LONG WAY HOME.

Bea wasn’t usually one to sleepover. Not that she thought it was too intimate or anything, she just simply preferred her own bed. At least she knew her bed wouldn’t hurt her back. When she started to wake up in an unfamiliar place, her heart rate spiked. With a heavy weight on her chest she frantically looked around to realize she was in the hotel room she and Dario had gotten. She sighed as she sat back and tried to slow her beating heart. Maybe this was why she didn’t sleepover places either, she always did this when she woke up somewhere new. The heavy weight on her chest turned out to be the man in question and she attempted to nudge him awake,”Dario. Dario, get off me.” She didn’t hate cuddling, but she liked breathing more. When he made no moves, she began to try to wiggle herself out of his grasp. She wanted coffee and a shower, not whatever this was. 

Dario loved cuddling. That was simply a fact, and always had been. He knew some people thought it was too intimate, or that it was strange, but who the hell didn’t enjoy the warm feel of a body next to their’s? Of course...perhaps Dario was sometimes a little too attached, so desperate for warmth and the confirmation of another life being in the world besides himself that he could be a little...close. This, paired with being an extremely heavy sleeper while in a sound sleep often made it difficult for his bed partners to wake him. Vaguely, he was certain that someone, somewhere in the world was calling his name, but that didn’t matter as he felt his delicious warmth slipping away, and instinctively clung to it, following it as it tried to escape. A disgruntled and muffled sound came from him as his grip only tightened, his subconscious mind seemingly determined to stop Bea’s attempted Houdini act.

Bea let out a grunt as he tightened his grip and her wiggling intensified. She never really liked clingy sleepers. She liked having the freedom to get out of bed as she needed and return as she wanted. This was not the ideal situation for her. “Dario!” She said louder this time as she attempted to force his hands open to free her. She was never sleeping over with him again, if there ever was an again. She didn’t usually do this, one night stands or friends with benefits situations, but it had been a long time and he had been there. Still, she didn’t expect it to happen that often if it did happen again. 

Bea’s grunt was met with Dario’s own sleepy version of it, still quite displeased with his source of warmth slipping away from him. But as she said his name more insistently, he woke with a bit of a start, looking quite alarmed for a moment before taking in Bea’s morning look. Then he simply frowned, still grumpy upon having his sleep stolen from him. “Why are you yelling?” It took him a moment to remember where he was as well, taking in the hotel room in the new light of day. His place wasn’t exactly….fit for company, and Bea hadn’t wanted her sisters finding out what she was up to. “I’d say good morning but- pretty sure you’ve stolen any chance of it being ‘good’.” The words were only a little disgruntled, shifting more into teasing now.

“You were suffocating me,” Came Bea’s own grumpy reply. She didn’t usually get grumpy in the morning, but to have him be annoyed at her for trying to get out made her own irritation spike. Her eyebrows came together, a frown on her face. She knew he was kidding but it still annoyed her. It wasn’t her fault he was clingy in the morning. “Go back to sleep then, but let me out first,” She said her frown still etched into her face. She was going to get shit from Nell if she noticed she wasn’t at home last night. She pushed that thought from her head as she tried to sit up, hoping that he would finally release her now that he was awake. “You didn’t strike me as a cuddler,” She told him, her voice a bit more relaxed. 

Dario opened his mouth to make some joke about cats smothering babies in their sleep before his sleepy mind reminded him that Bea certainly didn’t know why that would be a funny joke when it came to him, and he didn’t care to explain. “It didn’t work?” Was the response she got instead, his voice still a little rough from having just woken up. Reluctantly, he moved a bit to the side, freeing her with an expression that could only be described as a pout. He didn’t want his human heater to leave, and he wasn’t sure how effective going back to sleep might be without it. “I can’t sleep now. I’m just gonna be too busy thinking of you. And how much I miss you.” The words held a healthy amount of sarcasm. “What makes a person more likely to strike you as a cuddler or not?”

“Shut up,” Bea replied with a small kick aimed at him. As good as he was in bed, he was ridiculously annoying. She didn’t remember him being such a smartass in high school, but she couldn’t remember as clearly as she wished she could. It was still strange to her that thirteen years had passed since she last saw him. “I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to live,” She replied as she scooted up to sit up against the headboard. She ran a hand through his hair, absentmindedly. “Usually I don’t associate fuckboys with cuddlers.”

“You gonna make me?” Dario shot back, though it was all in the good fun they normally joked with. He did his best to dodge the kick with a still sleepy smile on his lips, his recent awakening making him a touch too slow for it to miss him completely, even with heightened reflexes. “Wow, you’re gonna hit the man who was so kind to you last night. And continues to only be kind to do.” His sarcasm was heavy as he simply continued to lounge where he was, seeing no reason to rise. “But what if I can’t live without you?” he continued to joke, his face rather similar to that new emoji thing he’d learned online in the last few weeks. The “:/” one. “Wow, you’re going to just put me in a box like that? Haven’t you ever heard to not judge a book by it’s cover?” Nevertheless, he basked in the little moment of her hand in his hair, reflexively stretching out like a cat sunning itself. 

“Don’t try to flirt with me right now,” Bea replied. She figured he wasn’t trying to get into her pants again this morning, but she figured she’d lay down the rules right now that that wasn’t on the table. She didn’t like morning sex that much anyway. She felt sweaty and she didn’t want to experience morning breath. “What you did last night is not a free pass to be annoying.” She couldn’t help but admit that Dario was funny sometimes. Annoying a lot of the time, but funny occasionally. “I guess you have to die then,” She told him, trying to keep a straight expression, though her lips quirked a bit. She kept stroking his hair as he stretched out, enjoying that he seemed to enjoy that. “It’s very easy to put you in a box, Dario. You are a fuckboy and you like to cuddle. You’re complex.”

“Abelha, you know that’s like asking me not to breathe. Which I’m sure you’d also be happy if I stopped doing but- you understand my point.” Dario continued to tease, generally always finding amusement with the woman. He personally wouldn’t say no to morning sex, but he also was very much enjoying the way Bea’s hand was making its way through his hair, loving the petting for now. “Don’t you mean what we did last night? I wasn’t the only one there.” Beyond the sex though, he enjoyed spending time with Bea, feeling more like his old self when he was around her. “I don’t think I’d mind dying with a pretty girl’s hand in my hair.” By now, he knew she quite liked it when he called her pretty, and he wasn’t above using it to his advantage at times. He hummed contentedly as he continued to just lay there, still stretched out. “Was that you complimenting me? Calling me complex?”

Bea couldn’t help the little blush that went to her cheeks at his nickname for her, it was just so cute. “I suppose it would be tragic if you stopped breathing while I was here,” She teased him back. At his response she stopped her petting for a moment to tug his hair lightly, “Whatever happened last night still doesn’t give you a pass to be annoying like I said.” There certainly times Bea felt like she was sixteen again around Dario and the stress she held so often melted away. She supposed it was nice to not worry around him. (Or at least worry as much). “As the pretty girl in this situation I would mind a lot if you die on me.” She wasn’t the most squeamish about death or bodies, for obvious reasons, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to die on her, even in a hypothetical. “Well I wasn’t completely insulting you, so I suppose it’s kind of a compliment.”

“So when you leave,” Dario began, amusement in his voice, “then I can die?” Her little blush didn’t go unnoticed, and a hint of smirk began to form on his lips as he reached up to gently brush her cheek. “You like it that much? When I call you abelha? Você gosta de ser minha abelhinha?” It was a fairly simple phrase in his mother tongue, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she picked up on it— half curious whether she would or not. Either way, he was curious to see her reaction. But then a frown quickly replaced the small smile, wincing slightly as she pulled. “Now, now. You’re going to start something you can’t finish,” Dario pretended to admonish. “I take offense to that. I would also like to be the pretty girl in this situation. Or are you too selfish, to share?” As for him dying...well- it might come sooner rather than later if his hunt for those that had killed his family went wrong, and he wasn’t particularly concerned for it. “Do I get another compliment? I’ve given you plenty. Isn’t it my turn?”

“Yes. Then I don’t have to witness it. I have no desire to try to figure out how to bring you back.” Bea told him with a little eye roll as if that answer was the most obvious in the world. It took her a moment to try to translate his words and she only understood some of it. “Your little bee?” She asked, her eyebrows furrowed. She had never excelled with language, even between english and turkish she took to them much slower than her sisters had. She let out a laugh,“Noted, no hair pulling in the morning before we brush our teeth.” She leaned down to press a kiss to his temple, “I am the only pretty girl in this room but good try. Your one compliment is that you are less irritating now than you were before, congrats.” 

“But that implies that you’d at least be interested in bringing me back,” Dario continued to tease, seemingly content to stay here until they were forced to check out of the hotel. There were few places he felt this relaxed, though it was less about the place, and more about the person he was with. Bea was safe. That much he knew. “Yes, my little Bea,” he repeated with a smile, reaching out a finger to poke between her now furrowed eyebrows. “You’re going to get wrinkles.” His smile was now turned to a childish pout. “You don’t like my unbrushed teeth? Why do you keep being so mean?” His eyes closed for a moment to accept the little kiss on his forehead before he raised his head, landing a soft, morning kiss on her lips while his hand found the hollow of her waist. He knew how much she liked all kisses. “I’m pretty girl. I don’t care what you say. And I’ll take it.”

Alright, Marley though idly, that was good. She was laying in her bed and next to her was the text she’d received at 1am. They both knew exactly what they wanted and exactly what this was, and that’s all it had been. Except, he didn’t know exactly what this was. While a nice late night romp in the sack was always great, Marley needed a good feeding. A good, real feeding. And then sex hair Dario had come crawling into her Tinder DMs and it was like a match made in heaven. Except that he, apparently, liked to cuddle. Marley hated cuddling. Well, alright-- hate was a strong word, but she wasn’t exactly comfortable with it. At all. She’d obliged because it made things easier, even as she laid tensely on his chest until he fell asleep. And finally, he was asleep. Slowly, she lifted herself, his arm sliding off her back. There was already something so enticing about him, she almost couldn’t put her finger on it. His face pulled into a furrow, as if he were stressed. Or having a nightmare. She wasn’t even touching him yet, though. Perhaps this was going to be less work than she thought. Reaching out, she placed her one good hand on his forehead, and was instantly filled with a wave of his fear. Rushing through her like a torrent. A delicious storm. One she wanted more of.

On the nights Dario lay awake in the middle of the night with little to fill his mind other than things her certainly did not want to think about, there was a very simple answer for his plight. Tinder. Sex. That warmth of another body, and a sensation that made it rather difficult to focus on anything other than the person (or sometimes people) he was sharing the evening with. For whatever reason, it was even easier to fall asleep with them. For when the nightmares came, at least there was some, something there or him to latch onto when he woke up in a cold sweat, another body breathing beside him to remind Dario that he wasn’t dead or dying, or hidden away in a small space of his head while the jaguar was out and about doing as it pleased. Tonight was no different, though it seemed nightmares had come anyway. It was often more prone to happen when he didn’t know the person as well quite yet, and wasn’t sure how safe they might actually be. It wasn’t unusual for them to take a darker turn as they were doing now, the raw fear he felt continuing to steadily grow as dream Dario ran through a dark forest with no shoes or shirt, a fire burning in the background. 

Fire. A forest. Marley’s eyes were open, but they didn’t see what was happening in front of them. Instead, they saw his nightmares, his memories. It was choking, almost, like walls closing in. Like if they didn’t move fast enough, the forest was going to swallow them whole. Dario ran along the forest floor, barefeet. He was looking for someone. Or was he being chased? She couldn’t tell. He was crying out for someone. Suddenly, the forest shifted and a house took its place. Smoke billowed from it enough for Marley to understand what had happened here. There were people on the ground. Her eyes followed him as he ran up to them. 

Back in the bedroom, Marley’s arm tensed. 

Fuck, the house. Dario had never actually seen it in it’s full, fiery glory after the Hunters had set it on fire, but his imagination had proved plenty proficient at recreating it for him. But hadn’t he just been running away from it? The dream, or rather, nightmare, didn’t seem to care about the laws of space and time, and now he was faced with the bodies of his family in the last places he’d seen them alive. His father, in the center of the foyer, his younger brother not too far from him. His mother— slain on the grand staircase that led upstairs with his little sister still in her arms. They were all charred black, blacker than the fur of the jaguars they turned into with the skin flaking off in places, revealing bone and muscle peeking out from beneath the places where skin had been burned to a crisp. He stood stock still, just as he had in those first few moments of the attack before his mother had bid him to run. However, the dead didn’t seem content to stay dead as they rose up from their own ashes, their eyes a stark white against the black of their burned skin. As they straightened themselves, they simply stared, and more horrors were revealed. Their skin hadn’t just charred, but their eyes were melting, running down the fronts of their face to leave empty, red sockets in their place. Fear was such a recurring character in his dreams that the terror he felt now wasn’t all that foreign as he watched with horror. 

Marley followed him into the house. She walked past his charred father on the floor. A few feet more was the body of a child. His dead mother on the stairs. The burnt girl in her arms. Enough, she thought to herself, as they rose from their spots and turned on him. Enough, she told herself, but she hadn’t fully fed yet, and her body craved for it. So she backed away and she watched. Their mouths hung open in slack-jawed horror as they tried to speak. Ash and smoke spewed from their mouths. Fire tore at their empty sockets. “Why didn’t you save us?” they asked Dario, falling at his feet. “Why didn’t you come back?” 

Whether Marley had been feeding or not probably wouldn’t have even made all that much of a difference, though the nightmares usually weren’t this bad when Dario slept over with someone. Had he been alone, though...this wasn’t all that uncommon, and the reason he tended to seek people out on Tinder in the middle of the night in the first place. Unfortunately, it seemed to have failed tonight. The dream avatar of himself stood stock still, as if he couldn’t move, his foot rooted to the spots they’d landed on as his family asked him their questions, sounding more like accusations on their blackened lips. He parted his lips to speak, but nothing came out as if he was muted in the dreams, unable to say anything that might defend himself. Or perhaps he simply didn’t wish to defend himself, thinking this is atonement for leaving them behind. But now they were advancing on him, jaguar claws sprouting from the ends of their fingers as they closed in. A moment later they were slashing, tearing, ripping the skin from him as his heart pounded in his chest, not entirely sure if he had stopped breathing all together, or if he was simply breathing so quickly that it was hard to tell where one breath stopped and the other began. Somewhere, outside of the dream realm, his own claws slipped out, presenting themselves in the face of the panicked state his dream self was in. As his skin was ripped away, it wasn’t sinew or flesh that lay beneath, but the jet-black fur of the jaguar that lived within him, and this was more terrifying to him than if he was actually being eviscerated. “No,” he finally spoke, “No, no, no, no, no!” was all he managed to say as he tried to fight it, to push the fur back from whence it came. “I’m fixing it! I’m trying to fix it!” He was trying to find the Hunters wasn’t he? To avenge his family? Of course...how would that fix that fact that his family had been burned down along with the house, not even given a final resting place?

Marley felt almost breathless. In a strange way, she felt responsible for what he was seeing. She’d pried into nightmares before, but nothing had ever been this visceral, this real. Did she care? Should she care? She watched them tear him apart, bit by bit, piece by piece. Flesh giving way to fur, his secrets laid bare and full for her. Secrets that she...didn’t want. Didn’t need. Dario was just a person, someone she’d slept with on a whim because she needed to get Anita out of her head. Because she liked having sex. He wasn’t a criminal, he wasn’t hurting anyone. Had desperation really driven her this far? Didn’t she have standards? Morals? Something sharp stung on her side. She looked down. Blood. In a blink, she was sucked from the dream world, a rejected infection.

“Fuck!” she hissed, wrenching away from him in the bed. Her side was bleeding slightly, four thin scratched along her hip. When she looked back at him, she saw the claws. She felt his fear still. He’d wake soon.

Someone cursed, shied away from him, and Dario woke with a start, already on edge from the nightmare he’d been having. He would have bolted up if he’d been able to, but instead he was stuck firmly in place, unable to move after apparently waking too quickly. Fuck, fuck, fuck. No matter how many times this happened, he couldn’t get used to it, and he couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open in the darkness or not. Was this still part of the dream? Was he actually awake? Panic continued to course through him, his breathing quick and shallow while he simply lay there, desperately willing his body to do anything. Then he saw her as plain as day, the woman he’d slept with no more than a few hours ago huddled on the bed, through her eyes glowed red in the night as they had before. Of course, now they only reminded him of the red behind his family’s melting eyes, and that fear renewed itself once more, feeling as if a hand was slowly closing around his throat. 

He was awake, and Marley didn’t know what to do. This had never really happened to her before. This was what she got for crossing her fun with her food. She usually didn’t do it, but with her injury, she’d figured why not. Well, this was why not. He was panicking, his breaths erratic. “Hey, uh-- c-calm down. You’re okay,” she tried to coax in a soft voice, hand on her side coming up to his arm, his chest. “Just breath,” she said, positioning herself so she was in his line of sight. “You’re awake. Just...let it come back slowly.” Glanced around the room, to the claws on his hands, to his face again. She didn’t know what else to say.

For a moment, Dario just saw a girl over him and another memory was triggered, the face of a blond who he’d brought home the night of his family’s death, and the girl who had tried to stab him once they’d gotten into his bed. But Marley wasn’t blond, he tried to forcefully remind himself, clinging to that fact for dear life as he stared at her hair. Somewhere, Marley was telling him to breath. Just breathe. But how was he supposed to do that when it felt like there was no air. His eyes screwed shut for a second, and it took him a moment to realize...he’d moved. At least in some small form. He wasn’t as lost as he’d been when the jaguar had taken over his body, or rather...when he’d let it. Dario’s hand tensed, ever so slowly curling into a fist. Something blue glashed at the end of his claws, god dammit his claws, but the confusion was at least something to break through the haze of panic for a split moment. Finally, words came, though it felt like he had to fight for each syllable. “Marley.” It wasn’t so much a question as confirmation, a reminder that this was the woman from Tinder, and not something else. “Marley,” he simply repeated, holding onto that singular anchor. “Fuck.” Finally he managed to ever so slowly raise his head, his leg shifting to try and touch a bit of her skin, to feel the warmth there that would tell him this was real, not the pictures still flashing in his mind’s eye.

Marley stayed tense as she simply watched. She’d watched people wake from their nightmares before, frozen in this paralysis. But she’d enjoyed it, then, because they’d been people who deserved it. But who was she, to feel sorry now? She wasn’t supposed to have feelings. She didn’t have feelings. Rule number one was she didn’t need anyone other than herself. Rule number two was no feelings. Swallowing, she let out a long breath as she watched him move small things at a time. First his eyes, then his hand-- shit, her blood was on it. Blue blood. She looked down at her side, little trails of blue falling from the cuts. Fuck. She wrapped the blanket around her midsection, turning back to him when he finally said her name. “Yeah, yep,” she answered, unsure, “That’s me.” Let out a long sigh when he was able to move, feeling him shift, reach for her. Tentatively, she met him halfway. The least she could do was keep up appearances, right? Should she say sorry? She didn’t know what to do here, the discomfort sitting in her stomach like a pit. This was supposed to make things easier, sleeping with other people was meant to remind her of who she was, not-- not this. “Are you...what happened?” she asked finally, feigning, wondering if he knew.

With the addition of Marley pressed up against him, Dario managed to take his panic another down another notch, his breaths still far from regular but- certainly improving from what they’d been. The sweat on his brow was already growing cold, and he lifted a hand to wipe it away. The claws? Had she seen them? Now that the immediate, perceived danger was gone he could worry about things such as that. The motion of her pulling the sheet caught his eye, and he noticed that the blue seeping through it was the same shade as what was on his hand. “Is that….blood?” What else would be coming out of a person? But why the fuck was it blue? He sittferend as she asked her own questions, never proud that he had these fucking ghosts haunting him. “A nightmare. It’s fine. It just happens sometimes.” More often than he liked to admit to a girl he’d just met on Tinder. 

“That seemed like a little more than a nightmare,” Marley immediately muttered, unable to stop herself before it came out. She paused, looked over at him. “You were...calling out in your sleep and then, uh--” she needed to divert attention from her slip up, and from her blood. “Well, your hands turned into claws.” She motioned to his hands, which were still stained slightly with her blood. “Fuck, here,” she reached over for the tissues she kept by her bedside and handed the box to him. “I just...does that happen often?” she asked, finding herself genuinely curious, wondering if it was truly out of curiosity or something else. Guilt, perhaps? No, not guilt. She didn’t feel guilty. She’d needed to feed, and if he had nightmares anyway, then this wasn’t her fault. “Or just sometimes?”

Dario simply shrugged, not even particularly knowing enough about the difference between nightmares, sleep paralysis, night terrors or other such things in the same vein to be able to put words to what he was feeling— even if he wanted to. And sharing the inside of his head wasn’t exactly something he wanted to do with a woman he’d just met, even if she was hot. After all, wasn’t the reason he was on Tinder in the middle of the night in the first place to avoid the ghosts of his past? “It is what it is.” Then his eyes went back to his hand, and he cursed silently that his stupid fucking claws had decided to betray him. “Yeah they uh- do that sometimes.” There was no use denying it when it was in plain sight. But the blue on his hand and then the tissue caught his eye once more. “Why’s it blue?” he asked, utter confusion on his face. “But thanks,” he said, glad that she at least wasn’t making this more embarrassing than it needed to be. “Uh-” he hesitated at her question, not entirely sure how specifically he wanted to answer it. “More often than I want it to. But then- who wants it in the first place, right?” That was vague enough, wasn’t itt?

Marley frowned. She wanted to push him about his claws-- werewolf, perhaps? Oh, god had she just slept with a werewolf?-- but she knew if she pushed too much, she’d have to give in return. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that. She’d given him enough tonight, letting him take the lead, letting him come over to her place, letting him cuddle-- she didn’t want to give anymore. So she didn’t push it. “I have a copper deficiency,” she said flatly, “from a rare blood disease. Don’t worry, it’s not contagious.” She sat up a little more, looking down at the sheets on the bed, stained a little with her blood, torn a little from his claws. She sighed. She knew she couldn’t just kick him out-- well, she could but that didn’t seem altogether like the right move here, even for someone as cold as she supposedly was-- but this night had taken a turn she wasn’t happy about. “No one,” she answered a little quietly, shifting to move from the bed. She didn’t bother putting any clothes on. “I’m going to go erm-- clean up. Do you...need anything?”

She didn’t ask more about the claws which he was...relatively grateful for. Dario didn’t think he needed to worry about someone knowing what he was on top of the anxiety still swishing in his stomach, trying to keep it down to a manageable level as best he could. “Copper...deficiency,” he echoed, not entirely sure whether that was an actual thing or not. But she’d let his claw thing go, hadn’t she? He could let the blue blood situation lie where it was as well. “As long as I don’t wake up looking like a smurf,” he decided to tease instead— trying his best to get them out of these strange waters they’d found themselves in post nightmare. For a moment fear gripped him once more as she mentioned leaving, not entirely trusting himself to be left alone with his thoughts after such a vivid nightmare. He felt...unstable, like he might easily slip back into the clutches of his panic, the anxiety in his stomach demanding his attention once more. “I- no. You go do that.” He wasn’t going to be clingy just because he was afraid of slipping back into that dark place. Dario would deal with it. “Maybe I’ll do the same after you, if it’s all the same.” A shower or something of that like felt like a nice, grounding experience— something to wash away the feeling of his dead family clawing away at his skin.