something, and Puri just looked nauseous. The pinkette slung an arm around EJ, pulling her in for a one-armed embrace.

Some of the other nuns had started to look, too - they said nothing, making nearly no sounds at all even as they ate, simply watching Esper James contemplate the bowl of soup. Soup was a generous name for it, frankly; more of a stew, if anything. EJ, however, didn't give a damn about what constituted a soup or a stew in that moment.

Her heart felt like it was smelting. She wanted to dive into it so badly, the unmistakable scent of fresh blood drawing her in like a magnet. But, on the other hand? All these fucking Easterners were watching her like hawks. It went without saying that... if she ate it, she'd have a reaction. She'd start to get blood-drunk, her muscles would spasm, her eyes would dilate like a cat.. She'd be filled with both an excess and an absence of energy... The ghoulette shuddered to even think of it.

After a solid minute of her staring into the soup bowl, Luca spoke up. "Ah, miss Esper James... I do hope I didn't offend. I've always been told how fond the second-living are of blood, and, well... we had an excess. You could consider it a favor on your part, to get rid of it for us." His smile wavered in its gusto, slipping between confident reassurance and noted worry. He coughed, though it seemed more to fill the silence than anything else. "The, ah, the meat? It's pork, I promise. From a butcher. We buy fresh."

His words weren't exactly the sterling vote of confidence EJ needed in that moment to still her own quivering heart, but they didn't hurt. The way his voice seemed to lose its measured pitch, for naught but a moment, did at least show some genuine concern. EJ looked up, swapping her focus to her partners. Purity was just as she was expected to be: somewhere between a frown and a pout, brows furrowed, lips pursed. She seemed as though she wanted to sweep Esper James up and away, drag her off to anywhere but here.

Then, Esthrielle. Esthrielle's own expression, and the whirl of emotions it conveyed, was more akin to a carnival-goer about to vomit. One could've imagined the words she held in her throat were blocking her windpipe, forcing her to gag. The Wayward's eyes were locked on Luca, eyes flashing nearly imperceptibly; the LEDs flickered so subtly as to seem more like a shift in ambiance than actual activation. Esper James doubted that the Knights knew second-living could notice the little things like that.

"Fff-... F-Fuck it." Esper James choked the words out so Est didn't have to. Luca's eyebrows raised, his smile breaking immediately; eyes widened, lips opened into a circular shape, his jaw dropping to accommodate. Purity, too, took on a look of surprise - Est, even, was snapped from whatever trance she was in.

EJ grabbed the bowl with both hands and, before her observers could find the wherewithal to comment on her expletive, tipped back head and soup vessel both.

The thick fluid that filled the bowl flowed down in an unbroken stream until EJ's mouth was full, broken by the bowl's angle being adjusted. While the bowl itself was righted, however, the ghoul was certainly wronged. Whatever the soup had been made of hit her instantly, coating her mouth in a substance that was all at once bitter, sour, electrifyingly savoury, and lush with umami. She had only a split second to mentally compare it to fish sauce before the texture of the meat hit her.

It was pork. That was true, at least. Luca hadn't been lying about the pork. Porcine flesh added a notably creamy, flavourful undertone to the entire dish. It would have reminded EJ of mett, if she had had the time to form such a thought; instead, she felt herself immediately draw out of her own body, her soul zoning back to see the world through a microscope's lens. She felt like she was viewing everything through third person and in extreme detail in equal measure, every hair on her body standing on end in an instant.

Blood. Blood. Blood. It had been blood, of fucking course it had been blood, it practically reeked of the stuff. Like, yes, it was human blood - Luca had said that, after all. But this blood was... euphoric in a way all its own? The mixture of alcoholic tang and bloodborne ecstasy struck her soul like a sledgehammer blow, knocking her metaphorically back on her ass even as it dragged her forwards. Sharpened fangs minced pigflesh like it was confetti paper, a greedy throat gulping down every ounce of the stuff even as she screamed in her own head to slow down.

Deep breaths weren't enough. Every time she had fed off of Purity, or even Est, it had never been like this - never confined her consciousness to its own little pocket dimension in this way. The mere seconds which passed between her first mouthful and the ferocious second were as if hours to the ghoul's perception, time seeming to slow down just to focus more on what she had been given.

And then, the bowl raised directly to her lips with speed rivaling a bullet, the physical caught up with the mental. She became distantly aware of her entire body lighting up like a fucking Christmas tree, the sensations she had become accustomed to hitting harder than they ever had. Her muscles spasmed; her eyes twitched. Her organs kicked into absolute overdrive, her stomach the engine that powered her organic machinery.

Not even sex could have compared. Even her night with Judas, the first one, where the vampire had been so sweetly sadistic, so lovingly cruel... it hadn't had this effect on her, nothing even close. The finest blood in all the world surely lay within this bowl. Somewhere far beyond her mind's purview, people were speaking to her - shouting, then screaming. Physicality came next, hands on her shoulders, shaking her carefully but firmly. She didn't even care what they were saying, or who was addressing her.

She just needed whatever was in this bowl.

Gulp after gulp came hot and heavy, meat and malus flowing down her throat to fuel the furnace within. And then, in what was in retrospect likely seconds flat, it was empty. There was no more blood. No more meat. No more to eat; no more to consume, to devour, to absorb. She was deep beneath scarlet waves, drowning silently, able to see the light of the sun but never able to reach it.

The obscene, indulgent feeling of it all was like standing before a tidal wave. She yearned for it even as it crashed into her with force incomparable. Within her head, all she could imagine was what it would be like to feel this way perpetually - to burn eternal, as blisteringly bright and horridly hot as a funeral pyre for the whole globe. She realized, after some seconds, she was trying to lick the bowl; someone was stopping her, pulling at it strongly from the other side, their hands bloodied from contact with the remnants.

Perception turned to mush, mentality melted to slag, her very being was burning to ash. She hated that she loved it, but loved that she hated that she loved it. Blinking. She was blinking then - her eyes were dry from an unbroken stare into the bowl. Every part of her was mustered to try and focus on the world outside her own red-soaked paradise, and what was found therein was exactly the world she had left behind. Nuns surrounded her on all sides; they didn't touch her, didn't get too close, but they were watching intently.

Luca had a vice grip on the bowl, getting blood all over his hand - his brows were bent downwards to crease his eyes, the strain of exerting such a herculean effort weighing itself upon his face. However, despite this, he was smiling. A real, honest-to-God smile, too. There were more hands around her, on her - a darting of the gaze told her who held her now.

Purity was crying, arms wrapped around her waist, body trying to shield the ghoulette from the crowd; Est had her own powered prosthetics upon both of EJ's biceps, pushing them back and down with every ounce of strength she could imbue into the act. Whereas Purity had been crying, Esthrielle was furious - she alternated between barking at Luca, the assembled sisters, and EJ. While her face was a mask of rage, however, there was a deep sort of sadness within her eyes.

Both of her beloveds were sad. Why? What was wrong? Everything was great; everything felt amazing. The soft textile touch of her custom habit was sweeter than the finest silks, and feeling her lovers' touch through it? Their warmth? Good fucking God, they were so warm. Esper James could have died right then and died happy, so why were they so upset?

Est's mouth opened wider than before, wider than was necessary for speech. What was she doing? Was she going to have some of the soup, too? Was she going to indulge in this sensation, this cacophony of sensory delight? Maybe they'd fuck again... Oh, having sex when she was like this? That was an exciting idea - and EJ was already hard! God, maybe some of the nun girls would join in, too - it'd be just like something she had seen in a douji-

Sharp pain combined with thrilling, unspeakable bliss. Est plunged her steely fangs into EJ's neck, just above her collarbone, instantly drawing a thick black flow like pooling oil. EJ whined and cried out like a bitch in heat, vision blurring into mosaic forms; the world became fractalized, the warmth in the air skyrocketing even as her skin went cold. That bite... it was something nice to focus on, wasn't it? But why would Esthrielle bite her? Why would...

Oh, fuck.

The chemical cocktail in her brain was replaced by fresh, hot adrenaline. This pain drew her out of where she lay within that sanguine sea, an escape rope dropped out of desperation as much as courtesy. EJ gasped in a breath so deep it felt like her lungs were fit to burst. As quickly as it had come, the grip on her brainstem crumbled away.

The flurry of realizations that came, then, hit EJ as potently as a prize fighter's trained fists. Purity was crying. Est was desperate and upset. Luca's smile had even begun to fade, and everyone was fucking watching her have this little episode. Everyone could see her tenting her shitty little cosplay habit like a needy slut. Everyone could see her making an absolute mess of herself - not a literal mess, but a social mess. She was a disaster, wasn't she?

And once she had finally surfaced, she, too, began to cry. Tears welled and flowed in a process so streamlined one could have imagined she had the twin-trails of sorrow ready ahead of time. Her hearing returned last, but she wasn't surprised in the least by what she heard. The bowl in her hands clattered to the table as she released her grip on it, Luca's pool of now unmatched force sending it slamming off of the tablecloth to shatter against the floor.

"Esper James! Esper James, please, can you hear us? Calm down! Calm down, please, we're sorry! We didn't know that this would happen to you, please, take a deep breath!" Luca's normally dulcet tones were now flecked with the tremble of genuine worry; the smile that had once been plastered on his statuesque face now lay in ruin, a real sadness having taken residence in its absence. He didn't even care about the bowl; didn't give it a second thought. His focus was devoted entirely to EJ, it seemed.

Purity sobbed even more loudly as the piece of dinnerware split to fragments against the stony floor; her embrace, already constricting to shame a California king, became even more crushing as EJ's strength drained away. She pressed her face into the other side of EJ's neck, the side Est wasn't currently gum-deep in, nuzzling into her as needily as one possibly could. No words came from her, but that was for the best. It would have split EJ in twain if she had said anything.

Esthrielle, too, had begun to cry: sobbing into EJ's shoulder and neck, each one making her buried fangs jostle and draw a new wave of pleasing pain. She joined Purity in the EJ-embrace-sandwich they were making, her hands shakily moving away from EJ's biceps only to throw her arms around the petite predator. Her fangs were pulled free, rent in truth, though her lips were never far from EJ's body. Unlike Purity, she found the strength somewhere inside herself to speak up - if only in a timid, scared whisper.

"E-EJ... Please... Calm down... L-Luca, he... He forgot that... He forgot that this happened when, w-when you... When..." And then nothing more, nothing but tears. Her breath was hot against EJ's flesh, matching the heat of that inky fluid which ran from Esper James's broken flesh.

Esper James wished she could collapse. She yearned for nothing more than the chance to curl up into a ball and die, if only to save herself and her partners the pain of this whole situation. She tried to choke out some sort of apology, some kind of admittance of fault; shame burnt her cheeks and ears even as guilt punched her in the throat. Her mouth opened, it was true - but rather than words, or even a single coherent syllable, all that came forth was a single, pathetic warble. It drew out for longer than she wanted it to, but she couldn't stop it.

Luca was silent, then, simply panting from effort. His eyes shut with the same sort of solemnity as a father whose child has been subjected to a trauma that he couldn't keep her safe from. Two strong, reassuring hands went to EJ's biceps, squeezing her gently for a few seconds as the three women cried and the lone male gathered himself. Once he had built himself back up, or at least taken the time to reassemble his own tranquility, he gently laid his arms about the three broken girls.

"Ladies, I... I will find a way to make up for this, I swear it. This was... never my intent. I can't imagine... I can't imagine what it was like, what it's like even now. Please... I promise, I will right this wrong." His own head rested on Est's, his forehead to her crown - the proximity made him lean against EJ, too. She didn't mind; she didn't even notice it enough to care in the first place, in truth.

A new hand laid itself upon EJ's torso - finding a place on her back to lay itself. Then another. Then another still. One by one, hand by hand, the women surrounding her offered touch - silently, gently, sorrowfully. Every nun who could reach put a palm on Esper James's body - on her head, on her arms, on her head. An entire crowd of silent bodies, standing in a layered semicircle around their ghoulish guest. Quiet dominated the room for unbroken minutes; quiet, and the sound of sadness.

EJ didn't know how long she sat there and cried for. No one was keeping track, anyways - meals were left abandoned, drinks discarded, seats vacated. The entire populace of the convent seemed to have come together to try and still her aching heart, and once she was composed enough to open her eyes and even notice, it nearly sent her spiraling again. Through panting breaths and damp, desperate gasps, she raised her head to look around herself.

Why were they doing this? Why were they even being nice to her at all? They hated the undead, right? And yet... Here they were, every single one, watching through emotionless eyes and offering no malice or disdain. Their eyes flickered in that same way Est's had earlier, yes, but other than that? They were motionless, a field of statues to upstage the terra cotta army. Despite their reactionless faces, they clearly cared enough that they wanted to soothe her. That was...

Gut-wrenching. Why was this always happening? Why did everyone seem to want to be nice to her? She didn't deserve it; she was just a little secretary a week or two ago, slaving away for an abominable corporate dictatorship. She was a tool of the oppressors, and even now, she had just gulped down a whole bowl full of raw meat and human blood. Why did they give her any care at all?

The sobs had since ceased, but a new onslaught of tears drew itself from her exhausted tear ducts. She wished she could shout; wished she could scream, if only to beg them to be cruel to her. It was what she had always known; it was what she had always received. She had come to expect the pain of it, like a bitter friend. She wished she could say anything at all... but words escaped her now just as they had then, all those moments of shame that had come before. A new voice came then, to break the silence in her stead.

"Miss Esper James... Please, worry not. None among us will hold this against you. This was thrust upon you; it was not your choice to die."

EJ's head turned on a rusty, creaky swivel towards the voice's originator. A young woman, barely nineteen by the look of her, was the source. Her long, silken brown hair fell in milk chocolate drizzles down the front of her habit from beneath her veil, flanking her chest. Her face was... placid, as every other nun's was, but there existed a slight droop to the lids that EJ could only assume was some display of sympathy. If it was, it was just another gut-punch, treasured though it may be.

EJ offered her a smile like a shattered stained-glass window, broken to pieces but with some tragic semblance of grace. It felt good to smile, in truth - but it felt just as wrong as everything preceding it had. Upon seeing EJ smile at her, the girl broke her tranquil facade - a smile, tinged with deep sadness, bloomed upon her lips. Her hand alone squeezed EJ's shoulder in empathic encouragement, her grip as firm yet gentle as her words. The longer she stared into the woman's coffee-coloured irises, with their LED underglow, the more the ghoulette believed her.

"Please. Wipe your tears. You are safe here; you are as much a child of God as the rest of us. We should have known better."