Chapter Text
Joey would never hit a child.
Until she did. Multiple times. With a pistol, mind you. She wasn’t even done, either; and it wasn’t just limited to children anymore. Peter was screaming on the comms nestled in her ear about a splinter, and Sammy wasn’t exactly being quiet either, making Joey’s usual chronic dim migraine double the punch into a loud, throbbing pound in her temples.
She was positive she was going to kill them, if Abigail didn’t beat her to it.
That was when another hoarse scream—belonging to Peter, Joey swore to god she’d kill him first—scratched her eardrums, making the sharp pain in her head crescendo to a point.
“Peter, won’t you stop fucking around?!”
She scolded into the comm, gritting her teeth as she felt her brain might bust.
“No, no, vampire on my ass!”
He cried, sounding genuinely distraught.
Speaking of, let’s see what he’s up to.
Dried blood still caked around his chest, he was running for his life—quite literally. Abigail had found him, that little bitch! Peter didn’t like to call women bitches, especially the younger ones, but he feared this may be an exception. She screeched behind him, a terrible, inhuman screech, charging at him with simultaneously no coordination yet an impressive amount of grace every time he dared to look back.
“Vampire!”
He yelled, as if that would give anybody any useful information, before harshly shutting the door behind him, locking it with trembling hands.
“Got you,”
He snickered, slowly backing away from the chipping white door that would hopefully keep his pursuer back.
“I’ve got her trapped in the hallway, you guys—“
That was when his only barrier was kicked into, combusting inward like it was nothing more than cardboard. Abigail’s toothy grin peered through, and Peter couldn’t help but think of:
(HERE’S JOHNNY!)
It made his small, cocky smile from “trapping” her quirk up a little more before reality hit him.
“Holy fuck!”
His profanity devolved into a means of senseless, fearful mutters, breaking off as he started motoring like Sister Christian.
She was significantly fast, almost faster than Peter, who was more muscle than man, and meaner too; absolutely no doubt about that.
As he stupidly stumbled down the stairs, his only thought was a repeating mantra of:
(oh god she’s gonna get me she’s gonna get me she’s gonna get me she’s gonna get me she’s gonna get)
However, his trance of pure terrified autopilot was broken when the blunt feeling of a door, opened by Frank, slamming into his ribs sent him crashing over the banister and down at least a good dozen feet.
Peter hit the ground not running at all, more screaming and groaning. He’d had the wind knocked out of him for sure, and a sound that could only be described as a pig being crushed by a car compressor rose out of his throat. Meanwhile, in an entirely different stairwell, Sammy wasn’t having an entirely awesome time, either.
Bodies. Bodies in the pool.
Sammy hadn't realized that she was screaming her thoughts as she swam toward the stairs, her arms pressing through layers of decomposed viscera and body parts. She took hold of the railing and yanked herself up, ignoring the slop that soaked her hair and painted her skin. No shower would ever cleanse her of this mess.
"How many bodies we talkin'?" Frank was asking her. She turned to look back at the pool and screamed.
Abigail leaped onto the railing and tip-toed toward Frank. He hurried down the steps, cursing internally that he was too slow. She seemed to be taking her time, hissing only to intimidate him. It was working.
Abigail flew at Frank and tackled him, causing him to roll down the stairs. A series of painful thumps ensued, and then Frank was on the ground. He adjusted his glasses and stared up at Abigail, who was leisurely making her way down the staircase. "Oh, shit," Frank said, moving to get up.
Abigail grabbed him by the collar and smashed him against the ground. He groaned in pain and frustration. "What color are my eyes, Frank?" she taunted, neglecting to blink, if only to burn her visage into the man's pupils.
“Oh, what the fuck!”
Joey instinctively recoiled at the cold grime of Sammy’s touch as she suddenly latched on her, freshly climbed out from the corpse pile that she oh so happened to fall into on almost the other side of the house. Despite the former’s confusion and disgust, she felt slightly guilty as Sammy’s relieved look fell into one of shame.
(Imagine that, you fall into a pool of bodies and the only comfort of another person you find won’t even let you touch them.)
Not important, Joey followed that saddening thought with, not important right now. She pointed Sammy, who was grabbing onto her probably without even thinking about it, away and to hide. Because from what she was hearing, Abigail wasn’t sparing Frank and she probably wasn’t going to spare any of them either. Nor was Frank the stairs.
Joey ducked down herself, watching the cunning vampire ballerina trap to their pack of rats slowly advance on Frank as to how a lion might advance on a small, defenseless animal in a nature documentary. Her eyes widened with shock as she heard her fellow criminal’s dazed cussing cut off into a choked hack.
Oh, God, Abigail was choking him.
Fuck this job, man.
Sammy obeyed Joey's wordless order, her hands leaving the other woman's figure reluctantly. She found a dark spot in the corner of the stairs and hid. The practical side of her mind understood why Joey had redirected her; she wasn't all the best at fighting, and she also stunk like nobody's business. She couldn't help but feel hurt at the dismissal, though, because it wasn't her fault she had fallen into the pool of bodies. It wasn't like she intended to, anyway.
Frank writhed like a wild animal beneath Abigail's fingers, his arms gripping at the carpet and scratching at the vampire's wrists. He kicked his legs, but he couldn't seem to move with Abigail's weight on top of him. His eyes bulged out of his skull as he fought for air. Frank thought of about a dozen words all beginning with "f" as he looked around the room, catching just the slighest glimpse of Joey in some obscure corner. His hand outstretched toward her, begging.
Frank wasn't a begger; but he also wasn't ready to accept his fate. He could stand to lose some dignity on this one.
Joey got the gist almost immediately, yet not without stupidly having to process having the sedative for half a second from the fierce migraine piercing between her eyes, slowing down her lingering military reflexes. She sprang into action, tackling Abigail off Frank with a surprising amount of strength.
Joey had the ballerina by the shoulders at first, her grip quickly changing to have one bicep around the girl’s neck, the other free hand ready to jab the needle into her shoulder. Joey felt a sense of cocky pride, thinking:
(You can’t see what color my eyes are right now, can you?)
However, as fast and confident as Joey was, Abigail was quicker.
That was when Joey felt teeth, two rows of piping hot daggers, dig through her sleeve into her forearm. She let out a howl of pure surprised pain, sharp bolts of agony spreading throughout seemingly the entire left half of her body.
It seemed to her for a moment that she’d maybe be there forever, screaming like a pussy as her skin was being torn apart until Peter came flying
(this is going to hurt isn’t it oh god oh god oh god oh god i’m hurting enough fuck you peter fuck you how are you even getting that much air oh god holy shit)
and knocked the little vampire out of Joey’s grasp, sending all three stumbling. Peter and Abigail slid across the hardwood, Joey struggling to catch her footing for a moment before she tried to yank Peter off, who had the latter pinned down by the arms as she snapped her blood-coated teeth
(that’s my own blood oh lord)
at the air uselessly. Both the man and the inhuman were screaming, the ballerina’s screeches extremely loud, making Joey’s head pound with an absolutely torturous velocity.
“Peter, get! Get off her! I’ve got it!”
She yelled, and in response, Peter—the fastest he’s probably ever reacted to anything in his life—rolled out of the way for the sedative to finally make its way into the kid’s bloodstream. Joey quickly pinned one of Abigail’s arms down, Peter pitching in and holding down the other as Joey had to use her left, bitten arm to sloppily jam the needle into their torturer’s shoulder.
Most of the pandemonium died down, as with Abigail’s screams, but she slowly turned her head to look at Joey with a disgusting sense of rage painted upon her icy blue gaze.
The latter recoiled as if looking into the eyes of death itself. In a way, she was.
Then Abigail started to rant.
“I swear to god, I’ll kill you! You watch, you fucking watch, you fucking whore! I’ll rip your fucking head off! Fuck you, you cunt! Fuck you! You’re my fucking puppet! You are! YOU ARE!”
Then she was out, her teeth clattering together as her breathing steadied, an eerie silence following.
Joey and Peter both got up knowing Abigail’s energy was completely drained, and for a moment… Joey felt just fine. No headache, no ache to be felt whatsoever. Damn, she felt great!
But nothing good lasts forever, because directly after that almost euphoric millisecond, all her pain returned multiplied into the tens, attacking her like the nonstop rapid fire of a gun.
She audibly winced, squeezing her eyes shut. Everything was too bright, and it seemed even with her eyes closed the light would burn holes into the sockets. Her head seemed like it was about to split open, and her arm, oh god, her arm—
She felt Peter gently lay his hands on her shoulders, soft spoken concern breaking through her ringing ears.
“Joey? Joey, are you okay?”
Joey’s knees buckled.
"You got her!" Sammy shrieked, tumbling out from her hiding place.
Frank was slow to pull himself up, wincing at the massive thrumming pain in his abdomen. His vision shook in beat with his pulse, a low ache settling in around his eyes.
Sammy's temporary relief at seeing the unconcious Abigail was subdued by the sight of Joey's beaten form being coddled by Peter not far away. She touched down at Joey's side, looking between her and slumbering Abigail. Slowly, as if she wasn't sure she wanted to ask the question, she said, "Is she okay?"
Her eyes grazed Joey's face and fell down her neck, shoulder, and finally bounced to her arm. Sammy gasped at the obvious holes torn into Joey's shirt. The area was stained with blood and she could barely see puncture wounds beneath the fabric.
"Oh, no," Sammy said, her pitch rising. "No, no, no—she got bit, didn't she? Isn't that how vampires turn?" She looked back to Abigail. "Is Joey gonna turn evil? Like that little shit?"
“I don’t,” Peter hesitated for a moment, shaking his head and closing his eyes, as if doing so would get the image of Joey’s bitten arm out of his conscience. “I don’t know, Sammy.”
It was true. Peter didn’t really know what to do at all. Nothing was in his control, and that unnerved him. In his years of snapping necks for a quick buck, he always had some element of control or directions to follow, whether he did it wrong or right—he thought that element would just be there. All the time.
Now it wasn’t.
He gingerly scooped Joey into what could be called a bridal carry, hissing as he did so due to his own injuries—you see, Joey was fairly tall and frankly had a good amount of muscle, but in Peter’s arms she almost looked small. Peter shook his head again, in denial.
Because, oh, God, even if they did kill Abigail and Joey still turned into a vampire, what would they even do?
Kill her?
(oh no no i don’t like that i like joey i like her quite a lot)
Against his will, the thought of Joey biting and tearing and slashing and laughing snuck foggily into his mind, and with that, the thought of sunlight and stakes and Joey’s fanged head being cut clean off made him feel sick.
(but it would be the right thing to do)
But, really, would it be?
He didn’t want to think about that right now. But, that doesn’t mean the thought wouldn’t still return and disturb him to no end, he knew that. For now, he—they—had to figure out what to do with Joey.
(kill her now so you won’t have to deal with it later that’s what)
(!! OH PETER WON’T YOU SHUT UP !!)
He mentally scolded himself with such severity he almost thought he had screamed the order out loud. However, upon seeing that nobody had a reaction, he simply just sighed and started to walk.
Most of all, to find Joey a place to be safely put down—likely, a bed—but also to just get away from where… it, it had happened.
“Frank, do something with the girl, won’t you?”
He called behind him, grimacing as the situation he’d just witnessed skipped over and over in his head like a broken record. He didn’t care if Frank currently had the physical capacity of a sack of potatoes, Peter really just wanted to get the fuck out of there. The fresh memory of Joey’s screams made Peter extremely upset. To see her, such a reasonable and levelheaded member of their crew up to here, howl in agony wasn’t something he expected to nor wanted to see ever again. Also, one thing that didn’t help his unpleasant feelings was the dull, thumping pain in his back from being thrown down almost an entire story by a wooden door.
All in all, as Peter started to try and find a bedroom, he was scared.
"I'll throw her in a fuckin' elevator," Frank spat. He crouched down beside the slumbering Abigail, his mind trailing back to when they first caught the girl. She really hadn't been faking—what did they put in those syringes? Could he get some? Frank jerked his head a little bit at the thought. Not now.
He lifted the girl with as much strength as he could muster. A vein bulged out of his forehead, and for a moment he was afraid his skull would actually pop open. Were vampires supposed to be this heavy, or was he just out of training? Perhaps it was the temporary cut-off of oxygen; yeah, that would do the trick.
Frank angled his neck away from the girl as he carried her, awkwardly shuffling toward the exit. He knew that there was a particularly secure cage-like elevator downstairs, which would serve as Abigail's cell while the Rat Pack tried to find a way outside of the mansion.
Sammy had formed something like kinship with this ragtag group of criminals. Dean was, well, Dean, but he was dead now, so her opinion of him didn't matter much anymore. She liked Rickles—he was authoritative, something which she hadn't experienced at home. Her parents were sleazebags. Peter and Frank were just men to her. Peter was the definition of "gentle giant", despite his violent tendancies. Frank was gross; he had the energy of a New Yorkian subway rat that would kill its packmates for a slice of pizza. He was smart, but that was the only quality of his that Sammy liked.
Then there was Joey. Joey was smart and skillful and crafty and caring (and pretty). She was probably the only person in the group that Sammy would actually trust if given time, but now she was bitten, and probably going to turn into a blood-sucking monster with zero self control. Sammy wondered if there was a cure. She just wanted to know that they would all be alright, and not victim to her possible fangs (fangs!).
Sammy decided that she would rather stick with Peter.
It wasn’t long until Peter heard Sammy’s footsteps join his.
He wasn’t surprised, Sammy had mostly been following at least one of them like a lost dog the entire few hours they’d been there. Could Peter blame her? Not at all. He’d found himself fearfully latching onto as much human contact as he could also—a common nature.
Speaking of, the silence was scaring him. The quiet pattering of the two’s shoes and Joey’s even breathing seemed too welcoming to a sudden silent attack from that little monster, and frankly, his balls were crawling with anticipatory fear. He needed to speak, just to know somebody else—somebody that wasn’t at the risk of turning into a human leech—was there with him.
“Hey, Sammy?”
He sheepishly asked, not taking his eyes off the hallway in front of him.
“Do you have people at home?”
His initial grimace curved into a gentle smile.
“I do,”
He said, his paranoid mind crawling to a place somewhere that wasn’t in a dirty, body-filled mansion. His home.
Back down there, he had a dog. A little bugger, that thing. Quite literally; its name was Bugger.
Bugger was a cute little teddy bear dog that had big bug eyes—hence the name—and got so excited whenever Peter came home it’d bounce off its hind legs like a show dog.
Of course, Peter was always just as happy to see Bugger. He, however, didn’t show it as enthusiastically. He’d probably fall through the floor into the apartment below if he tried to jump like that dog did.
He, without shame at all, found himself missing Bugger almost violently.
“I’ve got a dog. Do you have a dog? Any pets?”
He’d almost forgotten their current situation until Joey softly shuddered in his arms, and he confusedly looked down for just a moment until he remembered.
(you’d think she got sedated too how funny is that)
(i do not want to kill her i do not)
Sammy thought for a moment whether or not she wanted to ruin Peter's melancholic reminiscing, but it seemed that Joey's rousing was doing her work for her. So, in order to distract him, she puffed and shrugged.
"I don't have people at home. I left my parents once I started doing—" she twirled her finger around, indicating the mansion, "—this." Sammy couldn't help but look back to Joey, her eyes bouncing from Peter's concerned expression to the woman's grimace. It made her uncomfortable. The whole situation was uncomfortable. That bite on her arm was probably uncomfortable too, although it looked a bit better than it did some minutes ago.
"I always wanted a pet when I was younger, so my parents got me a fish. Not that they couldn't have gotten me something more expensive, but they decided that I wasn't capable enough to handle a mammal," she laughed.
"They were right, of course. Since I was the one in charge of it, I was supposed to feed it and everything. I kinda forgot I had a fish at one point. Then they took it away. I hope that fish was happy with whoever they gave it to." She looked away, her stomach twisting with a build-up of nerves. She'd never told anyone that before. She probably shouldn't have said anything, but it was already out there. What exactly could Peter judge her for? He'd probably done worse things.
“I never had a fish,”
Peter responded, seemingly not bothered at all with the story. Because, well, he had one considerably worse.
“I had a lizard, though.”
He frowned. The tragedy with his lizard still made him wildly uncomfortable almost three decades later, and he had to accept that now he mentioned it, he had to tell the full thing. He didn’t really need to, but nonetheless, he still had a sense of urgency to spit it out.
“His name was Manny. You know those, uh, little guys? the ones that change colors? Yeah, that was Manny. Funny little guy.”
He chuckled a little, smile slightly fading.
“I had him for a while. He climbed up my arm sometimes, and I guess when I put him back in his tank one day I just… forgot to close it, you know?”
He paused, clearing his throat louder than he intended to.
“I couldn’t find the poor thing for days. I found him in the bathroom behind the toilet with his head missing.”
(cut her head off that’s how you’ve got to kill a vampire)
“I never knew what happened to him.”
(oh yes you did you killed manny you wanted to know what it felt like didn’t you oh peter you killed him just like you’ll kill joey cut her head clean off cut it)
Without thinking, he looked down at Joey again.
Right, he needed to find a bed. Where’d she be safe, that’s right.
As if the house read his thoughts, he came up to a door he remembered possibly having a bedroom contained behind it. He gingerly opened it with his heel, almost letting out a sigh of relief upon seeing his notions were right.
In a way, Peter was glad to get away from Joey. He knew exactly why, but he tried to tell himself he didn’t.
No, he didn’t.
“There we are,”
He said, praying with all his heart Sammy didn’t hear the shake in his throat.
He gently set Joey down in the bed, hesitating before tucking her in and patting her head with a bit of humor.
He started to leave, unintentionally in a bit of a rush, before he paused in the doorway. He looked back toward Sammy, an unknowingly guilty expression subtly etching his features.
“Can you watch her?”
(cause if you don’t careful you might find just her mutilated head in that damn pit)
"Yeah," was all Sammy could muster, looking around the room for a seat. She found a small sofa chair and dragged it up to the bed, careful not to let the mechanisms catch on the carpet. She hopped into the seat and kicked her legs out onto the bed, avoiding Joey's figure beneath the blankets.
She waved Peter goodbye. He was talking about a chameleon, right? Because chameleons changed colors. She had read numerous factoids about those lizards, all contradicting. They changed colors, but was it depending on their mood, their environment, or if they wanted to get it on with another chameleon? She didn't know, and didn't care to know.
Peter was like a chameleon, she thought. In some ways, he changed his colors to fit in, to make himself more appealing. He was strong and gentle and seemingly a bit smooth-brained, but behind that facade was something else entirely. Sammy didn't quite know what it was, but the fact that he teamed up with a bunch of other criminals to kidnap a little girl keyed her into his true nature. Maybe he was just in it for the money, but maybe he had another motive. Maybe he was as sick in the head as the rest of the group.
Sammy looked over her feet at the tired form of Joey on the bed. She hadn't moved much from how Peter had placed her there, looking pretty much like a ragdoll. That was what Abigail saw them all as: dolls, playthings. Unimportant objects. Things to sink her teeth into and forget about moments later.
It aggravated Sammy. She didn't like feeling trapped, especially not without internet. She had been stripped of the one thing that made up practically her whole identity. She was a hacker, a builder, an engineer; she was stuck in someplace where none of that mattered. Did she not matter? She shook that thought out of her head.
Sammy was important. She mattered. She could watch over Joey and make sure Abigail didn't tear away any more of her. She could do that.
Immediately when Peter left the room, softly closing the door behind him, he couldn’t help it.
He wept.
He wept silently, guiltily, fearfully.
(OHHH I KILLED HIM IT WAS ME MAMA IT WAS ME IT WASNT THE CAT IT WAS ME I KILLED POOR OLD MANNY ARE YOU MAD AT ME MAMA)
He wept like he was twelve again, wishing he still had a mother to cry to. She left after the whole Manny fiasco, and he always feared it was only because of him and that damn lizard.
It certainly wasn’t. Peter’s father was a violent man, and he beat his wife so regularly he could do it while reading the morning paper. He wasn’t exactly very nice to his son, either. Peter’s mother left him to a father who beat him just the same, not without calling him a pansy and a faggot for simply existing. But that was his father; Doesn’t a son always have to love his father?
With insane amounts of shame, Peter had to tell himself he didn’t. He would never be like his dad, he always told himself, he wouldn’t. He would be kind and loving and gentle—
(SNAP! goes their neck)
“You quit it,”
He scolded himself weakly through tears, sniffling as he wiped his eyes with his forearm.
“Please, you quit it.”
Peter realized with a terror that made his skin crawl that he sounded just like his father.
He stopped walking, as did his tears.
He was just like him.
The thought struck him with so much severity it had basically knocked out of the tears for him, even for just a moment. Before he could control himself, he found himself sliding down the wall, hiding his face in his hands as the tears started to come again.
- -
Joey couldn’t recall the last time she had a nightmare. She had had some particularly bad ones after she had gotten out of the army—her body dumping all of that now lost battle adrenaline on her at once, she guessed—and that was a very, very long time ago.
However, she never had one about Caleb; and now, unfortunately for her, that’d change.
She was prowling the halls of the mansion, spiderwebs seemingly tickling her every movement. Her arm didn’t hurt anymore, which was nice.
(i don’t remember getting up. when did i get up?)
Her foggy mind, as one’s is usually in dreams, pushed the question away until it was no longer a worry.
“Hey, Joe-cat, you having fun?”
A juvenile voice said behind her, and she briskly turned to see Abigail—for some reason, Joey didn’t know why, she didn’t want to run.
Unknowing of how to respond, she shook her head.
“That’s a shame,”
The little ballerina dramatically pouted, mockingly shaking her head, mirroring her older foe.
“Caleb misses you. Did you know that? Didn’t you tell him you’d come back to him? He’s starting to become upset; you’d really better hurry up.”
“Yes, I did. I did tell him that.”
Joey’s chest turned to ice. Abigail couldn’t know this—Caleb loved his mother, and she loved him too, is all. She’d see him again.
The word again suddenly seemed impossible.
“Why are you concerned about that?”
“No reason. Maybe he just… won’t love you anymore,”
The vampire snickered, and Joey found herself wishing she could knock that cute little shit-eating grin straight off her face.
Joey felt her hands teeter with new weight. She quickly looked down, and saw a stake, sharp and shiny, almost as if it was beckoning her to use it and use it as brutally as possible.
“You’re gonna stab me, but I’m right.”
“No, you aren’t—“
“You lied to him! You’re forever that mother he never saw again!”—the word again started to make Joey’s eye twitch—“The one who left and died like a damn pussy, that’s who! He’ll forget everything about you! You lied!”
“You don’t know him!”
Joey yelled, and the stake found Abigail’s heart as to how a puzzle piece finds another—perfectly.
She brought her arms up, then down.
A splatter of blood hit her face, warm and welcoming.
The little bitch wasn’t dead yet.
“You lied to him!”
She brought the stake up,
“I know him! You can’t run from the truth!”
then down,
“You lied!”
then up,
“Lied!”
then down,
“Lied, lied, lied, lied!”
then up,
“Oh, God, Mom, stop it, don’t kill me!”
Joey looked at her target mid-plummet, and saw it wasn’t Abigail anymore.
It was Caleb.
Before she could react, the stake crashed home, right between her baby boy’s innocent brown eyes—her eyes.
She was thrust into consciousness, not giving much waking reaction other than a small flinch.
Her brain still lagging behind, she groggily turned over onto her other side, hissing at the pain in her shoulder as she mistakenly put her weight onto her left. She couldn’t think of why her arm hurt, but then a mental ping went off:
(doof you were shot there)
But even on its worst days, the phantom pain was never this bad.
Suddenly, remembrance was poured into her mind like water into a bowl, and she sat up, though slowly.
She scrubbed a tired hand over her face, finally opening her heavy eyelids. She looked over to see Sammy, and she couldn’t not say she felt a bit of genuine relief.
“Sammy,”
She said, a simple greeting; she couldn’t think of anything much better at the moment.
Sammy had been staring at the wall for God knows how long. It was dark, like the rest of the house, and dusty. There was some unknown stain in the corner of the ceiling. There weren't any pictures, which she found weird. Maybe vampires didn't like picture frames.
Then Joey said her name, and her eyes snapped back to reality. She looked down, then drew in her legs, criss-crossing them on the chair. Sammy found Joey's gaze again.
"Hey," she said about as calmly as she could manage. It wasn't everyday that one got stuck in a mansion with a vampire; it wasn't everyday that one's criminal partner (friend?) got bit by that same vampire.
Sammy leaned over Joey and put her hand on her forehead. "Not hot, not cold," she mumbled. This was what people did when they cared, right? Checked for a fever? "How's your arm? Do you remember what happened?" she asked, moving her hand down to the blanket and pushing it aside. She pulled Joey's arm toward her by the wrist. She was gentle, of course, but gave no warning.
Sometime before, Frank had finished locking Abigail up in the elevator shaft. He stared at her with disgust, and maybe a little bit of intrigue as she slept. When he was alone, he could allow his thoughts to run wild.
Vampires were real. That was his first thought. His second was that vampires could turn other people. He wondered how Joey was faring. Did she feel like shit, or something else entirely? Did she feel like a whole new woman? He wondered what that would be like.
Strangely, Joey found herself wanting to lean into Sammy’s touch.
“Clear as a bell,”
She snarked in answer to Sammy’s question, giving the latter an amused look. For just a moment, she felt a bit ashamed.
(she’s taking care of you and you can’t not be sarcastic for one damn minute huh)
She felt a pang of guilt hit her stomach. She always felt…well, different around Sammy. More comfortable, if you will. Similar to the blonde’s mindset, she viewed the others as men through and through—careless, snobbish, pretentious men who viewed her as nothing more than inferior. Yet, Sammy, despite having some obnoxious moments herself, was nothing but caring and kind to her. The other wanted to return that favor as much as she could.
Joey tried to shrug off her affection for her by saying it was because they were the only two women, but she knew there was something more than that. Maybe a friendly bond—
(don’t lie to yourself)
She hoped Sammy didn’t notice her eyes widening for a fleeting second. She couldn’t exactly tell herself she only liked men, that wasn’t even really the problem; she’s had plenty of times where she made out pretty good with a girl in college.
She remembered that girl quite fondly.
They weren’t exactly girlfriends just yet, you couldn’t really say you were girlfriends so openly in those years, but they certainly weren’t friends either.
(shit. what was her name again? bennie. yes that’s it bennie like bennie and the jets)
She remembered stumbling out of bedrooms with Bennie, red in the face, lips numb and giggling, telling all their skeptical male friends that oh, no, Mike, we aren’t gay at all! We were just smoking that day!
That was a lie. A bold-faced, motherfucking lie.
Actually, now that Joey really thought about it, Bennie looked a lot similar to Sammy. Same smile, definitely for sure.
She looked at Sammy deeply, without even really realizing it, and the resemblance was almost unnerving.
Foolishly, the sentence came tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop it. She felt a dopey smile threaten to creep up on her features.
“You know, you kind of look like a girl I used to be friends with in college.”
Sammy couldn't stop herself from blurting out, "You went to college?" It likely wasn't the takeaway Joey intended for her to have, but could you blame her? She leaned back in her chair with an open-mouthed smile, teasing but also impressed. "No way you went to college. Is that why you're doing this? Paying off student loans?"
It seemed ridiculous. Smart people, valedictorians, scholars—they were supposed to graduate and be successful and rich. Life turned out to send them down just the opposite path. Sammy sighed and decided she was better off turning the topic back.
"Was she pretty? Tell me she was pretty." She asked with a tinge of humor, bunched her hair up, but cringed when she felt the sticky, wiry texture of it. It had partially dried from the pool of bodies, but it was still, for lack of a better word, icky, and she didn't care for it. Well, she did, but that's how the idiom went, right? She wished this place had running water.
“Are you calling me stupid?”
Joey joked, placing a hand on her heart, dramatically offended. It wasn’t usual for her to be like this, and he wasn’t exactly sure if it made her happy or twice as tense as she was before. God, why was she so tense?
“Yeah, kind of the student loans. Also, because…”
She hesitated. She couldn’t tell Sammy she had a son—not yet. A son she abandoned, that is.
(you lied lied lied lied maybe he just won’t love you anymore)
“Other things. Personal.”
She wished she could just tell Sammy everything. Ramble on and on about her time in the army, her college ragers, her son all while those soft blue eyes stared at her admiringly like she was telling the gospel.
God, she thought, God, how nice that would be.
“Yes, she had a pretty damn nice smile.”
Just like yours, Joey wanted to add so badly.
Sammy couldn't help but grin at that. Yeah, she was pretty; she had perfect teeth, too. She had to suffer four years of braces in her early teen years for them but they were worth it.
Then her smile faltered. She examined Joey's face and found that something didn't sit quite right with her. She didn't know if it was the bite mark dusted with flakes of rapidly drying blood or the way that Joey was looking at her with big brown eyes that begged to convey poems and entire essays in minutes. She had something on her mind, but Sammy didn't know how to ask what.
Then she let slip, "Your smile is pretty, t—pretty damn good, too." It was true, even if she hadn't seen the whole thing. Sammy had caught glimpses of it. It was sad, but happy at the same time. Melancholic. It was more than pretty, but she didn't want to admit that to herself just yet.
Frank thought that this place was far too maze-like for any old mansion. Of course he knew that this vampire bitch was dangling them over pits and a frighteningly good security system for plain fun, but he didn't have to enjoy it.
He walked endlessly through the halls, realizing that he hadn't communicated with Peter about where they would convene after putting Abigail and Joey to rest in their respective places. He would find Peter soon enough, he thought. It was only a matter of time before the shape of that hulking man appeared on the horizon. God, when would this end?
Peter had cried himself tired.
He hadn’t moved an inch, and the rest of his sorrows came in tearless hitches of his shoulders and chest.
He almost had fallen asleep, he admitted with some embarrassment. Christ, what time was it? As if coming out of a trance, he lifted his head up from where it was resting behind his knees to look around like that would give him any answers. Similar to Sammy’s distastes, he also noticed that the mansion was depressingly dark no matter what time of day, with the exception of the warm lamps in the more… welcoming quarters of their lovely little death trap.
He let out a weak, exhausted sob, too embarrassed to keep crying but too comfortable to stand up and keep walking.
Groaning, he straightened his legs from the curled position they were in. He cringed as his joints popped.
Not without some hesitation, he put a finger up to the comm in his ear and clicked it on.
“Hey, Frank; everything A-OK out there?”
He asked, seemingly the only one other than Frank to remember they had the things in their ear.
In spite of herself, Joey jumped.
- -
Joey recollected herself, and how stupid she was being hit her all at once—comparing somebody who’s nothing more than a co-worker to a girl she made out with in college? Like the flip of a switch, her professionalism started to shuffle back in, yet she couldn’t help but feel flattered by Sammy’s admirations.
“I appreciate it,”
She said, smiling. A small, barely noticeable one, but nonetheless a smile. For a small portion of a while, she had forgotten it wasn’t just her and the blonde. She didn’t exactly mind that while, but it was past now, and they needed to do their jobs.
“Let’s get going. Come on.”
She kicked the rest of the blanket that pooled on her legs off. The sudden weight change as she got up made the bed creak, and she humorously took note that everything in the damn house creaked and moaned and whined; Frank being more of the whining category.
She started to leave the room, but paused not only because small spots bloomed in her vision (damn getting up too fast, everybodys thought at least once in their life), but also because of the fact that she could practically feel Sammy’s eyes burning longing holes into her back told her to wait for her friend—co-worker—to catch up. She turned her head, looked back in front of her, then turned full-length to face her—aw, forget it. Whatever Sammy was to her.
Not the problem, she tried to tell herself. Sammy isn’t the problem right now.
Joey still wasn’t feeling very well, but she could manage.
She wouldn’t feel completely well for the rest of her hours, unfortunately.
"Fuckin' fantastic," Frank sassed, holding his hand up to his cheek. He stopped in his movement, leaning against the wall. "The fuck are you? Swear to God, you leave your crew for one second and they've already abandoned you like you're nothin'!" he complained loudly, stretching his head back.
"Hey, take it easy," Sammy said, standing up alongside Joey. She came to her side with a worried frown. "We're gonna be trapped here for a while, so I don't think there's any need to hurry. Frank's got Abigail ... somewhere. I think—"
Frank's voice crackled on the reciever moments after Peter's. She nodded.
"—He's gonna be here soon, then we'll all go get the bitch to talk, yeah?" Her hand trailed back to Joey's arm, hovering.
“Yeah,”
Joey replied faintly, hoping that Sammy didn’t notice her arm breaking into goosebumps.
“Yeah. We’ll do that.”
She felt strangely distracted, Frank’s petulant bitching not angering her as much as it should’ve. Maybe it was because she hadn’t had something from her bag for…
The urge to get that good sugar high to tide her over was suddenly monstrous, and she had to fight off the muscle memory of reaching into her pocket for that familiar paper crinkling and the taste of sweet, artificially flavored relief.
However, she didn’t. She didn’t know why—as if she knew anything.
Confusingly, the urge to return Sammy’s physical contact was at least ten times stronger.
Sighing, she shook her head and pressed the receiver in her ear.
“Me and Sammy are in the left wing. If you’d be so kind to tell us where you are, we’ll be there.”
For just a moment, Joey thought she heard Peter sniffling.
"Oh, so you come to me now? That's how this works?" Frank scoffed. He rattled off his location, then told them where Abigail was being held. "She's still out cold, but she shouldn't be for long."
Sammy listened in and nodded. "Okay," she said to herself more than anyone else, not bothering to actually answer Frank. Then she turned on her earpiece. "Okay," she said clearly. "We're coming to you, Frank."
She looked to Joey. "You got all that?" she asked. "I'm just asking because I want you to be on board. Everyone should be on board, obviously, but you more so because you're like, the only competent one in the group—" she stopped herself before she said anything more. Maybe she was only asking because she wanted to hear Joey's voice again.
While she was talking, Sammy moved to the door and opened it, walking through the threshold.
“Got it, yup, yeah, I’ve got it,”
She broke into the end of Sammy’s rambles—something Joey admittedly found rather endearing with her Total Co-Worker, while on the contrary ear grating and obnoxious with anybody else. Upon that fact, a sense of frustration rose in Joey’s chest. Why did she not know how she felt? Did she view Sammy as a friend? Did she? For being so perspective with everybody else, hell, she certainly didn’t know how to read herself.
In fact, Joey rarely thought about herself all too much, if at all. Whether intentional or unintentional she wasn’t exactly sure, but what was definite was the fact that she was a people pleaser through and through, despite her confidence and slight occasional arrogance showing otherwise.
She stayed behind Sammy, something she hadn’t done in a very long time. She usually went in front.
She was fine being behind for now, as long as it was Sammy.