Chapter 10

Puck straightened his back, took a deep breath, and focused in on his target. He let go of the air slowly, and released the bowstring.

A few dozen metres away, the arrow struck a zombie in the shoulder. The three arrows that stuck from its body were barely hindering its ability to limp closer to the trio.

"Damnit," he cursed with a frown, turning to Quinn with his bow. She'd been standing behind him for all his attempts at shooting, arms crossed in an unimpressed fashion, while Rachel stood to his right, closely observing his shots with a pair of binoculars. "Something's wrong with this gear. It can't shoot straight to save its life."

"Then we find something that does agree with you, because you sure as hell aren't going to use that shotgun in my vicinity," Quinn said, eying the weapon that Puck carried around in a makeshift holster.

Rachel dropped the rather unnecessary binoculars from her eyes. "What do you suggest?" she asked, finding the entire situation rather amusing. Puck had hit the zombie in practically all vital organs except the head.

"A naginata, for all I care." Rachel shot Quinn a disapproving look that just made her roll her eyes before looking away.

Puck was smiling rather smugly when Rachel turned to him. "What silent weapons are you proficient with, Noah?"

He took a moment to think, ignoring the moody blonde. "Silenced guns?" he finally offered. "I don't know. I just don't feel comfortable getting close to infected, okay?"

Quinn looked up at the admission, as if given an idea. "Rachel, why don't you try the bow?"

Puck and Rachel exchanged glances before Puck handed over the weapon. "I gotta see this," he said with a smirk.

Rachel shot the zombie straight in the eye socket.

From thereon, it was decided that Rachel would handle Robin – the bow, once again so aptly named by Rachel – while Puck got to wield Batman until they found a solution for his predicament.

"Oh shit, a Hostess truck," Puck remarked as soon as the truck came into sight. Rachel grabbed at his arm and bounced up and down a few times to show her glee.

Quinn peered down the street, raising an eyebrow at the discovery. There were maybe two undead visibly zoning out as they stood there. She looked over at the excited couple, relenting pretty much instantly when she came across wide brown eyes. She sighed in exasperation. "What do you want?"

"Sno Balls!" Rachel answered at the same time Puck responded with, "Twinkies!"

Silent as a cat, Quinn made her way over to the truck. Completely bypassing the zombies, to both Rachel and Puck's surprise, she came back with a box of Sno Balls.

Puck didn't complain as he took a bite from creamy goodness.

Rachel experienced a certain kind of déjà-vu when she woke up, huddled up into Puck's side. He was nice and warm in a large kind of way, what with the breeze they were exposed to at this height. They had found a strategically placed roof to camp for the night, which she thought was a great plan when the sun was out. Now, however, under the dark sky and in the cold breeze, she wished they'd gone for something with walls.

She turned around, readjusting her makeshift blanket as she went, only to come face to face with IQ's amused eyes. Rachel sighed at her appearance. It was surprisingly easy to spot the imaginary woman in the full moon, and so was the actual Quinn, who was standing on watch with her back to them a short distance away.

Rachel raised an expectant eyebrow at IQ, who remained adamant in her amusement. "Getting twitchy?" IQ asked, tilting her head.

Rachel furrowed her eyebrows. Twitchy about what?

"Quinn is right there, ready for the taking," IQ whispered, leaning in closer. She stopped rather suddenly in her advances, eyes flitting to the immobile man besides them. "But so is Puck."

Rachel narrowed her eyes at the woman, wondering what she was getting at.

"But I'm just a dream," she continued, looking down at the brunette. Rachel jolted when she felt a hand slip over her hips, under her sweater and across her stomach, soft and teasing. "They will never know," she breathed into her ear.

Rachel gasped at the feeling of blunt nails running across tender skin. It felt so real and kind of nice, but oh dear God, Puck and Quinn were nearby. Quinn, who was very much conscious and hyper-sensitive to any and all sounds.

Thankfully, and very much out of the blue, IQ was yanked back by the shoulder. Rachel was rewarded with the image of Quinn pinning IQ's hands to the floor. A low growl sounded from between clenched teeth, "Begone." IQ obeyed the order, disappearing into thin air. Rachel was just about ready to jump into an explanation, but gleaming eyes turned to her, and instantly, Quinn was hovering over her in a possessive fashion.

"Mine."

It was a simple word and it shouldn't have rung that painfully in her ears, but it did, and the next thing Rachel knew, she was jolting awake. Her eyes flitted around the darkened roof, finding that Puck was still asleep behind her and Quinn was still standing watch. Gleaming eyes turned to her, an unspoken question in them, but once Rachel confirmed it had all been a dream and settled back down, Quinn turned away again.

For a few moments longer, Rachel stared at Quinn's immobile back.

What was this mind-fuckery?

"So what do you eat?" Puck asked, eying Quinn as they walked down a gloriously empty road.

"Your mom," Quinn responded with sarcasm. Puck blinked, wondering if he heard right, then laughed rather loudly at her answer.

"Quinn!" Rachel scolded, staring incredulously. It was around this time that she started noticing that something was wrong with Quinn. At first, Quinn seemed apathetic about Pucks presence, but now she was showing downright hostile traits. It was a good thing Puck seemed to take everything in stride.

If she hadn't been so busy watching the road, Quinn would have rolled her eyes. "Rachel," she corrected.

It took a moment for Puck to realize that Quinn meant to say she ate Rachel. "Oh," he breathed with a faraway look on his face. "You could always—"

"No." Quinn looked around, then turned left into a street, leading them towards the next safe house.

"We're taking the bedroom, Butterfingers," Quinn called after Puck as he checked the two other rooms the bunker had. Rachel raised a brow at the way she demanded it, because it would've been theirs by default. It was simple math, really. A couple and a double bed equalled—oh God, that equalled appropriate time for shameless cuddling and kissing.

"Dude," Puck said as he came back out of the bedroom. "That nickname is drastically uncool."

"Then how about spineless coward?" Quinn growled, actually flashing her canines as she sneered at the man. Rachel was startled by how she legitimately growled, and looked about ready to pounce on her very suspecting prey. While she appreciated certain dramatics, she quickly undertook action before Quinn did something extreme, because Puck was making no move to protect himself physically or emotionally.

"Quinn!" she chastised, and the ferocity of those eyes turned to her. She straightened her back under the intensity. "I understand that Puck sounds questionable most of the time, but he's harmless, really."

Quinn's face crumpled. There was no other way to describe it. One moment she looked ready tear someone's head off and now she just looked confused? Helpless? Rachel couldn't really place the emotions that flitted across her face.

"Forget about it," Quinn said, hastily pushing past the two and entering the bedroom. Unsurprisingly, the door closed immediately behind her.

"Noah Puckerman!" Puck snapped to attention at the sound of his name. "What did you do?"

"Nothing, I swear!" Puck held up his hands in surrender. There was something off about the way he said it, but Rachel couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"Your 'nothing' has obviously upset Quinn a great deal. I've known her long enough that she wouldn't become angry at simply anything," she explained, hoping that was enough to start eating at his conscience. Sure enough, he did start to look reluctantly sheepish. "Now excuse me while I do some damage control." She also pushed past the man and entered the room, closing the door behind her.

Quinn was sitting on the ground on the other side of the bed, leaning back against the wall. Her legs were hugged against her chest as she stared thoughtfully into space. Rachel briefly considered how fitting the position was for someone who was trying to keep her emotions in check.

"Are you okay?" Rachel asked, walking over before sitting down next to the blonde. With no other reaction besides a brief shift in those thoughtful eyes, she leaned in so that their shoulders touched and spoke softly. "What is this about, Quinn? I know you're not jealous. I've been very frank when it came to Puck's advances, so that can't be it."

This managed to pull a tiny smile from Quinn. It didn't last for long, but at least it was something. Rachel could see she was troubled, that was no mystery. "I'm not really good at this," Quinn replied eventually.

"At what? Talking?" Rachel guessed, trying to catch Quinn's elusive eyes. She shared Quinn's amusement when her lips curled up into another tiny smile. "That's okay. Opposed to popular opinion, I can be quite patient when the need arises."

"I have no doubt." Quinn let the light-hearted air drop with a sigh. "I've been feeling increasingly…" She rolled her jaw, lowering her eyes to the ground.

"Yes?" Rachel prodded gently, absentmindedly wondering if it was appropriate to lean against the woman's shoulder.

"I've been becoming angrier and… scared," she finally forced out.

"Of Puck?" Rachel asked incredulously. Even before Quinn actually did it, she knew the woman was going to shoot her a dignified look.

"No, not Puck. It's all of your friends," Quinn corrected. Now it was Rachel's turn to become slightly dignified.

"This again?" she sighed.

"This always," Quinn snapped angrily, turning her heated gaze on Rachel. "They abandoned you in the middle of nowhere, Rachel. It wasn't like you were on the brink of death or infected. You guys weren't even being chased for God's sake! It was barely a flesh wound. A clean one, at that."

Rachel's eyes widened. "You were following us," she concluded softly.

"Yes. Yes, I was. I saw how they treated you, and heard how they came to decision to get you injured so they could leave you behind." Quinn waited for a reply with a clenched jaw, but Rachel was merely watching her with incredulity, slowly becoming the victim to a sinking feeling of dread. "And don't even try to reason that it makes me a bad person for not stopping them, because we both know that would have been futile."

All those words were like tiny little pinpricks to Rachel's heart, until she couldn't take it anymore and it simply broke. She knew it to be the truth. She may have turned a blind eye to the group's behaviour because it was too painful to see, but now it was hard to deny. Her eyes blurred with tears, and she could feel her chin tremble as she fought valiantly to keep the illusion of a happy family in tact.

"I'm sorry," Quinn murmured delicately, and then she was cupping Rachel's face in her hands. Rachel sucked in a breath as the first tear fell, but was comforted at the same time by the cool air against her skin as Quinn rested their foreheads together.

"I'm angry that they – that Puck didn't do anything to change their minds. But I'm even more scared that you may leave me to go with them anyway, and I can't bear to loose you now," she said, running her thumbs under the girl's eyes to gently swipe away an errant tear.

Before Rachel could even think about reacting physically – her emotional reactions were pretty much off the charts – Quinn had already pulled her into a hug that somehow ended with Rachel sitting sideways in her lap. Rachel just wanted to be alone for a while after receiving all this information, but Quinn didn't let go. "I don't want to go on without my little Monster," Quinn whispered, and Rachel lost her fight all at once. Quinn had said it with such vulnerability that she felt as if she was imposing on one of her private thoughts. Never had she imagined that the dependency she experienced could be mutual.

"Oh, Quinn," she breathed, pressing her face against the side of a pale neck. She tried to find words, because Quinn was finally opening up, but her thoughts kept backing up into what the blonde had said. She was smitten with her and sounded all around protective. It felt simply wonderful, because, despite her initial hesitance and fears, she could believe Quinn.

Rachel backed away to catch Quinn's wonderfully expressive eyes before pressing a sweet, slow kiss to her lips. She really would have liked to pour her emotions into the kiss, to show the woman how much she appreciated her, but all she could focus on was how soft and pliant and cool – always cool – Quinn felt against her. Trying to pry her lips open to deepen the kiss had the adverse effect, however, and Quinn pulled away with a shuddering sigh.

"What's wrong?" Rachel asked, taking the opportunity to make herself more comfortable by shifting a leg so that she was properly straddling Quinn.

Quinn followed her movements with slightly widened eyes, giving the impression of a cornered animal as she backed into the wall. But Rachel didn't fully realize what kind of vibe her actions gave off as she wrapped her arms around Quinn's neck. The truth was that Rachel had no sexual intentions so she didn't think twice about it. Not until Quinn's eyes flickered up to meet hers and she could see the effect she was having on the woman. Aside from the smouldering hazel eyes gazing back at her, there was also a pair of very telling canines peeking through her parted lips.

"I," Quinn started, snapping Rachel out of simply fascinating thoughts. She swallowed. "I've also been having trouble resisting… temptation," Quinn continued in such a hesitant, almost twitchy manner that Rachel couldn't describe her as anything less than flustered.

"What temptation?" Her eyes flickered down to those pointed canines, and the only thing that kept her from reaching out and touching them was the vague notion that Quinn needed her mouth to speak.

In a show of confidence, Quinn instilled some life in her arms and ran them down Rachel's clothed back, pulling her in closer. This had the desired effect of catching Rachel's attention again. With such intense eyes focused on her, Rachel didn't stand a chance in looking away. "Your warmth," she responded breathily, hands finding their way up underneath a thick sweater. The chilled flesh – as if those hands had been pressed up against cool glass – sent a shiver up Rachel's spine. "I find myself wanting to," hazel eyes dropped down to what was visible of Rachel's neck, "devour you."

Rachel swallowed, almost unable to breathe in the heavy atmosphere. "In what way?" she asked, against her better judgement. She would have been so much safer thinking that Quinn simply wanted to feed off her.

"All of them," Quinn responded immediately, eyes snapping up again. "Rachel, I want you in all the ways, but I don't want this to be the second time. It can never be over," she added with a hint of desperation.

To Rachel, those were the most beautiful words ever spoken, and for a moment, she lost the capacity to think. In an effort to mask her loss of IQ, she trailed her hands up Quinn's nape and into blonde hair before they came to rest upon pale cheeks. Then, without any preamble, the answer came to her. "Don't take too much, and we can count it as the first and a half."

Quinn couldn't seem to get a grasp on her composure, staring at Rachel with such admiration that it made the brunette feel like she was someone else entirely. She appeared to want to say something, but forwent words to kiss the woman before her instead. It started out as a reassuring press of the lips, but the charged atmosphere didn't allow any slow, intimate exploration for long and quickly turned open-mouthed and needy.

Rachel found it a wonderful improvement when Quinn let her hands drop to her ass, tenderly running her fingers across the seams of her jeans. She just wished Quinn wouldn't treat her like glass. It wasn't nearly enough. If she were glass, then she would still want to shatter. Surprisingly, her prayer was heard as Quinn started palming those curves with a welcome amount of pressure.

There was a permanent sharpness present in Quinn's mouth that made it hard for Rachel to take control of the situation, forcing her to go at a pace that was slower than she would have liked. So she whimpered her helplessness, purposefully running her tongue along a row of sharp teeth.

Quinn froze at the action, jaw unhinging as Rachel carefully stroked a canine. Momentarily, Rachel was worried she broke some unwritten vampire rule, but was reassured when Quinn moaned out a breathy, "Sensitive," before roughly pulling Rachel closer and firmly massaging the globes of her ass, deepening the kiss to the point that it made Rachel's blood boil.

The kiss scorched her insides all the way to the tips of her fingers, turning her sweater into a thick, suffocating layer of wool. It was sweaty and great, but she needed glorious. And the only way she could think of achieving that, was to get rid of the obstructive heat and get those cool hands on her. Quinn was of similar thought, if the hands wandering up her bare back were any indication. So, with a great deal of effort, she leaned back to detach herself. She was amused to find that Quinn followed her movement until she was arching her back uncomfortably – Quinn either unwilling or unaware that she was trying to break the kiss – until the only thing keeping her from falling over was Quinn's assuring grip. Eventually, she was able to create distance between them long enough to rip the confining sweater from her torso.

Rachel was in no state of mind to realize how much she just exposed herself, because Quinn's demeanour kept shifting from one extreme to the other and those eyes sucked her in every single time. Hazel eyes peered into her, opposed to all the skin she just revealed, and that just made her feel even safer. It made her want to embrace and kiss the woman, made her want to give more than she was offering. "Can I?" Quinn asked in a whisper, breathing the words against Rachel's lips.

The fact that she asked, simply asked, even though she threw every nonverbal permission out there—

Well.

"Yes," Rachel hissed, tangling her hands in blonde hair once again. "A million times yes."

Quinn's hands may have been moving – around her sides, up her stomach – but she kept her gaze locked with Rachel's, kept sharing sweetened breaths. A certain wonder painted across her face as skin prickled wherever her fingers trailed, and Rachel couldn't decide whether she liked or loved the difference in temperature. Through careful touches, the cold lapped at her in the most magnificent of ways, calming her heated skin and creating gooseflesh in the strangest places. Before those hands had even reached her breasts, her nipples had already pebbled to an almost painful degree due to the cold.

Quinn smiled sheepishly once she cupped sensitive flesh, and Rachel would've been embarrassed, except this was Quinn. "Cold?" she asked, her eyes dark as she ran her tongue along the upper row of her teeth.

Rachel could only nod before Quinn reached up and captured another kiss. The thought that Quinn's hands were slowly turning warmer briefly flashed through her mind, but then those fingers started moving. They circled and teased, and God, it felt really, really good. She couldn't help the tiny whimper that escaped her at a particular wonderful teasing pinch.

Quinn eagerly swallowed the sound, yet all but snapped once Rachel instinctively rolled her hips down into her. She released a growl, dropping her hands to circle her arms around the other woman before lifting her up and laying her back on the ground.

The movement was rough and quick, but Rachel didn't feel the harsh bite of the carpeted floor. She only barely realized that she was now lying horizontal before a mouth was latched onto her neck. There was no piercing pain, however, just the press of an open mouth. Regaining her senses somewhat, she noticed that Quinn had tensed all over, almost as if in an attempt to reign in her instincts. It wasn't until she heard a low, tortured whine that she realized that was, in fact, the case.

Rachel took a steadying breath, running what she hoped was a comforting hand through blonde hair. She knew what was about to come, but she wasn't sure she'd ever be prepared for it. "It's okay."

With those words, Quinn flexed her jaw, piercing through skin.

And it hurt. It hurt so good.

BAM, FADEOUT to Puck twiddling his thumbs in the next room. I actually feel bad for him, but the plot must go on!

I've made a bit of a mess in this chapter, as some of my tumblr followers could tell. But I won't bore you with the details. The last scene will be continued in the next chapter, though. So don't worry about the sudden ending.

Also, don't tell your hairdresser to go wild, even if you're feeling lucky.

Much love,
Plush

Alice Kuran; Oh wow. Um. Thank you xD
Gleefulness; Ohey, look. I included Puck's reaction. I will go more into detail about his reaction next chapter though. This was just the comic relief.
Rioshix; LOL. It wasn't my intention to draw attention to the differences, but I suppose, yeah.
4wingeddinosaur; I think my favourite reviews now include excited squealing, hahaha. Thank you :)
Lauraluvscasey; Oh, that's an interesting thought. The feeding, I mean. I think I might work with that.