EYE CANDY

It had been a bitch fest in the RA meeting last week. Anything involving volunteering usually resulted in one. Sure, if Whitmore was willing to put a few bucks in their pockets hands would be going up all over the room but ‘free’ was almost a dirty word amongst the team. A couple of the guys had offered to rock-paper-scissors it but as usual he’d found himself putting his hand up.

This wasn’t so bad, Bram justified as he spread his arms, trying to encourage the group he was taking on a tour of Whitmore’s grounds together. He’d gotten used to playing mother hen years ago, always taking the younger kids that his dad taught under his wings. He was a bit of a gigantor sized mother hen but when it came to a game like hockey people responded to that. It was what had brought him back to the game after he’d come back to school. Couldn’t play, not professionally, but he still had a lot to teach. He supposed that was why he was doing this now – he had a lot to show them.

Bram gestured back over his head as he stopped back pedalling on the path. ”And we’re back at the cafeteria. It’s not gonna feel like it but this is probably gonna be the place your time at Whitmore ends up revolving around. Everybody’s gotta eat right. A word of warning though folks, don’t trust the fish sticks.” His smile curled up brightly as a couple of dads in the tour group snorted. Damn, he was pulling out his dad’s favourite jokes now, that was probably some sort of sign that he needed to stop putting himself front and centre for these things. He was about twenty years too young for dad jokes. ”I’ll be on campus all day, if anyone’s got any other questions, feel free to grab me.” Holding up his hand in farewell Bram turned away. A couple of hours of trailing around Whitmore already had him half regretting the volunteering thing.

He sighed as he trailed in the direction of the booth that’d been selling smoothies all day. There was always one at these things, like that was gonna be the school’s biggest selling point. It was always going to be its academic acumen and the fact that it was tucked next to a little gem of a town. Some of the kids in the tour group had been local, a couple of the parents people he’d actually recognised from Mystic Falls. One of the girls in his second group had flirted with him pretty hard, drawing smiles back. It came as easily as breathing, even when what had happened with Milena was still tugging at something deeper in his gut.

Blue eyes tried to pick her out of the crowd as he worked his way around the throngs in the courtyard. He didn’t know if she was back at school yet, if she’d be back again after everything that had happened. No sign of her but he was almost at the smoothie booth when a shorter girl stopped dead in front of him, a beaming smile shot up at him that had his face settling into amused lines as he looked down at her. ”Thank you, I could say the same,” he chuckled, taking the compliment with good grace. Narrowing his eyes, Bram pretended to peer around the courtyard, like he didn’t know that the school used its resources widely. ”How else do you think we sucker people into studying here?” One brow arched as his gaze dropped to take in the stuff dripping from one hand, the smoothie he hadn’t managed to get to in the other, sunglasses with the school’s logo branded on them perched on her head. ”Looks like we probably didn’t need to pull the Magic Mike act, you look like a walking Whitmore ad. You get over to the cheerleading table?” It was as cheesy as it sounded but the cheerleaders always had the best give aways. This year there’d been glow sticks lining the booth first thing, body paint too … in the school colours … and probably totally against the impression Whitmore wanted to give.

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There really was a reason why Whitmore had this many people at an open day. Sure, pretty faces and freebies might sway them a little once they got here but a smoothie or news of a champion cheer squad wasn’t gonna have people applying, not the ones that were actually gonna stay the course and make it all the way to graduation at least. It was the school’s reputation for academic excellence that got them here and then the little things kept them happy.

That wasn’t to say he wasn’t prepared to go the extra mile to talk people into signing up. That was what he was paid for right? Bram McCabe, big brother to the guys in the dorms, referee for when things kicked off, assistant coach on the hockey team and all around blue eyed boy.

He tried playing dumb, something most people who’d seen him out on the ice a couple of years ago thought he was anyway. Or innocent at least, practically batting his lashes at her until the girl had him snorting. Bram made a sound in his throat, tilting his head in agreement as he drew his gaze back to her. ”They’re the bonuses,” he quipped. ”The hot guys are the real reason they all wanna come to Whitmore. We pride ourselves on it.” Bram lifted his hand, pretending to buff his nails on his shirt like he was egotistical enough to include himself in that number. He was a realist, he knew he was a decent looking guy but he wasn’t like some of the guys in the dorm who spent an hour in front of the mirror, primping and in some cases plucking, until they swanned out the door not looking all that different to how they’d walked in.

Hands slipped into the pockets of his worn jeans, Bram bunched his shoulders slightly. The grin had been on his face before but as she took his question and ran with it like freaking Usain Bolt he laughed out loud. He raked his teeth over his lower lip, tilting his head to take another look up and down at her before he pulled a hand free to encourage her to give him a twirl. ”You’ve definitely got the legs for it,” he admitted. ”How’s your ra-ra-ra?” Most of the girls on the cheer squad seemed full of it, like they were constantly snorting mammoth doses of spirit altering things behind the dorms. It was a constantly level of pep that left even him feeling a little drained. Huh. Maybe it was more a matter of sucking the spirit out of everybody around them instead.

Blue eyes crinkled at the corners as Bram tipped his head back slightly to look down at her. His tongue ticked against the back of his teeth like he was considering it. A smoothie had been the next thing on his list, something to wet a throat left kinda croaky by the morning’s multiple tours. After a moment he lifted his chin, indicating the smoothie she’d been sucking on. ”How about we make a deal?” he suggested. ”I get a little taste of that and I make it a one-on-one tour. All the McCabe expert tour guide attention you could ever want.” His smile was all choir boy innocence and charm but there was always that little hint of mischief in his eyes that his mom swore gave her most restless nights than anything else.

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This hadn’t been on the approved ways of talking people into coming to study at Whitmore but Bram was willing to bet it’d have a hell of a lot more people signing on the dotted line than if he’d pretended to be above it all. He’d leave that to some of the others, those manning the STEM table or offering up detailed histories of each of the Deans whose portraits had lined the admin building he’d swept them through. You had to be flexible, switch your plan when you needed to before that stubborn adherence to the rules became a brittleness that shattered.

He’d pushed aside the scheduled sights the moment the petite blonde had approached, his own flexibility allowing him to zig and zag where necessary. His naturally friendly nature taking over from the responsible RA who’d dropped his last tour party off and gone looking for something cool to drink. Bram was pretty sure he needed it more than ever after the way she’d drunk from her own smoothie.

Swallowing back the heat in his throat, he encouraged her to give him a twirl, showing off not only the bounty of Whitmore stuff decorating her like frosting on a cake but her school spirit too. Bram chuckled as she shook the stuff in her hands, his teeth returning to his lower lip as he let blue eyes drop from her head to her toes and back up again, meeting her eyes as she completed her full circle. ”Oh yeah,” he breathed, reaching out to flick a finger at one of the things hanging from her hands. ”You’d do great out there. The team would be eating it up.” A short cheerleader’s skirt, those blonde curls bouncing and that smile lighting up. She’d definitely end up popular if she decided to end up here.

And he was gonna do his best to make that happen.

At her enquiry about room on his next tour Bram paused. He thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans, his arms straining at the sleeves of his t-shirt’ as he rocked back on his heels a little. Eventually he tipped his chin towards her, indicating her smoothie, offering up a little deal that he was pretty damn sure was going to get snatched up with the same vigor she’d shown in her little cheer. She wasn’t though, not yet. Bram’s eyes narrowed faintly, watching in silence as she took another step forward, that elfin body brushing, pressing up against his as she dropped her own little offer right in front of his face. ”Anything?” he asked huskily. Now wasn’t that a red rag to a bull, a bull that had always loved this sort of chase.

Bram tugged his hands free of his pockets, one settling lightly at her hip, the other cupping her elbow to lift that cup just an inch higher. Keeping his eyes on her Bram used his tip of his tongue to flick the straw into his mouth and draw hard on it. His hand flexed on her hip just a little as he sucked down a couple of mouthfuls and then he was slowly drawing back. Lips curving, he tipped his head in the direction of the dorms behind him. ”Could start back there … take the tour of the more … picturesque parts of the campus. It’s quiet back there while all the actions going on here but given the right people, it livens up real well.” He kept his hand where it had been at her hip, calloused fingertips brushing at the strip of warm skin.

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He’d barely touched her. One hand light on her hip, fingers curling around the soft curve of it, fingertips kissing her skin, the other at her elbow, not even gripping. It had been just to hold her there as she’d offered the straw up to him. A balancing act as she’d stretched up on her tip-toes to reach that high. For a moment it all seemed fine and Bram wondered whether to trail those fingers round to her spine, the dip them into her waistband when her face was scrunching up, a sound he sure as hell knew was pain whispering from her lips. Her eyes had closed but now she was frowning, little lines appearing as she scrunched her brows up. Shit. What had her done?

Bram went to pull away, his tongue nervously licking the taste of smoothie from his lips. Her hand was there though, reaching for his as he stared down at her with her mouth open. Before she forced words out of it, she was using the grip on his hand to drag him across the courtyard and in the direction of the dorms he’d indicated. At this time of day they were relatively empty, the quiet spot out back of one of them where he’d intended to spend a few minutes infusing her with a little more school cheer.

Cheer was the last thing on her mind as she pushed him into one of the niche’s in the wall instead. Bram tried to twist his hand out of hers, to cup her cheek and check she was OK but she was crowding in. ”What happened back there?” he breathed, trying to squirm away but she wasn’t having any of it. ”You were in pain? Did I hurt you? What…” His blue eyes were open wide before she dropped his hand. She didn’t look like she was in pain now, not with the way she was pressing her far smaller body into his, right into his.

He tried to squirm back into the wall, to put a little space between them and slow this down but her questions were slipping out finally, leaving him frowning. Bram drew away as far from the posters and stuff behind him as he could get but that just pushed her up against him. ”What the hell are you talking about? Death? Die again?” What? He glanced down at the smoothie in her hand, wondering if someone had been dosing it out there. Add a little booze, maybe a little mood enhancement, give everyone a case of happies and make them all the more likely to apply for Whitmore.

Bram swallowed hard, lifting his hands in the crowded space like somehow he was surrendering to this little elf of a girl. God, he could’ve picked up and just set aside, giving himself room to back out from something that had been fun and flirty and definitely wasn’t now. ”Look, honey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you wanted me to back off, I would’ve done in an instant. I’m super shitty, I get it. What I am though, I’ve got no idea what you…” His voice trailed off, his expression stilling like the shutters had suddenly come down over his face. He straightened up, his hands falling. ”He speaks honestly, witch. He has no idea what he is, or what you are and for both here … it would be best for you to keep it that way.” There was a lower rumble to his voice, a flicker of orange light in his eyes as he stared down at the diminutive blonde still pressed in against him as though a witch had chance of truly going toe to toe with a hellhound.

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Bram had been intimidated, a Great Dane dominated by the fighting above its weight ballsiness of a Chihuahua. The cute immediately becoming the overwhelming.

The hellhound hadn’t been. To cut off the confusion and stop the girl in her tracks before she started to reveal things to the man that he was not yet ready to know, if he ever would be, Kresnik had pushed his way to the fore. Filling the space inside of those broad shoulders and the long legs, pushing against the human skin until the glow of the fire his kind was known for filled his eyes. The heat could’ve radiated from his skin, the waves of it curling in the air, driving the witch back from him but Kresnik held it in check, the words that slipped from his mouth cooler edged than they could’ve been.

They weren’t supposed to know, not the souls that he gathered to take to the other side – at least not until they had departed this world and the door was closed on them being able to slip back through that invisible veil – or those who would one day become his to ferry. A blindness was best for all, going beyond simple secrecy. Kresnik knew he had little choice with this one though.

Instead of drawing back as she should’ve done the girl was pushing in. A tiny form stretching up against this hulking one. Arms slipping around his neck, the cup she held cold between his shoulder blades, heated skin against that ice. Kresnik didn’t raise his hands and set them on here, didn’t push her away or as his host might have done, drawn her close to try and use the opportunity to shift the conversation away from the bizarre and confusing turn it had taken.

Those orange eyes fixed on her, the skin and flesh still beneath the forwardness of her touch. Lips only shifting in the surround of that scruff as he found his voice again. The movement of his mouth brushing that wiry hair of his beard against her mouth until he turned his head into her slightly. ”You think I should tell you even if I’ve not revealed all of this to him?” he asked, not outright calling her impudent but hinting heavily at it. She had pushed for a quiet moment with Bram, if such willingness to go with the girl could be considered being pushed, but he doubted she would find it having been so wise to do the same with him. Their kind were always happy to push the limits, Kresnik thought, right until they tumbled breathlessly past them. Suddenly finding themselves strangers in a strange and unsettling world.

Cassie had not shown the wisdom to avoid the obvious line. She had chosen to storm straight over it, not stepping back even as he felt the shudder role through her. Kresnik stared into those wide blue eyes, emotion finally breaking in the faint smile that touched the hellhound’s lips. He shook his head, their noses bumping, that scrape of scruff on skin coming again. ”My host,” Kresnik rasped, a grating undertone to his host’s voice. ”You piqued his interest, at least until you saw beneath that flesh. At least I assume that is what had you recoiling? You sensed me where he has not been able to yet.” The power of one who could read such things, to touch and sense and feel enough to pull back from that flirtation until her own interest was piqued. ”Your kind and mine have been bound for an eternity, witch. You will one day end up with one of us drawing that soul from you and ferrying it to where your kind live out their afterlife. Such things as I do not … face-suck.” Creatures above such things, who didn’t feel the same shiver of something more pleasurable in the giggle that rolled from the petite blonde. ”Hellhound,” Kresnik breathed against her skin. Fire personified, caught in this fragile human form. Silently waiting to do what he had just promised for numerous things in thisplace.

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Hosts had come and gone over the centuries. Each remaining for a short time before inevitably he was driven away, left for their own good or they were killed, lives so brutally short before this modern era. Some had remained in his memory, a tiny distinction between them but once he moved on they were gone. Lost to time. As this host would be when the time came for his life to end again or he was left an empty shell, entirely unaware of what he had been doing for the last couple of years. Kresnik had no intention of allowing his head to be filled with that knowledge. For his own good his consciousness had remained as it usually was, cut off from the main. Taking over usually only at night, doing what he needed before the body was returned to wake again hours later, fully unaware of what had transpired.

A secret.

Except for now. The girl had not backed down, pushing as just enough of what he was had been revealed to her through her touch. She had wrapped herself around his host’s frame, leaving him to go still beneath her touch, a foreboding expression on his face that seemed to do nothing to wipe that beaming smile from her face. ”I am expected to believe you will not breathe a word?” he asked. There was a faint snort, an arching of one red-gold eyebrow as he studied the side of her face. Humans were never able to hold their word indefinitely. There were too many ways to wring that truth from them – pain, death, desperation, each a guarantee to unlock those promises in the end.

His own hands had remained steadfastly at his sides, not rising to draw her in or push her away. A small gap between their faces as she’d leaned in, the distance feeling as though it were shortening as her fingers trailed into his hair. A touch his host felt as affectionate, the heart he had little control over racing just a little faster in his chest. Even when suppressed there were reactions Bram could not help. Blue eyes narrowed faintly, his head tilting just a half inch more. ”Bram,” he confirmed, as though that explained it all. The movement seemed to draw the girl’s attention to his mouth, her eyes settling there for just a moment before she closed her teeth around his lower lip and tugged. It meant little to him but inside he felt Bram give a slight shudder. A sound rumbled low in his throat, not entirely born of his own reaction. Something of the man inside of him escaped.

The amusement curled the hellhound’s lips slightly as his hand came to her hip, resting lightly. His host certainly wouldn’t hate what had happened. Bram’s interest in the blonde had been palpable even before she had pushed him into the corner and demanded the truth about what he was, it was there now, in the shudder he’d felt roll through him and that sound in his throat. ”Our hosts are not selected for their looks,” he chided, shaking his head just enough to cut the thought off but not dislodge her fingers. ”My host certainly has not been feeling anything approaching hatred. Confusion yes, and that is something I’ll need to clear from his mind after this.” He had never allowed the human to become aware of his presence and Kresnik had no intention of it now. It was the rule for their kind, the human mind separated from that of the creation within.

She was sighing again, her chin dropping before those eyes crawled up to meet his again. Still so painfully young, emotions flitting over her face without any attempt to hold them back. An innocence, despite her obvious awareness of the darker things around her. Kresnik let out a faint laugh. Perhaps the creatures he had hidden within for centuries had rubbed off of him at least in minute ways. ”That is not the way for my kind. We have no interest in such things, or a concept of fun where our work is concerned.” Work, existence? He was not sure what would cover it. Death was their only function, the hiding of it in the removal of these changed souls. ”For you?” he asked slowly. Even if there were some way to tell he would not have done. Passing on that news altered everything.

On a breath he had admitted to her what he was. There was something perhaps intrigued in her face now, the sound stretched out before she echoed his own word. Kresnik made a sound approaching a grunt, dipping his head slightly to look her more squarely in the eye. ”The Greek’s notion of what we were couldn’t have been more wrong. Just … an ancient being.” Dear God. Kresnik stood stock still, the witch shifting against him as she was suddenly struck by the idea of what he was and what he could do. Wriggling with her lips brushing against his. Again his host reacted, that slow rush. ”Hell,” he whispered hoarsely, feeling his host’s stubble rasp against her lips, ”is not for you, witch. Your place will be on the Other Side, at least until you find peace. That will not be yet for you, if you remain quiet.” If not … he would have to return, to press the girl into holding on to the secret she had wormed out of him.

Slowly Kresnik’s head dropped, his lips brushing the crux of the girl’s neck and shoulder. Lips against warm skin, the pulse right there against them. Bram drew a breath in, let out slowly with a faint sound of confusion. The hand on her hip flexed, sliding up an inch or two for his thumb to brush beneath the hem of her top. His lips moved slowly on her throat, scraping upwards to her jaw as the cloud lifted. ”Where … were we?” The words held a faint edge of puzzlement but his mouth was already moving towards her, lips moving smoothly, confidently as though no time had passed between her pushing him back here and now. The thoughts bridged like a gulf by the thing he had no clue had taken the wheel.

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