upstairs: for jemma

[lazy_but_loyal]

[Continued from here.]

Pam slips the key into the lock and pushes the door open, flicking a nearby light switch. Immediately the expansive room is illuminated warmly by a black chandelier in the center of the ceiling.

The decor has an old-fashioned, Victorian feel to it, but with modern sensibilities. And also lots of pink and black.

The walls are a very deep shade of pink; the thick carpet is black. Two chairs set at a round table with a black marble top have gilded arms and backs, with satiny pink cushions. Black velvet drapes are pulled closed and tight against the windows. The bed, at the far end of the room, is king-sized with an ornate padded headboard, the carvings matching the chairs. The sheets are black silk, and the pillows and duvet, of course are pink.

A black armoire stands in one corner by the bed, a matching dresser on the bed's opposite side. Both are empty, only because Pam hasn't had a chance to fill them yet.

Pam shuts the door and makes sure it locks behind Jemma.

"Go on and make yourself comfortable."

Comments

[lazy_but_loyal]

"And Leo Fitz is...?"

The way Pam trails off implies that she suspects it's someone she likes.

Girl talk! This is fun.

[protect_and_survey]

"He's..." For a girl who can talk about venomous snakes for hours without pause without a problem, she has surprising difficultly defining Fitz. "He's my very best friend in all the world."

It's not quite right.

But it's not wrong either.

"Most people, when they come down to our lab, think there's only one scientist down there - a FitzSimmons. Imagine their surprise when they find the pair of us."

There's a pause, and she wrinkles her nose.

"Actually, there's more than a few who can't seem to get it into their heads that there are two of us. They don't tend to last long."

[lazy_but_loyal]

Jemma is so adorable that she makes Pam's teeth hurt.

She's about to ask why she and Leo aren't together, when she's reminded of her own current relationship status with Eric. While it can't be defined in human terms, being as complicated as it is, she actually...knows that feeling.

Remembers it.

"Sounds like the best kind of partnership."

Pam comes over and sits on the bed beside her.

[protect_and_survey]

"I'm lucky." She knows it very, very well. And now she's going to press her luck, chin raised despite the way nerves are making her heart beat near out of her chest.

"But somehow I don't think you brought me here to talk about Fitz."

[lazy_but_loyal]

"Clever girl."

She smiles, her eyes narrowing like a cat's.

"You might want to take--" (she gestures to the top half of Jemma's outfit) "--this off. It could get a little messy."

[protect_and_survey]

"Right." She can understand that, even blood draws with hypodermic needles get messy sometimes, if someone flinches at just the wrong moment. This... won't be with needles.

She shrugs out of her sweater and undoes the buttons of her shirt with shaky fingers, made clumsy with entirely too much adrenaline.

"Y... you said it would hurt?"

[lazy_but_loyal]

Pam takes the sweater and neatly lays it aside. It's a cute but rather...utilitarian sweater. She gets a twinge. Just. Some kind of urge to raid Jemma's closet and give her a makeover.

"A bit. It's like any bite that punctures the skin. Some people have told me my bite stings. I probably didn't like them very much. But I'll be careful with you. Promise."

[protect_and_survey]

She shrugs her shirt off as well, just about as pale underneath of it as she is anywhere else. Sunbathing doesn't make it very high on Jemma's list of priorities.

What she's sort of wishing was a little higher on her list of priorities was packing some fancier bras on her trip, but honestly she thought she was going to spend the entirety of it elbow-deep in someone else's disaster of a study. She packed for comfort, not style.

[lazy_but_loyal]

Sunbathing is also not very high on Pam's list.

Pam watches Jemma as the shirt comes off, and she smiles, taking the garment as well and laying it over the sweater.

"Now, you? Have an adorable figure. I bet you'd look fabulous in something leather."

She sweeps her hair away from her neck, her cool fingers brushing against her skin.

[protect_and_survey]

"That's not very practical for the lab environment." She protests, but it's breathless. Jemma whimpers, caught right on the edge of losing her nerve altogether.

[lazy_but_loyal]

She sweeps the palm of her hand down her bare back and leans in close, her mouth near her ear.

"Oh, sugar," she purrs, her breath oddly cool, "you've gotta think outside the lab once in a while."

And she kisses her, lightly, just under her ear at her pulsepoint. Pam's lips are also cool, but soft, as she follows the smooth slope of her jaw.

"If at anytime you want me to stop...I probably won't. But tell me anyway."

She smirks between kisses.

[protect_and_survey]

"I..." Her hands are tentative, delicate, searching more for a point of reference (reassurance) than anything else. "You said you'd tell me how...?"

[lazy_but_loyal]

Pam raises her head, and cupping Jemma's cheek, turns her face toward her.

Parting her red lips to expose her incisors, her fangs suddenly come down with an odd-sounding click, like a tiny snap of bone. They're very white, conical-shaped, and dangerously sharp.

"This is how, honey."

[protect_and_survey]

"Oh wow..." She's forgotten to be afraid, faced with this new variation on morphology. "They're gorgeous."

[lazy_but_loyal]

...Well, that reaction was unexpected.

And she smiles, her fangs stark and white against the red of her lips.

"Why, thank you, sweetheart."

She sounds genuinely flattered.

[protect_and_survey]

"Are they hollow? There's a design, well, similar, but not really, amongst the pit vipers and adders, but they all have hollow fangs, very fine, to inject venom - these look quite a bit more sturdy, more like a carnivorous mammal, but there's nothing there with a similar retractable design."

The babbling is back, but this one is full of 'the universe is awesome!' rather than nerves.

[lazy_but_loyal]

The girl really is amusing.

But she shakes her head, sweeping the pad of her thumb over the corner of Jemma's mouth.

"Not hollow. No venom. We're our own special kind of carnivore."

And she leans in to press her lips against hers. Maybe to keep her from babbling. Maybe to let her feel how dangerous it is to kiss someone with very sharp teeth.

[protect_and_survey]

There's a soft hum of appreciation, her heart rate picking up for a different reason than the fear she's neglected to remember again.

Perhaps she has so little luck back home because no one's tried to seduce her with a stack of technical journals.

[lazy_but_loyal]

Pam can smell the subtle shift in the scent of her blood as the fear begins to dissipate somewhat. She deepens the kiss a little, careful not to nick Jemma's lips and tongue, even as her fangs lightly bump and scrape against her teeth.

For Pam, it's an exercise in being gentle, as Eric showed her. It's simply a means to an end, not because she cares.

But Jemma is so sweet and so delicate...

Pam's cool hand slips down the side of her neck, thumb stroking her pulsepoint. She can feel the heat of her blood, hear it rushing through her arteries. And her appetite grows as a purring growl escapes her lips.

[protect_and_survey]

Another mark to put on 'things Jemma knows about vampires': living longer means their technique has time to improve markedly. The entry after that is a rather gleeful babbly note about purring but thankfully no one has to hear it right now. Right now, Jemma is the one who pulls away first for air.

"I think I'm beginning to see why Eric complains so much about groupies." She laughs, breathlessly. Jemma tilts her head away, exposing her neck to that gentle hand, watching Pam with unquenched curiosity.

[lazy_but_loyal]

Not breathing is definitely an advantage when making out.

Pam chuckles, low and sensually, as she reaches up with her other hand to rake her fingers through Jemma's hair, sweeping it away from her neck. She cups the back of her head to keep it steady, her other hand still caressing the side of her throat.

It's kind of like how someone adjusts their hold on a big sandwich before they begin to eat it.

"You ain't seen the half of it, sugar."

She dips her head, scenting along the exposed curve of Jemma's throat, the gesture almost animalistic. Her upper lip curls. The cold sharpness of her fangs scrape her skin.

And she bites her.

There's really nothing gentle about inflicting a flesh wound.

Blood immediately seeps from the double punctures, and Pam closes her lips over the broken skin. She utters a deep, sighing moan as the hot, thick sweetness fills her mouth, her long eyelashes fluttering closed.

[protect_and_survey]

Jemma jerks in Pam's hold, her hindbrain recognizing the pain of the bite and trying to get away from it without any further input from any higher-functioning parts of the brain. She has her hands on Pam's shoulders and a panicked whimper in her throat before the other sensations catch up, sweet and coiling and disarming, if she lets them.

[lazy_but_loyal]

Pam likes the feel of panic. It makes Jemma's blood flow faster, warmer.

But then she strokes Jemma's cheek with her thumb, slowly sweeping back and forth, in sync with the strokes of her tongue and the rhythmic pull of her mouth.

Her blood is so, so sweet. There's a certain pureness to it that Pam hasn't tasted in a long time. It takes every ounce of restraint to keep from sucking at the wound too hard. She growls a little, kittenish for a century-old vampire, but deep enough to be a bit disconcerting to a human.

A warm trickle of blood escapes the corner of her mouth and travels down along Jemma's collarbone.

[protect_and_survey]

The fear dies down again, slower this time, aided as it fails to hurt more and what pain there is matters less. It's hypnotic, the concerted movement of fingers and lips and tongue.

Idly she tries to reason out the rate of blood loss, but the numbers float away and she gives it up as a bad job. Then she tries to figure out what sort of morphology changes would need to happen to create such a low pitch from human-sized vocal chords, and that distracts her for longer.

Long enough that she's stopped leaning against that soothing hand for comfort, and is leaning against it because she's getting dizzy, a feeling like spending too long on a carnival ride.

[lazy_but_loyal]

Sometimes when you're feeding on someone, you get a little carried away. Baby vampires and undisciplined vampires with no control over their impulses usually end up with a dead human on their hands. Whoops.

Fortunately, Pam, despite her general attitude, can follow the rules, and plus she wouldn't want to deliberately do any lasting damage to Jemma. And also, there's Eric. He'd be disappointed if anything bad happened.

At some point, Pam can hear Jemma's heartbeat start to slow. Her pulse drags underneath her palm pressed to her neck. Her body begins to slump against hers.

It's enough.

She lifts her mouth from Jemma's neck, lips and teeth stained dark red with blood, before gently easing her down onto the mattress.