Shifting and movement brings Katherine back to the lands of the living, Estelle standing up and off her, putting a shoulder holster on, tying her hair back in a pony-tail and sipping at a chilled bag of blood at the same time, a confusing mess of priorities as her eyes are distantly thinking.
Katherine twirls her hair around her finger, and affixes a bun with hair prongs, before slipping on her own shoulder holster, a hip holster, a concealed waistband holster, A knife sheath on the opposite ankle. Then slips on a vest, in which she affixes six clips to the front. Finally she throws a trench coat over the whole assemble, and attaches a long arm to the internal strap. Finally she puts on sunglasses, and takes a handful of pills. In front of her is a single piece of toast covered in peanut butter, with three bites taken from it.
"Wow." Estelle whispers, stopping to look at Katherine with a smirk and impressed eyes, "You aren't cute anymore, you're hot."
"This is my work outfit?" Katherine says with her eyebrows furrowed, "This is what I wore to work when I was a detective. It made the department really nervous though."
"It's a, 'I wanna pin you to a wall' outfit." She admits, securing her holster properly and throwing a jacket overtop, "Come on, we're taking my ride, I got the passenger side fixed."
"Ok! Sounds fun," Katherine says, following out the door after taking a crucial fourth bite of toast. The Pontiac Firebird sits pretty in all black on the street, parked without a care to anyone towing it, daring them to do it. Estelle slides across the hood, opening the driver's side door and slipping in, starting the chunky engine with a gasoline growl and puff of smoke from the exhaust.
As Katherine gets in on the passengers side, Estelle hits it, roaring down the street and slipping between cars as she talks, "So! I've got a good lead on the trafficking ring that made this all happen, but I'm getting like… vibes?" She pulls a turn that has g-force to it as she explains, "I don't get visions like you, but I do get vibes."
"Oh, do you have a coupon to Adam And Eve?" Katherine was feeling a bit better, but not like herself, or maybe the cinnamon roll was not herself and this was her. It had been so long since she wasn't in the loop headspace. A week now? Two?
"I…think so?" Estelle gestures to the glove box.
She looks at Estelle, "It's a website for sex toys." She pulls a water bottle from inside the trench coat, that she didn't remember putting in there and takes a swig of water that tastes slightly… Viscous. "Oh that's old." She puts it back into the coat.
"Ooooh!" Estelle ignores the complaint of the water, continuing, "So yeah, bad vibes right? Well not bad but certainly not good-Complex vibes. That usually means there's something off about the people, so prep for, I dunno, fangs, or fur, or fangs and fur." She explains, halting the car in a screech in front of an apartment building.
"Does silver bullets or holy water do anything?" She realized that she probably should have asked that earlier.
"If we see a Werewolf, you run, I distract and probably die." Estelle jokes darkly, "You can pump a half dozen silver rounds into one, it'll die fifteen minutes later." She opens her door, stepping out into the night air.
"The M-sixteen has uranium rounds, you sure?" She says, opening her door and then letting it close. Her eyes scanning her surroundings and the back of her head tingling with something.
"Oh yeah, the last time we killed a werewolf? It was Nines, they threw grenades at it, shot it to pieces, took off an arm and then Nines had to climb that fucker, grab its head and tear it off. And headless, like a fucking chicken, it still tore a hole in him before it died." Estelle's moving to the apartment building, trying the front door and finding it locked. "You know how to pick a lock, right?"
She pulled out a bump key and a small rubber block that seemed to have been taken off a rubber mallet, tapping the key a few times before popping the lock. "Maybe." Katherine said, opening the door.
The inside is old, obviously years, decades since anyone's cared to maintain it before the most basic of repairs. Dust lies thick, concrete has small cracks spreading by milimetres every year it goes on untouched. Doors are fully chipped of their paint, numbers hanging on by a string if at all. A smell like mildew is present, mildew and weed-smoke.
Estelle goes from door to door, frowning as she's looking for something, whispering to Katherine as she does, "We're looking for…well, human scents. This used to be a holding facility, I'm gonna see if I can get anything, or spark a vision of yours." Her eyes scan all around, but the odd sensation grows in Katherine's head.
"Stay next to me actually." Katherine said suddenly, pulling out a fairly large pistol from her chest holster. "Close. I feel… Hinky? Or it's… paranoia." There's something very unfamiliar around her, she doesn't like it at all.
A naked panic blooms in Katherine's chest, an urge to twist, to shoot behind her, to do something that isn't staying here, it ripples through her veins fast.
"Look behind me," She says quietly to Estelle, "You have better senses."
Estelle frowns, turning around before squeezing a shot off right past Katherine's head, bullet whizzing in a heat trail as something falls back from the impact. A split second later, a wire is wrapped around Estelle's neck, biting deep as she is pulled by it, blood slowly spilling from the wound. A creature is behind her, just now visible.
Opening fire on the creature now, multiple shots, aiming for the head. Just like the gun range, breathe calm. She was laser focused, she loosed three shots, waited, then three more.
The creature stumbles back, holding to the garrote for dear life as its head is pulped, blood slowly dripping out in that tell-tale sign of an undead horror. Estelle is still very much aware even with half her neck cut into, flexing herself against it to flip herself onto the creature, breaking both its wrists in the manipulation and wrapping her legs around its neck.
"Knew it." She said quietly, "Fuck." Then she looked behind herself, now aware this was premonition not paranoia, and switched to the long rifle, unleashing with the bump stocked rifle.
Scrabbling noises from behind Katherine turn to an image of a pale skinned man, a bullet hole the size of a dinner plate in his chest. He's in the midst of standing as a long rattle of firepower punches more holes in him, piercing organs and cracking bones, grimace of pain in his face as the garrote is held loosely.
"Stop resisting," She yells on instinct as she continues to fire.
A wet tearing noise is heard as Estelle gets the garrote out of the monsters hand and forces it through its skull, splitting it in half. The corpse collapses beneath her, fading into a hot spray of dust, leaving bleached bones in seconds as her throat heals in globs of vitae forming into red flesh that then is covered in skin.
Instinctively, Katherine picks up her side-arm, checks it, reloads it and re-holsters it, then the same with her long-arm. "Do you need blood?" She asks, pulling her knife out from the ankle holster.
"Nah." Estelle says, more focused on the limp corpse of the man Katherine shot. "I know you aren't dead, jackass, I'm a vampire too." She kicks the man, forcing his eyes open as he tries to scramble, too many shattered bones for any sort of movement to be very possible.
For good measure Katherine fires into his legs, just in case with the side arm, aiming carefully for the kneecaps. "I said stop resisting. You made me nervous."
Estelle looks to Katherine with a naked desire at that, "God, I'm going to fucking destroy you later." She growls, ripping her attention back to the man on the ground, "You though, timelines a lot closer. Name, now."
The vampire on the ground grits his teeth, fangs on display, "Fuck you, you're supposed to be an Anarch–" Estelle interrupts by languidly sitting on his lap, her fangs pushing out as she leans in, "You wanna know something funny about me?" She whispers into his ear, "Something really, really funny?" The growl enters her voice as she nears his neck. "I have a taste for vampire."
She bites, the man freezes, a short scream cut off as his eyes roll back in pain, his whole body frozen in rippling waves of shocking agony that seem just as efficient at stopping resistance, if not as pleasant.
There's a slight smirk, as Katherine remembered something, pulling a black and mild, lighting it. Suddenly feeling in place. Somehow. Taking a deep puff. Occasionally ashing it very close to the vampire, just close enough that it's aware of the cherry's existence. Though she only watches.
Separating with a hiss and dripping blood down her maw thick with power, Estelle says, "Just so we're on the same page, Kat. No one, knows about this, 'kay?" Her eyes are glowing like flashlights, practically sending out a haze.
"Okay," She says, "I'll ask which part was the secret later." Pointing at the man underneath her.
Slapping the man's face to bring him back to consciousness, a small stubble evidently not shaved before he was embraced, dark brown hair stained with blood and eyes black with hunger, "Hey there." She whispers, "I'm gonna keep you in my basement, mkay?" The threat stiffens him, black fading from his eyes as he stares at Estelle.
"Kat, neat trick, you wanna learn what a vampire handcuffs like?" Estelle turns her bloody face over to the standing woman again.
All business now, it's time to work, she raises an eyebrow, "I'm always delighted to learn new things." She takes another puff of her cigarillo. Blood and Gunpowder creating an odd sense of clarity, one from a time nearly two hundred years ago, or five, or one. Time sucks.
Estelle pulls a long wooden…stake from her jacket, pressing it between the third and fourth ribs at an upwards angle, "Legend says this kills us. Not true." She rams it upwards, a spurt of blood around the base as it sinks into the man, "It's like…full body paralysis, still awake, still aware, but dead weight." He's frozen, staring at the ceiling with a complete lack of motion.
"Then he should be very careful about any lies he might think about saying,", "Since we get to keep him until we know he's telling the truth or not."
"It'll be about three nights." Estelle says, grabbing him and, with veins that are obviously engorging on her wrists and presumably up her arms, lifts them full grown man onto a shoulder, walking out of the building, "First night to get him used to me, second night to get him to want me, third night till he's mine." She chuckles darkly through the whole sentence, tossing him into a trunk before shutting it with a crash.
"Better die night four or I'll be jealous." Katherine said not sure where… The energy was coming from, was she like this on the force? Detectives had partners didn't they? Did she? She couldn't remember.
"Anything for you, Kat." The vampire grins through bloody lips, starting her engine, "Eleanora won't mind us using her basement, it's pretty much what it's there for I think."
"The thing you said don't mention, won't we have someone in the basement who can choose to mention it?" She says gesturing to the man as she gets in the passenger door, but not before double checking the safety on both weapons, the clips, and then, "Should I go pick up the shells? I shot eighteen."
"It's middle of nowhere LA, ain't no one checking." She laughs, "Police know better at this time of night anyways-Your guns aren't registered right?" Estelle looks over.
She takes out a piece of chalk, and writes a quick penal code on the sidewalk. 217.1(a) "Right." She decides not to explain it, and gets in the car.
"Besides, this part of town's Anarch. I got a buddy that has the local precinct wine'd and dine'd." She guns the engine again, screaming into the streets and covering ground fast, breaking every traffic law imaginable. It's less than twenty five minutes to Eleanora's home, bumping a wheel onto the sidewalk as Estelle parks close.
She gets out, grabbing the man out of her trunk and brazenly carrying him through the front door. Eleanora is gone, probably busy at Elysium, leaving Estelle to carry the man through a door that Eleanora has never drawn attention too, down well made stairs and into a stark, concrete floored basement riddled with tools of a discomforting type, scalpels and saws and barrels of formaldehyde alike.
Katherine follows behind closely, looking at the tools around her, as Estelle puts the man down Katherine approaches, "Now, my partner is going to ask you some questions I think," She looks at Estelle then back, "Either way, you're going to give us the answers, but there's a very nice way, that ends amicably if rather final." Then she presses the black and mild to the staked vampires arm, "Or there's a very mean way, that ends horrifically, while still being rather final." She stands up to leave, "Think about it."
"God." Estelle almost moans at the display, refocusing herself after a full five seconds of staring. "She's right, if you break now, I can just take your head off. If you break in three days, there'll be nothing left of you, not a thought of who you were before." She promises, leaning in and ripping the stake out, making the vampire twitch on the table, still too injured to move.
"Fuck you!" He shouts, bringing a grin to Estelle's face. She asks lowly, "Do you like it when they fight the interrogation?" She grabs his face, steadying it.
"I… I think I was the good cop, so I wasn't supposed to." She said quietly, racking her brain for something distant, "But it was way more fun." She puts the stake back in, before searching for a wallet. Pulling it open, rummaging through it for cash and business cards, finding an ID, "Cole Mayer" She says out loud to the stunned vampire, "Sorry I just don't want to be interrupted. Cole, I completely understand you're used to being the predator and outcast, but no-one is going to know whether you died honorably or not. If you fought at the end, if they ever ask, I'm going to tell them you folded immediately. There's no honor to save here." She took the wallet with her as she left,, "I'm going to do a search on his address."
"I'll start feeding him blood." Estelle bites open her wrist, forcing it into his paralyzed mouth. "Day one Cole. Right now, you should be feeling more scared, terrified, angrier and whatever else is rolling around in there." She describes the effects as it flows into his, "Every feeling towards me… heightened. If I was kind, i'd wait a month, but I'm not."
She pulls her hand back, wound sealing up quickly, "Instead, tomorrow, the next dose is gonna start changing how you think, making you like me. I'll be a friendly face no matter what i do to you. We'll have some fun, then I'll wait." Estelle's words are dark, full of a vicious, monstrous glee, "Day three, that's when you're gone, Cole. The blood's gonna icepick into your brain, all you'll want is to make me happy. If I smile, it'll make your year. You'll tell me everything."
The paralyzed vampire has no response. Somehow this entertains Estelle more as she turns to saunter up the stairs, "Let's give him an hour to think, yeah? In the dark." She gestures to the lightswitch, waiting for Katherine to follow her up.
"Well, that seems mean." Katherine said, taking out an incense cone, leaving it just in his eye-line but nowhere near touching him. "Something to let him focus on." She lights it, leaving it on the ground with his head turned to it. "We'll be back." Then she follows up with Estelle.
Estelle, as she gets up to the stairs, grins again, giddy and bouncing to the couch, laying down, "Oh my God, Kat!" She's staring at Katherine with a brightness to her eyes, "You are amazing!"
When Katherine takes the coat off her demeanor kind of falls away with it, smiling, "Yeah? Thank you, oh my god," She takes the compliment the same way someone would respond to hearing they had a nice sweater on. "I don't know, it was… Time to work? And it all just came back." Then takes out her rifle, checks the magazine, clip, and safety, before writing down a number.
"Mhmm, I noticed." Estelle smiles through the blood, "Just like…went full you for a sec." Her boots come off, hitting the ground in a loud impact.
"I dunno if I went full me I like to keep things compartmentalized, people are faceted." Katherine says with a smile, before taking her bullet proof vest off, counting the front, and writing down another number.
"I'm not the one to tell that too, I've pretty much got one mode." The vampire shrugs, jacket falling off, leaving her with just a shirt and jeans.
The shoulder holster comes off, she again, checks the magazine, clip, and safety before writing down a number. Then the neoprene concealed carry holster which again, she checks the magazine, clip, and safety before writing down a number. Finally the ankle weapon, which with a mechanical roteness, she checks the magazine, clip, and safety before writing down a number. Then she counts all the guns and writes down a number, and logs it all on a spreadsheet in her phone.
"You being obsessive is hot, you know?" Estelle stares at the show, noting each movement with a keen eye at odds with how relaxed she is all the time.
"It's not OCD," She clarifies, "If I think someone is stealing my things, then I have to argue with a spreadsheet that says it's impossible. If I think I had killed someone, then I have to argue with the spreadsheet which says I didn't fire any new rounds. Which is all possible, but the spreadsheet not being updated is generally warning bells. Same reason when I had a funny feeling behind me, I had you look."
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
There's a momentary consideration on Estelle's face, "Do you think your brain problems are related to your superpowers? The time stuff?" She bluntly asks, "Cause if you like, had some sorta preternatural awareness of things as a baby, that probably fucking ruined your brain."
"Depends also on how time interacts with your personal timeline I guess. For example, I get paranoid and delusional that something is behind me or hunting or watching. What if it's from a split? What if the thoughts are from a reality that it is true." Katherine has been thinking a lot about this. A lot. "Or, alternatively, what if the looping effects the body on the timeline. Creating feedback effects of the same night over and over, a complex trauma of being murdered sixty-thousand times. Even if I did like it." She admitted writing down more numbers.
"What if it was an unconscious thing? That night was a good one, yeah? Just constantly repeating it till you, subconsciously, felt good enough to move on." Estelle wonders, "It's how I started off controlling people, didn't notice it at first, just kept doing it until I stopped being as freaky about needing people to do what I said."
Katherine logged her mood in a seperate spreadsheet, assigning a number of "positivity" in the first column "negativity" in the second, and a quick blurb. The spreadsheet went back a dozen years, meticulously updated with a gradient of numbers. "Doesn't explain the mood swings though," She says quietly, pressing a few buttons to generate a chart, one for the last week, month, year, five years, decade, and then since the beginning of the sheet. She showes the chart to Katherine, "See how it's stable once it's five years with a few dips and spikes? That's an average but look at the weeks and months. Huge spikes, huge falls, normally a few weeks at a time." Data, numbers, math doesn't lie.
"No impetus." She says simply, as she pushed the chart further, "Just days where I want to cry and lose my shit, or panic check everything a million times."
Estelle's got her phone out, and is ringing someone as Katherine finishes, "I got someone you'll like talking to, I think. He's a weirdo and like, your age too." The phone buzzes again, and again, before going to voice mail.
"Hey, this is, uh, my voicemail. Don't leave a weird noise please-thanks……oh yeah after the–BEEEEP." It beeps loudly after the male voice on the other side is interrupted. "Hey jackass, I got a girl that can see the future and shit, you're the local expert, get on a nocturnal schedule already, nothing interesting happens in the day!" Estelle shouts into the phone, before hanging up and going back to lounging.
"Oh the log goes back to seventeen." Katherine says to herself once Estelle looks to her phone, "Ok, oh. No blood family, all dead. Stopped going to the cemetery at twenty-two." She's still refreshing herself on… Herself. "Joined the force, promoted very quickly." More whispering, a bit of grimace, "Eesh, I was… Well, I was definitely a cop. Not like… A misguided cop." More whispering and muttering, "Paranoia started at twenty-seven, started getting very anxious. Already had was having mood swings since… Well first thing is at seventeen. The therapist said 'keep a log,' so… That was the start. I forgot I had this until I started doing cop shit. Then it was just… Muscle memory."
The vampire listens closely, glowing eyes a clear sign of attention, "You sure you don't wanna go vampire? Like I said, a lot of those things vanish, you don't use your brain to think anymore."
"Honestly? No not really, not in like 'Oh what if I don't see the sun, or I become different' way." Katherine says with a nod, "It's that I spent two hundred years perfecting being this. Being what I am right now. I'll have to spend another two hundred learning a new way to be. This is the control loop, if I find out on the next loop that it would have been extremely useful or helpful I can pick it up that time." She was pragmatic she realized, was she always pragmatic. That wasn't how she was acting when she got out of the loop, unless that was a manic phase. Or maybe… She should have kept her logs over the time out of the loop, but she forgot about them. That was proof this is the first time this loop was happening.
"You ever try to keep anything with you? In the loop?" Estelle considers. "Like…a not–"
"Yeah. Carved notes on myself at one point," She said, "Hid things in my pocket, tried eating things, and regurgitating them. It's a fixed point of time, which also means that consciousness exists outside of time and space. You are not your body or your cravings or your chemistry." It was a matter of point to Katherine, a proven fact through rigorous study, "You are you."
"I coulda told you that, idiot." Estelle laughs, "I'm a corpse running on blood, you put a bullet in my brain, I don't notice." She reaches out to Katherine, hoping she'll come to her. "The soul's very real."
Katherine climbs into Estelle's arms still thinking very nervously about something but she didn't know what. Then she gulped, "Some of the things in the notes are clearly distressed about hallucinations, but not delusional hallucinations. Yelling things that I know aren't real, but bother me anyways. I made a pattern tracker, but there's not enough deterministic data to reliably predict the next episode." She needed to calm down, but the data was so soothing. It was very real in a world where everything could be faked. "I either just had a bad episode, or am about to come up on one."
"You want me to force you to relax?" Estelle questions.
"Yes please." She asks quietly, "If it's not too much blood, you can have some of mine if it helps." She would very much like to relax.
"Relax, Calm, be Happy." Her voice strains as it ripples through Katherine, black veins on her throat engorging with blood that dissipates seconds later. The commands are ironclad and not resisted, forcing her muscles to untense, a wave of calm and an almost drugged euphoria wash over her in a second.
"Be careful with that, because I will lock you in a basement to keep me happy." Katherine says suddenly letting out a desperate breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. The euphoria washes over her like a spring, and the numbers finally start to make sense, "Oh, I had an episode over the last two weeks, I must have that's why I kept triple checking the cameras." It was just a peaceful calm like something had been unlocked on her brain and returned to her. "I handed you a note on my phone that said I loved you." She realizes quietly, "I'm very smart, but in a very stupid way."
"To be fair." Estelle grins, holding onto Katherine, "It was really cute." Her gravelly whisper settles into the larger woman.
Her bubbly nature starts to feel like it's returning, and realizes that some of the grit she felt was the vestige of an oncoming depression, not the throes of it. Being told to be happy, felt… Nice. Sometimes when she was sad, and she felt happy it felt the same way, kind of forced despite her feelings. It still made her feel better. "I don't really know what mind game I was playing with the incense cone. I just know fire hurts him, and it's like… a count down?"
Estelle feeds off the excitement, nestling in closer, "Oh fire? It's like seeing a gun in your periphery, its anxiety in a dancing piece of ignited oxygen and hydrogen. He's having a nervous breakdown right now, unable to get away from it." She describes this with an almost lurid tone, stroking Katherine's arm along its veins and muscles.
"And to think, I just wanted the room to smell like Chai the next time I walked in." She smiled, wrapping herself around Estelle to cuddle in a warm embrace that was rapidly cooled. "I wish I had known about vampires sooner, partners that are cold are very nice. Half the reason I hate people is because it can be so… hot physically I mean, with them in the room."
Estelle nods, smiling at Katherine's comments, "Oh I get it, I was alive in the seventies, God. Everywhere was sweaty and hot and terrible." She bemoans with bemusement, "Number one advantage of this, ignoring weather and temperature–Well, other than the immortality and blood powers."
"Records were broken in the seventies so yeah I believe it," She giggled, "That's the one thing, I'd give up the mortal shell for is just to feel… Comfortable in my skin. Everything feels… Wrong. Clothes itch, mind is constantly furling and unfurling, it's too hot all the time. I'm sweaty and feel miserable until I can find something to focus on." She looks at Estelle, "Would it be weird if we took our shirts off just to cuddle? I am actually still very new to the romance part of existing."
"I think it'd be very cute if we took our shirts off to cuddle." Estelle's already on it, slipping her tee off before Katherine moves.
Katherine whipped her shirt off in a flash, pressing herself against cold skin, letting the agonizing fibers be cast away and presses against her, finally feeling heat dissipate away from her body. Finding comfort to accompany the relaxing, calm, euphoria. She just sits there next to her with a smile. Letting the icy body pull the worry from her, letting it sap at the energy, cut through the anxiety and bring a sense of quiet to her senses. Numbing discomfort, leaving only her feelings, her real feelings left. Her breathing slows to almost a crawl in peace.
"I really want to bite you." Estelle admits, "Holding back is a real effort." Her voice ripples, rough and scratchy.
"I promised Eleanora," Katherine says quietly, "I wouldn't mind otherwise. Even if it was apparently… Bad? You made it sound bad last time."
"It hurts, a lot." The vampire smiles into Katherine's neck, not doing anything there except suggesting, "You like that, though."
She bites her lip just a bit, "You're being so cruel teasing me. I'm just a defenseless morsel how could you?" She loved the word, something about it made her feel… Appreciated? Wanted? A certain type of way for sure.
"You are a problem." Estelle blinks at Katherine's words, "God, I want to do so much to you." She growls as a scent of Chai rises through floorboards, somehow exciting Estelle more in a perfect storm of things happening. "How about just one bite, somewhere Eleanora doesn't bite."
"Would you be able to stop?" She asks her, not sure if to give her a chance to consider reason, or to stop herself from immediately saying yes, "Alternatively, we could shoot the hole probably… Somehow. I don't really know how all that works. If you can think of something with the thinking part of your soul and spell it out I'll listen."
Estelle breathes, a gesture to calm herself more than anything else, "I'm not a lick, I can stop, don't worry about that, Kat." She smiles, "Besides, you aren't my favourite flavour of lollipop anyways. You're safe."
"Is it biting or drinking? Because if it's drinking I really don't mind. It just seemed like the biting part was important to Eleanora." She admits, still not entirely clear on what it was that vampires liked outside of sustenance when it came to drinking blood.
"It's like…sex and a meal and a drug at the same time." Estelle describes, a distant look to her, "You're shaking and feeling full and feeling spacey at the same time, it's a full body experience every second, every drip of blood on your tongue, it never gets old, never gets dull, it's always like the first time." There's a breathy quality to her voice.
"Right, but when you bite specifically, or just when you drink?" Katherine realized she wasn't being specific, "I mean, can I make you feel better by cutting my wrist and letting you drink or does that make it worse." She reaches for the knife in her ankle holster, before looking at Estelle waiting.
Estella shrugs, "It's not the same, better than a bag, worse than the real deal. It's not…fresh? Even a second out of the vein takes a lot out of it."
"Oh do you drink through your teeth? I never considered that." Katherine said thinking, before looking at her own reflection in the blade.
"Uh, no. It's just…magic? I dunno, it's different." Estelle is confused at the idea of drinking through her teeth, thinking on the logistics.
"So you're saying you don't want any from the wrist." Katherine finally about to move to put the knife back, "Because from my understanding, if I or you were startled while you were drinking from my wrist then the teeth'd just come out."
"Oh, yeah." Estelle catches on to something suddenly, "Wouldn't want that to happen, we should be careful." A predatory growl in her voice.
She very quickly made the cut and put the blade down, holding her wrist out to Estelle, "So be very careful then. I'm unstable."
Estelle slinks lower, cupping Katherine's hand and gently raising it to her waiting mouth, locking her lips around the cut and beginning a slow sipping of it, eyes briefly hazing over as she gives off a moan. Then Katherine, a little playfully, pokes her in the side with the point of the knife, permission, granted in the poke. Continuing the game, she widens her eyes as warning.
The bite is pulsing pain, it feels overwhelming, ripping through Katherine like a wildfire, up and down veins and arteries, rocketing her heart rate and intensifying every stimuli imaginable. Its panic and frenzy and fear and agony all put into a world-shaking cocktail. Estelle doesn't let it last long, separating with a wild grin, moving atop Katherine and holding her face merely an inch away from her own. Staring into the widened eyes, glutting herself in the display. It takes Katherine a moment to recover, the pain being far worse than what she expected, but not nearly as bad as she had worried.
"That's it." She says with a quiet smile, "Back to cuddling." It wasn't really a request, and she grabbed Estelle to pull her into an embrace. Estelle laughs, shifting to kiss Katherine with a coppery tang to her lips, pressing in passionately as she holds the other woman. Separating after stealing enough breath to be satisfied. "You're cute, Kat." She whispers into Katherine.
Looking back she says, "You make me happy. Literally. Like… Calm, when the worries and the aches and everything else is gone you bring a clarity that no-one else ever has. Domination magic is a gift, I think. I mean that's not all you are to me." Suddenly very concerned and lost in her thoughts, "I just mean you've given me something precious. Peace is rare."
"I like it when you get worried about…words." Estelle admits with a smile, "Makes me feel like I'm flustering you. I like it. Is that okay?" She asks, curious more than worried.
Katherine nods happily, "It's great, means you appreciate me for me." Then suddenly, "I should probably get OJ, since… That probably has to do something to my blood sugar. I also made Cookies earlier. Do you want one?" She moved to get up, a little light headed, but getting used to the back and forth of whoozy from being drunk from, and not.
"Eat a couple, I'll take a sip-without teeth." She assures, smiling at the light-headed haze afflicting Katherine.
The cookies were taken from the fridge, and she munches them taking a sip of orange juice as well before returning. "Eleanora said I can drink from vampires, because her blood overwhelms theirs, but warned me that it's addictive. Is… How personal is it for the morsel to drink from the vampire?"
Estelle looks at Katherine with an amused look, "Eleanora's blood is powerful, but mine's…much more infectious. You shouldn't, unless you want to be my forever pet." It's said as a joke, but there's a tinge of seriousness to it.
"Oh you can't turn that off…" Katherine says suddenly, realizing what Estelle was saying though far later than she wanted to admit, "So three sips and I'm just Puppet Kat, but first sip and I'm head over heels intense?"
"Sip one makes you feel whatever you're feeling times…I dunno, fifteen." She explains, "Sip two, you're obsessed, want to make me happy. I'm happy, you're ecstatic. Sip three? You're mine, I own you, I'm in your head, in your soul, in your thoughts all day and night."
With a slight smirk Katherine says, "Have you been secretly feeding me then? I'm at sip three right now." She falls back into her embrace, pulling a paper towel away from her still bleeding wrist and offering it to her.
She takes a lick, the tongue's passage somehow sealing the wounds in a flash, "Oh that's a lot of chocolate." Estelle smirks, "Someone have a sweet tooth?"
"How dare you…" Kat replies in faux indignant rage, then laughing, "It's one of the two things I can get down. Chocolates and coffee, which pair well together thankfully. It's been an hour now by the way." She knew somehow. As if at any point she just knew when things were.
"Wanna make it two?" Estelle smiles, fingertips on the back of Kat's bra, teasing at the hooks with gentle motions.
"Next time, being bitten makes me sleepy and lovey-dovey." She admits kissing Estelle's neck, "Next time we do the bite after I think."
"Why not during?" Estelle laughs, leaning into the kiss. Before starting to get up, not bothering with a shirt.
"I think I'd immediately devolve into shakes if you did it during," She followed getting dressed, checking each weapon, putting her entire assembly back on, and then the sun-glasses. "Doesn't feel right without the uniform." She admits in a slightly more brusque tone.