by Martha Woods
“He’ll come around,” I said, “I know he will, but I still feel so helpless through all of this. I should be able to just… grab him and make everything better, that’s what I should be able to do for him, and I can’t. I just hate feeling useless, that’s all.”
“I can assure you that you are not.” Squeezing his arm around me, I felt his breath ghosting against my cheek as he leaned in and pressed a kiss to the shell of my ear. “If you weren’t here then both of us would be in much worse places, I doubt that we would have stayed in one piece for long without you there to help put us back together. It might feel like you can’t do much, it might feel so hopeless that you can’t do anything but think that you’re doing everything wrong, but trust me when I say that you’re doing your best and that is more than enough.”
Rather than answer, I just snuggled deeper into his hold, so warm for someone without blood and so comforting for someone without a pulse. Maybe he was right, maybe all that this was was a waiting game, and all the pieces were going to come together for us eventually when we needed them to. I never did like waiting but… when it came to the two of them, I don’t think there is any amount of time that I wouldn’t wait for them. I think if it came down to it I would wait my entire life just for the chance to see them happy a single time.
“Do you hear that?” He nudged me, jostling me from thoughts that had been going on so long that I’d lost myself completely. “I think I can sense him nearby.”
I didn’t want to get my hopes up, since we’d become more open we’d had numerous vampires come around to visit, if nothing else to marvel at the sheer novelty of our relationship, for all I knew he was just sensing another one come to gauk. But in my heart… from that tingling I got in the back of my mind when something important was just so near that I could taste it, I knew that he was telling the truth. I knew that Damon was coming back to us.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” Came a voice from behind us, our heads swiveling around on our necks towards the figure crouched at the now open window, “But it’s… been a weird couple of days.”
“Damon,” Vincent started, relief clear in his tone and in the slump of his shoulders, “We were just talking about you actually, why don’t you come and join us?”
“Is that alright?” He asked, clearly not certain of what to do going forward, “If you two want some privacy I can leave, I have some leads to chase up and... I don’t know…”
Rolling my eyes and letting my frustration be known with a scoff, I stepped off of Vincent’s lap and pointed across the room at him. “Damon, get your ass over here right now, we’ve missed you way too much.”
The direct approach always seemed to work, the corner of his mouth turning upwards and his fang glimmering in the early moonlight. “Alright, I guess I can do that.”
I hadn’t quite gotten used to his new speed just yet, one second he was standing at the window and the next he’d tackled me over the couch and was laying on top of me, the back of my head against Vincent’s thigh and an amused smirk on both their faces. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to move either, not when this was the most comfortable I’d felt all day, so instead I just let myself go limp and relaxed between the two men that I loved most in the world.
“It’s been too long since we got to enjoy this, hasn’t it?” Pressing a kiss to the tip of Vincent’s nose, I wrapped my arms around his back and pulled him closer against me. After a long day at the office this was what I’d needed, the reassurance that he was alright and not wasting away somewhere out there out of a need to prove that he could do everything himself. I thought that we’d outgrown all of that over time, but it looked like it had made a comeback with his new condition.
Still, he was here right now with us, it wouldn’t do to ruin this good moment worrying about what would come afterwards.
“Busy day huh?” He asked, nuzzling his nose against my neck, “You feel stressed, did something happen today?”
“No, no just the usual…” I wasn’t sure I should bring it up, but… there was no point in hiding secrets from either of them, especially about something so innocuous. Besides, they would in all likelihood be able to help with the situation. “Actually, there is something…”
“What is it?” Vincent asked, interest piqued and his attention fully on me, “It must be interesting compared to the reports and complaints you usually get.”
“Half the complaints are about you probably,” Damon sniped back, grinning all the while, “Too moody, not moody enough, I’m not sure what quota vampires are supposed to fill.”
“You’re not sure of most anything I imagine.”
“Stop, please,” I laughed, making sure that they were paying attention properly before I thought back to what Cara had told me. “Apparently there’s been a convoy, a couple convoys actually, spotted moving towards the city. No one knows what they want or if they’re dangerous, the werewolves are kind of nervous but they get nervous around everyone, so I’m not sure what to think there.”
“You think this could lead to something bigger?” Damon asked, and if there was any more proof that you needed that our minds had synched up by now, that was it. “Maybe it’s a trojan horse or… a diversion or something like that?”
“I honestly don’t know what to think, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt but after everything we’ve been through over the last year…” I shook my head, no time to think about the past like that. “Whatever the case is, if they’re here to cause harm or to seek help we need to handle this right. I don’t want to have everyone attack and find out that these are just people looking for help, we’re not just going to treat them like the enemy without proof.”
“Mm…” Vincent nodded in agreement. “But to be able to operate properly we’re going to need information, and depending on who we send that might end up worse than better.”
“I can’t send any of the werewolves, as bad as that makes me feel. They’re getting so much better, but they’re still so territorial, that’s just a fight waiting to happen.”
“You can’t send any of the hunters,” Damon said, “For… obvious reasons. If this is a convoy of paranormals they’ll probably shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to hunters, and given the reason that I needed to be turned in the first place I can’t really find it in myself to blame them too much for that.”
“Which leaves vampires and witches,” Vincent said, “Neither of which will be lining up to be part of a shadow group.”
“Some of them might,” Damon replied, “If you need someone to take a look at the situation I don’t mind being one of them, there’s a lot of hours in the night and they need to rest sometime, no matter who they are.”
“Are you sure about that? You don’t really need to that much.”
“They’ve been moving during the day right? And they’ve been moving a lot?” I nodded, he continued, “That rules out vampires pretty much, and if they’ve been moving as much as you seem to be saying they have then they’re going to be tired, regardless of what creature they are. I’ve studied a lot of creatures in my time, and one thing that all of them have in common is that sooner or later, exhaustion is going to win over. Every single time, without fail.”
“If you go I think that I should too,” Vincent said, “No offense intended, but you’re still new to how we work. I don’t want to take the chance that you get overconfident and have something terrible happen.”
“Oh come on, do you think I’m that much of an idiot?”
“I’ve seen it happen to people much smarter than you, temptation doesn’t discriminate when it comes to power.” He placed his hand on Damon’s shoulder, effectively trapping me in place but I wasn’t going to ruin the moment anyway. “Just trust me Damon, this is really for the best. I’ve already seen so many people be lost, I don’t want to lose you too.”
“Fine,” Damon sighed, “But don’t go acting the sage leader or anything like that alright? I
already went through the mentor thing when
I was a hunter, I’m not eager to repeat the process all over again.”
I cleared my throat, getting their attention again and smiling at the both of them. “I’ll check over the reports and see where they were last spotted, apparently they’re still quite a while away but they’re clearly heading this way, probably arriving in the next couple of days. How do you think you’re going to be able to track them?”
“There’s motels every mile until the next city, we’ll have somewhere to fall back to if we can’t get back before sunrise,” Vincent said, going over the map of the state in his head, “We should be fast enough to get back here if we really push it, but either way we’ll have a fallback.”
“No danger of us turning to dust in the sun.” Damon grinned. “This might be just what I needed, it’s been way too long since I went on a proper tracking mission, it’ll be just like when I was younger.”
“Hopefully not,” Vincent chuckled, “I would prefer if you would shower at the very least.”
“You know wha-”
“Please, stop,” I laughed, “This is the first time we’ve had to spend together in so long, let’s not spend it arguing alright? Let’s just… spend a night being together, can we do that?”
“Yeah, of course,” Damon said, narrowing his eyes at Vincent, “This isn’t over.”
“No, nothing is ever over with you,” He replied, shuffling my head off his leg and standing up, “So much to choose from and no way of deciding, whatever shall we do?”
“Hmm…” Now that was hard to say. I’d been so busy with my work, and they had been far from idle, the last time that we’d been able to spend some uninterrupted time together was… wow, at least a few weeks ago. I’d spent so much time trying to think of what we were going to do when we finally got the chance, and now that the moment was here I didn’t have any idea how to choose. Watching a movie? That seemed a little mundane. Cooking? Too messy, not to mention too tiring.
Just talking? Not that I was going to complain if that was all we ended up doing but… in terms of mundane that seemed even more so than watching a movie. Which left… well, I wasn’t going to complain about what option four was, far from it, the only question was if either of them were going to be for the idea or not as well.
“Say…” I said, moving my hand from the small of Damon’s back and sliding it lower, “I think I might have an idea of what we can do together…”
“Do you now?” He said, eyebrow raising into his hairline at the first squeeze of my hand, “If I’m not mistaken it feels like a pretty good idea to me.”
“I think it is, yeah.” Looking back at Vincent, with the world upside down in my vision, I winked up at him and purred, “How about you?”
He sighed, already unbuttoning the top button of his shirt as he walked back towards us. “I suppose so…”
* * *
Our lips locked together, my hands fisted in Damon’s hair while Vincent worked on removing his shirt, hands roving along my thighs whenever temptation got the better of him, which was an embarrassing amount considering that he’d spent the last three minutes tangled in a mass of fabric instead of just doing the reasonable thing and concentrating for a moment. Who am I to complain though? This was my idea in the first place, and the fact that it was still so light hearted even after everything that had happened was… nice. It was really, really nice.
“Are you ever… going to get… out of that fucking thing?” Damon said between kisses, “Seeing you struggle is funny, don’t get me wrong, but it’s kind of distracting.”
“I’m sorry, let me critique everything that you’re doing wrong as well,” He replied, finally throwing the shirt off to the side and taking his position at my other side, grabbing my face roughly and pulling me towards him. If there was one bonus to their constant bickering, aside from it routinely being hilarious to me, it was the competition that opened up in every aspect of their lives, always having to prove that one of them was better than the other at whatever it was that they were currently focusing on.
Much to my delight, that thing they were focusing on right now happened to be me.
With my mouth claimed by Vincent now Damon’s had been cleared up, clamping onto my neck almost instantly out of a want to just taste something, even if he wasn’t biting just yet. There was an unofficial agreement that we wouldn’t do that particular act until we were right at the end of our sessions, otherwise I would be undone right away and we would have to stop before I lost my mind, and that wasn’t going to be fun for anyone at all.
“Slow down,” I mumbled against his lips, running my hands along the sculpted muscles of Vincent’s chest and gasping at each shiver and tremor that I drew out of him. I’d never considered before meeting him that vampires could shiver, but you learn something new every day don’t you?
“Amy,” Damon grunted against my skin, “You’ve been under a lot of stress lately haven’t you?”
“I… yeah,” I gasped, “Yeah I have, why?”
“Well…” His hands wrapped around my shoulders, pinching gently at the knots of stress that had taken residence days ago and made themselves a known presence in every movement that I made. “I was thinking, maybe what you need isn’t for us to drill you into the bed like you clearly want, maybe what would be best is if the two of us took care of you more gently, you know, with a massage or two…”
“Mm,” Vincent groaned, scraping his tooth along my lips and coming this close to drawing blood, “I think that’s a good idea, you can have those occasionally it turns out.”
I nodded frantically, too caught up in everything to care about anything, allowing myself to be swept up into their arms and carried swiftly to the bedroom, my shoes falling off along the way and being kicked off to the side of the room for tomorrow Amy to find. It was with impossible gentleness that I was placed down onto the bed, told with a whisper and a peck to the cheek to just relax and enjoy what was going to happen.
Lifting my arms obediently when asked, Damon pulled my jacket off followed by my shirt, kissing whichever patch of exposed skin that he could access before moving lower, pushing my knees apart and working on dragging my stocking down at such an achingly slow pace that I’m sure snails have made love faster. Vincent was content to watch for now, eyeing both of us with the analytical gaze of the predator that he was, searching for the best way to make me unravel with the slightest flick of his finger. The bedposts had the nail marks in them to prove that he could too.
Damon only made it to one stocking before his lips were darting along my thighs, tongue dragging along and leaving goosebumps in its wake, hands placed firmly on my knees to prevent me from clamping them shut like I was so tempted to do. The image of him looking up at me from between my legs, hunger so plain in his pitch-black eyes that you could get lost forever if you stared into them too long, it was enough for me to forget that this was supposed to be a massage. A regular massage, not the happy ending kind, but I’m sure that’s where this was likely to head anyway.
“Oh for god’s sake, move out of the way,” Vincent barked, shoving Damon aside and taking over in regards to undressing me, his hands making short work of my other stocking and leaving me sat only in the underwear that I’d been wearing that day. It wasn’t something particularly flattering or sexy, what, was I supposed to be working every day in my best lingerie or something? Sue me for wanting to be comfortable I guess.
Neither of them seemed to care, pushing me backwards with the tips of their fingers until I was laying on my back, Vincent’s hands on me in an instant and doing his best to massage the tension from my arms and shoulders, fingers with such strength clear in their touch working into every knot and kink effortlessly. Damon wasn’t one to neglect his duties either, strong hands wrapped around my calves and kneading the muscle underneath, months of tension that I’d just blocked out by now bleeding out with every touch and leaving me feeling freer than ever.
“You two are… really good at this,” I grunted, feeling more of t
he pain being released with every heavy breath that I exhaled, “I should have asked for this sooner, shouldn’t I?”
“It wouldn’t have been a bad idea, but you can always ask whenever you want from now on, can’t she Damon?”
“That she can,” He answered, hands sliding up my thighs and brushing just too high to have this be considered a professional massage, if it ever truly was. “Right now though, I think she needs to flip over onto her front. Lots of tension in the back and all.”
“That’s a good point Damon, a very good point.” Turning back to me, Vincent didn’t ask permission before scooping one hand beneath me and flipping me over like a table in an old western. “We need to cover all areas Amy, I’m sure you understand.”
“Oh of course, you two need to do what you need to do,” I giggled, wiggling my hips at them until they placed their hands together and stopped my movements, “What’s wrong? I thought you liked the view?”
“We do, very much so, but if you keep doing that then this massage might turn a bit more… deep tissue than we might be intending.” Vincent leaned into my ear, scraping his fangs along the shell of my ear and whispering harshly, “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
“I-I don’t know,” I shivered, “I… might.”
Damon laughed, and all thoughts of kicking him for it escaped my mind when he dragged his finger across me and sent bolts of electricity shooting up into my core. “Look at that, you managed to break her already. We haven’t even taken that many clothes off yet.”
“You seem surprised that it’s possible…” I didn’t have to look up to know that Vincent had an audacious grin on his face. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“No, I prefer to be a little more upfront with what I’m doing, had no complaints about it so far.” He got onto the bed, shuffling forward on his knees until I could feel his hardness pressing against my behind. “If Amy wants to show you, I’d be more than happy to give you a demonstration.”
“What do you say Amy?” Vincent asked, sweeping his finger under my chin and tilting my head back to look at him, “Would you like us to continue with what we were doing? Or would you like… something more?”
