She returns freshly showered and changed to find her hunter standing quietly at the half-open window drinking in the warmth of the sunshine bathing half the room in its soft glow. Her fingers lifted to toy absently with the silvery charm hanging at her throat.
"Oliver said there were wounds." Cal says her voice much louder in the quiet of the room. Not that she looks away from the window glass as she talks more like she was musing aloud as the soft sounds of the charm between her hands slides a little farther down its equally deadly silver cast chain.
"More scars now than actual wounds" Juliette agrees the hand not lifting her towel against her wet hair dropping to press self-consciously against the front of her shirt as if to add another layer of cover to the disfiguring marks hidden beneath the fabric. "Prolonged torment with silver isn't exactly an easy thing for legacies to bounce back from." Juliette says, still pressing uneasily at the front of her shirt. "No matter how much blood we take in afterward. The purer the amount…."
"Please," Cal whispers now standing in front of her with such speed Juliette was left mentally reeling with just how sudden it was. So suddenly in fact that if it wasn't for the equally staggering amount of pain in her hunters' eyes as Cal dropped to her knees in front of her Juliette would outright swear this was another of her vivid hallucinations.
"Cal don—"
Again, most of Juliette's mind was screaming that this was all some kind of Guild implanted trick. And a good one at that as Cal's fingers coaxed away Juliette's to slowly push the covering of her shirt up to uncover the lasting damage of Jack Burns's handiwork to his daughter's searching gaze.
"Funny how much I've missed that little crinkle you get when you're thinking too hard." The kneeling hunter muses although she had yet to take her eyes away from each scaring mark covering her legacy's small-statured body as she tugged the covering of her shirt up higher.
"I can just take it off you know." Juliette sighed attempting to hold onto some of her hard built annoyed bravado since her rescue from the Guild's torment.
"Could do that." Cal hums in agreement. "Lay back." Her hunter instructs instead rolling back onto her feet and then backing without looking towards the freshly remade bed.
"Cal."
"Jules, lay back." Cal repeats now leaning more than actively sitting against the edge of the bedspread-covered mattress.
Again, the legacy hesitates her gaze casting around for anything that could prove this was some very clever trick even as she crosses obediently toward the bedside. Her shirt was stripped off and tossed onto the floor before she'd finished climbing onto the mattress. "So bossy," she huffed stretching out on her stomach against the darkened bedspread.
"Theo has a few of these." Cal muses after a few beats of quiet between them letting her fingers trail along a few deeper-looking scars made along Juliette's shoulder." Not as scars but kind of like….
"Cavoite of a newer made sire's bond." Juliette admits before Cal could come up with a better comparison for the tattoo-like markings, she'd spotted peppering her brother's skin as they'd changed the bedding "I tried to-"
"I know you did, and he knows too." Cal quiets her weapon calloused fingers dancing over a few more stabbing-made marks cross-crossing the legacy's back.
The quiet returns around them broken only by the occasional shifting of the legacy when Cal's caressive fingers graze along one of her more sensitive scars Juliette gives a guiding "sorry that tickles" or a simple "Not there" in the hunter's silent quest to map them all out. Each one given a soft caressive brushing of fingers along them with the few denied touches earning a sympathetic brush of lips against them before Cal's lips are on the move once more. Her teeth graze teasingly along the shell of Juliette's ear.
"Change me."
Juliette blinked slowly sucking in a short gasp in surprise at the asking. "What?" if she was being honest the feather-like caresses of Cal's hands had started to lull her into a sleepy dozing so it wasn't so crazy to think she'd dreamed it.
The two were facing one another now Cal's hand having stopped its tracing movements as the two lay on their sides drinking in the other as Cal speaks with a husky-toned request. "I want you to change me. Jules." The hunter says her hand moving to cup her legacy's jaw.
"Cal you don't…." Juliette argues her hand reaching to cover Cal's against her cheek whilst the other dropped to fist tightly in the front of Cal's shirt.
"Yes, I do." Cal argues in a growl "I've had more than enough time to think about this and I'm still down for it." She says her tone leaving no room for doubt as she holds Juliette's gaze "I'm not losing you again Juliette. I barely survived the first two I'm not going for a third."
"Cal…"
But Cal sits up her eyes hardened in her decision. "Want me to make it simpler then?" she asked "do I need to be dying for you to do it cause I'm sure Oliver or heck even Carmen would…"
Juliette's angered hiss only made the rambling hunter smile as Juliette's fingers locked in a vice around her wrist holding the rising hunter hostage against the bed. "They lay so much as a finger on you…."
"I knew you still cared." Cal sassed leaning in to brush a kiss against her angered legacies' lips.
"I can't not care about you Cal." Juliette reminds leaning her forehead against her hunter as Cal sat back down against the edge of the bed. Juliette immediately moved to gently mold her smaller statured body along Cal's taller one hugging her possessive from behind now. "I've tried. Lilith knows how I've tried." Her chin rested against the hunter's warm shoulder.
"Don't remind me." Cal huffed relaxing back into her legacy's embrace.
"I thought that's what…"
"What I said before about how you make me feel hasn't gone away no matter how angry I was over what happened with Theo." Cal reminds intertwining their hands together. "that night when the Guild took you I was trying to come after you. I wanted to apologize."
"You…what?" the legacy gaped.
"I was hurt, I was confused, and I was beyond angry, but you were right. I couldn't and I can't just turn off how I feel about you." Cal attempted to explain holding their clasped hands even tighter as she spoke. "I love you, Jules."
"You do?" The question tumbled barely above a whisper from the legacy's lips. "Even after." She breaks off not knowing what more to say other than a sighed "well everything?" as she stretches her arms as wide as she was able without dropping her hunter's hand from hers.
Cal snickers at the wording of it but Juliette can't see anything but the truth burring in her hunter's eyes as they lift to hold hers. "Hell yes. Even after everything." Cal nodes "I love you, Juliette Fairmont."
The shrill buzzing of Cal's cell phone cuts off Juliette's attempt at reciprocating the declaration as Cal groaned fishing the thing from the pocket of her jeans. "Ben wants his wheels back." Her hunter summarizes after only the swiftest of glances at the newly received message.
"Buzz kill." Juliette sighs under her breath.
"Yeah, but we still love him too." Cal laughs firing off a text of her own in annoyed answer before slipping her phone back into her jeans pocket.
"Debatable." Juliette sighs nuzzling her face against Cal's hair. "It means you have to leave."
Cal gives a mischievous grin in answer. "Yeah, but in ten more minutes." Her hunter clarifies.
"Only ten minutes?" Juliette pouts
"Well, that plus however long it takes to get back to the school from here without tipping off anyone thinking of finding out where here is." Cal expands with a smile when she feels the answering tugging of her legacy's fingers against the edge of her shirt.
"Guess that means we have some time to kill huh?" Juliette smiles chewing her lower lip to fight down a groan when after Cal's shirt and both their bras are added to the scattered clothes littering the floor the tease of a hunter rolled up onto her knees to hover over her against the mattress.
"Guess so." Cal agreed, fighting a moan of her own when she noticed Juliette's fangs once again on full display when the legacy pulls her in for another hungry kiss. The hunter's tongue flicked up to lick along those deadly points earning a definite underwear-spoiling moan from the vampire laying under her.
"Best make the most of our time then." Juliette hums flipping their positions in a charged burst of speed as her free hand reaches between them to slip under the waistband of her hunter's jeans. Cal's hips already bucking into her searching touch.
"I love you, Calliope Burns."
The binding words make her heart flip again in her chest dulling the longing ache with each separating block Cal was forced to put back between them as the teenager guides Ben's jeep back into the darkening school lot well past the agreed time, she was meant to return the borrowed car.
The night air ticks her cooling skin as she gets out with a low sigh when the movement sends remembered sensations of lips or hands dancing along deliciously sour muscles as Cal steps out onto the darkening blacktop.
"Ben?" she calls out noting for the first time how empty the space seemed letting the door swing closed behind her as she spins the keys teeth side out facing between her knuckles out of habit once she remembered that in a scene Ben's car keys were her only weapon aside from Juliette's bee necklace should something come up.
Her phone gives another ominous buzzing against her hip as if in answer.
Took you long enough.
"Seriously Wheeler?" Cal scoffed, already feeling a blush heating her cheeks as she notices the winking face and kiss-blowing emojis Ben had added to the message.
"Seriously, Burns."
Cal stiffened at the board-sounding answer being whispered so close to her ear as the whip snap of a hand that wasn't hers flashed out in careful but deadly aim against her before the sweet tang of chloroform invaded her senses.