i wanna watch you turn into a werewolf (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gorgeousnerd) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
firmament2013-10-17 03:05 pm
gorgeousnerd) wrote in firmament2013-10-17 03:05 pm
Entry tags:
write it down (but don't send the letter) - Teen Wolf, R, Lydia/Erica.
Title: write it down (but don't send the letter)
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Rating: R
Length: 2700 words.
Characters/Pairings: Lydia/Erica.
Content notes: I spoil it in the summary, but in case you don't read it, the character death doesn't involve anyone in the main ship, but the characters do have to take care of the remains. There's violence consistent with Teen Wolf canon, but the use of the violence warning on AO3 doesn't refer to the consensual biting/injury between Lydia and Erica. The story deals with being a survivor of violence and involves nightmares and unintentional self-harm in connection with that theme. There are also brief mentions of vomit.
Summary: By the time the others show up to check on them, Lydia's cleaned up and breathing. It's more than she can say for Peter.
Author's notes: Written for the bites and bruises square on mykink_bingo card. This is a somewhat canon-friendly AU - it takes place post-s3, but with some differences, in case the ship didn't tip you off.
Also on AO3.
write it down (but don't send the letter)
Scott's the bait, Lydia thinks as Peter grins and stalks toward her from the bedroom door. Scott. Not me.
Lydia backs into the corner. She can't overpower him on her own; she's known that from far too much personal experience. Her eyes are filling with tears, but she keeps her chin tilted up. She squeezes her eyes shut and looks away when Peter grazes his finger under her chin, but she doesn't let her chin drop.
"Ready for a ritual?" Peter says, quiet and cheerful.
The pack's known Peter was setting them up for days. Why else would Boyd and Isaac find all the materials Peter was using, and why else would Deaton be able to identify them as supplies for a sacrificial ritual? Peter had wanted the pack to find them, but they hadn't known where. Lydia's still not sure where it's happening until Peter closes his fingers around Lydia's throat hard, but not so hard she can't breathe. More importantly, he doesn't move her anywhere, and her eyes shoot open.
Lydia's the beacon. The ritual's here.
Or it would be, if Peter wasn't too busy flying across the room to contact his druids waiting around Lydia's pool.
Maybe the pack couldn't figure out Peter's endgame, but Peter didn't know things, too. He may or may not know that Lydia's been part of Scott's pack since Scott officially became alpha; Derek's busy in Florida, so that keeps Peter out of the loop, an omega in his own town. Peter probably doesn't know that the human members (or slightly more than, like Lydia) have done a binding ritual under Morrell's guidance, and everyone can call anyone they want to if they're in trouble.
What Peter also doesn't know is that Scott doesn't like to rely on any pack bonds or vows, and Lydia learned how to mask werewolf scents from other werewolves months ago. Erica's been in the house the entire time.
The fight's quick and dirty like most werewolf fights Lydia's seen. Erica knows the room, and she's been taking combat lessons along with the other wolves on Lydia's suggestion, after more than one weirdo kicked all their asses and barely let them escape. It's quick work for her to get her legs around Peter, pull him to the ground, and use her fists and claws on soft tissues. It's not enough to kill Peter, but he's sure not healing fast enough to keep up. Erica's barely scratched, and she's grinning.
Lydia stumbles over to her vanity and rummages through her drawers as quickly as she can, but just as her fingers close around what she's looking for, something hard crashes into her. Peter. He grabs her throat again, this time with claws, and she screams. Not at banshee level - the wolves haven't been the only ones to practice - but enough to release some of the tension from the pain. Enough to surprise Peter for a couple seconds, to stop him from tearing her throat out.
His mistake.
Wolfsbane bullets kill slow. Hunters shoot in non-lethal spots when they want to track a wolf back to their pack or get information in a more direct way. Ever since Peter hurt Boyd and nearly killed Isaac in an attempt to get at Scott, she's been in the lab with Morrell, working with her chemistry notes and dogged determination. Lydia's had a finished potion of sorts for weeks, and it takes her a blink of an eye to inject it into Peter's carotid artery. He falls to the floor in a heartbeat, and it takes only slightly longer for the potion to rot his veins on its way to his heart.
Lydia stares down at him as he gasps. Maybe it would be better if she could take her time, hear him scream, have it sink in past the fog of terror in her head that he's dying because of her. Either way, she has seconds before the wild gasping breaths Peter takes slow and the desperate look in his eyes fades to nothing.
She's taking a breath to say something when Erica comes up and tears his throat out with her claws.
Peter might have a couple more seconds after that, but Lydia's too busy vomiting under her window to talk.
-
Lydia stares out the window of the guest room as Erica paces by the door behind her. Even though Lydia's room is across the hall, the smells of blood and puke and death drifted along with the change in location. Her front lawn's being torn up by werewolves driving away evil druids (who, luckily, don't seem very interested in a fight). Lydia can already see dark circles on her arm from where Peter grabbed her, and when she touches her throat, she draws away blood. The last blood Peter Hale will ever draw from her.
She got a glimpse of his vacant staring eyes before they left the room, and she can still see his silhouette across the hall. Burning him didn't keep him dead last time. They'll have to do a full cremation, find some kind of accelerant that will break down werewolf corpses fully. Spread his ashes to the wind.
"You want to clean up?"
Lydia didn't notice Erica moving up beside her, but she wasn't unaware, exactly. The pack's always in the back of her mind.
"I can't yet." Lydia's voice comes out steady and cool. "Scott's not done out there."
"No, I mean..." Erica nods at Lydia's throat. "At least make sure you don't get infections."
It's a good idea. Lydia nods, and Erica walks quickly out of the room. She comes out with the kit Lydia assembled for this kind of emergency and plops on the guest bed like they're going to do each other's nails.
Lydia's posture is perfect when she sits beside Erica. She remembers what it was like after the first attack, the days after the nightmares when she was screaming for help without anyone listening. She'd hunched over, drawn her arms in, ducked whenever she could. She couldn't help it. It's not a bad thing that she can go without doing that now.
It doesn't stop her from flinching when Erica drags her fingers over the growing bruises on Lydia's arm.
"I don't heal like that anymore," Erica says, a little wonderingly. She's not wrong. Peter managed to get some scratches on her face that would permanently scar on a human. On Erica, they're already starting to heal - if the blood wasn't there, the edges wouldn't look fresh at all.
"Lucky you." It's not biting, or even particularly envious. Lydia knows how to cover wounds with makeup. She gave up on doing it months ago.
Lydia does let Erica clean and bandage up her cuts, though. There's a difference between owning what happened and possible infections. Besides, it's good for Erica to get the practice. Lydia and Scott have been making sure everyone knows basic patch jobs (and actually, Scott's better at it - it's good to have a nurse mom), whether wolf, human, or something else.
By the time the others show up to check on them, Lydia's cleaned up and breathing. It's more than she can say for Peter.
-
Lydia waits a week and until her room's fully clean to sleep in there again - she goes shopping and repaints, just because she can - but it's not enough to keep Peter out.
Actual Peter is long gone. They checked with all groups, druid and Hale and Argent, and found several different ways of ensuring his body and spirit couldn't be brought back. It brings up a lot of interesting questions about the afterlife that Lydia's not entirely ready to examine, but she burned his bones, helped Morrell grind them, and fed them to ravens who nested near the Nemeton. That should be the end.
But she closes his eyes and he's there, and she's never awake enough that she can fight him back, tell him he's gone. He makes her scream in her dreams, and she wakes up screaming, sweating in her sheets. It's a normal scream, so no one else hears it.
There are no ghosts, Deaton says when she asks. Those questions about the afterlife she has seem pretty straightforward as far as druids are concerned. There's loose energy, or the energy's tied to something. Peter's energy has passed along, and considering they'd built in protections when they reconstructed Lydia's bedroom, no traces should be anywhere near her.
But after she goes home and goes to bed, Lydia wakes up screaming with her fingernails biting into the palm of her hand and drawing blood.
Maybe Peter's gone, but she's still haunted.
-
Allison gives big eyes and asks if Lydia's okay before slipping into their usual dynamic. Scott keeps hugging her. Stiles waves his hands and makes a big deal about her being in danger, but after Lydia gives him a very sour expression, he doesn't do it again. Danny shares his notes with her when she zones out in the middle of class, which is far less often than it used to be. Boyd sits next to her at lunch without saying a word, which is actually what he normally does, thankfully.
It's Erica who's waiting at Lydia's car after school and asks, "Can I get a lift to the gym?"
She means the gym where she took her classes and still works out. The only plans Lydia has are to do homework and trade gossip with Allison, and that's not for hours, so Lydia lets her in the passenger's side of the car.
Her only intention is to let Erica out at the door, but when they turn into the gym's parking lot, Erica says, "Come in for a minute? I want to show you something."
"I'm hardly dressed for this," Lydia says, rolling her eyes, but she goes in, heels clicking on the pavement.
The gym's mostly empty when they go inside, and Erica mentions something about how classes don't start until three because that's when the other kids get out. Lydia doesn't care. She crosses her arms, and Erica gets the message, so she goes over to one of the punching bags and hits it a few times, even though she's still in her own short skirt and heels and hasn't so much as grabbed gloves. She nods at it when she's done.
"Jackson wasn't the first jock I dated," Lydia says with a sigh. "I know what a punching bag looks like."
"Have you ever tried?"
"I have. Does that surprise you?"
Erica's toothy grin says no. Lydia rolls her eyes again as Erica grabs the bag with both hands.
"Try it anyway," Erica says.
Lydia huffs, but she grabs a pair of half-gloves sitting nearby and hopes they're not too disgusting when she puts her hands inside. She squeezes her hands a couple times and feels the plastic pull, and then she does her best stance and hits the bag a couple times before standing straight again.
"Happy?" she asks.
Erica raises an eyebrow. "It's an outlet, Lydia. Or it can be."
"And so is painting my nails." Lydia holds up her fingers. They're purple, and they go nicely with today's lip without being too matchy. "It's not like anything I could hit would actually be hurt by it."
Erica looks thoughtful for a moment. She drops the bag and nods, and Lydia takes the gloves off. It's not the end of it - Lydia can tell - but it's good for now.
-
Not even a week later, Lydia's slapping Erica across the face.
They're sitting by the pool - Erica hadn't wanted to go in Lydia's room - and Lydia didn't care. She also didn't blink when Erica asked her to slap her across the face. She just...did it, and Erica had grinned that toothy, predatory smile she got when she really enjoyed something. Lydia flexed her hand, and the sting traveled up her fingers.
"Did you like it?" Erica asks.
It's a good question because Lydia doesn't know the answer. She didn't not like it. She'd need more experience to come to a solid conclusion.
Like Erica's reading her mind, she's shucking her jacket. Her arms are left bare - her blue top has no sleeves - and she has smooth, unmarked skin.
"Do you want to try here?" Erica asks, and yes, Lydia knows the answer to that.
She doesn't go for a slap this time. She digs in hard with her fingernails to the soft flesh of Erica's upper arm, and Erica throws her head back and gasps as bruises bloom on the skin. Lydia smacks the bruise before it can heal, and one of Erica's feet kicks a little, like she can't help it.
Lydia's cheeks are burning, and it's not from embarrassment. Neither is the quickness of her breath.
-
That night, Lydia sleeps without dreaming, and she wakes up unmarked the next day.
-
They meet at Erica's place next. It's an apartment, and no one's around; both Erica's parents work swings, from what Erica says, so they'll be left alone for hours. Erica leads Lydia to her bedroom without hesitation, and it's as plain and unremarkable as the rest of the place, except for the partially open closet, which has all the showy clothes that Erica only started wearing after she took the bite.
Erica strips and shrugs on a saggy t-shirt that Lydia's pretty sure she saw her wearing years ago. She doesn't ask Lydia to turn away, and there's no reason to at this point. Erica's matching lingerie was clearly meant to be seen, and Erica had suggested they try her legs this time. Even though Erica obviously doesn't mind the pain, to put it mildly, there's more flesh to play with on Erica's thighs.
There's a bite-shaped scar on Erica's thigh. Lydia grazes her fingers over it, and Erica doesn't flinch away, but she's not exactly pressing into the touch, either.
"Would it be weird?" Lydia asks.
Erica shakes her head, biting at her lip a little, gaze distant. It only snaps into focus when Lydia sinks her teeth in, grabbing the meat of her thigh and pressing. It's not the kind of bite designed to draw blood; just because Erica can't change Lydia doesn't mean that she wants to risk blood contact. The way Erica grabs at the sheets and her thighs shake, she doesn't seem to mind, anyway.
Lydia eases her jaw a little when it starts to ache, and then she bites again as hard as she can, grunting with the effort even as it settles some unnamed feeling in her chest.
Erica's slipping her hand between her legs, but she's doing it slowly, eyes meeting Lydia's in a silent question. Lydia pulls back and wipes her mouth of saliva with a nod, and as Erica's fingers tuck into her panties, Lydia digs her nails into the purple bruise on Erica's leg. Erica half-sobs and presses into her hand. Lydia's cheeks are burning again, and, absurdly, tears are springing to her eyes. She wipes them away with impatient fingers and goes down to bite at Erica's other thigh.
It only takes a few more minutes before Erica comes, and her legs are healing three more bruises at that point. Erica collapses against the bedspread with a fuzzy smile on her face, and Lydia watches the bruises heal with a pleased smile of her own. She touches one of them with the pads of her fingers.
"It was how I felt, after I changed," Erica says without prompting. She's looking at Lydia looking at her almost-healed legs. "Like I was getting something back every time I sprouted claws."
Lydia hums in acknowledgment. She isn't sure how many bodies would have piled up if she'd been tied to the moon's rhythms instead of something else entirely. There have been enough the other way.
"So do you want to come or what?"
"I..." Lydia thinks for a moment, and then she nods. "Lie back."
Lydia strips her skirt and panties and climbs on Erica's face. When Erica puts her arms over her head, Lydia keeps her balance by digging her nails into Erica's skin.
Not claws, but close enough.
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Rating: R
Length: 2700 words.
Characters/Pairings: Lydia/Erica.
Content notes: I spoil it in the summary, but in case you don't read it, the character death doesn't involve anyone in the main ship, but the characters do have to take care of the remains. There's violence consistent with Teen Wolf canon, but the use of the violence warning on AO3 doesn't refer to the consensual biting/injury between Lydia and Erica. The story deals with being a survivor of violence and involves nightmares and unintentional self-harm in connection with that theme. There are also brief mentions of vomit.
Summary: By the time the others show up to check on them, Lydia's cleaned up and breathing. It's more than she can say for Peter.
Author's notes: Written for the bites and bruises square on my
kink_bingo card. This is a somewhat canon-friendly AU - it takes place post-s3, but with some differences, in case the ship didn't tip you off.Also on AO3.
Scott's the bait, Lydia thinks as Peter grins and stalks toward her from the bedroom door. Scott. Not me.
Lydia backs into the corner. She can't overpower him on her own; she's known that from far too much personal experience. Her eyes are filling with tears, but she keeps her chin tilted up. She squeezes her eyes shut and looks away when Peter grazes his finger under her chin, but she doesn't let her chin drop.
"Ready for a ritual?" Peter says, quiet and cheerful.
The pack's known Peter was setting them up for days. Why else would Boyd and Isaac find all the materials Peter was using, and why else would Deaton be able to identify them as supplies for a sacrificial ritual? Peter had wanted the pack to find them, but they hadn't known where. Lydia's still not sure where it's happening until Peter closes his fingers around Lydia's throat hard, but not so hard she can't breathe. More importantly, he doesn't move her anywhere, and her eyes shoot open.
Lydia's the beacon. The ritual's here.
Or it would be, if Peter wasn't too busy flying across the room to contact his druids waiting around Lydia's pool.
Maybe the pack couldn't figure out Peter's endgame, but Peter didn't know things, too. He may or may not know that Lydia's been part of Scott's pack since Scott officially became alpha; Derek's busy in Florida, so that keeps Peter out of the loop, an omega in his own town. Peter probably doesn't know that the human members (or slightly more than, like Lydia) have done a binding ritual under Morrell's guidance, and everyone can call anyone they want to if they're in trouble.
What Peter also doesn't know is that Scott doesn't like to rely on any pack bonds or vows, and Lydia learned how to mask werewolf scents from other werewolves months ago. Erica's been in the house the entire time.
The fight's quick and dirty like most werewolf fights Lydia's seen. Erica knows the room, and she's been taking combat lessons along with the other wolves on Lydia's suggestion, after more than one weirdo kicked all their asses and barely let them escape. It's quick work for her to get her legs around Peter, pull him to the ground, and use her fists and claws on soft tissues. It's not enough to kill Peter, but he's sure not healing fast enough to keep up. Erica's barely scratched, and she's grinning.
Lydia stumbles over to her vanity and rummages through her drawers as quickly as she can, but just as her fingers close around what she's looking for, something hard crashes into her. Peter. He grabs her throat again, this time with claws, and she screams. Not at banshee level - the wolves haven't been the only ones to practice - but enough to release some of the tension from the pain. Enough to surprise Peter for a couple seconds, to stop him from tearing her throat out.
His mistake.
Wolfsbane bullets kill slow. Hunters shoot in non-lethal spots when they want to track a wolf back to their pack or get information in a more direct way. Ever since Peter hurt Boyd and nearly killed Isaac in an attempt to get at Scott, she's been in the lab with Morrell, working with her chemistry notes and dogged determination. Lydia's had a finished potion of sorts for weeks, and it takes her a blink of an eye to inject it into Peter's carotid artery. He falls to the floor in a heartbeat, and it takes only slightly longer for the potion to rot his veins on its way to his heart.
Lydia stares down at him as he gasps. Maybe it would be better if she could take her time, hear him scream, have it sink in past the fog of terror in her head that he's dying because of her. Either way, she has seconds before the wild gasping breaths Peter takes slow and the desperate look in his eyes fades to nothing.
She's taking a breath to say something when Erica comes up and tears his throat out with her claws.
Peter might have a couple more seconds after that, but Lydia's too busy vomiting under her window to talk.
-
Lydia stares out the window of the guest room as Erica paces by the door behind her. Even though Lydia's room is across the hall, the smells of blood and puke and death drifted along with the change in location. Her front lawn's being torn up by werewolves driving away evil druids (who, luckily, don't seem very interested in a fight). Lydia can already see dark circles on her arm from where Peter grabbed her, and when she touches her throat, she draws away blood. The last blood Peter Hale will ever draw from her.
She got a glimpse of his vacant staring eyes before they left the room, and she can still see his silhouette across the hall. Burning him didn't keep him dead last time. They'll have to do a full cremation, find some kind of accelerant that will break down werewolf corpses fully. Spread his ashes to the wind.
"You want to clean up?"
Lydia didn't notice Erica moving up beside her, but she wasn't unaware, exactly. The pack's always in the back of her mind.
"I can't yet." Lydia's voice comes out steady and cool. "Scott's not done out there."
"No, I mean..." Erica nods at Lydia's throat. "At least make sure you don't get infections."
It's a good idea. Lydia nods, and Erica walks quickly out of the room. She comes out with the kit Lydia assembled for this kind of emergency and plops on the guest bed like they're going to do each other's nails.
Lydia's posture is perfect when she sits beside Erica. She remembers what it was like after the first attack, the days after the nightmares when she was screaming for help without anyone listening. She'd hunched over, drawn her arms in, ducked whenever she could. She couldn't help it. It's not a bad thing that she can go without doing that now.
It doesn't stop her from flinching when Erica drags her fingers over the growing bruises on Lydia's arm.
"I don't heal like that anymore," Erica says, a little wonderingly. She's not wrong. Peter managed to get some scratches on her face that would permanently scar on a human. On Erica, they're already starting to heal - if the blood wasn't there, the edges wouldn't look fresh at all.
"Lucky you." It's not biting, or even particularly envious. Lydia knows how to cover wounds with makeup. She gave up on doing it months ago.
Lydia does let Erica clean and bandage up her cuts, though. There's a difference between owning what happened and possible infections. Besides, it's good for Erica to get the practice. Lydia and Scott have been making sure everyone knows basic patch jobs (and actually, Scott's better at it - it's good to have a nurse mom), whether wolf, human, or something else.
By the time the others show up to check on them, Lydia's cleaned up and breathing. It's more than she can say for Peter.
-
Lydia waits a week and until her room's fully clean to sleep in there again - she goes shopping and repaints, just because she can - but it's not enough to keep Peter out.
Actual Peter is long gone. They checked with all groups, druid and Hale and Argent, and found several different ways of ensuring his body and spirit couldn't be brought back. It brings up a lot of interesting questions about the afterlife that Lydia's not entirely ready to examine, but she burned his bones, helped Morrell grind them, and fed them to ravens who nested near the Nemeton. That should be the end.
But she closes his eyes and he's there, and she's never awake enough that she can fight him back, tell him he's gone. He makes her scream in her dreams, and she wakes up screaming, sweating in her sheets. It's a normal scream, so no one else hears it.
There are no ghosts, Deaton says when she asks. Those questions about the afterlife she has seem pretty straightforward as far as druids are concerned. There's loose energy, or the energy's tied to something. Peter's energy has passed along, and considering they'd built in protections when they reconstructed Lydia's bedroom, no traces should be anywhere near her.
But after she goes home and goes to bed, Lydia wakes up screaming with her fingernails biting into the palm of her hand and drawing blood.
Maybe Peter's gone, but she's still haunted.
-
Allison gives big eyes and asks if Lydia's okay before slipping into their usual dynamic. Scott keeps hugging her. Stiles waves his hands and makes a big deal about her being in danger, but after Lydia gives him a very sour expression, he doesn't do it again. Danny shares his notes with her when she zones out in the middle of class, which is far less often than it used to be. Boyd sits next to her at lunch without saying a word, which is actually what he normally does, thankfully.
It's Erica who's waiting at Lydia's car after school and asks, "Can I get a lift to the gym?"
She means the gym where she took her classes and still works out. The only plans Lydia has are to do homework and trade gossip with Allison, and that's not for hours, so Lydia lets her in the passenger's side of the car.
Her only intention is to let Erica out at the door, but when they turn into the gym's parking lot, Erica says, "Come in for a minute? I want to show you something."
"I'm hardly dressed for this," Lydia says, rolling her eyes, but she goes in, heels clicking on the pavement.
The gym's mostly empty when they go inside, and Erica mentions something about how classes don't start until three because that's when the other kids get out. Lydia doesn't care. She crosses her arms, and Erica gets the message, so she goes over to one of the punching bags and hits it a few times, even though she's still in her own short skirt and heels and hasn't so much as grabbed gloves. She nods at it when she's done.
"Jackson wasn't the first jock I dated," Lydia says with a sigh. "I know what a punching bag looks like."
"Have you ever tried?"
"I have. Does that surprise you?"
Erica's toothy grin says no. Lydia rolls her eyes again as Erica grabs the bag with both hands.
"Try it anyway," Erica says.
Lydia huffs, but she grabs a pair of half-gloves sitting nearby and hopes they're not too disgusting when she puts her hands inside. She squeezes her hands a couple times and feels the plastic pull, and then she does her best stance and hits the bag a couple times before standing straight again.
"Happy?" she asks.
Erica raises an eyebrow. "It's an outlet, Lydia. Or it can be."
"And so is painting my nails." Lydia holds up her fingers. They're purple, and they go nicely with today's lip without being too matchy. "It's not like anything I could hit would actually be hurt by it."
Erica looks thoughtful for a moment. She drops the bag and nods, and Lydia takes the gloves off. It's not the end of it - Lydia can tell - but it's good for now.
-
Not even a week later, Lydia's slapping Erica across the face.
They're sitting by the pool - Erica hadn't wanted to go in Lydia's room - and Lydia didn't care. She also didn't blink when Erica asked her to slap her across the face. She just...did it, and Erica had grinned that toothy, predatory smile she got when she really enjoyed something. Lydia flexed her hand, and the sting traveled up her fingers.
"Did you like it?" Erica asks.
It's a good question because Lydia doesn't know the answer. She didn't not like it. She'd need more experience to come to a solid conclusion.
Like Erica's reading her mind, she's shucking her jacket. Her arms are left bare - her blue top has no sleeves - and she has smooth, unmarked skin.
"Do you want to try here?" Erica asks, and yes, Lydia knows the answer to that.
She doesn't go for a slap this time. She digs in hard with her fingernails to the soft flesh of Erica's upper arm, and Erica throws her head back and gasps as bruises bloom on the skin. Lydia smacks the bruise before it can heal, and one of Erica's feet kicks a little, like she can't help it.
Lydia's cheeks are burning, and it's not from embarrassment. Neither is the quickness of her breath.
-
That night, Lydia sleeps without dreaming, and she wakes up unmarked the next day.
-
They meet at Erica's place next. It's an apartment, and no one's around; both Erica's parents work swings, from what Erica says, so they'll be left alone for hours. Erica leads Lydia to her bedroom without hesitation, and it's as plain and unremarkable as the rest of the place, except for the partially open closet, which has all the showy clothes that Erica only started wearing after she took the bite.
Erica strips and shrugs on a saggy t-shirt that Lydia's pretty sure she saw her wearing years ago. She doesn't ask Lydia to turn away, and there's no reason to at this point. Erica's matching lingerie was clearly meant to be seen, and Erica had suggested they try her legs this time. Even though Erica obviously doesn't mind the pain, to put it mildly, there's more flesh to play with on Erica's thighs.
There's a bite-shaped scar on Erica's thigh. Lydia grazes her fingers over it, and Erica doesn't flinch away, but she's not exactly pressing into the touch, either.
"Would it be weird?" Lydia asks.
Erica shakes her head, biting at her lip a little, gaze distant. It only snaps into focus when Lydia sinks her teeth in, grabbing the meat of her thigh and pressing. It's not the kind of bite designed to draw blood; just because Erica can't change Lydia doesn't mean that she wants to risk blood contact. The way Erica grabs at the sheets and her thighs shake, she doesn't seem to mind, anyway.
Lydia eases her jaw a little when it starts to ache, and then she bites again as hard as she can, grunting with the effort even as it settles some unnamed feeling in her chest.
Erica's slipping her hand between her legs, but she's doing it slowly, eyes meeting Lydia's in a silent question. Lydia pulls back and wipes her mouth of saliva with a nod, and as Erica's fingers tuck into her panties, Lydia digs her nails into the purple bruise on Erica's leg. Erica half-sobs and presses into her hand. Lydia's cheeks are burning again, and, absurdly, tears are springing to her eyes. She wipes them away with impatient fingers and goes down to bite at Erica's other thigh.
It only takes a few more minutes before Erica comes, and her legs are healing three more bruises at that point. Erica collapses against the bedspread with a fuzzy smile on her face, and Lydia watches the bruises heal with a pleased smile of her own. She touches one of them with the pads of her fingers.
"It was how I felt, after I changed," Erica says without prompting. She's looking at Lydia looking at her almost-healed legs. "Like I was getting something back every time I sprouted claws."
Lydia hums in acknowledgment. She isn't sure how many bodies would have piled up if she'd been tied to the moon's rhythms instead of something else entirely. There have been enough the other way.
"So do you want to come or what?"
"I..." Lydia thinks for a moment, and then she nods. "Lie back."
Lydia strips her skirt and panties and climbs on Erica's face. When Erica puts her arms over her head, Lydia keeps her balance by digging her nails into Erica's skin.
Not claws, but close enough.