Breaking and Entering

A Brief Author's Note:Please do not flame me, as this is my first Repo! fic. Also, I will write a gift-fic for you if you can pick out at least three allusions in this fic. Flames will be transferred to my good friend AmazonTurk and you will likely wind up the subject of a chapter in her lovely, lovely fic Operation: Assassination.

Disclaimer:Repo! is not mine. Nothing alluded to in this fic is mine. Even the cat is not mine - she's based off my neighbor's cat, Max, who is fat and irritable, talky as can be, and missing one fang. Also, the song "Machine", which I credit to Blind Mag in the fic, is actually Josh Groban's song from his album Awake - listen to it! Sarah Brightman would sound awesome singing it and I just decided to throw that in.

Now! On with the fic!

Cold wind blew, tree branches rattled loudly, and the sirens howled - the GenCops spilled out of their armored vans, hoisting firearms and not bothering with restraints. The sign on the entrance clearly stated that grave robbers were to be executed on sight, so anyone who was out there couldn't pull the "I didn't know" card by any stretch of the imagination. Oh, he knew the rules, regardless of whether or not he ever actually followed them - he also knew that he had really landed himself in hot water this time. Why in the hell did people waste so much time and money on these great big marble chess pieces?! He swore foully and tried again to push the large bit of marble off his hand. Normally, he would be up bouncing around and baiting the GenCops with everything he had - it was all great fun to him, a lovely game to distract him from the addicts. But tonight, he had just wanted to get in, get his product, and get out; everyone got bored with a good game every once in a while.

A flashlight's beam waved over in his direction and he twisted rather awkwardly to press himself down behind the tomb he had been in the process of "collecting" from. He rolled his eyes, sucked in a breath, and yanked again, trying to free his hand from the marble chunk. You'd think if these people were going to have the damn things constructed, they could at least be marginally sure that pieces weren't going to go flying the second they were touched! Granted, he probably shouldn't have ignored that this was real marble, not concrete. There were no iron stabilizers inside the solid stone. But that was neither here nor there at this point - he had grabbed the wing while trying to situate something, and it had come off in his hand. The surprise he had been unprepared for, so he had toppled off the adjacent gargoyle and wound up with the angel's heavy marble wing pinning his hand against the side of the tomb. Of course, the crash had set off several alarms, but even GenCops were bound by time, so he'd had a good amount of that to start working his hand out.

This was one of the more expensive indoor cemeteries, dirt and marble and chandeliers and everything - it was the dirt that served him quite well at this moment. If he worked this out correctly, he could shift enough of said dirt that he would be able to either move the marble wing through his own strength or use the soft earth to shift his hand out from under it. A frown crossed his face as the flashlight beamed dangerously close to him. He picked up a chip of marble and hurled it as far away from himself as he could get it. Like most generic henchmen, GenCops were notoriously easy to fool, and a thrown rock always drew more attention than a shout. The awkwardly-armored GenCops clunked off in the direction the piece of stone had landed, making enough noise to rouse several bats from one chandelier and another. Smiling to himself, he repositioned and, after making sure his newly-collected stash was safely inside his jacket, propped a booted foot on the jagged edge of the fallen marble wing. If he'd worked everything right, he should just be able to kick it off and get up, spiriting himself away before those GeneCo idiots figured out that their "rat" was a lot bigger than your ordinary rodent...

"Dammit!" he roared.

... Or he could kick it over and, as soon as he stood up, it would fall over on his foot. As the GenCops swung around to see who had just yelled, adrenaline lent him the strength he needed to yank his foot out, the boot keeping the heavy marble from breaking anything. Flight kicked in and he banked off the one-winged angel, back to the gargoyle, then over the back wall. He laughed to himself at the idiocy of designers - who in their right mind didn't put a back gate in when everyone knew that the "bad guys" always got away over the back wall? Dropping down behind the back wall into a festering swamp of corpses in varying states of decay, he paused for a moment. One of them on top, a drag queen from the look of it, looked like there might still be a chance of harvesting decent Zydrate from it. Confident in his escape, he knelt and dug a long needle and syringe out of his pants pocket. The GenCops would all have to hustle out the front gate and there was a good chance that they wouldn't even bother pursuing him down here.

"Down there!" a muffled voice hollered, and the Graverobber cursed mentally as he watched the black-armored figure wave its arm. "He went that way!"

The Graverobber screwed his eyes shut for a split second, growling in frustration and clenching his free hand into a fist as he shoved the half-full vial into a pocket, momentarily forgetting that it was probably fractured. Next second, he was kicking corpses out of the way, some of them splattering unpleasantly over his boots and lower pant legs, as he tore his way out of the burial basement. He could hear the GenCops behind him, their heavily armored boots crushing anything that did not splatter on contact. Rolling his eyes, he told the cosmos that the tech elevator had better be working as he kicked a bloated arm out of his way. There was so much potential Zydrate he was sprinting over! He gritted his teeth as a splintering bone picked that moment to give way and he sank to his right knee in dead yuck.

Swearing again, he wrenched himself out of the pile, trailing a good five feet of intestine behind him as he tore his way over to the tech elevator and kicked the door open. He could hear the group behind him - the GenCops were getting closer. What the hell was happening!? The only time they ever got that close was when he let them! It was all part of the game! It was then, as he closed a hand around the chain to start the pulley that would take him back up to the surface, that he realized that he had to have been slowed down more than he estimated. With the GenCops behind him and the adrenaline starting to leave his body, his hand started to throb - yeah, that was most definitely a fracture at the very least and his foot didn't feel too great either. He heard a rattling noise behind him - what else could go wrong!?

The elevator cranked to a halt, but not so soon that he couldn't push up off a crossbar on the side and get out that way; it was only a short jump to get to the opening and that was exactly what he did. He winced as his bad hand caught the edge of the door frame, but ignored it and kicked all the way out, climbing to his feet and shaking himself off. Looking around, he couldn't see anyone who might have seen him crawling out of the tech elevator shaft like a snake, so, nonchalantly as you please, he sauntered off, pleased with himself. The silvery moon lit his way and he whistled along with Blind Mag's latest tune as it blared indistinctly from a speaker. A metallic clink sounded somewhere behind him and he frowned, squeezing his eyes shut and pretending he had just imagined that. Apparently, the game was in motion again.

He knew that they knew he could hear them - they were making so much noise that anyone who happened to be awake and in the general vicinity could most likely hear them. They had managed to stop the elevator while they were trying to trap him, but now they had to deal with getting it back down to where they could use it themselves. A grin turned the corners of his dark lips up and he laughed to himself as he listened to the GenCops struggling with each other, trying to make the elevator work again. Any sensible criminal on the run would have taken flight, like, yesterday, but the Graverobber had never claimed to be a sensible man - he wasn't running. Sure he had a... handicap, but that just made everything that much more fun - gambling was always so much better when the stakes were higher. A crank turned, a chain clanked, and the elevator was in motion again, bringing his opponents back up to the surface and the world of the mostly-living.

As the elevator ground to a stop, he stood still and counted the seconds in between the time it took for each of the GenCops to exit the elevator - there were five of them and it took them a grand total of three and almost-a-half minutes to get up on the ground and get situated. When the last individual had exited the cage-like elevator, he started counting down a minute in his head. Once he heard them get close enough that they could see him, but not clearly identify him, he knew it was time to start running. Just scant seconds after he started off, he felt something wrong - apparently falling knee-deep in dead people had caused him some injury that was probably best checked later. Straight sprinting was not going to be an option for long, so he turned mid-stride and cut a right angle towards a neighborhood of old, decrepit, yet still-expensive houses. Another basement, preferably one not filled with rotting corpses, would serve him perfectly well right now. All he needed was enough time to cool off, collect himself, and wait for the GenCops to lose interest as they always did.

The first house he came to had a six-foot-high granite-brick fence encompassing the back yard and, conveniently enough, a surplus of ivy draping over the top. All right, so it wasn't a basement, but it would do just as well. It took three quick strides and he was able to push off the wall, vault up, grab a handful of ivy, and hoist himself up on top of the wall - the bricks were old, well-made, and a good twelve inches thick. Still confident that the GenCops were behind him, he held his position until he could see the starlight glinting off their armored masks as they approached the back of the house. If he stayed still, they weren't likely to see him, due to the large tree inside the fence whose overhanging branches obscured exactly where the fence topped off. Waiting until they were within ten feet of him, the Graverobber shifted his weight and dropped over the back of the wall into the fenced yard.

He hissed in surprise as he dropped straight down onto a rusty wrought-iron outdoor table, shattering the glass on impact. Thankfully, his jacket was thick enough that he didn't wind up with any major injuries, but getting all that glass out of his hair was going to be... murder. Climbing out of the wreckage of the table, he shook his head, flinging glass everywhere, and started looking around for a basement or a storm cellar or anything like that. Frowning, he noticed that the back doors and windows all seemed to be boarded up from the inside. He located a set of double doors beside the garden hose, but it was triple-chained shut and there wasn't a lock in sight. Apparently someone had taken the good time and trouble to weld at least one of the links shut so that, in order to get the door open, the chain would have to be cut away. Well that was irritating, and he gave the lockless chain a good kick out of frustration.

Ambling back over to the boarded-up doors and windows, the Graverobber tripped over one of the rusty wrought-iron chairs that went with the broken table - the chair was in a similar state, the iron so rusted that it had contorted into a shape barely resembling furniture. Swearing under his breath, he kicked the twisted metal thing out of his way, no longer caring that he was creating a racket. There was no one in this house, and this neighborhood was mostly empty, so there wasn't anyone around who might alert the authorities. He glared at the door and gave it a good, solid kick, figuring that even if it was boarded up from the inside, the hinges might be in the same state as the rest of the metal around here seemed to be and thus should give way. The only result he got was a heavy thump and the door refusing to budge. He wasn't crazy enough not to figure that he'd get the same result from the windows, with the added bonus of more broken glass.

The balcony above him did not have a staircase, as some of these old houses' did, and the only way he could see to get up there and check was via the tree he had been using for cover on his way in. Call him insane, but he didn't fancy hopping back up on that wall with his hand bummed and no way of knowing if the GenCops could see or hear him. However, with the noise he had been making, if they had heard him, then they were on their way. It seemed his best bet was up the tree and onto the balcony, because really, who bothered locking their balcony doors? Quite sure of himself now, he seized a decent-sized branch and started hauling himself up the tree. Cursing under his breath, he set his boot against another branch and pushed up. The balcony wasn't really that high up, so it shouldn't be hard for him to get to. Four more branches, one of which snapped in his hand, and the Graverobber, annoyed and filthy, found himself reaching up to the rickety-looking balcony railing.

Just as the last branch gave out under his foot, he closed his hand around the rail and, after flailing a bit, swung himself rather awkwardly up, using the balcony of the dilapidated old house. He landed with a muffled thud on the badly-reinforced hardwood deck and straightened up to take a look around - two GenCops were busy blasting out the basement door of a house across the cracked street. A snide smile twisted his lips as he watched three more of them tromping across said street to hassle the house directly beside 'his'. They kicked the door down and, while one stood guard, the other ducked into the house to have a look around. The Graverobber figured he could probably sit down on the balcony and wait it out and was just getting himself comfortable on a stronger-looking bit of the railing, where he had a good vantage point. However, since it seemed that Lady Fate had chosen tonight to have a squat on his head, the GenCop standing guard at the door chose that precise moment to shine his flashlight up at the balcony.

"Damn it all!" the Graverobber cursed loudly as he halfway toppled off the railing, thank hell on the correct side. "Not my fucking night now, is it..."

Motion caught his eye and he tilted his head as the door to the balcony swung open with a sudden gust of wind and the opening door revealed a bedroom.

"Or is it..." he half-growled as he smiled to himself and silently bowed himself into the room.

Of all places he had wound up in over the years, this was one of the most forlorn he had ever seen. It obviously belonged to a female, due to the abundance of plush animals and the more-than-a-few female undergarments littering the floor. The owner of the room did not seem to give much thought to order or tidiness, as evidenced by the piles of clothing and very small visible bits of hardwood flooring. A calico cat glared at him from a pile of socks in the seat of a large, squashy armchair. He quirked an eyebrow at it and it hissed back before hoisting one hind leg and licking its behind, very deliberately ignoring the strange human invading its space. The Graverobber didn't bother rolling his eyes at the cat, just silently continued perusing the room - his eyes fell on a writing desk dotted with slightly dirty china dishes of one kind and another, indicating that the occupant of this room normally ate there. A stuffed raven decorated the top right corner of the writing desk. He had to wonder now... With all this oh-so-female mess lying about, where was the female responsible for the mess?

Off to his left, he heard a thumping noise and he froze where he was - not that he was particularly concerned about getting caught at this point, but causing less of a scene would probably be beneficial to all involved. Silently turning his head to the direction of the sound, he watched a door close to the back left corner of the room slowly get pushed open. Stumping clumsily out of the bathroom, scratching her head with one hand, was a creature just as forlorn and messy as the room she lived in. Her wavy brown hair fell in untamed snarls to the middle of her back and her nose looked like it may have been broken when she was very young. From the way she was squinting, she probably wore glasses normally, and she was missing an earring from one ear. The white nightgown she wore, while not too long, flatteringly calf-length, hung loosely from her shoulders. He couldn't call her extraordinarily pretty, but she had a decent shape to her, petite but curvy in most of the right places. Grinning, he looked again and found it helped that the neckline of her too-loose nightgown barely covered her female charms and the cold breeze which had blown the door open did wonders for said charms.

The girl rubbed her eyes sleepily, grinding her fist into her eye as she yawned, and the Graverobber, watching her closely, figured the bathroom light had momentarily blinded her. He followed the path she had taken through the swamp of clothing on her floor and his eyes fell on her nightstand; indeed, there were a pair of black thick-framed glasses with rhinestones around the edges. She grunted a raspy "shit" as she tripped over a calf-length black boot and stomped over to her bed, where she yanked her covers back from the million pillows at the head of her bed. A worn brown teddy bear fell from the tangle of blankets and the girl displayed surprising grace and flexibility as she bent to pick it up at the same time that she was crawling into bed. Her silent observer's eyebrows raised appreciatively when a convenient moon beam across her backside revealed exactly what she was wearing under her nightgown. She grumbled incoherently to herself - "stupid" being the only word clearly audible, followed by a cough - and held her bear close and didn't bother to pull her blankets up all the way.

It was a funny thing really - from the moment the Graverobber had set foot in the room, there had been something tickling his nose and he had been stifling a certain respiratory urge. At first, he figured that it was probably nothing more than the dust and stale air in the rickety old house - enough to give a body claustrophobia, the air being so thick in there. Or maybe it was the awful smell that he realized was coming from his yuck-soaked clothing. When he got a look at the cat in the sock-piled chair, he got the sneaking suspicion that maybe the something was furry. Regardless of what it was or could have been, he found it harder and harder to ignore the persistent tickling inside his nostrils and, unable to raise a hand to swipe at it, he could only stand and twitch his nose. The urge persisted - he fought it... Oh how he fought it! The girl had just settled down, giving a chesty cough in her sleep as...

"--choo!" he half-stifled the sneeze, but the spastic arm movements that accompanied the stifling tipped him just off-balance enough that he stepped to the side and tripped over a pair of shoes, landing with a slightly-muffled CRASH in a heap of skirts, bras, and panties. The cat shot out of the chair and skittered into the closet. "Shit..."

As the Graverobber tried to right himself and get the hell out of sight, the girl sat up in bed, her arm still around her bear, and groped for her glasses with her free hand. She looked alarmed, which was to be expected, and pissed off at the same time. As she found her glasses and slid them awkwardly, one-handed, onto her face, peering suspiciously around her room, hiding wasn't an option. Instead, the Graverobber figured now might be a pretty good time to step out of the shadows. Slowly, expressing his natural flair for the dramatic, he climbed to his feet and stood at his full height, conscious of the fact that he had just completely silhouetted himself in the moonlight. The girl fell into shadow, but he could see her face. Now this, he had not expected - she was sitting up in bed, arm still around her bear, the other folded over her chest, and glaring at him.

"Who are you? Why are you in my room!?" she demanded, tightening her arms over her chest, seemingly not realizing that this only served to push her... girls... up and almost out of the top of her nightgown. "You get out of here!"

"Oh really, dear?" he drawled back at her, leaning casually on the door frame, still silhouetted enough that she couldn't see exact features, but could partially see his face.

He watched the girl's eyes cast furtively around her room, telegraphing plainly that she couldn't find anything close to hand that even remotely resembled a weapon. Turning towards her, deliberately slow in his movements, he let her watch the moon highlight the sinister smile quirking his dark lips at the corners and chuckled darkly as her eyes widened. The annoyance on her face faltered, then she glared at him, trying to pull it back up.

"Cute," he intoned in the deepest speaking voice he possessed, making what would normally be complimentary or even borderline seductive sound downright dangerous, almost evil. "Very cute."

The girl scooted back a bit on her bed, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the strange man in her room.

"I know who you are!" she told him, as though this might sound threatening to him - he only cocked his head, waiting for some follow-up on that.

He took a step towards her, out of the moon beam behind him and into the dark of her room.

"You do, now? And who might I be?" he kept his tone playful, a step up from the dangerous/evil combination, but not by much.

The girl squared her shoulders and pointed a finger towards the open door.

"I've seen your pictures out and about, when I used to go out," she announced, pointing that imperious, though shaking, finger at the door, her other arm still clamped firmly around her bear. "Now you get out."

Graverobber laughed a bit at that - this girl sure was a funny one, thinking she could just get rid of him like that.

"Pictures? What pictures?" he asked her, feigning innocence as he took two more steps towards her - he knew as well as everyone else on the street that his pictures were on "wanted" posters all over the place for his Zydrate escapades.

She squeezed her eyes shut in frustration and opened her mouth, apparently about to tell him off.

"I--- hnk!" was all she got out as her voice caught in her throat and she started to cough like crazy. It sounded wet and disgusting, like a cat being sick, and it seemed to come out of the bottom of her chest. Whatever else she had been about to yell at him came out as "Cough, hack, sputter, half-retch, cough cough, hack!"

Graverobber, now a mere five steps from her bed, tilted his head at her, partially out of curiosity and, in a small part, genuinely concerned. People nowadays just did not do things like this. As tired and broken-down as most of the houses in this neighborhood were, they had to be expensive as all hell and anyone who had the money to live here had to have the money for elective surgery easily. GeneCo's organs were made pretty much indestructible - short of another organ failure, you weren't getting sick anytime soon if you had one. But the girl seemed to recover fairly quickly, her chest still rising and falling erratically as she worked up the chutzpah to try and yell at him again. Sniffling defiantly, she continued pointing her finger at the door.

"Didn't quite catch that," the Graverobber said dryly. "Could you try that again?"

The girl glared at him, swiping the cough-induced tears off her face with the hand she had been using to point at the open door, and gathered herself to try again.

"You're the one they call the Graverobber," she accused, tilting her head at him like a cat.

His eyebrows shot up as though he had only discovered this fact himself.

"Why yes. Yes I am!" he confirmed, easily gliding over to her bedside and grinning as he watched the girl scoot away from him. "Does that... bother you? A job's a job you know."

She opened her mouth to protest his closeness, shut it quickly, and scrunched her nose up.

"You smell awful!" she declared, yanking a fleecy yellow blanket up over her nose and mouth. "That's the only bit that bothers me, really."

That was it? Graverobber quirked an eyebrow at her. She stared back, her bespectacled hazel-green eyes still flashing in irritation at him.

"All part of the job, y'know," he told her. "You try it sometime and see if you don't get used to the smell."

His only answer was a racking cough and she let go of her bear as she scrambled for the opposite edge of her bed, spitting a great, horribly wet-sounding wad of phlegm into a wastebasket that he could only guess was kept for that precise purpose. As she straightened up, she scooted over as close to that edge of the bed as she possibly could, until he thought she might overbalance and fall off. The girl wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and reached for the canary-yellow hand towel that sat beside her pillow. To her surprise, it wasn't beside her pillow, like she had expected - the man known as Graverobber, one glove off, had the little towel in his hand, holding it out to her and giving her a rather odd look.

"Thanks..." she mumbled, looking away as she took the towel and roughly wiped the ick off her hand. Surprising him in return, she looked up at him, her face almost plaintive. "I hate this stupid cough. Goes on night and day."

He grinned at her again and pulled a little glass vial from the inside of his jacket.

"So tell me, have you considered surgery?" he asked casually, as though it were nothing at all. Still smiling, he tossed the little glass vial from hand to hand carefully, then stretched out his arm to dangle it in front of her nose. "I can help you with that. Y'see, the little glass vial goes into the gun like---"

"Yes, I've heard how the damn blue voodoo goes into the gun like a battery," she cut him off, her bear back under her arm. Glaring at him, she snatched the vial from his hand. "And I want no such thing against any part of my anatomy."

At first slightly poleaxed, the Graverobber had to laugh out loud at that.

"'Blue voodoo'? That's priceless! Never heard that before!" he stopped laughing and took her hand as he gave her the most penetrating look he could muster. "I like it. So the blue voodoo doesn't interest you?"

The girl's face went red, she snatched her hand back, and sat up a bit straighter.

"You be quiet!" she snapped, then she rolled her eyes. "Ugh, you're so annoying. And the only reason that I'm letting you stay is that I can't turn you over to the GenCops!"

"I thought not," he replied. He looked around the room at the mess, apparently contemplative. "So, miss, if I can ask, are you here alone?"

She nodded and looked away.

"Yeah, nobody else is ever home," she said sullenly. "Mom and Dad don't really come here anymore. We don't get along."

Whatever the Graverobber might have said wound up cut off by a loud BANG from outside - apparently one of the houses had been left uncared-for longer than the others and the floor had given out under the GenCops.

"Well that should slow them down!" the girl giggled, suddenly mischievous - it was pretty clear she was eager to leave her bad mood behind. "Still, nothing stops them completely, so you're welcome to stay the night."

His eyes lit up and he grinned almost sadistically at her; and he was met with a stare that, coming from a person of sterner stuff, could have leveled Rotti Largo himself - this little girl was coming close to freezing water in July as she was, and she didn't exactly cut the most imposing figure.

"There is a guest room down the hall to the right and it's open..." she told him stiffly. "The bathroom still works, so you should consider taking a shower."

Well damn! This girl had some spirit to her! The way she practically spat the word "consider" at him... It intrigued him - he certainly wasn't a man used to doing what people told him, or for that matter, having people tell him to do things or not. Giving her a mock salute, he ambled out of the room, laughing under his breath. When he heard a shuffling sound behind him, he stopped in the doorway and turned about, leaning on the frame. From there he watched the girl climb down from her bed, still surprisingly agile - he supposed it was from practice. He waited until she knew he was looking at her, then proceeded to study her shamelessly. She blushed and tried to cover her chest with her arms - it didn't help much.

"What are you looking at!?" she practically shrieked at him, stifling another onset of the coughing by pressing her hands over her mouth.

Graverobber smiled as slowly as he possibly could, continuing to look her up and down as if he hadn't heard her protests.

"My dear, for being so cold, could it be that you were considering joining me in said shower?" he inquired, drawing out the word "consider" and looking down his nose at her. "I'm not saying I would mind but---"

"No!" she yelled, and he almost didn't see the high-heeled black velvet shoe she launched at his head.

For having a good arm, she couldn't aim to save her life and the shoe flew wide to the left; Graverobber watched it sail by and laughed again, giving her a patronizing look.

"Then may I ask what a good little girl is doing out of bed at this hour?" he asked solicitously, tilting his head at her.

Before he could follow that up with any other smart-ass remarks, the girl cut him off with "I'm going downstairs for some food, and don't call me little girl again" and hustled past him, sniffing indignantly. Graverobber thought of following and harassing her a bit more, but caught a whiff of the stench radiating off his clothes and figured that shower might do him a world of good. Plus, there was probably only so much the girl would take before she got angry enough to actually throw him out. He laughed to himself again as he strode off down the hall to the open guest room and watched the girl stomp down the stairs - it certainly was fun to annoy the living hell out of her though; she just made it so enjoyable!

As the girl's stomping footsteps faded away, the Graverobber found the bathroom that she had said to be in working order. Raising an eyebrow, he wondered if she had been in here lately. It was technically clean, but the sort of oxymoronic dusty-clean that suggested it hadn't been touched or even looked at in quite some time. A layer of dust coated every available surface and a large mouse sat on the sink's edge, munching on a peanut and glaring at him for interrupting the rodent-y lunch hour. This mouse had to be quite used to humans, because even the Graverobber standing there and telling it firmly to "shoo" would not make it budge. Rolling his eyes, he put a hand on the doorknob of what seemed to be a very large linen closet, where he could only hope the towels were - he half expected the knob to come off in his grip and would not have been at all surprised to find more rodents living in the actual linens.

When the door came open with no trouble at all and he saw only one mouse sitting on the shelf, the Graverobber took hold of a towel and smiled at Lady Fate as he discovered it was not cloth Swiss cheese. One corner seemed to have been gnawed upon, but if he never counted his blessings before, now seemed like a hell of a time to start. With a towel in hand, he decided to try and tackle the shower - there was only one chipped black porcelain knob and it didn't seem to be labeled for either 'hot' or 'cold'. Temperature seemed to be up to experimentation, so he took hold of the knob and gave it a good, hard turn to the left - and absolutely nothing happened. A twist to the right yielded the same result and he gave it a tug in frustration. This caused water to explode from the faucet, not the shower head, and said water was brown.

"You know, I seriously think this is just not my night," he said sarcastically to no one - the mouse squeaked at him and skittered away from the sink. "And I'm being talked to by rodents. Never had that before."

All right, so it seemed that pulling the knob made the water turn on, but how to get it to come out of the shower head was the first question - then he could worry about the temperature and turning it a color other than brown. Frowning, he looked down at the faucet and found a little steering-wheel-shaped attachment on top of it - he had seen things like this before, so he pulled it and, sure enough, water started coming out of the shower head. Yes, water coming from the shower head was a good thing - but now it was red. He blinked and decided to wait and see if it would go away - after about a minute and a half, it started clearing up.

Figuring now was a safe time to test the temperature, he pulled the glove off his left hand, hissing as he did so - yeah, that was probably a fracture and he needed to get it wrapped - and stuck his hand in the falling water. He hissed again and pulled his hand back as quickly as he could - the water was cold as ice! He wasn't a religious man by any means, but someone up there really hated him tonight... By process of elimination, he should be able to figure out which way to twist the big knob to get the water to turn hot or cold. Tilting his head, he saw that one particular chip was pointed all the way to the left, so he twisted the knob so that the chip was pointed to the right. Immediately, steam rose out of the shower and he smiled. He was so happy he could practically sing as he shed his clothing, not particularly caring, at this point, where it landed, and stepped into the shower.

"FUCK!" he yelled as the water turned ice-cold the second it touched him. He stepped out of the stream and fiddled with the knob again - steam rose off the water again and he stood under it, squeezing his eyes shut and daring the cosmos to fuck with him again. Swiping water out of his eyes, he glared at the ubiquitous black knob and muttered "Damn straight..."

With the water under control, he took a washcloth from the nice little twisted-metal basket sitting on the back of the commode and rinsed it clean of the years of dust settled on the top fold. Selecting one of the soaps from the basket next to that, he lathered up and started scrubbing the night's ick from his skin. It wasn't that the smell of it particularly bothered him anymore - he had long since gotten used to it - but it was nice to get it off. The water was still flying steadily at him from the shower head, still hot and the pressure pretty constant. His hair hung soggily down his back, bits of broken glass from the table still tangled in the mass. That would have to wait until he could get his gloves back on unless he wanted to deal with a hell of a bloody mess.

*****

Downstairs, the girl shuffled around the kitchen, wondering what on earth she wanted to eat tonight. It wasn't that she was really all that hungry, but eating at night sometimes helped her get to sleep. Tea would be nice too, she thought, hunting through cabinets for the automatic kettle and her favorite peach blend. She could reach the tea easily enough once she got her vision focused enough to actually look for it - she noted that she certainly was a space-case tonight. The kettle was at the very top of the cabinet, and only being somewhere in the neighborhood of five-feet-two-inches tall, the girl swore under her breath and rolled her eyes as she dragged over a kitchen chair. She climbed on top of the chair, seized hold of the kettle, almost got her hand tangled in the cord, cursed again, and hopped down. Before she thought about filling the kettle and actually setting up to do something useful, her mind took off into space again.

As if this already wasn't one hell of an interesting night - she had the Graverobber upstairs in her guest shower and the GenCops, out looking for him, bashing in the doors of every other house in her neighborhood. Her heart stopped briefly in her chest and, instead of coughing, she wheezed for a moment as the thought crossed her mind - would they come here? Oh hell! What would happen to her if they found him here and figured out that she'd helped him!? A thump echoed around the downstairs of her house and she covered her frightened shriek with a self-induced coughing fit.

As she wheeled around to find the source of the noise, she saw two green eyes glinting back at her from almost at her eye level and all of a sudden, felt incredibly stupid. Her cat had come traipsing down the stairs shortly after her arrival in the kitchen, and had jumped up on the kitchen table to watch her and meow when she wanted attention. About two minutes passed with cat and human just looking at each other and the cat had not stopped meowing since, so she glided rather absently across the room to pet the squalling creature. The cat hissed for apparently no reason at all, bopped her hand with a lightning-quick paw, jumped down with another solid thud, and scooted under the kitchen table. "Cats are weird," the girl said out loud, laughing as the cat meowed menacingly back at her. She coughed harshly, spat the phlegm into the kitchen sink, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand as she turned the sink on to rinse the disgusting blob down the drain.

As soon as she turned the water off, then turned it back on again to start filling the automatic kettle, she heard the most awful sound she had heard quite some time, like a combination of a scream, a roar, and a howl. A clattering noise, a wet splat, and a barrage of muffled swear words, most of them sounding like "FUCK!", sounded off from the general direction of the upstairs guest room. In a house as old as this one, unusual sounds - bangs, crashes, things falling over for no good reason - were pretty much par for the course, something to ignore. She had stopped investigating the sounds when she was seven years old and if it didn't bother the cat, it wasn't worth worrying about. Said cat bounced up from under the kitchen table and into a chair, then up onto the nearest counter, sending the chair rolling across the room. The girl laughed at the feline's antics, watching the cat tilt her head up in the direction of the upstairs guest bathroom.

"Should I go see about that?" she asked the cat, scratching behind one splotchy orange ear.

Apparently the cat gave an affirmative response, because, leaving the water running and the half-filled kettle sitting, dripping wet, on the counter by the sink, the girl headed upstairs. The portly calico cat padded around her ankles, hampering her progress up the hardwood stairs and more than once - "Dammit, you stinkin' ol' cat!" - almost caused her to fall on her ass. Another yell went off in the guest room and she raised an eyebrow - what the hell was going on in there? She ran up the rest of the stairs, tripped over the last step, fell to her knees and, coughing her brains out, pushed herself up and dashed down the hallway towards the guest bedroom.

Bang! Bang! Bang! She pounded on the door with her fist, glaring at the immovable slab of wood.

"Is something -hack- wrong in there?" she yelled at the closed door, her throat nearly failing her mid-sentence. "I heard some commotion!"

"I thought you said this shower worked!" a grumpy voice shouted back.

The girl wrinkled her nose - surely the shower had to be working!

"But I can hear the water running!" she hollered in protest, gesturing uselessly at the door.

"It's COLD!" roared the voice on the other side.

Another surge of irritation flooded the girl's veins and she counted to three before kicking the door as if it had caused the problem in the first place - after calming down and thinking things through, she figured out what was wrong.

"Oh! Yeah, our plumbing's kind of crazy," she told him, still raising her voice so he could hear her through the door. "At least it wasn't a toilet flushing - it would have gone super-hot before it got cold."

Silence answered her and she kicked the door again, this time wishing she could kick that infuriating man in the shins, before turning on her heel and stomping back down the stairs. On her way, she stopped in the downstairs bathroom and flushed the toilet twice for good measure, taking a rather sadistic pleasure in the muffled curses and shouts coming from the guest bath. More of the same followed when she turned the kitchen sink off after finishing filling the automatic kettle and getting that plugged in. She sang lightly to her favorite song by Blind Mag, her cough having subsided for a bit, and danced around the kitchen as she waited for the kettle to start boiling. The cat hopped back up on the counter, washing her paws and watching her human dance about like a loony. Said human yelped as the kettle whistled loudly and she banged open the cabinet, grabbed a mug - grey earthenware with a red fox glazed on it - and set a tea bag to steeping.

The silverware drawer clattered as she yanked it open, grabbed a spoon, and banged it shut, now completely rocking out to Blind Mag's "Machine" and not caring that she looked utterly ridiculous. With an almost-spilling mug of tea in her left hand and her cat in her right arm, she bounced up the stairs, singing as loudly as her lungs would allow. The cat squalled to be set down, finally taking five sharp claws to the girl's arm, squirming free, and landing with a whump on the floor, rocketing ahead of her human and on into the bedroom. Said human stifled a cough and slammed her bedroom door shut in her "rocking out" craze, continuing to dance madly around her room after setting the steaming mug on her night stand. When a stitch in the side of her chest caused her to cough until she almost threw up, she flung herself down on her bed, pouting.

"Sunshine, this sucks..." she announced to her cat - a muffled mow answered her. "Come up here and sulk with me..."

She patted the pillow closest to her and the overweight calico leapt up onto the bed to sit with her human, with the surprising agility fat cats are known to possess. Animal intuition wasn't medically recognized or anything, but animals knew when their humans were out of sorts, and sometimes there could be no better medicine for any ailment than a warm, furry critter, particularly one that purred. It didn't take away the symptoms or the pain, didn't make her cough any less, but it warmed the girl's heart, even when Sunshine latched onto her fingers and bit them with all her fuzzy little self was worth. She laughed and rumpled the cat's soft, plush-like fur, earning a green-eyed glare and an irritated meow. A wheeze, then a short cough, and she doubled over again - the cat stayed. When she straightened up, the girl pulled the cat into her arms, ignoring the growling and struggling for a moment.

"Oh quit it, you little brat," she muttered, letting the cat go after a second. Sunshine curled up beside her human and purred, letting the girl stroke her behind. "You know your mama doesn't feel good..."

The girl reached for her tea, found the handle of the mug, and sniffed - peach always smelled so good! She took a tentative sip to test the temperature, smiled, and drank deeply. There was nothing like hot tea to take the sandpapery feeling out of her throat, especially after as many coughing fits as she'd had just in the past, oh however-long it had been since the Graverobber had showed up. She shrugged, then cracked her neck noisily. It wasn't like he woke her up or anything - she wouldn't have been able to go back to sleep anyway. Continuing to drink her tea, she found it relaxing to languidly mess with her feline friend, gently ruffling her ears and stroking her whiskers.

"I hate coughing all the time," she told the cat, wondering why she bothered as she watched the cat climb into her lap - it wasn't like cats ever listened.

"Well, are you sure you won't consider... surgery?" It was that voice again. "Hasn't it ever crossed your mind?"

She continued petting Sunshine, who turned on her back so her human mama could rub her belly.

"Doesn't it cross everyone's mind when they're sick?" she shot back, taking another sip of her tea after. The large cat purred lazily, tilting her head back and displaying the fact that she was missing one fang. "It's just not right. Nature dictates how we live... and die."

Continuing to ignore the disturbance, focusing on the feline, the girl sipped her tea noisily, making sure he knew that she was doing everything possible not to pay him any mind.

"Why keep lungs that don't work?" he asked, not caring that he was probably making the girl quite uncomfortable. "Especially when new ones are so easily available?"

The girl shot bolt upright, scaring the cat off her lap.

"What!? Haven't we been over this already!?" she shrieked angrily. "I'm not interested in your Zydra-whatever-it-is! These are the lungs I was born with---"

She whipped around to face him, forgetting to ignore him.

"--- and..." Her face turned brilliantly red. "... these... are the... um..."

The Graverobber smirked at her, taking in her flushed cheeks and listening to her stammer.

"Lungs?" he prompted, as though he were just being helpful.

"Uh, yeah..." she mumbled, forgetting entirely what she had been about to say next. "You're... uh..."

He was stark naked, dripping wet, and leaning on her bedroom door frame, grinning at her from ear to ear - a funny gurgling sound came out of her mouth in lieu of comprehensible speech. That smile twitched as he forced himself not to laugh out loud, but he didn't move - it was just too fun watching her face turn so many different shades of red. Hold on... Was she purple now!? Why yes, yes she was. A bark of laughter escaped his lips - the girl sat motionless on her bed, still gaping at him. Slowly, mechanically, surreptitiously - quite obviously trying to pretend she was not doing what she was doing - she scooted towards the opposite edge of her bed. The Graverobber stopped himself from rolling his eyes - hadn't they been through this once already? Hold on, he thought. Could he possibly...? He took a step towards her and it surprised her enough that she squeaked, jumped clean up in the air, missed the edge of her bed completely, and, thrashing hopelessly like a landed fish, tipped out of sight.

The Graverobber, quite unashamed of himself - indeed, amused by the whole spectacle - pushed himself off the door frame and strode easily over to the girl's bed. Sunshine glared at him and hissed in protest, swishing her furry tail in extreme irritation; clearly, in the absence of Mama, this was now HER bed - it was in the rules. He ignored the pouting feline and slid comfortably onto the bed, stretching out languidly. Disgusted, the cat hopped down off the bed, landing on her human mama's head before plodding deliberately back to her sock-filled armchair. The girl, slightly dazed from her unexpected trip, flailed a couple times and attempted to right herself - after grabbing various things, trying to pull herself up, a sweater fell on her head and now she didn't know which way was up!

"You know, it really shouldn't take you that long just to get up after something like that," the Graverobber said conversationally, looking innocently up at the ceiling.

"Well then help me up, smart-ass," snarled the girl, her voice muffled by the sweater over her head.

Rolling his eyes, the Graverobber leaned over the edge of the bed and took in the sight of what now looked like a giant wriggling blancmange of laundry. He couldn't help laughing, almost to the point of tears as a skinny hand with unnaturally-long fingernails poked out of the mess long enough to flip him an obscene gesture. At least trying not to laugh out loud and piss her off even more, he took hold of the lime-green sweater and lifted it off her head. He had to admit, it was somewhat endearing, seeing her glaring up at him from under her static-y, messed-up hair and cock-eyed glasses. She stretched a hand out and he took it, not stopping when she got to her feet, pulling her to the bed with him. Her eyes shot wide open and she looked up at his face, trying to pull her hand from his and spring back, trying to put a good bit of distance between herself and him.

"What's the matter?" he asked, his voice that same dark, dangerous tone, now almost predatory. "Are you... scared?"

She kept her eyes forcibly trained on his left shoulder and tried hard not to think about how nice his hair looked draped over the pale skin. Something in his hair glinted in the moonlight. Wait, glinted?

"What's that in your hair?" she asked abruptly, pointing at the lock of hair over his shoulder. "It's shiny."

"Glass," he replied easily, obviously still quite amused by their current position.

The girl wrinkled her nose.

"Well I don't want it in my bed," she groused.

She tilted her head and he waited for the inevitable follow-up that was bound to be somewhere along the lines of 'And I didn't invite you into my bed either, so get out!'.

"I can get that for you, if you like," she told him, actually throwing him off-guard - not that he was going to show that for two seconds. "It's bound to be easier for me to see all the pieces."

He smiled at her, this time more relaxed, more genuine - he had been wondering how the hell he was going to get the glass out of his hair without shredding his hands; in fact, there were already a couple of cuts here and there from trying to wash his hair. The girl, determinedly not letting her gaze wander below his shoulders, sat back so that he should straighten up and she could see what she had to work with. First things first, she hopped down from the bed, still very deliberately not looking in his direction - she could hear him laughing under his breath - and headed for the bathroom. There was a clean, dry towel on the towel bar and a wide-tooth comb sitting on the counter, a mouse beside it. She smiled at the mouse and said "excuse me" as she picked up the comb, trying not to disturb him too much - the mouse squeaked appreciatively - then turned and grabbed the towel off the bar and went back to her bedroom.

"Like I said, I don't want broken glass in my bed," she said, shaking the towel at him by way of explanation. Still looking at everything but him, she slid up onto her bed, her legs tucked up under her, and spread the towel out behind him. "Holy hell! What did you do!?"

"Fell through some glass," he said nonchalantly, neglecting to mention that said glass had been her own back yard table. "How much of it is there?"

She ran one hand through his hair, trying to convince herself that it was just to assess what she was working with - okay, so she really just wanted to touch it. Hell, broken glass aside, he had nicer hair than her! She did it again, slower, and told herself that no, he had not just shivered like that - this wasn't a freakin' romance novel or some shit like that! Taking another quick pass-through, she winced and pulled her hand back, yelping - her left index finger was bleeding from a half-centimeter cut.

"Ow! I'd say there's a fair amount that didn't come out in the shower," she told him, sucking on her finger to try and stop the bleeding.

As she reached her hand out to his hair again, he decided not to mention what a bitch move it had been to double-flush the toilet, closing his eyes and smiling as she gathered his hair back, her fingers accidentally(?) brushing over his ear. She picked up the wide-tooth comb and selected a lock, starting to pick at the ends. Another shard found its way to the side of her right hand and she clenched her teeth, but made no sound, just dropped the little piece of glass onto the towel and moved on. Apparently the only way to find the pieces would be to run a hand through his hair and see what bit her. Raising an eyebrow at the thick, dark mass in front of her, she wondered if there was anything in there that was likely to actually bite her. Ignoring the thought, she just continued the methodical production of detangling the still-mostly-soggy mess of hair, some of it dreadlocking naturally. How long had it been since this man had taken a decent shower before tonight? Urgh, she didn't want to know!

"You know, as unusual as the circumstances are, it's nice to have some company other than Sunshine around here," she said, trying to start a conversation. The cat meowed loudly as she heard her name, but went ignored. "Hell, you're a right interesting fella."

"And you say some of the oddest things I've heard - and I hear a lot," he replied, making sure she heard the sinister undertones in 'a lot'. It was true; the Zydrate addicts tended to say some pretty fucked-up shit. "At least your strange things make sense."

The girl giggled, then squeaked as a bigger piece of glass that had been caught between two of his natural dreadlocks stuck into the palm of her left hand - this one wasn't so easy to ignore. It wasn't that she was squeamish about blood or anything, or she'd've passed out at first seeing this guy, but something like a piece of glass sticking out of her skin, yeah. That made her feel faint and she felt herself wavering a little bit - trying to shake it off, she knew the first thing she needed to do was get the damn thing out. Poking it with the index finger of her right hand only served to nudge it a little bit further in and wound her up with a new cut besides. There was no way she'd be able to keep her wits about her long enough to pull on it herself. Shyly, she poked him in the shoulder with her right index fingertip, quickly wiping the small blood spot off his skin.

"Hm?" he asked, tilting his head back trying to look at her backwards.

She couldn't open her mouth to say anything due to the strong urge to throw up that was creeping up the back of her throat, so she just held up her hand, displaying the bloody shard of glass in her palm. Her eyes swam a bit, watery and going slightly crossed; she wasn't going to stay upright much longer - and here he thought she had a stronger stomach than that... Turning slightly, adjusting the nearest blanket to keep himself borderline decent - shocking her right now, while potentially amusing, would not be a good idea - he took hold of her hand with his left, the half-crushed one. It had loosened up a good bit in the shower, so he decided it might not even be a fracture, probably just majorly bruised. The other arm, he slid around her, tilting her back slightly - it was harder to pass out when one was lying down, or at least at an incline.

"This is going to hurt and if you're going to retch, do it that way," he told her, indicating the direction of her wastebasket with his head. "Just take a deep breath and hold it until I tell you to relax."

His deep voice sort of wavered in her ears, but she sucked in the deepest breath she could and tensed up her entire body, trying to count backwards from a hundred. She could feel him fiddling with her hand and decided not to think about it. Ninety-one, ninety, eighty-nine, she counted in her head, squeezing her eyes shut as hard as she possibly could. Colors burst in the darkness of her closed eyes and she thought of the line in Peter Pan about how just before the colors caught on fire, one could see Neverland. She winced as she felt the sudden tug and knew the glass had just been pulled out of her hand, sat bolt upright and leaned over the side of her bed, dry-heaving a couple of times and nearly overbalancing before she felt herself being pulled back. Sniffling hard, she shook her head, straightened herself and looked up at the man holding her.

"Talk about odd things," she grated out, the accompanying laugh turning into a cough. "Graverobber..."

He raised an eyebrow at her - well, that made sense. It couldn't possibly be every day that things like this happened to this girl... or to anyone really, since it wasn't like he was in the habit of breaking and entering. She shifted a bit, trying to sit up straight again.

"Here, let me finish that up," she said suddenly. "I know I didn't get all of it."

Before he could say anything, she was up, out of his grip, behind him again, comb in hand, and going through his hair with tender precision. It was true, she hadn't even been close to getting all the little glass bits out of his hair. One, then three, then four, then another two - the pieces, tiny and not-so-tiny, fell onto the towel, which had now been used to wipe off several bleeding cuts. He couldn't see this, of course, but she could; and it was a very good thing that it was not, in fact, blood that she felt faint over. At first embarrassed by her barely-conscious display and near-performance of digestive pyrotechnics, she managed to tell herself that it wasn't like she was the first person, nor would she be the last, to get a little freaked out by a foreign object lodged in her skin. The minutes passed and, with the exception of the dreads, which she had to go through by hand, the comb now passed more or less easily through his hair.

"You know, I think I got it," she announced, folding up the bits of glass in the towel and looking down at her hands as she did so - they were pretty much uniformly cut up and bleeding. It was funny how much superficial cuts bled. "Let me clean this up."

Her version of 'cleaning up' consisted of taking the folded-up towel and tossing it into the corner closest to her bed, so it would be out of the way, but visible enough that she would remember to do something about it; or that was the plan anyway. The Graverobber heard the "fwsh" sound that was the glass-filled towel landing in the corner and turned to the side again, still using the blanket to keep himself mostly-decent. She really had done him a kindness by getting all that mess out of his hair - he ran a hand through the strands, surprised at how easily it went through, not snarling or catching on his fingers. Smiling, he leaned back into the mass of pillows that hid her headboard from view. He could feel her looking at him - once again, her eyes seemed riveted to his left shoulder and her cheeks had gone bright red again, in contrast to the rest of her face, still pale from the lapse in consciousness.

"You know what you're doing with your hands, I'll give you that," he remarked, grinning as he watched her turn red to the tips of her ears. His gaze wandered down to her hands, which he noticed she was trying to hide. "Here, let me..."

She stared at him in plain confusion for a moment as he took her hands in his, deciding to watch and see what he did - if she didn't like it, she could smack him for it. Then she noticed the contrast in their skin tones - his was pale as the moonlight illuminating him, like he hadn't ever been out in daylight before, and while she was naturally pretty tan, she hadn't seen the sun in quite some time, so by contrast, she had turned an unpleasant yellow color. His hands were large, willowy, and softer than she had expected - she realized that was because of the gloves - and the left one was splotched black and blue. Pulling her gently but firmly towards him, letting her know he would hear no protest, he set her right hand on his left shoulder, and raised her left hand to his own eye level. She had no idea that having someone study her hand could make her so self-conscious...

The first thing he did was close his eyes and press his lips against the still-bleeding puncture wound where the largest bit of glass had gone into her palm, trailing his tongue over the cut edges. Her eyes and mouth opened wide and - she couldn't help herself - she started to pant softly. He smiled against her skin and cracked one eye open, giving her a deliciously wicked look. She was beginning to feel hot around her face and neck and would have begun to fan herself if her other hand hadn't been resting so solidly against his shoulder. Besides, moving right now might make him stop, and she didn't want him to stop. Her own eyes fell half-closed as she watched him trail his lips and tongue over every little cut, every drop of blood. Her chest rose and fell shallowly, erratically, and before she was even all that aware of it, a soft moan escaped her parted lips.

"Oh, don't look so surprised," the Graverobber practically purred at her, reaching a hand out to touch her blushing face. "Contrary to popular belief, I can get it up if the girl's breathing... And you seem to be breathing quite heavily."

To prove his point, he kept his eyes locked on hers as he kissed each of her fingertips in turn and brought that hand to his chest before picking up the other, watching her panting grow stronger. Taking her right hand in both of his, he pressed it to his cheek, not seeming to mind the small blood smears left by the open cuts in her skin. Holding her hand just so, he let his tongue snake out and trace each individual cut - a few of the larger ones, which had been bleeding for some time, had trails leading from them and these were taken care of in the same fashion. The girl simply couldn't tear her eyes away and realized that he'd managed to pull her in so close that if she moved her hand from his chest, she would fall against him - she also realized she might not mind this at all. She tilted her head at him, smiling almost dazedly.

"That feels really good," she confessed lamely, quite sure that she was red right down to her chest by now, and now acutely conscious of how exposed said chest was at present.

He smiled at her, exposing teeth that were a lot whiter than they probably should have been, and she could swear she heard a soft growling noise from deep in his throat. Blood - her blood - still decorated his pale skin and had now collected in the corners of his lips; he licked them slowly, fully aware of how avidly she watched him. Completely forgetting how badly he had irritated her earlier, she leaned in carefully and kissed a spot of blood from his cheek, pulling back quickly, as though she thought he might hurt her for trying. Her only response was, as his left hand held her right, he slid his right hand against her cheek and slowly threaded his fingers into her hair, pulling her close. She closed her eyes, waiting, feeling warm breath on her lips... Surely he was going to kiss her? The touch never came and she opened one eye a slight fraction.

"Expecting something?" he asked, his voice hot, heavy, and teasing her to within an inch of her sanity already - she wondered if she'd ever had any of that to start with. He leaned down, not kissing her but brushing his lips against her ear as he whispered throatily "I won't know what you want until you tell me..."

Still panting softly, she ran one long-fingernailed hand into his hair - he shivered; the nerve endings in his scalp were already in overdrive from before - caught a handful, and pulled... suddenly and almost hard enough to actually hurt. He hissed in surprise and pulled back from her, locking his eyes on hers intensely, his right hand still holding her fast. A quiet growling sound passed his lips - he could truly scare her if he wanted to - and he pulled her body tight against his. He trailed his hand from the back of her head forward over her ear and, as he listened to her suck in her breath, closed it around her throat. The pressure served as more of a warning than anything else and her eyes widened to almost twice their normal size.

The girl's body shivered against his and he tilted his head down at her. With her eyes wide, her lips parted and trembling, and what breath he allowed her quick and erratic, he might almost guess that she... enjoyed it. He smiled, the expression playfully sinister, and, his hand still closed around her throat, brought his lips slowly down on hers. As she arched her entire body against him almost out of reflex, one hand scratching his chest, he could surmise that he had been right. His hand held her where she was and she struggled, but not to get away - that much was obvious from the way she pressed her hips to his. He smiled into the kiss and tightened his grip just a bit, enjoying the way she tilted her head into it.

Gently, he slid his tongue over her lips, the skin soft and giving - until she bit him. He pushed her back, keeping his hand around her throat, the grip more threatening this time, looked down and saw her grinning at him. Her cheeks flushed red, her eyes fell half-closed in seductive amusement, and she giggled. She tilted her head at him, one hand laid gently on his wrist, fingernails subtly biting into his skin. Mild annoyance crossed his mind, but he couldn't help but share the humor - anyway, he had kind of liked it!

"So you bite, dear?" he asked, his grip tightening again for several moments then loosening almost completely.

Looking halfway intimidated, she panted when he eased up.

"Ah! Only a little bit," she shot back, her grip mirroring his as she dug her fingernails into the skin of his wrist once more. She tilted her head at him - a challenge. "Did that hurt or something?"

He laughed quietly at that and, keeping his hand tight on her throat, shifted to pin her under him, careful not to make too much contact between his lower body and hers. Intimidation flashed across her face again and she stared hard up at him, determined to shake it off. Quirking an eyebrow at her, the Graverobber looked down at the girl, silently daring her to challenge him again - he knew she would take it, somehow. Her hand had come back to wrap around his wrist, not trying to break his grip, but telling him that if she felt like it, she would sure as hell try. He smiled again, that same almost-dangerous expression, as he leaned down to her lips again.

This time, he didn't waste a second teasing her - his mouth was on hers, rough and demanding, and she responded with as much force as she could bring up. The hand not around his wrist tangled in his hair, pulling him tighter against her as she moaned out loud. Her body writhed under his - it wasn't as if she had never played around with a guy in her life, but surely she had never felt anything like this! She whimpered as his lips left hers and trailed over her cheek, then slightly down her jaw line, and stopped for a moment to suck on her earlobe. He laughed softly in her ear, grinning as she tilted her head into his touch as much as she could, then, without warning, moved his hand and bit her neck.

"Hey!" she yelped, trying to wriggle out from under him. "What was that for!?"

"Did you enjoy it?" he inquired, swatting her question out of the way with his own. "Or would you prefer..."

The Graverobber trailed off as he leaned down to the side of her neck again, tenderly laying his lips over the place he had just bitten, drawing a tiny whimper from the girl. He followed with his tongue, his touch feather-light, and she moaned out loud for him. With his free hand, he stroked her face lightly, feeling the slight movements as her eyes fluttered and her lips parted a bit. Pulling back from her throat for a moment, he kissed her again, this time softer, more tender, then he returned to deliver a quick nip to the place he had bitten before. The girl moaned deeply, arching her throat up to him as if to say "do that again".

"I figured you'd like that," he told her, his lips so very close to her ear. Then he pulled back so that he could look her in the eye. "You're welcome to bite back if you choose."

With that, he tilted his head back slowly, displaying his pale throat. The girl's eyes widened - she needed no more encouragement. Using the hand she had wound up in his hair, she pulled him down against her, loving the feel of his weight on top of her. Panting hard, she leaned up and pressed her parted lips against the soft skin offered to her. The Graverobber closed his eyes, wondering what in hell she was going to do next. Clearly, she wasn't so innocent as the stuffed animals and white nightgown made her out to be, but just how much did she know to do?

He was pulled from his thoughts as sharp teeth found their way to his earlobe and he couldn't help but hiss in pleasure. The girl moved down, kissing the side of his throat as he had done to her. When she found the small curve where his neck and shoulder met, she bit down - hard. A short, sharp "Ah!" escaped his lips and he wanted to pin her down right then and have his way with her... But he held himself off, sweating lightly out of anticipation. He wasn't disappointed in his need for sensation because, as the girl found a new place to bite - the pulse point at the side of his throat - she raked those nails down his chest. She seemed to get off on his answering moan as well.

"Like that?" she whispered roughly in his ear.

He pulled back from her, his hand returning to her throat and gripping just enough to present a threat.

"Quite... But not as much as you'll like this..." he growled at her, pressing her into the pillows behind her by her throat.

Holding her in place, he eased the white nightgown off one shoulder, then the other, delivering a small bite to the newly-bared skin each time. Slowly, inching the fabric down a little at a time, he kissed down her chest - it hadn't been too covered to start with, but he enjoyed teasing her. A few pulls in the right places had her chest completely exposed, and he could not deny that he liked what he saw. He looked up at her, captured her gaze, and flashed her a confident smile - she raised an eyebrow at him, mentally cursing the cocky bastard, but enjoying the sensations all the same. Then he caught her hands with his free one - flinching a little bit as the black-and-blue places protested - and pinned them over her head.

"Trust me..." he whispered, his warm breath making her skin tingle in the chill of the bedroom - it vaguely occurred to him that the door was still open. "You'll like this."

He spent a moment or two just watching her chest rise and fall in its erratic, panting rhythm - if he read her right, and he was pretty sure he had, she was anticipating just as much as he was. Once he thought about it, it really was lovely to have a live woman who was, number one, coherent and knew what was going on, and two, genuinely wanted him as much as he wanted her. The addicts, nearly dead already, were all well and good, but it felt so much better when there was truly living... friction. And this one, impatiently writhing on her bed under him, was about as alive a body could get. He grinned at her and lowered his lips to her right breast, just touching the skin there and feeling her arch up to him - of course he knew what she wanted, but this could prove one enjoyable game of keep-away.

She growled at him and wriggled very deliberately, trying to pull her wrists from his grip - if she didn't try and take the edge off herself soon, things might get noisy sooner than they expected. But he tightened his hand around both her wrists and kept going at his own leisurely pace. Slowly, he trailed the fingertips of his free hand over her soft skin in an inward spiral, coming so close to the perky little tip, then avoiding it entirely. It certainly wasn't like he didn't get any on a regular basis, but it had certainly been a while since he had last had an encounter with a girl of these proportions. He wasn't about to say he'd ever had an experience quite like this one before. She whimpered when he pulled away and writhed when he turned his attention on her left breast.

"Dammit! Don't tease me!" she whined, her back arched as tight as a drawn bow as she tried again to yank her hands free.

He ignored this, tightened his grip again, then continued tracing the skin of her ample chest, now deliberately taking his sweet time. The girl swore under her breath - he couldn't quite make it out - and pouted at him. Graverobber looked up at her, his expression considering, then he reached his free hand up to her face. She tilted her head at him and blinked in confusion as she figured out what he was reaching for - her glasses. "Hey!" she protested, but it was no good - he removed them one-handed, folded them, and set them over on the nightstand. One eyebrow raised, she tried very hard to glare at him, the expression losing much of its oomph in her squinted-almost-shut eyes. She could still see him quite clearly, but she squinted because everything else in the room beyond him had become a shadowy blur.

"Meep!" she squeaked as his lips found the tip of her left breast and he sucked gently - she felt his laughter against her skin and she had to admit, however grudgingly, that the sound had been amusing. Her thoughts were soon taken from her as his free hand caressed the little tip's twin and her eyes fell closed as she bit her lip to keep quiet.

"Now stop that," he commanded softly, pausing for a moment to lean up and touch her cheek - she seemed to really like that soft and tender stuff. "I like the sounds you make. They're... interesting."

The girl decided she didn't want to know what he meant by interesting, figuring he was probably trying to get a rise out of her again, but released the soft skin from the grip of her teeth anyway. Smiling again, Graverobber continued, flicking his tongue over the sensitive skin and enjoying the reactions he garnered. Every little twitch, each muffled sound, the continued struggling of her trying to free her hands - it all reminded him how much he loved being with a live one. Carefully, watching her face to gauge her reaction, he slid his hips against hers. Even with her nightgown in the way, she instinctively arched up to him, unashamedly moaning out loud.

"Eager?" he teased, biting down without waiting for an answer, just enough to make her cry out, but not enough to really hurt. He knew well the difference between 'good pain' and 'bad pain' and was confident in his practice of both. The girl squirmed, whining at being kept in suspense and he grinned up at her. "I know..."

His touches changed - quite suddenly, his hand gripped her right breast almost roughly and his body weight pressed down on her, dominant and almost-threatening again. The girl's eyes shot wide open in surprise and he detected a hint of fear behind those eyes. Good, he thought, his grip on her wrists so tight that she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he could break them both, even with a bad hand, if he wanted to. She felt his lower body, hot and throbbingly hard, pressed intimately against her. This man could very easily hurt her, even kill her, but now she found herself more aroused than ever, shifting her hips under his. A violent gleam in his eyes said he wasn't going to wait much longer.

"Graverobber?" she asked quietly, her voice hushed with arousal.

He stared down at her, pressing more of his weight on her wrists - she wasn't going anywhere whether she wanted to or not. The wild look in her eyes told him that she would have stayed put even if he were to completely let go of her. She wanted this as badly as he did. So, just to test that little theory, he let go of her hands and shifted his weight so that he was holding himself up on his good hand. Given his display of near-violence just seconds before, she wondered where he might be going with this. She kept her hands where they were, for the moment at least, and regarded him with open curiosity as he watched her right back, totally still. When she was pretty sure he was waiting on her to make a move, she reached up to him with both hands at once, her left scratching down his chest while the right wrapped around him to grip the back of his shoulder. He growled low in his throat, pleased with how her abnormally-long fingernails nearly punctured his skin.

"You realize there's no going back from here, right?" his voice was half-tender, half-threatening - a combination probably only he could pull off.

She looked at him like he was nothing short of a moron.

"Please... I haven't been blonde since I was thirteen," she scoffed, squirming wantonly under him. Tilting her head, she looked him square in the eyes. "Fuck me."

He paused for a moment, watched her face, then started to laugh out loud at that - she took in a hard breath, then smacked him.

"Ow!" he squawked through his laughter. "You thought I was going to let you off like that!?"

Her eye twitched momentarily and she raked the fingernails of her left hand down his chest hard enough that a few little droplets of blood welled up in each scratch.

"Well if I don't get off soon..." she trailed off challengingly.

"Oh, you will," he promised, his voice as dark as it had been the first time he spoke to her.

In a flash, the violent streak was back and he tore the front of her nightgown open, ripping several of the neat, white buttons clean off and leaving her completely nude under him. The girl protested angrily - "You bastard! I love this nightgown!" - and looked around frantically to see where the buttons had flown. Her cursing went ignored as he leaned down and bit her neck roughly, causing her to cry out in a disturbing mix of pleasure and pain. His member pressed clean against her bare skin - she had been shaving that since she was sixteen, out of comfort's sake - and she shivered. None-too-gently, the Graverobber kissed, licked, caressed, and bit his way down her body. She stifled what would have been a very inconvenient cough as his hands trailed along her sides.

Up until now, she had been at least trying to keep her knees pressed together, unsure of how far he would try to push things with her and unsure of how far she wanted to let him go. Now, she had the city's most notorious Zydrate dealer kissing from the point of her left hip down to her softest skin. When he paused to slide a hand between her thighs, she let him without protest. He looked up at her, gentle once more - for the moment - then ran his left hand slowly into the crease where her inner thigh met her lower body. She had never had someone do that before, gave a shuddering moan, and her eyes widened as she realized what he was about to do - make good on his promise.

In his profession, reading people was an essential life skill, so it didn't take much for the Graverobber to figure out that this girl had never had someone take the time to completely explore her. He had the time and she was willing, so there was, to his mind, no reason in the world not to. This time, his tongue trailed over the path his hand had taken, drawing a strangled-sounding cry from the girl's parted lips. He smiled at his ability to draw such a reaction from the girl without once touching her directly between her legs. His right hand slid from her left hip to caress her behind before coming up to repeat what his left had done in the crease of her inner thigh. She writhed, trying to close her legs and stop what he was doing to her - it was too much, she thought, half-panicking - but he held her down, still completely open to him.

Smiling to himself, the Graverobber leaned down again and delicately traced her most sensitive bit with his tongue, proud of the unbridled shriek this caused. "Good girl," he whispered, also priding himself on how his very breath against her softest skin caused her to writhe. He followed this with a soft caress from his finger - she whimpered, wanting more and trying to push her hips towards him to get it. Indeed, he had promised she would get off and, judging from the abundance of glistening wetness betwixt her thighs, it wouldn't really take that much. Speaking of which, he decided now would be a good time to simply run his tongue up the length of her slit and listen as she let out a hoarse scream. A soft cough followed, but she arched up to feel that again.

"Scream for me again," he told her, his lips barely an inch from where she wanted them.

Pausing only scant seconds, he started in on her and, until she screamed again, he certainly wasn't planning on stopping. His tongue circled her clit again, occasionally slipping down to taste her entrance. His eyebrows knitted together as he realized she was... spicy, in the best way possible. He had been expecting a bit of sweetness from her, but the spice, he decided, fit her personality much better allover. She cried out, shuddering uncontrollably, as he slid his tongue inside her, then licked from there back up to her clit - the edge was just out of her reach. As he kissed, licked, and sucked on her wildly sensitive skin, he brought his right hand up and let his first two fingers get slick from caressing her.

Her body shook under his hands, one on her thigh and one between them both, but he knew it was great fun for them both that he continued to keep that climax from her. The longer he did, the more she would appreciate it when he let her have it. He stopped what he was doing, licking the taste of her from his lips and kissing her inner thighs - she groaned, asking him almost without coherent words why he stopped. Ignoring her protests as he had done for most of the night, he instead bit her, just on the tendon he felt tensing up as she tried to push her hips back to him. She shrieked and her entire body twitched out of her control for a second, a small orgasm.

"Damn it all..." she panted, her chest almost heaving with the effort and her voice thick with lust. "Let me come."

He propped up on his right elbow and gave her a measuring look.

"Let you come?" he asked innocently, as if he hadn't been keeping it from her for longer than she could stand. He paused for a few moments and let her stare daggers at him - then his face darkened. "Oh no, dear... I'm going to make you."

With a positively evil smile, he let that sink in and watched her eyes widen. He kept her eyes locked with his as he reached his left hand up to fondle her right breast, pinching the tip playfully and listening to her moan. She whimpered, begging him with those big green eyes to let her off the edge. This was so much more fun than playing with the Zydrate addicts in the street... Without warning, he slid those two slick fingers inside her - he knew a woman's body well and where to touch for the best reactions - and fluttered his tongue over her clit. The girl let out a loud, wavering "OH!" and her body automatically clenched down on his fingers. Oh hell, he thought - if she was that tight around his fingers... It just figured she'd still be a virgin, even with everything else she had probably done. And even if she wasn't technically... Damn!

"Damn, you're tight," he growled against her skin, working his fingers inside her just so and finally hearing her scream for him.

Watching her orgasm was something indeed - for all the inhibitions she seemed to have earlier, she certainly didn't have them now. Her head tossed back and forth in total abandon, as one hand clenched and unclenched sporadically in the blankets surrounding her - the other found his free hand, squeezing with all she was worth. He squinched his eyes shut for a moment and pulled back to grit his teeth, not stopping the motion of his other hand inside her. Of all things, she had managed to latch onto his bad hand. He waited for her to ease up a bit, broke her grip easily without harming her, and pinned her wrist down on the bed. The feeling of restraint seemed to urge her on and she ground her hips against the hand he worked inside her, still clamping down.

As sudden and violent as it was, her climax didn't last all that long - in her head, it seemed like an eternity, but after just a few minutes, the Graverobber found himself watching her relax. Her body still twitched erratically and she couldn't seem to stop panting - maybe that was just her lungs again. Her closed eyes weren't clenched anymore though, and her head lay mostly still on her pillow. The Graverobber eased his fingers out of her and immediately licked them clean - he had always been a fan of spicy things. Shifting a bit, he moved to lay next to her - he wanted to see her face when she came out of this one, since it seemed to have knocked her for such a major loop. She had caught her lip sometime, probably during her orgasm, and bitten it roughly - blood trailed from the bite. As he licked the red trail off her face, he traced her breast gently, trying to force his own arousal to wait - difficult since he was not, by nature, a patient man. It also didn't help that he had been completely aroused and had not once touched himself, that being part of the reason he wouldn't let her touch herself either.

"Hnnph?" The girl made a noise, apparently coming back into her good senses. Her green eyes fluttered open and she blinked fully a few times to try and straighten her vision out. Seemingly with a good bit of difficulty, she sat up and watched the Graverobber watching her as he lay back, one hand behind his head on the pillow. He grinned up at her, the picture of a cocky bastard once again - somehow, she couldn't make herself be irritated at him this time. Her hand shook as she reached out to push his hair back, not that it had really been in his face to begin with. As he wrapped one arm around her, she leaned down and kissed him hard, tasting herself off his lips.

"That good?" he asked as she pulled back, tilting his head at her - he wasn't at all surprised when she smacked him lightly on the shoulder. "Well I did promise... Ready to go again?"

"Wh-what!?" she sputtered, her eyes wide and almost genuinely frightened. "You mean... again!?"

His grin widened - this girl never ceased to amuse him! However, his patience was wearing thin and the teasing bit was running its course. Instead of coming back with another borderline-sarcastic remark, he just took the arm he had wrapped around her and used it to pull her on top of him. Well, all right, he couldn't resist just a bit more teasing and used his arm to pull her just enough that she overbalanced and fell the rest of the way. The girl screwed up her face as her girls impacted squishily with the Graverobber's face. She scrambled to sit up and found herself straddling his stomach, which she couldn't help noticing was quite nicely toned - she supposed it had something to do with his lifestyle and left it at that in her head. The Graverobber stared up at her, the grin gone and replaced by such an intense expression of want that it took her aback.

Without a word, he took her left hand in his right - had noticed a bit ago that she seemed to be left-handed - and guided it behind her. Nothing or no one in her experience of making out, heavy petting, and high-school handjobs had been anything near equal to this. He brought her hand to his member and watched her eyes widen as she wrapped her hand around it, almost gingerly at first, then she caught her confidence and her grip firmed up. She couldn't help knowing where this was going, but she still worked him a few good times because she felt like it. His eyes fell half-closed and he arched up as she had done under his hands, if a bit more controlled. Releasing him, she simply trailed her fingers, teasingly light, up and down his shaft, playing for a moment with his tip. He growled from impatience and the fleetingness of the sensation.

"I asked if you were ready..." he intoned dangerously, stilling her hand with his and leaving the "don't make me ask again" bit unsaid.

"And?" the girl replied evenly, knowing what he wanted but taking a very similar sadistic delight in witholding it from him.

The Graverobber clenched his teeth, trying to the last not to wind this up in a way that would hurt her.

"Let me... be frank..." he ground out, staring her in the eyes with all pretense removed. "I am not... a gentle man. You can stay... where you are... and have some control in this... or... I can pin you under me... and you surrender... entirely."

The girl's eyes seemed to physically expand to twice their normal size, different from just opening a bit wider than normal - what he had said, his tone, the unspoken threat in his stare, all of it shook her to her very core. It took her perhaps a moment and a half to realize that she was shaking. In another half a moment, she found that it was not entirely from bone-quaking fear... To her great surprise, there was a measure of extreme arousal stirred inside her at his ultimatum. Swallowing hard, coughing slightly as a result, she slid back a bit and raised up on her knees. Her eyes never left his face, but she found herself unable, for the moment to make eye contact - he was too intense.

"I meant what I said earlier - and you laughed," she told him, closing her eyes for a second before opening them and fixing him with a stare almost equal to his own. "Fuck me."

She bit her lip, causing it to bleed again, as she sank onto him all at once. Determination, pleasure, shock, and true pain warred on her face - she could not believe what she had just done. Her teeth dug into her lip and tried to situate herself in a way that didn't hurt, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to pretend that was not a tear rolling down her cheek. A hand found her left hip, the other brushing the drop from her cheek. She opened her eyes just in time to see the Graverobber, his eyes studying her face intently, lick the tear from his fingertip - her mouth dropped open. A slow smile washed over her entire visage and she leaned forward to brace her hands on his shoulders, her insides clenching at the new angle.

"Good girl," the Graverobber purred savagely, reaching the hand he had used to brush her tear away up to wrap around her throat and watching her grin back at him.

The hand he had on her hip guided her to slide against him once more and he arched up into her - he hadn't been entirely right, because she was tighter around him than he could have imagined. She hissed, still in pleasure and pain, as she rocked against him a few times; it was getting easier as she started to relax. Her hands gripped his shoulders, fingernails closer to piercing his skin than ever. He rolled his shoulders under her hands and smiled up at her, wordlessly telling her "feel free" - she gripped harder, feeling a truly savage sort of pleasure at feeling the resistance of his skin give way. She let out a broken moan and pushed her hips against his, slowly learning to purposely clench her inner muscles on him.

Graverobber, thoroughly enjoying himself, let his hand move from her hip to her chest, tracing lightly between her breasts as he tightened his grip on her throat momentarily. She gasped for breath, moaned deeply as he let her have it, and arched her chest forward into his touch. His hand took hold of her left breast, squeezing firmly and drawing a cry from her - for some reason, the cry gave him an idea. Stilling her movements by moving that hand to her hip again, he shifted to sit up against her wall of pillows. Her fingernails dug deeper into his skin and he hissed in the kind of pain that he loved, rewarding her by clenching his hand on her throat. She gasped at the tightness around her throat and at the new angle his cock found inside her with the change in position.

Smiling sadistically, the Graverobber extended his arm and held the girl back from him, letting her thrust more and more wildly against him as she fought for her breath. Her fingernails, dripping with his blood, clawed at his wrist and he held her there, letting her beg him with her eyes. With his free hand, he pulled one bloody-nailed hand away from his wrist and proceeded to clean the red drops off with the same erotic precision as he had first used. Her remaining hand clenched until the nails sank into the soft skin of the underside of his wrist and he moaned out loud. The girl watched the world in front of her: his face, her bedroom wall, even her own hands, go blurry in front of her. She felt the tension in her body melting and continued to rock against him, but not quite from orgasm - though she found the feeling similar. Colors started to swim and her grip began to fail.

"Graverobber..." she gasped, her eyes still open by sheer force of will.

Just when her eyes went watery and unfocused, she felt herself being pulled firmly against his chest. Close one, she thought vaguely as a hand twisted not-unpleasantly in her hair. Her vision, while still not perfect due to lack of glasses, started to focus again and she coughed harshly as her breath returned to her. Graverobber tightened his hand in her hair and she clenched hard on the inside, causing him to buck roughly into her. Her wet tightness, clenching and unclenching around him, had nearly done him in while she had been fighting him for her breath - and she wasn't even aware of it! One arm locked around her back and the other hand remained tangled in her hair as she gripped his shoulders.

She rocked back and forth in short bursts, feeling him stiffen even more inside her.

"I'm close..." he pulled her hair back, forcibly tilting her head so that he could whisper in her ear.

The girl moaned back quietly, the sort of restrained-sounding quiet that suggested the same heat was building inside her. Graverobber, now panting hard himself, leaned down and bit her neck, almost breaking skin and drawing a loud cry from her. Whether it had come from pleasure, pain, or a mix of the two, he found himself past the point of telling. Regardless, she scratched across the width of his chest, leaving more bleeding welts, these crossing the ones she had left before - he let out an "ah!" and bucked hard into her, drawing a staccato scream. He was so damned close and this position, while it was supposed to have been easiest on her, letting him take some of the edge off himself too, wasn't going to take him over. The girl was losing control, grinding herself against him in total abandon, moaning and squalling in the most indecent manner possible.

Totally without warning, he took hold of her shoulders, shifted his body weight, and turned them both over, pinning the girl under him and startling her into silence - she stared up at him, open-mouthed. Where before, she showed fear, at least in part, every time he did something unexpected, now she just looked expectantly into his eyes. She knew that whatever came next was going to feel inhumanly good and she was perfectly ready for it. The pause didn't last long and he pushed roughly into her again. One hand found its way into his hair again and she pulled back as he had done to her - her hands weren't as strong as his, but dear gods if he didn't love what she could do! The other scratched down his back, the welts burning as his own sweat trailed over them - he was close to a sensation overload, driving himself so forcefully into the girl's body that she clenched in retaliation.

"Fuck!" she shrieked, her body convulsing upwards as her head tossed back, following that with a long, loud moan. "Oh my god!"

The Graverobber growled low in his throat, abandoning restraint and thrusting full-strength into her - he was sure to leave bruises, but from the way her hands clenched on him, pulling him tighter to her, she didn't mind. Her voice sounded as if it were tearing itself out of her throat, moans and cries loud enough for probably the whole street to hear. He didn't care, just answered with his own in reckless delight - all he could be aware of at the moment was the wet sheath surrounding his cock and the soft, warm body providing it. The girl clung to him as he almost-cruelly invaded her body over and over, her arms wrapped around him, pressing herself against his bare chest, their combined sweat dripping onto her sheets. It hurt - it shouldn't have felt good, but it did. His deep-voiced, rhythmic vocalizations caressed her ears and she couldn't resist giving herself completely over to him.

"FUCK!" he growled, thrusting hard into her as everything inside him tightened, then he let out a long, loud wordless roar as he shot off for the first time inside her.

His body had left his control and he couldn't help thrusting erratically into her a few more times, continuing to spurt inside her body as she kept pushing her hips against his. As his strength left him, his body spent, his head bowed forward and he leaned down carefully to draw his lips across the girl's sweating forehead, unable to find the presence of mind to actually kiss her. She still twisted under him, trying to crest over once more - her next move surprised him, even through his post-orgasm haze. Her left hand caught his right as he shifted his weight onto his left arm, and she dragged his hand slowly and deliberately over her body, tracing her breasts with his fingers, making his palm caress her stomach. Moaning needfully, she guided his hand down between her legs, still arching her hips up, wanting him to take her over one last time. Though manual dexterity was not exactly high on his brain's priority list right now, he had to give her points for trying.

Settling on his left side, a good deal of his weight still pressed on her, he laid his head on her shoulder, still panting heavily as his brain tried to re-direct his lungs into taking in air normally again. Gently, as carefully as he could manage, he eased out of her with the motion. With her lust-driven hands clumsily guiding his own, his fingers found her clit once again, ghosting over it as he attempted to get his hands back under his own control. She groaned loudly out of want and pushed her hips towards his hand - purring soft encouragements in her ear, the Graverobber obliged, swirling around her clit in a teasing circular motion. A wavering cry tumbled from her lips and he repeated his action, firming his touch a bit; the girl bit her lip in response, her body tensing up again.

"That's it..." he cooed, his breath hot against her ear as his hand played deliberately with her nerves. "You're beautiful..."

Her eyes fell closed at his words, her breath once more becoming ragged panting as her hips rose to the touch of his hand - it wouldn't take long now. She was so close, wriggling with everything she had, trying to find that one little touch that would take her over. Everything in her wanted it; he could see that - this one would definitely be intense to watch. His lips touched her temple and she tilted her head into the small contact, moaning softly as his fingers found a particularly sensitive spot. Her panting grew shorter and faster as he caught that tiny reaction and ran with it, teasing that tiny area relentlessly - another sinister smile curved his lips as he thought of what shock to deliver that would take her over that edge. She tilted her head with a soft "huh?" when she heard him laugh quietly to himself - it would at least make up for the bruises she'd have tomorrow morning.

He snaked his left arm under her body and, as she gasped in consternation, pulled her to him in a bruising yet tender kiss, his fingers playing absolute havoc with the tangle of nerves between her legs as he pressed her immovably to his body. Behind her closed lids, her eyes rolled back in her head as she shuddered against him. She moaned reflexively into his kiss as he sucked gently on her lower lip, still bloody from where she had bitten it earlier - the sweetness he had been expecting between her legs instead manifested in her blood, unlike the coppery bitterness he tasted upon biting his tongue. He returned the quiet sound, his deep voice creating sweet vibrations against her lips. Her hands gripped his shoulders and her hips rolled gently against his hand, her insides tightening, then relaxing again and again in a divine almost-rhythm. His fingers danced almost lazily over her center until she gave a final moan and, after arching tight against him, relaxed fully in his arms.

Normally, the Graverobber was not one to stick around with his "encounters" for very long - generally both parties got off and then gathered their clothes and parted ways. He lifted his head as a breeze chilled his nose - through the open door, he could see the sun just beginning to show itself over a horizon made of rattletrap houses. A small, half-laughing "hn" escaped his lips; he had just needed a place to hide from the GenCops for a while, had completely intended to wait for a bit, then get gone. He looked down at the girl next to him, who had not stirred at his sound, and realized that his arm was pretty much pinned under her - he weighed his options, the first being to go ahead and wake her. However, it had been quite some time since he had spent an entire night in a real bed, much less sharing it with a warm, living woman. While he would, in fact, be spending the day in bed, it would be the same effect and it didn't seem like she was going anywhere soon either.

The girl had started to shake a little, and he realized he was shivering lightly as well - getting up and closing the damn door wasn't an option in his current position, so he reached for the tangle of blankets as best he could. A good, one-armed shake straightened most of them out and he pulled them up to the girl's shoulder-level, about the middle of his chest. She sighed in her sleep, coughed twice, then settled in, her head on his shoulder and her warm breath tickling his neck. His eyes were protesting all this "staying open" business, falling half-closed as a strong reminder - each time he blinked, it got harder to open his eyes again, but he couldn't quite sleep yet. The girl shifted in her sleep, enough for him to slide his arm out from under her - it was half-asleep, that feeling of pins and needles extending to his fingertips - and grab a pillow. He tucked his arm up under the pillow, used to sleeping with his head on his arm, and laid his head down, his eyes closing as soon as his cheek touched the cool cotton.

*****

The girl and the Graverobber slept well into the evening - he woke; she didn't. He checked the open door first thing and saw a black sky dotted here and there with white stars outside. The girl had turned on her other side sometime during the night, her naked back pressed against his chest, his left arm draped over her, holding her there. Reluctant as he might be to leave the warmth of a comfortable bed and her soft skin on his, it was time for him to leave - he couldn't have her getting attached to him or anything like that. Slowly, carefully, doing his best not to wake her, he slid out from the blankets and tucked them quickly back around her, shivering as the cold air in the room kissed his bare skin. He rolled his eyes as he realized he had left his clothes in that godforsaken guest bathroom and left the room to retrieve them.

He saw no rodent on the sink this time, nor anywhere else in the room, but when he picked up his boxers, he discovered a couple of holes that he was pretty sure hadn't been there before. Putting his clothes on after being so clean felt sort of odd, but he shrugged the feeling away and tipped the mouse out of one boot. The offended rodent left a couple pellets on the tile floor, squeaked indignantly, and skittered away to hide behind the commode. The familiar stench of death warmed over found his nose and his sense of smell sort of did an auto-turnoff, the smell neutral to him. Careful not to make too much noise in the creaky old house, whose floorboards weren't exactly the best for moving silently, he picked his way down the hall and back to the girl's room. It wasn't his preferred exit route - too much chance of waking her - but there was no way in hell he was trying any of the downstairs doors, which were possibly noisier than the hall.

She still slept blissfully on, nestled comfortably in her blankets and unaware that she slept alone. Her bear lay near the edge of her bed, dangerously close to falling off. Blinking, he stepped over and caught the small plush toy with one hand, laying it beside her so she could reach for it when she woke and found him gone. The girl coughed hard in her sleep and... hold on a second! Was that blood? He had to be imagining things, but the sound of her cough reminded him of something. Frowning thoughtfully, he stuck his hand into a pocket inside his coat - his fingers closed around a little glass vial and he pulled his hand back, examining the glowing blue-filled container. A funny little half-smile quirked his lips, he had a thought, and he reached out to pull one of the blankets back, uncovering her left hand. Gently, he took her hand in his own, teasing her fingers loose - she was one of those people who, for some reason, slept with her hands clenched into fists - and, after setting the little glass vial gently in her palm, curled her fingers back around it.

"Just in case," he whispered in her ear, his deep voice as quiet as he could make it. "Come find me if you need more."

With that said, he pulled back, stroked her hair once, withdrew his hand and headed for the door. Not looking back, he ducked out and vaulted from the balcony onto the granite-brick wall, from there disappearing into the night.

... Fin...