Muffins - Loki & Ylva alternate universe stories

Love with a bite XIV

Author's note: Top art by Nanihoo.

***

How or why she came to the point of offering her bloodied wrist to Loki, Ylva can't really say. All she knows is that she feels comforted by him, despite the blood that dampens his shirt and the white fangs that are visible between his slightly parted lips.

There is blood on her face, it pulls on her skin where it dries; there's probably blood in her hair too and on her clothes. There's a lot more red on the floor of the locker room, where the lifeless body of her attacker slumps over the metal bench. Ylva doesn't want to take a closer look at that, preferring to watch how Loki cleans her injured wrist. To her surprise it doesn't weird her out, not as much as she thought it would anyway. He's gentle, sweet even; it's a very intimate act, despite their ghastly surroundings.

From the corner of her eye she can see movements; bodies are being dragged to the corner, stacked on top of each other. The vampires don't seem to be bothered very much by all the blood and gore, nor the corpses. It's astonishing how little Ylva herself is bothered by this; hell, she is sitting on the lap of the man who is responsible for one of the corpses in here!

Loki's a vampire. He's a killer.

And she feels safe with him.

Ylva nuzzles his neck and presses a kiss to his skin. This close to him she can ignore the smell of blood and dead and instead focus on the scent of a forest in the winter. Because that's what it reminds her of; a large forest in the middle of the winter, with a white layer of frost covering the brown leaves on the ground. It's a smell that suits him, just like it is fitting that he wears all black clothes or that he always wears dress shoes. Ylva suspects he doesn't even own a pair of sneakers, and if he does, it's only for working out; if vampires even need to do that. Loki looks like he is in his mid thirties, despite having an age that consists out of at least three digits instead of two. Maybe a vampire's body keeps the condition it was in when they were turned. Ylva lets her mind wander the way it does - as long as it stays away from what just happened in this room -, following Loki's gentle actions with her eyes. Her free hand plays with his fingers on top of her stomach, her fingertips catching in the dips between his fingers over and over again.

A little later, alone in the tiled shower cell, Ylva peels her dirty clothes off and eagerly steps under the hot water. There's no soap or shampoo, but that doesn't matter right now. It feels good to let the water run over her, to rinse the blood off. Her wrists ache when she rubs her hands through her hair and the water makes the gash on her wrist run with blood again. It'll need bandaging and rest, despite Loki's care.

That horrible pig really did a number on her arms; they're throbbing painfully and the first signs of discolouration are starting to show already. Tomorrow it'll look like she's wearing black and blue cuffs. Ylva even doubts she'll be able to carry the heavy trays at the coffee shop this coming monday. As she is looking over her arms, she sees the vampire's pointy nails on her skin again. Everything about the vampire had been horrendous, to say the least. His looks, his manner of speaking, his behaviour; Ylva has never met anyone with so little respect for other people; all traces of humanity were gone.

A cold chill travels down her spine as she realises she doesn't care that he's dead; she's even somewhat happy about it. He attacked her, who knows what he would have done to her if Loki hadn't been there?! It shouldn't feel this way to see him dead, yet it does; that asshole got it coming, she thinks grimly.

Somewhere in the back of her head she knows the shock of tonight might still have to set in; she's way too calm about it all right now. Shouldn't she be panicking more?

Outside, Ylva can hear raised voices. They're arguing, probably about what happened. Or about her, that's possible too. She can't hear what is being said though, not without pressing her ear against the door and for that she would have to leave the comforting warmth of the shower. Ylva wills her mind to go blank, to concentrate solely on the hot water that streams down her body and takes all the filth away through the drain.