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He catches up to her in a shithole motel somewhere on the Arkansas-Tennessee border. The lock’s easy enough to pick—it’s really a surprise it even has a lock given the rest of the dump—and she didn’t put up the chain. You’d think after all she’s seen and with her whole rotting body still falling to fucking pieces around her that she’d be more careful, but he doesn’t think she knows how to be any other way. Doesn’t want her any other way if he’s honest.
She’s chasing whatever high she thought the Baron gave her, some dumb cunt from the local bar moving between her thighs. He doesn’t miss the red-gold glint of ginger between his fingers when he hauls the fucker off her by the hair and tosses him into the parking lot. He’s kind of flattered, but mostly pissed, and that rage means he doesn’t hesitate to throw a haymaker that sends her little fuck toy arse-over-teakettle back out the door again when he decides rushing Sweeney is a good idea. He pockets the cash from the wanker’s wallet before he throws his clothes out after him and slams the door. Unlike her, he doesn’t forget to do up the chain even while she’s screaming at his back. She could knock him straight through that door, could make him hurt so bad he’d wish for death, but there she stands beside the bed—half-naked and screaming, madder than a wet hen. She could fuck him up, but he knows she won’t. Not this time.
They’re not good at talking. Never have been. So he doesn’t bother trying to talk. Instead he grabs Laura fucking Moon by her pretty, dry, dead hair and kisses her like she’s the only salvation he’ll ever find.
She bites him, blood welling up on his lip even as he slides his tongue into her mouth. There’s a hint of decay on her breath that hadn’t been there at the Baron’s bar, and a cold chill crawls up Sweeney’s spine. She’s already going off again. One of her tiny little hands finds its way to the back of his neck and grips him so hard he can feel the bruise forming. She’s still wearing her dress, bunched as it is by one of his hands at her waist with the sleeves caught on her elbows. It’s a flimsy, floral bit of nothing, and it doesn’t cost him any effort to tear it straight off her and drop it to the floor. She snarls against his mouth and uses the leverage of her grip on his neck to hoist herself up and get her legs around his waist, tearing at his belt with her other hand all the while. He yanks his mouth away, drops both hands to her thighs and fairly tosses her away from him and onto the bed. She drops his belt as she flies backwards, the heavy buckle falling to clank painfully against his kneecap. He swears at the pain, sure it’ll be black and blue come the morning, but something on the particle board nightstand draws his eye.
He’d know the Baron’s work anywhere.
She follows his gaze and scrambles across the bed, but he’s centuries and long limbs ahead of her. Her forehead smacks into his arm as his fingers close around the bottle. It disappears in his grip, almost dainty, almost delicate, like she’s supposed to be. Its appearance lies just like she does. He stares at it, a bit of glass and cork with something sloshing in its innards.
“Give it back.” There’s a threat in her voice.
“ Thought you said you didn’t get your cure.”
“I said it didn’t work.” She admits, kneeling as she is on the bed, buck naked and rumpled. She sighs like the petulant child she’s so good at being, flops a bit like a puppet with its strings cut. “I need another ingredient.”
He raises an eyebrow and folds his arms across his chest. “Do you now? Gotta add the cum of some random redneck? That why you’re spreading your legs for the trash I just threw out?”
“Don’t make me remind you why you don’t get to judge me for my choices,” she threatens, annoyance making the words sharp. “Unless you’d like me to see if I can squeeze your balls out of your sack again?” It’s all he can do not to flinch at the memory of being held up against the wall at Easter’s place, so he doesn’t rise to her bait. He doesn’t wait long before she turns those angry eyes away and cops to what she’s missing. “Two drops of blood.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you dumb bitch!” he shouts and slams the fist that isn’t holding her little potion against the wall. “Big fucker like me’s got plenty o’ blood to lend you.”
“Two drops infused with love, ginger minge.” Her eyes are fire as she stares him down. “Love for me. Not exactly something in high supply.”
He doesn’t stop to think of what he’s doing, just pulls a blade from the hoard and yanks the cork out of the bottle with his teeth, spitting it across the room. For once, he doesn’t follow the madness down the rabbit hole to the blade’s origin—doesn’t even register how its the dagger his queen gave him for their wedding—just presses the sharpened tip to the pad of his middle finger and drops the knife back into the hoard. She’s on her feet and holding him at both wrists, unnatural strength keeping him from adding the one thing she needs. He smells the fear on her, knows what she’s thinking before she can say a word.
“Your man’s not got it anymore, dead wife,” he tells her, eyes hard. “You know that as well as me. You ain’t got a wealth of options to fall back on. I’m a bastard, but with ye I’m at least an honest one.” He stares her down for a long moment, and blood runs down the length of his finger to pool in his upturned palm. “Besides, if I’m wrong or lying, what have you got to lose?”
Slowly, she loosens her death grip on his arms, her own falling to her sides. She watches in morbid fascination as he holds his injured finger over the bottle’s mouth. With his thumb he squeezes first one and then a second drop of his blood through the opening. They plop into the liquid within and sizzle. An acrid smell—the scent of week old cigarette ashes left to rot in a thimble of cheap soda pop— rises with a tiny curl of smoke and he lowers the bottle to her waiting hand.
~*~*~*~*~
The taste of the stuff is beyond vile, but Laura can’t be bothered to care. She can actually taste it . The intense flavor of the food she’d had at Coq Noir was nothing but a fading memory, and then there’s the horrific, sputtering burn of the potion and Sweeney’s blood on her tongue. She feels it all the way down her throat and into the pit that used to be a stomach, an intense trail of fire burning through her. Her chest aches, and for the first time she actually feels the weight of the coin in her innards that’s keeping her moving, the gold growing so hot she expects smoke to pour from her mouth next.
It hurts .
The bottle falls from her hand, bounces against the threadbare excuse for carpet. She doesn’t see where it goes. Her knees give way as the fire moves out from her torso to every tingling end of her body. Sweeney catches her, his arm a supporting brace against her ribcage. Something moves beneath the surface of her skin— organs inflating and returning themselves to their proper places.
Her heart beats.
First once, a thump against her ribs that rattles through her bones. Then a few more bumps. Then a steady rhythm. She feels blood that she didn’t have a moment ago pump through veins that weren’t ready to be filled, spreading from her heart out to her extremities. Her lungs reform and burn until she’s forced to gasp. Her first breath in months is pain and relief all at once. Blood continues to thrum through her, now carrying the precious oxygen she’s taking in to places that finally need it again.
Vaguely, she registers that she’s moving, supported in Sweeney’s arms as he carries her into the dirty little bathroom. He gets her on her knees in front of the toilet, kneeling himself to brace her. One of his huge hands gathers her hair while the other braces against her sternum. She realizes that he’d moved her because she’d started to gag only because she retches into the commode. Her eyes fill with tears, the back of her throat burning as it’s met with stomach acid. Maggots and blood spill into the bowl, mixed where the blood had poured in before all the vessels had sealed themselves again. It goes on for an age or maybe just a minute, and then Sweeney lets go of her hair and flushes it all away.
Her nerves reconnect all at once, electrical signals arcing from one to the next until her brain registers what they’re saying. His hand is warm between her breasts, callouses rough against her skin. His fingers splay, his palm pressing flat against her. The coin in her chest throbs, waves of heat pulsing out from its golden surface. She realizes a second too late that with the return of her life it’s ready to go home.
The coin moves.
Laura screams.
~*~*~*~*~
There’s a crack in the faded blue tile on the bathroom floor right where it meets the tub—a line of grime and a few trapped hairs butted up to the fiberglass shell the place is trying to pass off as porcelain. Laura stares at it through watery eyes, watching the way the hairs wave with every breath that passes her lips. Her lungs burn. Her entire body aches, every muscle trembling. Everywhere her skin meets air or tile is chilled, and she shivers at the contrast between that cold and the rest of her that brushes up against something impossibly warm.
The warmth is Sweeney. She doesn’t know when he pulled her into his lap, isn’t even really sure how long they’ve been in the bathroom, but there she lies, bare legs draping over one meaty thigh, her head pillowed on his knee. He’s got an arm about her hips, holding her in the cradle of the long legs he’s bent up and crossed beneath them. His other arm isn’t in sight, but from the acrid scent of smoke she’s pretty sure it’s holding a cigarette. There’s a gentle crackle as he inhales and she finally shifts, rolling onto her back and looking up at him.
She’s never looked at him with living mortal eyes, and the sight is enthralling. Even with his eyes closed and his head tilted back against the wall he’s impressive—otherworldly in a way she hadn’t realized when she was dead. Light fairly crackles along his skin, perpetually kissed as it is with the blush of the sun. He raises the cigarette back to his lips and a glint of gold catches her eye. Balanced precariously between his pinky and ring finger is the coin that kept her going for so long, grimy and tarnished by flecks of blood but very much outside of her body. He rolls his head over to his shoulder while he inhales, piercing eyes fixing on her face. A familiar cocky grin pulls his mouth at the corners as he pushes smoke out through his nose, making him look for a moment like some sort of dragon, grizzled and scarred. The cigarette’s done, and he flicks it into the tub without a glance. The coin slips from his fingers, but vanishes before it’s fallen an inch. Gone back to that freaky hoard of his.
“‘Bout time I got that back where it belongs,” he rumbles, sounding just as much like an arrogant prick as always. He stretches out one of those long legs, working his other arm beneath her shoulders before she can fall from his thigh to the tile. Her body’s filled with the kind of unnerving pins and needles that come from bloodflow returning to where it hadn’t been in entirely too long, but with his help Laura manages to move until she’s straddling his lap instead of sprawling across him. For the first time she’s truly aware of just how much bigger than her he is. He always has been, of course, but when she was dead it hadn’t made the same kind of impact. Even on her knees with him slouched against the wall like he is she’s not quite at eye level. He’s frightening in a way, and her heart thuds against her ribs at the realization. He keeps grinning at her, and as the pins and needles subside a blush races across her skin. His grin morphs into a lascivious smirk, and she feels her pulse jump in her throat for an entirely different reason. He’s beautiful .
“It worked,” she rasps after a long moment spent staring into his eyes, her throat raw and scratchy—a combination that’s part from the painful cries she’d let out when the coin left her and part from months of disuse while she was a corpse.
Sweeney snorts, snarky as always. “You’re as observant as ever, dead wife.”
“Not dead.” She shakes her head, insistent, reassuring herself even as she’s reprimanding him for missing the obvious. “Not anymore.”
His voice and eyes go softer and one of those massive hands brushes over her hair. “Aye. Not anymore.” He leans into her, closing the gap between their bodies. The heat of him washes over her, thunders through her veins.
Part of her wants the words to stick in her throat, wants the comfort of the apathy she’d had before she’d died, but it just won’t take. There’s something different now, and it drags her thoughts from her mouth in spite of the insecurity—the fear —that makes her want to hold them back. “So. You love me.”
“You keep making genius statements like that and I’ll have to start calling you Sherlock fucking Holmes.” His hand’s carding through her hair as he nuzzles the side of her face with his own. His stubble scrapes a bit, and she revels in the soft burn it’s leaving on her skin. Butterflies flit through Laura’s stomach. Her heart’s going a mile a minute. It shakes her to the core, this feeling that she’d thought she’d had with Shadow and now realizes was just as intangible as his nickname implied. When she opens her mouth again, the words that tumble out aren’t from fear but from personality alone, the corner of her lips twisting in a wry smile.
“What kind of a sick fuck falls in love with a dead girl?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Sweeney growls, his head thumping against the wall once more as he rolls his eyes heavenward. A string of Irish leaves his mouth in a tone that could only mean vicious swearing. The hand on her hair tightens so much she’s forced to keep her head tilted back and her eyes on his face as he looks back down at her. “The kind that loves that dead bitch enough to bring her back to life with a few drops of his blood, you dodgy cocktrough. Now, are you gonna let me kiss you or not?”
She’s expecting desperate, violent, and wild. She expects teeth and battle and the sort of angry back and forth that has always been their way. After all they’ve been through, how contrary she knows he can be, she really shouldn’t be surprised when he doesn’t give her what she expects. The press of his lips is gentle, reverent, and hums with an energy unlike anything she’s ever felt. His lips are chapped, their surface the only thing rough between them. His tongue dips into her mouth, smooth velvet against her own. Laura winds her arms around his neck, pressing herself as close to him as she can get.
His hands are everywhere, tangling in her hair, and then roaming across every inch of her he can reach. He doesn’t grip her, and she can feel him fairly trembling with the effort. She pulls back just enough to bite down on his bottom lip, drawing a growl from his throat as her teeth find the wounds she’d left before. Her fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck, yanking until he tilts his head back to look at her. His pupils are blown wide, dark with desire. There’s a bit of blood on his lip, swollen as it is from their kisses. He looks as wrecked as she feels, but she can see the fight for restraint in his eyes.
“I’m alive,” she pants, punctuating her words with another tug to his hair. “Not fragile.” His arms wind around her until he’s got her completely wrapped in his grip. Behind her back he bends his knees, the movement shifting her in his lap until she’s perfectly centered over his clothed cock.
“You want me to make you feel, is that it?” Sweeney doesn’t wait for an answer, mashing his mouth to hers in a kiss almost as desperate as the one when he first came through the door. This is the kiss she’d expected, the two of them battling for dominance. When she was dead she’d taken the force in it for meanness and much of it was, but now? Now it’s passion fueling him, and she’s surprised to find that it’s the same with her. His mouth drifts down from hers, biting and sucking his way down her throat. He sinks his teeth into the spot her neck meets her shoulder and sucks hard, surely leaving a mark. She writhes in his arms, rolling her hips against him. He’s hard and hot, the whole impressive length of him straining against his jeans. Little electric shocks dance through her when she grinds down against him. She feels the wetness gathering between her thighs, knows its soaking into his pants. She digs blunt nails into his back and rocks on his lap, chasing the sensations.
He swears when he slips a hand between them, his fingers finding her slickness. “Oh, fuck, Laura,” he mumbles against her breast. His lips close over her nipple, teeth grazing against its pebbled tip at the same time that he presses one of his long fingers into her. She arches her back and clutches at him, tilting her hips to give him better access.
“Sweeney.” His name sounds more like a prayer when it falls from her lips than anything else she thinks she’s ever uttered. He adds a second finger, pumping them in an out of her slowly while he ravishes her tits with his mouth.
“That’s it,” he whispers to her sternum, his lips brushing over a raised white line of tissue where his coin left her body. “Pray to me, darling. My Laura.” He crooks his fingers inside her at the same time he takes her nipple into his mouth and sucks hard. Something inside her shifts, rearranges. There’s a pull at the base of her spine, thrumming through her veins like booze and adrenaline and sheer fucking joy. His thumb circles on her clit, and she comes with a cry, her entire being trembling.
He’s on his feet with her cradled in his arms in seconds. He carries her out of the bathroom and lays her out on the bed like a treasure. She watches through heavy lidded eyes as he strips out of his clothes. There’s still blood dotted around his mouth, the tiniest remains that she hasn’t kissed away. He curses at the buttons on his shirt in Irish, slick and shaking hands fumbling. They’re stubborn, but he gets the shirt open and drops it from his body, tearing his eyes from her long enough to bend forward and yank his shoes from his feet.
Laura knows she’s beautiful, has always known she can get what she wants without putting in any effort. She wants to make an effort for him. She spreads her legs and plants her feet against the mattress, lets her hands roam over her body. She revisists the spots that make her shiver, and when he straightens up and looks at her again he finds her circling her clit with two fingers and staring at him like she could ride him for days. She’s not sure exactly what it is that comes out of his mouth—supposes she might have to make an effort to learn a bit of his language—but for a moment it almost sounds as if he’s the one praying to her.
He pulls his suspenders off his shoulders and eyes her like she’s his salvation. “You’ll be the death of me, woman,” he tells her when he whips his undershirt off and drops his trousers in one smooth motion. His cock looks bigger than she remembers from New Orleans, standing proud from a thatch of ginger curls. “Layin’ there looking like that. It’s a wonder you don’t give me a heart attack.”
“I guess you’re just lucky.” The words are out of her mouth before she has time to think about them, but the way his eyes spark at her when she says them tells her she’s said exactly the right thing. “Now get over here so we can both get lucky.”
“And what’s in it for you?” His lazy smirk is back, his gaze ambling over her like he was all the time in the world. She squirms beneath it, hot and needy. “We both know what I’m getting out of it. Seems only fair that I get to know the same for you.”
“I had better be getting your cock and another orgasm or two,” she growls, hands falling from her own body. She pushes herself up and reaches for him.
He goes, crawling onto the bed and up the length of her body. “There’s my saucy wench,” he laughs, pressing a kiss to her knee just before he settles it in the crook of his elbow and spreads her legs wider. The head of his cock nudges her entrance as he looms over her, supported on one hand. He’s looking into her eyes when he pushes forward, seating himself inside her in one smooth thrust. Laura can feel her insides flutter at the intrusion, squeezing tight around him. They both moan when he starts to move, thrusting slow and hard while he holds her leg against his side. Her nails find their way to his shoulder blades as they rock together, both to give her something to hold on to and because she likes the little sounds he makes when she marks his flesh.
She feels like she could crawl inside his skin, desperate to get as close to him as possible, and she tells him so. She lifts herself by her grip on his shoulders as he sits back on his heels, dropping her leg in order to grab her by the ass and move her in a rhythm that’s quickly taking them both to the edge. She cants her hips just so on every downward thrust, grinding her clit against his pelvis. If the motel were any kind of respectable she’s sure they’d have gotten complaints from the volume the pants and moans they’re both breathing into one another’s mouths. She can feel it building again, that tug at the base of her spine, and judging from the look in Sweeney’s eyes he’s right there with her. She grabs him by the back of the neck, fingers finding the bruises she’d left when she was the stronger one, and drags him into a filthy kiss.
This time she comes with his tongue in her mouth, swallowing all the things they’re both trying not to say—endearments and proclamations they make better by saying nothing at all. He follows shortly after, her name a breathless whisper as he holds her close and pushes so deep she swears she can feel him nudging her heart.
Laura’s had sex. Good and bad, she’s had lots of it. Nothing has ever quite felt the way it does with Sweeney. She’d been so mad after New Orleans because her dead flesh just couldn’t understand, but she’s not dead now. Her body can finally explain it to her mind. This is what it’s supposed to be when feelings are there and real. This is that shit the fairy tales were always talking about.
They manage to pry themselves apart long enough to stretch out on the bed, pushing the filthy comforter away and drawing a sheet up to their waists. Laura finds herself unwilling to be too far away, drapes a leg over his thigh to stay in contact. He doesn’t protest, and wraps one arm around her while he shoves the other under a pillow to prop up his head. They watch each other while they catch their breath, lazy and content until she suddenly remembers something she hadn’t needed as a corpse.
“I swear, if you’ve knocked me up I will cut it the fuck off,” she growls, tugging on his chest hair.
Sweeney laughs, tucks her against his side, and presses a kiss to her hair. “Don’t worry, love. Now that it’s back in its place my coin won’t let us down.” They’re quiet for several long moments. He strokes her side from her shoulder to her hip, watching as gooseflesh raises in the wake of his hand. Laura traces circles on his chest, fingers swirling through the red gold hair there.
“Do you think it’s pushing our luck to go for round two without picking up condoms?”
“I think our luck would hold to round thirty or so, but if you’re that worried about it…” he trails off, leaning up to give the room a calculating once over. He untangles his limbs from hers and goes to the beat up dresser across from the bed. He thumps a fist on top of the dresser and she hears a crinkle as something dislodges somewhere within. He opens the second drawer down and lifts out a strip of roughly a dozen condoms. “Our lucky day.”
She stares at him with a mix of awe and irritable disbelief. “Were those seriously in there or did you pull them from your freaky little hoard?”
“Condoms ain’t treasure, love.” He gives her a look that she’s learning means a good time is coming her way and tosses the strip of packets up onto the pillow by her head. “Speaking of treasure,” he begins, slowly tugging the sheet down until it meets her knees, leaving her bare to his gaze. He licks his lips, and she knows what he’s about to do before he makes a move. “Been meaning to do a bit of diving.”
Laura lets out a convincing shriek when he grabs her by the ankles and drags her down the bed, but when he drops to his knees she tangles a hand in his hair and sings an entirely different tune.
~*~*~*~*~
They come out of their sex haze late the next day, crawling from the bed with a few bruises and more than a few pleasant aches. He spots her dress where it lies completely shredded on the floor when he pulls his jeans back up over his bits, and Sweeney can’t bring himself to be sorry for his part in its ruin. He gathers the tattered fabric into the bin and helps her into his own wrinkled button-down instead. It swallows her, hanging far enough down her thighs to almost cover the black bike shorts she’s dragged up over her hips. There’s possessiveness in the way he smooths the fabric over her shoulders, does up the buttons to the middle of her chest, and promptly messes up his work by slipping a hand beneath the fabric to tweak a nipple. She bats his hand away with exaggerated annoyance, but their fingers catch and linger a second too long.
“Do you believe in me?” he asks quietly while he helps her cuff back the sleeves to her elbows. She’s twice as dressed as him, but still he lets her draw the belt from the loops of the jeans he hasn’t even bothered to fasten.
Laura snorts and throws him a look he knows for a fact means she thinks he’s a dumbass. “I drank your little blood cocktail on the one in a billion chance it would bring me back to life.” She cinches his belt around her own waist on the tightest setting. It still hangs low on her hips, but it does the job of pulling his shirt in enough to make it look like she’s wearing it for fashion instead of necessity.
“Answer the fucking question.”
“Yes, ginger minge.” She pauses and reaches forward to give a slight tug on the copper hairs at the base of his cock where they peek through the open fly of his jeans, smiling to herself. He doesn’t give her the satisfaction of a wince but does up his zipper and buttons all the same. “Obviously I believe in you.”
Sweeney fishes his undershirt out from under the bed and drags it over his head. “I’m not asking if you believe I love you, Laura.” Using her name nets him all of her attention while he puts his suspenders to rights and sits down on the bed to get his feet into his boots. “I’m asking if you believe in me for what I am. It’s not just luck you’ve had in your gullet all these months. It’s the sun. You’ve known its power. You know it’s mine.” Boots laced, he reaches out to take her by the hips and tugs until she’s standing between his spread thighs. “I can’t keep my own story straight nine times out of ten, but I know I’ve not been fighting the battles I should. I think there’s one we both need to fight, and I mean for us to do it together. But I’ll be needing your faith, love.” He squeezes her hips just a bit, eyes boring into hers. “So, little miss Laura Moon. Do you believe in me?”
She doesn’t hesitate, a fierceness in her eyes that hadn’t been there even in her angriest moments over the past few months. “Yes.” Her arms come up to drape over his shoulders, one hand twining through the tail of his mohawk. “Leprechaun or king or god.” She shrugs as if to say that the truth of his story makes no difference. “I believe in you, Sweeney.”
“Then let’s go kill that one-eyed cunt.” He fixes her with a lingering stare before he folds his long arms around her, dragging her tight against his body and pressing his face to her chest. It’s a serious business they’re setting out on, but it just doesn’t suit for the two of them to stick to such serious talk. “And we’re getting you divorced,” he mumbles into her skin. “I’ll only fuck another man’s wife so long.”
Super-strength or no, his chest still bruises where she punches him. She doesn’t apologize, but she sits on his knee to put her own boots on, trusting him to catch her if she starts to slip. He braces her with a hand to the small of her back and rolls a cigarette one-handed against his other leg. He finishes just as she’s done with the last of the laces and lets her take the first drag. They’re hand in hand in the parking lot and looking over the selection of cars they can nick before she speaks again.
“You know, I only vowed ‘til death do us part. Think it counts?” She waves her hand at a truck to one side of the lot that looks like it’s been there a while, and they saunter over like they own it. It’s not locked and the keys fall from the viser when Sweeney tips it down. He grins at her around the cigarette hanging from his lips. In a flash he hefts her into the cab and steps in close to press a kiss to the tip of her nose.
“Aye. I think we just might be lucky enough for it to count.”