Passage #4 - The Dream Is Dead
Arrows fester in my heart,
Each memory another dart,
Love and death both colored red,
Showing my past, the dream is dead.
Type O Negative, "The Dream Is Dead"
He lied when he told her that soon he would come for her. Since that night in her bedroom, he's kept his distance from her. Something inside of him doesn't want to see her, to hear her speak, to feel her eyes on him. He wonders succinctly if this isn't regret that he's feeling. He's lived so long without remorse that he's completely forgotten exactly how it feels. He imagines it's probably something like this.
It's been months since their encounter. Three months, precisely. And, as before, she's in his dreams, his waking nightmares, behind his eyelids when he's ripping the throat out of some random victim he happens upon in a dark alley where they never should have been in the first place. He wants it to be her he's nourishing on, her who is screaming in his ear, her who is clawing at his back at an attempt to stop him from draining her.
But therein lies the problem – he's no longer certain that he would kill her should her neck present itself in front of his mouth. He wants her, desires her, needs her. He wants to taste her blood for the rest of his unending life, not just for mere seconds. He wants to brand his initials – D.W. – into her hip and then cover it with ash, leaving it a permanent but unprofessional tattoo. He wants to prowl the streets with her by his side, clutching his cold hand with her own to remind him that she's still there, that she chooses to be there. He just wants her.
It's three days before All Hallows Eve when he makes an appearance back at 1984. He slips in through the door between two burly motorcycle men who already smell of liquor, cigarettes and leather, and he scurries into the shadows before Bella can see him. He knows for certain that she can sense him, but she'll be quite confused when she can't find him or feel him through the drywall.
"I've been waiting for you."
He spins around, his hand clenching around a soft familiar throat that he knows to be Bella's and he jams her into the nearest wall. He cannot feel the fear radiating from her because it's been replaced by yearning – God, she wants him just as much as he wants her, but is it the same thing? Does she want to share an immortal life with him or does she simply want to spend the night in his basement? He can't figure it out because she's learned to block him from her private thoughts.
"Why are you playing with fire?" he murmurs against her blood red lips. Lipstick should never be sold in this shade, he thinks bitterly, his lips gliding sensually over hers without applying any kind of pressure.
"Maybe I want to get burned," she breathes in reply, her knee bending and her leg stretching to the side where she touches the inside of her thigh to his hip.
"You don't know what you're asking," he tells her, slamming his knee into the wall between her legs, pressing his groin into her hip. She groans, instinctively bucking her hips forward, and he resists his own moan of pleasure.
"Explain it to me," she pleads, her hand finding his hip and fisting in his jeans.
He snarls as his tongue slithers beneath his extending canines behind his pursed lips. She thinks it's so easy to want what she wants. He smirks dangerously – he'll show her easy.
"It's cold," he respires against her cheek, his eyes flashing blue from hazel as he stares hatefully down at her.
She stares right back, though not nearly with as much spite as him.
"It's lonely," he continues, massaging her with his thigh, gaining a musical moan and the closing of her eyes. "And it's forever." He clutches her chin between his fingers and jerks her head, demanding, without words, that she open her eyes and look at him. She obeys. "Do you understand the meaning of the word forever?"
"Yes," she whispers, her thigh tightening on his hip at the same time as her fist yanks at his jeans to pull him closer.
"Enlighten me," he growls, shoving his hips against hers as hard as he can – his now rock hard cock is begging for friction.
"God," she whimpers, turning her face away from him.
He grabs her head with both hands – one hand on her throat, the other on the side of her face – and positions it so that she's looking at him again, and both of his knees, on either side of her leg, meet the wall behind her. Her hands lazily move up to his sides – beneath his leather jacket – where she can feel his ribcage and cold, dead skin even through two shirts.
"He can't help you now," he cynically remarks, finding it almost difficult to speak with his canines having grown to half their full length. "Speak," he hisses. "Explain forever to me."
Her eyes suddenly fly open and she gazes back at him with determination and possibly even irritation, he's not sure. Whatever it is, he likes it. He wants to see her angry, to hear her yell, to feel her fight back.
"Eternity," she grounds out. "Infinity. Endlessness." She blinks slowly, her hands clenching his shirts at his sides. "With you."
"I've given you ample opportunities to walk away from this," he breathes reluctantly, surprised even at his own words and the pitch of his voice. "Why do you stay?"
He can't believe when she smiles. "When you left, I stopped dreaming."
He cocks an eyebrow. "Why?"
Her smile widens. "Because you were my dream, Dean."
She speaks his name so beautifully, and he wouldn't mind listening to it for the rest of eternity. But he'll be damned if he isn't unenthusiastic about stealing her conventional life.
This is remorse, he tells himself. This is care. And where the fuck did it come from?
"Tell me you want this, too, Dean," she says.
His name again. Fuck.
"Death," he finally says nonchalantly, chancing a bored look at Bella, "Is what I want, Bella. Is that what you're willing to give?"
She nods slowly. "Yes."
"Tomorrow."
And then he's gone, and she's alone.