a/n: A little kinklet I originally wrote for the Soul Eater kink meme on livejournal. Maybe it's poor taste to post outside the comm, but I liked this so much I wanted to share it here, too, in all its (mostly?) typo-free glory. Reviews are always well-loved.
She's running from something – she doesn't remember what – maybe the darkness itself. At any rate, she can hear her breath, quick and shallow, as it echoes through the room. Marie holds out a hand to steady herself. As soon as she touches the wall, she regrets it: it feels clammy and cool, like a dead thing. The torches flicker, but they don't help; in fact, they only make the dark seem darker, somehow. They bring out the monsters in the corners. Marie doesn't need any more monsters to deal with. The fear she gets from being lost down here is bad enough.
"Marie?"
His voice echoes in the stone corridor. Marie looks toward him as he emerges from the darkness, her face wobbling into a reluctant smile. "Stein," she says. She tries to sound relieved. She doesn't want him to know that he's one of the last people she wants to meet here. "Oh, good. Do you know the way out of here? I'm completely lost."
He looks at her blankly for a moment. The light flickers off his glasses. Then he smiles. Marie doesn't like it. "Of course. Of course. Although I'm lost, too."
"You are? You don't know the way out, then?"
"I didn't say that." He approaches her. His features are twisted into something unlike themselves, although they are still attractive to her. He reaches out for something, and Marie give him her hand. Instead of leading her away, he flips it over and examines it, tracing a finger across the lines of her palm. Looking at her love lines, perhaps.
She catches her breath at his touch.
"Your veins are very blue," he says. He wasn't examining her palm lines after all, then. She should have expected no less of a scientist. "And your skin is very pale. White. Like a lamb's." His fingers trace their way up to her wrist, where even Marie can see the blue of veins. His touch feels like a whisper, but Marie doesn't want to hear what it's saying. The whisper is enough to make her heart pound in a way that feels wrong. He brings her wrist to his ear. Despite herself, she leans closer to him.
"I can hear your pulse. It's fast."
"Oh," she says, staring at him blankly. His eyes are so dull. His face looks so hollowed, with the torchlight carving out his eyes and cheeks – and now he's smiling –
"Oh," she says again, because now one his other hand has slipped to the small of her back, slipping under her top to the hollow there. He steps toward her and she takes a step back, until she feels her shoulder bones bumping into the cold wall.
Now that she thinks of it, his hand, too, feels cold.
"Marie," he says. His lips are at her ear. She can feel the tickle of his hair on her cheek, the pressure of his body against hers. "Lost little lamb. You know what happens to the one who leaves the flock."His lips work down to her neck, where he presses the gentlest of kisses. Marie paralyzes with fear. The hand that lay in the hollow of her back travels around up the front, so he's cupping her breast.
He works his way down, putting more pressure in each touch of lips to neck. An absent thumb strokes her breast. By the last kiss, Marie lets out a soft, but involuntary, moan. It echoes through the corridor so she can hear and relive her own shame. Stein laughs softly, only a bit louder than her moan, and this echoes, too. Everything looms large and dark.
"I'll take you apart and see why your heart beats for me," he says. "But first I'll work from the outside." He moves a little closer. Marie can feel all his bones, can feel all his muscles, can feel his slow heartbeat, but she can't feel an erection. She feels his lips crash into hers, so forcefully that her head knocks back into the hard wall. His tongue slips through like a snake and he grabs her by the waist, holding on tight so she can't move.
She responds to his kiss despite herself, despite the fear that he'll eat her whole. She finds herself clinging to him, rubbing against him. His heart remains slow, his body impervious.
"Please," she murmurs, begging for release. Release of some form; she's not sure exactly what she wants anymore, except for it to be over.
"If you want it," he says, and he reaches down to hike up her skirt. She shifts to allow his hand a way up. As his hand works up her thigh, she suddenly feels panic overtake her and, suddenly, she slaps him square in the face. He pauses, otherwise indifferent, then laughs again.
"Because you know how much I like a witch," he says, still laughing. "Little Marie…" Her heart sinks, although now it's beating faster than ever, so fast that she fears it might pop.
She gasps as his thumb makes its way to the rim of her underwear. She has no further protests. No further protection. She submits. The dead wall behind her is about to swallow her whole, she knows it.
She – she needs to wake up. She needs to wake up. There. Sleeping bag, underneath her. No Stein, good. Just a dream. She thinks she hears Stein laughing at her foolishness, but it's growing dim, just as the dream is, less real, because she knows it's all a dream now.
She stirs, opens her eyes. Darkness. Just a dream, she tells herself again. Just a dream. She sits up, unsettled, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Her hand, despite herself, inches toward the area between her legs. She bites her lip. What kind of a dream was that? It was a nightmare, more than anything.
She looks over from her sleeping bag to Stein's. He's sleeping, his silvery hair visible in the faint moonlight. His face looks smooth, until it crumples with a nightmare's worry.
She leans over him and brushes the hair out of his face.
"It'll be okay," she says, not sure if she believes herself. The dream was vivid, too vivid for her liking. "I'll be here." Whether her presence will have any effect is a question that she has no answer for.
He remains fast asleep, trapped in a nightmare of his own, likely not involving her.