it was an accident

Pan watches as he seems lost in time, her skin slowly heating up. Pounding, her heart was pounding. Blood pumping like a tidal wave. What was wrong? Then it clicks, she must look like dinner. “Oh, okay,” her voice is small, watching where he lands. So oddly graceful, like when he was hunting. The perfect killer. Shivering, she fights back her fear and wades closer to him. Her smile is timid.

When he came up for air, she was beside him smiling like a frightened animal. He wanted to sink his teeth in her and taste her. Luckily, he never actually did that. He saw what happened when Vinny almost killed Lina. Hurting fairies was nearly unforgivable. If she let him taste her though, maybe then it wouldn’t be bad for him or her. Bran smiles, “Yeah, definitely.” The intensity of Pan’s stare is dragging him in, but when he moves closer he’s met with a wall of water.

Oh he knew how to work her. Shivering in excitement now, she has to bite down all the noises he hasn’t heard in too long. It’s not like they hadn’t gotten close before, when tensions were running too high and all they wanted was to hold the other close. But not this close, with her thighs actually opening rather than pressing tightly together. He can smell her, he has to know how badly she wants to stay and the way he held her told her that he was terrified of her backing out.

Bran didn’t have time to do much else before she was on him, he slides his tongue against hers savoring the taste of mint and magic. The electric feel under her fingers shocks his skin, but he loves the sensation. Bran holds her up with one hand and walks towards the couch. His other hand is wrapped around a breast, squeezing and rubbing his palm against it. He wants nothing more right now than to be one with her again.

“No.” Pandora doesn’t know how to respond, it’s all she has. Staring at him with wild, wide eyes, she moves even closer. “No, no, I didn’t…”

Bran’s hands snake around her body to find comfort in her warmth. He has to lean down, but he nuzzles her neck and listening to her every word. If it wasn’t his fault, then how did they end up like this? So many years passed by and he never thought to try and talk about it with her. Bran is ashamed, but at the same time very relieved.

Pan’s fight or flight instincts are kicking in, and she’s literally shaking. She could just fly away, disappear. Her magic was low, but she could do it and she wouldn’t have to face this. Trembling, she gathers the courage too turn her face up to him.

Bran takes a step back as well as if she physically wounded him. She didn’t say it, she didn’t but she was going to and his face fell completely. His father... he hadn’t meant to do it. Those feelings he tried to deny back then, he knew they were love. It wasn’t tolerance or anything he tried to pretend it was. Growing older meant grower wiser sometimes and he had a thousand years to look back on it. It haunted him every day. Now he wanted to run in shame, he wanted to hide in his room and pretend nothing every happened.

The sense of relief that floods her is entirely brought on by the way he holds her close. Sighing, she lets her body go limp. She’s safe now, she’s home. The only home she’s ever known was with Bran. She still doesn’t know why he turned her, or at least she doesn’t understand it. If he wanted someone to keep him company, why choose a starving teenager that’d been on the streets since they were eight?

He cared about them all, he really did. Everyone that came to him and everyone he made, they meant something to him but they were not his Bean. When she says she tripped he looks mortified for a moment before wrapping his arms around her to hold onto her. If he’d lost her too, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. She wasn’t exactly a replacement for her, he hadn’t meant her to be one, but when he saw her starving on the streets he thought of her. She’d want him to save this poor being, this other little Bean. “You’re alive, Bean, that’s what matters. I’ll call her just in case, but I’m going to rip them to shreds for killing our family.”

It’s hard to believe him. Pandora stares at him for almost a full minute before huffing and rubbing her forehead in frustration. “Brandon,” she says tersely before looking up at him again. “You know that’s part of the agreement. I stay out of your hair as long as you keep me up to date.”

Bran doesn’t say anything before she gets up, but when she freezes at the door he takes that as his time to say anything. Bran sighs and rubs his face with his hands, suddenly exhausted by the conversation before it even started. “Pandora, have you ever thought that maybe I don’t want to do your job for you? If you need these numbers so badly you wouldn’t be hiding away.”

Now that he is closer, she can smell the blood on him. He always smelled that way. Pan’s spine goes rigid at his touch, and noticeably so. He doesn’t give her enough time to prepare, and suddenly she’s lurching slightly forward until she’s leaning into him. Clearing her throat, she shifts until his hands slide off. “Well, you know the drill,” she says softly, managing to keep the desperation out of her voice.

This close to her, he gets a whiff of fear and something else that causes his eyebrow to raise. “Yeah, yeah.” he waves off the usual like he always did and takes his seat across from her again. Bran feels like he’s staring at her for ages and the tension is growing with each moment of silence. It’s not exactly bothering him, but it’s making her uncomfortable and that’s the last thing he wants. Bran doesn’t want her to leave.

Pan can’t hide the way her mood soars when he decides not to take it, but it’s not like he gets the chance to see her thousand watt smile. Unless he can smell how happy she is. She drops the blood bag back into her pack, out of her skirt and top in less than two seconds. Sprinting past him in just her tights, she kicks those off too before diving into the water. The coolness envelopes her, making her hair feel like a curtain of velvet and caressing her skin. She kicks to the surface and smiles at him. “Come on! It feels great!”

At that very moment, something in him seemed to slow down the rest of the world. Maybe he was just moving way too fast, but he saw everything because she seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace. Her top was already off, but when she brushed by her tights took years to fall to the ground. Bran could see blood cells rushing around through her veins as her muscles tightened to make the dive. Are his eyes working right? When she kicks up back above the water, he’s frozen with his fingers still resting on the zipper of his pants.

Pan is glad she’s behind him, and he can’t see the disappointment on her face. She thought she’d been making some headway, could distract him for longer than a couple minutes. Maybe she was expecting too much of him, too soon. Maybe she wasn’t as good at this as she thought.

What was it about her that made him hesitate to even take the bag? The smell emitting from her was an emotion he couldn’t put his finger on, but his mom smelled similar every now and then. He stared at her now with both hands at his sides, as still as the dead man he was. Or was he alive? Bran was different than most vampires, that was all he knew. 

Every surface is slick, as if goading death and encouraging it to drag them all to hell. She is at the back of the pack, the monsters on her heels. Which is funny, because who the hell is she to be calling someone else a monster? Screaming, her foot catches in the cracks on the sidewalk and her body goes hurtling forward. Someone has the sense to turn around, to realize Bran’s most prized family member is seconds from being torn apart. She watches Ethan curse, spin fast on his heel and launch himself at the monster closest to her. He’s going to die, they’re all going to die.

Some vampires believed feelings were an unnecessary weakness. Bran thought the same thousands of years ago when he was a child. He thought he didn’t love anyone then and never really would. When he killed his father, he realized during that moment that he did love someone. The pain was real and vampires were idiots for denying this simple fact. Sure, the others could try to pretend it was only because Bran wasn’t exactly “dead” like they were. His heart beat, he could be set on fire, he could walk in the sun without losing any power, and he was something almost entirely new; he baffled them.

Oh. She hadn’t meant to make him hungry. Staring at him for way longer than necessary, she struggles for the words to reply. To reassure. To say anything really. All she could do was instinctively press her thighs tighter together. There was a burning between them, sudden and harsh. Teeth. Hungry teeth sinking into her tight skin, her thighs corded with muscle. The starved snuffles that followed, and deep draws of her essence. God, when he gulped…

Unlike his father, Bran thought he was smooth when it came to love or lust. He knew just the right thing to say and when to say it, but with Pan he thought his silver tongue turned to putty and he tripped over his words more often than he liked to admit. Or he just said the worst thing at the most inopportune time nearly every time with her. She walked away and he stood there, staring after her wondering if he should just follow her and do what he’d always wanted to.

Pan lets him walk out, even though the longing for him is entirely too clear. She didn’t even know what she wanted. Half the time she wanted to forget what they had, or almost had, and the other half she was tearing herself apart for not saving him. Of all the things she could do, all the things she’d mastered in her life… Why couldn’t she save the ones she loved?

Bran does anything and everything to keep his mind from wandering, but of course she’s all he can focus on. The sound of the water slipping down her skin into the drain. Like each drop was a reminder of what he walked away from nearly every time. He could have had her, but who wanted someone that killed their own father out of bloodlust? Not even the most loving mother.

It wasn’t a good choice, touching her like that. Even if it was just a brush of the finger, he knew exactly what that did to her. She bites back a shiver, staring after him as he begins to leave the room. “Bran-” she starts, the fear of losing him gripping her heart and making his name come out in a rush. Abruptly, her cheeks turn red and she’s staring at her feet.

He didn’t turn around when she called his name, but he did stop like her voice commanded him to freeze. Dead still, he waited for her to say anything. Like it’s good to see you, it’s been a few years, how are you holding up, or I see you got a castle. The silent command stretched on, but he stayed like an obedient old dog because he could hear her heart beating swiftly. The blood boiling in her cheeks was louder than the crash of his body when he was embedded in the walls earlier.