Author's note: Flashback-i-ness…hopefully not done in a confusing manner.
Warning: proto-smut?
It was probably odd. Most people would likely elect for a physician's skilled hand over someone with less than basic field training to patch them up. But Declan always preferred Penny-er-Miss Hayes when the unavoidable need for medical assistance arose.
Some would call it a torturous experience, and perhaps there was a bit of the masochist in him for it, but there was something undeniably pleasurable about watching her work. Sure, being audience to a person with a natural gift (or recipient of gracefully executed sutures) was a wonderful experience. However, it really held no candle to witnessing a perfectionist tackle an undertaking unto which they held no innate skill. The world melted away for her, all except for the task at hand. He could see the focus in every fiber of her being, from the small furrows in her brow, to the way she worried her lower lip, to the muscles tensing in her forearm, bicep and shoulder as they steadied her hand.
It may take her ten times as long as a certified medic, perhaps an agonizing duration for steel and thread to be piercing already raw nerves and tugged slashed flesh together, but if she didn't bloody well produce the loveliest stitches he had ever laid eyes upon. People who knew what they were doing tended to sew wounds up fast and oft ugly, moving onto the next patient with the confidence that their work would get the job done.
Miss Hayes' uncertainty was what created such a spectacular result. Others avoided her tedious approach to medical care like the plague, and they did not know what they were missing. Declan often wondered whether he would still suffer injurious bodily harm so damn often if he weren't curious about how the next scar she'd touched might turn out.
"Are you sure you don't want Dr. Renzi or Dr. Spahn to look at this?" Miss Hayes asked, breaking his trance-like study of her trance-like working state.
"Positive," he replied without missing a beat. "They'll only berate me for getting..."
Declan hesitated. It seemed an especially ridiculous injury when one was about to say it aloud. They were rather human-like abnormals after all. And after said incident, he felt enough like he were in a B horror movie. An eerie, understated hospital scene was all he needed at the moment.
"...bitten," he finally finished quietly after clearing his throat.
The amused look upon Miss Hayes' face was short-lived, quickly replaced by her previous one of concern.
"Bite wounds are notoriously nasty," she affirmed with a frown that dimpled her cheek. "Prone to infection..."
"Just pour some more disinfectant on it, if you're that worried," he interrupted her tirade. One of the reasons he liked it when Miss Hayes patched him up was that her scolding primarily remained nonverbal. The doctors were sick of putting him back together and let him know it. Her motives appeared to remain in the realm of compassion rather than obligation. But it looked as if he might have pushed her past her limit.
Or, maybe he was wrong.
Her face lit up, and she laughed; a genuinely melodious sound that made him smile. However, his smile quickly turned into a wince as she applied copious amounts of antiseptic to the wound on his arm.
"You sound like my gran," she observed, laughter still edging her voice, along with a hint of nostalgia. "She swore by Iodine."
"You could cut your arm off and she'd convince you that if you only used enough, it'd surely grow back. Once I-"
Without warning, a pain stabbed Declan in the ribs and he collapsed onto his side with a cry of surprise. He gritted his teeth but he couldn't completely stifle the primal need to vocalize his pain, and pathetic whimpers escaped his throat.
It felt as if someone had jabbed him in the side with a white-hot poker, and so intense was the searing sensation that he could only feel the pressure of Miss Hayes' touch as though he were wearing enough layers to weather the artic. Her hands seemed to be attempting to pry open the tight ball into which he had instinctively curled himself.
Her voice, too, seemed distant. Though he could detect the rise in urgency and panic residing there.
"Sir, are you alright?" she questioned from miles away.
"Please, sir, tell me what's wrong!"
Finally, when she could apparently withstand his suffering no further, she cried "Declan!" in the most emotional utterance he had ever heard pass her lips.
A few more seconds, which seemed an eternity of agony, and the pain was gone as suddenly as its onset. A mere tingling sensation remained as he shifted onto his back, his chest heaving in an attempt to regain breath he had not realized he'd been holding.
"That was odd," he said breathlessly as he tried to sit up. A firm hand placed upon his abdomen stopped him from doing so.
"I thought you said this wasn't your blood," Miss Hayes commented, drawing his attention to his blood-soaked shirt. Any playfulness about her had completely vanished, replaced by a reasonably concerned and slightly interrogatory look. Her normally chilled hand felt hot against his ribs, even through his shirt.
"It's not," Declan asserted. He remembered the splash of blood as that particularly aggressive succubus went down, drenching his front and side in a sticky, warm mess. It had since dried, and he knew the garment was surely a loss, but thought nothing further of it.
Her rebuttal to his denial came in the form of holding up the hand she had pressed against his ribs. The harsh florescent light of the exam room glinted off the fresh crimson coating her palm. Since Miss Hayes had not sliced her hand open in the last thirty seconds- not that he knew anyway- there was no denying its source.
He was bleeding.
Shouldn't it have hurt or something? He had never bled enough to coat someone's hand after the briefest of contact without the accompaniment of some significant degree of pain. And since it wasn't enough to have been an opened artery (evidenced by the fact of his continued living), he likely wasn't numb from shock and blood loss.
"Funny that," he began, "I don't remember-"
He flinched as Miss Hayes pulled the hem of his shirt up to reveal the curious injury. The wince on his face was not a result of pain, rather of sympathy, as if he were looking at someone else's flesh sporting a gaping, oozing wound and knew the agony they must suffer. Only it was his severed tissue...(could he see the white of bone?) And yet, he felt nothing but a bit of stiffness as the blood congealed and crusted on his skin.
The colour seemed to have drained entirely from Miss Hayes' face as she studied the gory mess that currently comprised his torso.
"It's not so bad," Declan reassured. "Doesn't hurt a smidge. Probably not as awful as it looks."
She gave him an incredulous look, but took the antiseptic to cleaning up the gore obscuring the true nature of the wound. A shiver ran up his spine as her hand brushed his skin, the disinfecting fluid wiping away the coagulating blood to better reveal the nature of the injury. He wondered whether there wasn't something odd in the fleeting touch of her (even through the protective layer of the latex gloves), but it was probably simply the rapid evaporation of the alcohol-base stealing the heat away from his body.
They had both dealt with their share of the stomach-turning, what with the bizarre end of abnormals and their tendency towards expelling various forms of nasty, mucus-like fluids. Not to mention the many, many injuries involved in hunting and aiding abnormals clashing with the world at large. The fact that he felt no pain gave Declan a rather detached, clinical view of his injury. And although, still atypically pale, Miss Hayes none-the-less returned to her stoic, business-like approach to providing medical care.
"Oh, lord," she whispered when she had done the best she could to finish her task, what with the blood still flowing rather freely from the gash, and even more profusely once the coagulated clots were removed. It was deep, but hit along the edge of his ribcage, and was halted from eviscerating him by the tough tissue and bone residing beneath the skin there -damn, those soul-sucking hags had sharp claws. She pressed a bandage to the wound.
"Keep pressure on this," she ordered, taking his hand and placing it over the compress.
Nerve endings stirred.
That same curious jolt of not-quite electricity running through him upon her touch. He couldn't help but wonder what her bare skin would feel like. And then her hand was gone.
He felt cold. And empty.
"I'm fetching Dr. Spahn and no arguments."
Grabbing Miss Hayes' wrist as she turned to leave elicited a startled look of consternation from her. Yet, he instantly felt much improved. There was a warm glow to her, emanating from her, like she were a crackling fire and he was standing satisfyingly close to the hearth. And he wanted to hold his hands out to warm them, to warm every bit of himself.
Declan shook his head, dispelling tempting thoughts, releasing his grip upon her wrist slightly, but not letting her completely go.
"What it is it?" she asked quietly when he only stared at her like he'd never actually seen her before.
She must have been as curious about him, his odd behaviour, as he was about the bizarre affect of her touch upon him. Because she let him run his fingers fleetingly over her bare forearm, stopping only where the fabric of a rolled-up sleeve obscured the warm, tender flesh from his probing.
But it wasn't enough.
The feeling, it was so difficult to understand, impossible to explain. And it compelled him with more than mere curiosity to pursue his exploration. Sitting up now, he was able to reach out and touch his fingertips to the curve of her neck. He did so tentatively, afraid that a more powerful surge of whatever it was might wash over him, drown him. And yet, he remained eager to feel more of the strangely alluring sensation.
More.
It just wasn't enough.
His hand moved to her cheek, a full caress of the supple flesh. Her cheek was so soft, so full, not yet wane of the vital collagen of youth. And so amazingly warm beneath his palm was it, that he closed his eyes for a moment just to revel in the feel of her. She leaned into the caress, an action that tore his thoughts from savouring what he held, instead returning him to the desire for more.
More.
Still cupping her cheek, he ran his thumb over the sensuous skin of her rosy lips. He had never noticed them before, being unremarkable as they were. They were not pouty or plump. Neither were they thin. Just sort of average, except for the fact of their exquisite shape, the kind that would leave a graphic artist's ideal behind in red lipstick upon an envelope. And while her skin glowed a comfortable warmth, her lips burned with an inviting flame.
And it might just be enough.
Declan shifted his hand around to the back of her neck, his other moving to the small of her back, and he pulled the young woman to him, slipping his mouth over hers, not in a harsh way, but one that made him impossible to refuse.
The nursery rhyme was correct.
She tasted of sugar and spice, and all things nice. However, it was the almost liquid heat of her pouring into him that drove him further, consumed what remained of his rational mind.
And it still wasn't enough.
More.
More.
He needed more.
Nothing remained but the overwhelming force of that need.
...
"Did you... uh... you know?" Dr. Zimmerman interjected, disrupting Macrae from his much censored tale and undiluted private recollections.
"I don't think she'd be alive right now if I had," he replied matter-of-factly, a passive facade belied by the guilt and anxiety in his eyes.
"What happened, then, to stop you?" The psychiatrist inquired, obviously intrigued by the strange patterns and symptoms manifested by the succubae virus, despite the discomfort of issuing such probing questions to a man with whom he were, frankly, only on tenuous terms.
"I just sort of snapped out of it," Declan supplied.
...
When her lips were finally freed, she moaned his name. Like a magic spell, it had transformed him into a human being once again. He was a man, not a mindless animal driven by some primal urge.
Hastily, he extricated himself from her inviting body. Everything was a little hazy, and he couldn't quite recall doing so, but along the way he apparently shifted her to lie supine beneath him on the cold -now moderately warm- exam table. Her legs had wrapped about his waist. Her hands had roamed as much as his, over his back and shoulders, head and neck, down his chest, stomach... Her body pressed, grinding against his. Had she only been wearing clothing that granted him slightly easier access, who knew how far he would have gone?
Wiping a hand over his face and then crossing his arms, he leaned against the edge of the table, his brain trying to process the chaos that the world had become.
"What in the bloody hell was that about?" he muttered to himself.
Laboured breathing drew his attention to the young woman he had almost ravaged as she hopped down from the metal surface into which he had very nearly ground her supplicant body.
What if he hadn't snapped out of it?
Just how far would he have gone?
He knew the answer to that. That much was rendered blatant by the insistence of his body about what should comprise his next act. By how constrictive his trousers felt at present.
The really very frightening questions, however, were how much would Miss Hayes have tolerated? And what would he have done if she had resisted his advances? What if she had asked him to stop? Pleaded with him? Would he have done?
He knew the answer to that one, as well. And it caused bile to bite at the back of his throat.
But the guilt and the frustration were nothing compared to the pangs of hunger beginning to stab at his insides.
And the hunger was in no way, not even remotely, linked to his stomach.
He glanced at Miss Hayes. She was tugging at the hem of her blouse in a futile attempt to unmuss herself. Even if it were straightened and smoothed, there was no erasing the large red stain spreading across the front of the pale blue fabric. And there was a further impossible smear of blood down the front and inside thigh of her fatigues, where his open wound had rubbed against her clothed body, bleeding through the scant layers that had separated them.
Her blouse was gorgeously fitted, and he could see the roundness of her breasts bobbing up and down as she failed to fully recover her breath. It also accented the curve of her waist, but those damn fatigues she adorned obscured any other alluring curves of which she might be in possession. The flush on her skin denoted her warmth, but he could also feel it. Several feet away, and he could sense the heat of her. It called to him. He wanted it. He needed it.
Declan grabbed a roll of gauze, stripped off his shirt, and made a sloppy but effective job of wrapping his torso in sterile bandages, stemming the flow of blood from the nasty gash that persisted in failing to pain him. Something bizarre was going on, and he didn't like the explanations that his mind was offering. Having little options, and even less time, he threw back on the same slashed, bloodied shirt.
"Goodbye, Miss Hayes," he offered in a genial sort of way, as if he were simply passing her on his way out to market, and they were mere acquaintances, not two persons who had shared a serious snog (and nearly much more) not two minutes prior. "You're in charge while I'm away."
"Wh-what?" she stuttered. A more entirely baffled person, he had never seen in his life. But he didn't have time to explain, not when he did not possess the willpower not to do things to her, things that begged to be done. In fact, there was quite the cacophony of arguments as to what precisely to do to Miss Hayes, to make her do, to give to her, to take from her.
"Where are you going?" she formed a coherent thought amongst all the extremely random stimuli with which he had bombarded her.
"To see the only person in the world who might possibly be able to help me."
Her voice called after him, obviously shoving aside everything it was incapable of processing in favour of something she could tackle.
"You need stitches!"
...
"So what did you do after you...snogged Miss Hayes?" Will prompted.
"I got the bloody hell out of there," he replied. "I knew if there was anyone who could figure out what was happening to me, it'd be Helen."
A fleeting look of what could almost be called jealousy clouded the young man's face before he recovered his passive psychiatrist facade. Declan was quite aware of Dr. Zimmerman's protectiveness of Helen Magnus, but he had never thought there might be more to it. And why did he have to be in middle of it, where he really didn't want to be?
"So you came directly here, and when you arrived, you felt the need to kiss Kate," Will supplied what he knew.
"And Henry," Declan added reluctantly. He couldn't deny what he'd done, what he still owed apology for, no matter how little he wanted to recall his actions.
By the time he had made it to the Sanctuary, he'd been like a starving man who had gone weeks upon weeks without. And all the worse, every step of his journey had seen him surrounded by a plethora of options to sate himself. He had held off for so very long, but the bubbling life of the two who had greeted him upon his arrival had been beyond his will to resist. At least he had retained the presence of mind to take only the briefest of sips from the piquant girl. Unfortunately, it was not enough to tide him over, it only made the hunger burn worse for the briefest of tastes he had taken. And he knew he should not take more of Kate, did not know exactly what it did to a person, so he took a sip from Henry as well. The young man -werewolf- had tasted odd. He wasn't sure if it was because of Henry's abnormal side, or simply that he'd never kissed a man before.
He rather hoped never to do so again.
"That would explain the doggy breath, then," Magnus interjected, making both men jump. She had entered the room as silently as a church mouse.
Did she really have to have so much fun at his expense?
"I'm just joshing you," she added, frowning a bit over the embarrassment he could feel was apparent on his face. No doubt Will had been the recipient of such teasing from Helen before, for he gave Declan a sympathetic look.
"I do owe some apologies," he replied, the guilt for stealing a little bit of their lives outweighing the shame of sticking his tongue in their mouths without invitation. His mother would argue that she raised him better than that, after all.
"There'll be time for that later," Helen asserted. "Besides, I've sent Henry and Kate to attend to some other business."
He caught Will raising an eyebrow in Magnus' direction, apparently as unaware of his coworkers' assignment as Declan was. She didn't give him anything for his silent inquiry. Instead returned her attention to the afflicted man.
"And there's more pressing matters involving you at the moment than groveling for forgiveness," she added.
"More tests?" Declan asked.
"Results, actually," Helen corrected. "I think I've determined the rather unique pathology of the virus."
"Best news I've heard all day."
A/N: PLEASE slap me if Penny/Miss Hayes seems at all Mary-Sue-like, for there's nothing I hate more than flat characters.