the wine, the beer, the whiskey are the only things that fix me

[pacificator]

Who: Wynonna Earp & you!
What: recuperating after March-April, reaping consequences, etc
When: backdated to late April-May
Where: the Saloon (the old Post Office)

Content Warnings: Alcoholism, a little light cannibalism, others to be listed as needed

Comments

[fidior]

[ Wynonna's hair is a curtain that falls against his face and neck, and she's wrapped all over him. Everything's so soft and yet so sharp somehow — she's all warmth against him and then she's a nip at his lip, a pain that isn't unpleasant, a small little jolt, here and then gone again as her tongue darts across his flushed mouth. He likes it, he realises, likes the little doses of sharp, just as much as he likes the warm comfort that always follows it. None of it is unwelcomed; he wants all of it, all of her.

Wants. He wants. Again and again, his body and mind feel it. (And that place that exists deeper than both mind and body, the place that perhaps could be called spirit, the place where that demon-thing lives.) Edward wants with every piece of himself, and that means— that means the demon-thing too, which means—

'Little....'

She says his name like a plea. She's pleading with him like his own soft cry of her name was a plea, a desperate little need for more, unable to voice anything but that name. It sends a fresh pleasurable shudder right down his spine, more pleasurable than he ever could have anticipated, and then he feels her fingers up under his clothing, brushing against his skin. Some part of him remembers what it is to feel shy, but the other part, the part that wants—

He's kissing her again with wide, gasping, open-mouthed gestures, like he's hungry. Insistent, sucking, hands locked onto her sides and body breathing hard into her, in and out, and then pulling her right back in. Deeper and deeper, he pulls her in. His dizzied mind doesn't understand what it's doing, his aching body only knows it's getting pleasure, but his spirit latches onto hers, smart and starving, and doesn't let go. She tastes so good he could weep.

Eyes closed, mouth working itself back to the slope of her neck where he kisses and sucks hard enough to draw blood to the surface of her pale skin, Edward starts to eat her alive. It's with a rush, faster than he'd fed from Kate and more intentional, more directed. Now the hunger knows exactly where to aim, exactly what to take, and it does. ]

[pacificator]

[ Some door has not just been unlocked but shoved open for him, and he's pushing eagerly through — she always knew there was a freak somewhere there under the layers of greatcoat and wool and Victorian sensibilities. He's messy about it and she doesn't care; there's time for refinement of technique later, right now she just wants him to want to kiss her, touch her, and he does. His inhibitions are dropping away, and she's curving her body even more closely into his, grinding down into his lap with her arm tight around his shoulders and her fingers tangling into his hair.

He's dragging her closer, too, pulling at her as his mouth chases down over her jaw to her throat and latches there, sucking hard enough to hurt a little. She's going to have a bruise there later, and if someone had described to her everything that would happen here over this last year and a half when she first arrived, she would have put gets a hickey from Edward Little at the very top of the list of impossible things.

And yet here he is, dragging at her skin, curling around her and pulling her close, closer, the heat of his mouth and her own quick breaths making her head spin. She can feel his lips and tongue and teeth against her, dragging up on skin, on everything beneath, and her heart makes a strange little faltering stumble in her chest. She can't catch her breath, and when her eyes open, it's lazy, lidded, her pupils a dark pool of black ringed by a thin circle of ice-pale blue-gray. There's a weird swooping feeling in the pit of her gut, and she realizes belatedly that the pulling feeling is becoming more like a yank, and it's not just his mouth, it's not his arms around her, it's something else, something different, and there is pain now, not just the deep ache of want. She's a whirlpool of crashing water and he's a drain she can't escape.

Except she can, because she's not a teenage girl and the Old Bear's strength is still hot and vibrant in her. Wynonna fists her hand in his hair, more deliberately this time, and pulls, dragging him back and off her throat as she gives him a faintly exasperated look. Already her face is a little paler, her fingers trembling slightly from something other than the need to touch him as she slides her hand out from under his shirt and puts her palm on his chest to make some space between them. ]

Dude.

[ No part of her seems to be reacting to him as a threat; this is just a quick annoyance. Her own fault, probably; she'd meant to bring it up before but she'd gotten... distracted. ]

I know I'm a snack, but get it together.

[fidior]

[ He's so hungry, and in so many different ways, and everything's one tangled rush of warmth and aching want and the dizzying rush of satisfaction that only bleeds into craving more. He's never taken like this. Never allowed himself to, but now he does, and it's almost gluttonous, bordering just on the cusp of frenzied. Not uncontrollable, just— fast, loose, wild in a way that's so easy to lose himself in. It's a feeling that Edward Little is so novel to, and a feeling that he's begun associating with Wynonna more and more.

(Freedom. It's freedom, it's safety, she's home. If he craves pleasure from her, he craves pleasuring her just as much — they feed each other, it's wonderful, pulses pounding beneath skin, blood hot, and he feels a surge of loving affection in the root of his heart through it all—)

There's a tight tension curling through his hair and pulling and Edward doesn't even realise what's happened at first, only knows the sensation of it (fingers grasped close to his scalp, not exactly painful but forceful, and the way it makes his eyes swell darker with a cascade of unexpected, fresh want—)

He's panting open-mouthed, still locked into her, eyes swept down to stare all glossy and hungry at Wynonna as the warmth of her palm leaves his stomach and comes to his chest instead, and he's straining forwards against it, just a little, just enough that it's needing, because he's still so hungry for her and he doesn't want to stop—

She looks paler now though, and there's something trembling faintly at her edges, and he realises Wynonna's intentionally placing some distance between them, and his eyes clear a little, and then— ]

Oh, [ he breathes as those snippets of realisation form something bigger, some understanding (he can feel the bright spark of revitalisation, as though he's been dosed with something powerful and medicinal, something that brightens him up from the inside out, makes him stronger, makes him feel good. Makes all the ache and illness and hunger go away.)

Edward balks like he's been hit, flinching fast, and that tension against Wynonna's hand deflates immediately, pulls back instead. Spine pressed into the sofa cushions behind him, he freezes, eyes as wide as saucers. His hands jolt back from her, let go of every place he's touching skin. ...For a moment, and then he's lifting them again, hovering helplessly, terrified to make contact but wanting to help her. Somewhere in his mind he understands she's not like Kate was, not crumbling inwards, not screaming, but— ]

Oh, god. No. [ He looks like he wants to cup her cheeks but doesn't, keeps his palms there centimeters away, stares with horror as his eyes search hers with a swimming desperation that's fighting right through his haze. ]

I'm sorry— Oh god, I'm sorry. Please, are you— Are you all right? Please be all right. I'm so sorry.

[pacificator]

[ They're both panting for breath, but not for the reasons she'd have preferred. She feels a little shiver of cold brush over the bare skin of her torso — there's no fire built up here, and the heat that had been rising in her has been abruptly banked. It's still smoldering, though, even now, even as she looks down at him from a face that's turned slightly pale.

She's not Kate, and she's no stranger to pain, but this is... it's something different, something that dragged at the very core of her, gulping her down. He really could hurt her, she realizes, as he stares up at her with horror in his eyes and doesn't dare touch her face with his hands. He could hurt her. Probably he could kill her, if she didn't stop him. If he can't control it.

Which is all the more reason to learn to control it. ]

I'm fine.

[ Not quite true; she can feel a faint tremble in her muscles that doesn't have anything to do with keeping herself upright in his lap. Wynonna reaches her hands up to cover his, then guides them to either side of the slope of her neck. When she shifts to look into his face, her hair slides over the backs of his fingers in a soft warm waterfall. ]

I'm all right, Little. But you're not, are you? You haven't been. Not for a while.

[ Not since before she and Fitzjames went after that bear and she woke up however many days later to find Edward sleeping there at her bedside. It wasn't long after that when he'd come to her little cabin, an anxious wreck of himself, and told her there was something inside him that longed to devour her. She'd told him then he needed to find a way to control it, and he hadn't, and then Easter had come, the darkest night any of them had known for a while.

He's afraid of it, this need, this hunger. Fine. But she's still not afraid of him.

She keeps her hands over his until she's sure he won't lift his away, then lifts them and sets her palms on his shoulders. ]

You need to figure out how to control it, and you're not gonna be able to do that if you're afraid of it. So go ahead.

[ Her eyebrows push up, her gaze on him intent and unflinching. ]

Take a little from me. On purpose, this time, so you know what you're doing. And when I say 'stop,' you're gonna stop. Okay?

[fidior]

[ Thank god, she's all right. ....Not all right, not fully, of course. But for the briefest flicker of time, Little can let himself feel relieved that she's not like Kate was. That he hasn't passed a certain boundary, gone too far, done something he can't undo.

But the seconds of initial relief pass quickly, and then horror is pooling in again, deeper now with a terrible understanding of the true measure of things. He hurt Wynonna. He was... taking from her. Feeding from her. The true horror of it is that he can't differentiate when it really started happening. Everything was gleeful, greedy, warm — and how does he know where the line is, when his heart and body and this beast's hunger all seem to want exactly the same thing? Her.

And now she's worn, even if just a little: gently pale, gently tired, gently shuddering. Horrified by this, Edward makes a sound when Wynonna reaches for his hands to guide them to her skin, shakes his head, fingers twitching. He doesn't force them back off of her, but he's tense, strained beneath her.

No, no he's most certainly not all right, and this was a mistake, the way it was a mistake back before. Wynonna's words conjure up memory of that time through the haze of his own mind and the coiling hungry thing left with its mouth open in the middle of feeding and wanting more. This happened then, too, much the same. Wynonna, trying to figure this out, telling him to touch her, and he had, he'd wanted to, but— the hunger comes on so fast.

...At least this time, he can't literally run away so easily.

So it's no true surprise that Wynonna says what she does next, but he's still shocked by it, eyes growing so big that it physically hurts. He doesn't move his hands away when the pressure of hers is finally lifted, but his grasp is faint, fingers pushed back more into her hair, palms not settling warm against her skin. There's a danger now to the warmth of her, of this. This curse is truly a cruel one. ]

No — I cannot purposefully— It is too dangerous, [ he breathes, his own insistence outwardly softer than the unyielding way Wynonna stares at him now, but just as stubborn. What if there is no way to control this? What if he can't stop? How could he ever intentionally cause pain to her? Her?

That look of horror is shifting, melting into something that pulls at his features like a physical weight. A deep, sad frown, eyes mournful as he watches Wynonna, as the jolts of shock and adrenaline and wanting are all settling, just a little, just enough for him to really feel how upsetting this is. What he wants clashes directly with what he doesn't want. To be with Wynonna the way he is now — something he can't perfectly define beyond those unfamiliar words like happiness, desire, freedom — but not to cause her harm. ]

......I don't want to hurt you.