roadtrip!

If Krista listened to him half as much as she expected him to (or thought he) listened to her, they wouldn’t have ended up here, with her scrambling up between the seats. She was lucky he hadn’t gone off road when she’d popped up like an infuriating, pretty blonde Jack-in-the-Box. Belted up as he was, he’d have been fine, but it was easy to imagine Krista pitching head first out of the wind screen. That danger didn’t seem to have made it into her head, there probably hadn’t been any room given all the excitement already buzzing around in there.

Reaching blindly for her, her curled a hand around her thigh, trying to guide her down onto the seat beside him, before she managed to do something else to distract him from the road. His brows drew together, his hand only sliding back to the wheel once her seatbelt was clipped in. Stacey, Amanda and Michelle? Who? The majority of what Krista said about school had a tendency to float in one ear and out the other (mostly out of self-preservation, so he didn’t have to pack all of it into his memory). Kitty’s name stood out, mostly cause hearing it left him feeling like he was developing an ulcer – Bram’s too when that mountain man slipped into the conversation.

”That’s good of ‘em,” Mal muttered, his voice perhaps a little drier than it should’ve been. They’d probably been happy enough to send Krista off for a couple of days of fun, giggling over the surprise if she’d filled them in. He hummed under his breath before he glanced sideways and shot her a little smile. ”That’ll give you somethin’ to do while I’m stuck in all these presentations.” While he slipped out of them to go see a chimera about his little slip ups. Krista would hopefully lose herself in her homework and wouldn’t question anything else too hard.

So far his irritation at her not sticking to their little agreement had been passing her by, like the scenery outside the window. The corners quirked, but it was a fight between it being a grimace and a grin. ”Cause I was tryin’ to make sure you didn’t lose out by goin’ with me. Ya know how I feel about your schoolin’.” The blessing of it keeping Krista from being around too much. ”That’s a definitely up side,” he promised, reaching out to cover one of her hands, bringing it back down to her thigh to squeeze. There went getting anything fresh from the vein. The chuckle rolled out of him, tightening in his chest for just a minute. For once Krista had proved to be a little genius, managing to pull off all of this with real sneakiness.

He still could’ve probably turned around. She’d pout the whole way though, plotting how many ways she could make his life miserable over the next couple of days. ”Yeah, somethin’ like that, love. It’s a convention, for blood docs. It’s in Charleston. You ever been there? Real pretty city, all sorts of historical stuff there.” The sort of thing she’d feign an interest in before it bored her and Krista’s eyes glazed over.


Alright, maybe she’d been a little less bored of it over the first couple of days than he’d expected. A fancy hotel room – one that made his motel room back in Mystic Falls look like a flea pit. A tub big enough for the two of them to slip into together. Food delivered to the room for Krista, his laid out on those crisp white sheets – warm, fresh and appreciative. If there’d actually been a convention he couldn’t have wriggled out of, he’d have been missing half of it while they had a couple of days of what everybody else probably would’ve called domestic bliss.

The newspaper that was set on the breakfast tray their second morning in the city had goosed him into action. Another death, another body dropped, this time left on the doorstep of one of the city’s mansions, like a dead bird brought as a trophy to an owner by its cat. If he didn’t get a bloody move on the Doc would be the one out here, making far more of a mess cleaning this one up.

”You won’t wanna sit around for four hours listenin’ to after dinner speeches and that miserable old bugger McGinty talkin’ ‘bout how they let blood in the good old days.” he’d murmured, smoothing a hand down Krista’s back to give her backside a fond little pat before he stepped back. ”He’ll probably put us all to sleep, so don’t worry if I’m not back tonight. I’ll see you in the morning, before I head back to the convention. Order in somethin’ good for dinner, eh? Call it a treat and we’ll put it on the hospital’s bill for this.”

His dinner had been one of those blood bags, slipped into the pocket of his jacket as he’d headed out. Breakfast had been some woman who he’d been interrogating under compulsion about her transformed son – why not kill two birds with one stone. By the time he’d managed to track the little shit to the garage he’d been holing up in, dusk had been coming on. By now Krista was probably calling the cops to report him as being missing. He hadn’t wanted to call in case she’d twigged to something being off.

Mal shot the receptionist at the hotel a sharp little smile as he walked in. A quick drink in the bar to slake his thirst and then he’d head up to really satisfy it in another way. Walking into the hotel bar, he stopped dead in the doorway. That familiar tussle of blonde hair glinted under the lights. The body opposite Krista half hidden, but bulky. What in the holy mother of all fucks? The same way he had when he’d turned up at their place to find her batting her lashes at Bram, Mal sidled up to her. His hand smoothed down her hair, a brighter version of his smile touching his lips even if it didn’t touch his eyes. ”Alright, love,” he drawled. ”Thought I’d never get out of there. I see you managed to find yourself some company while I was gone. Wotcha, mate.” The smile fell away the second he looked at the bloke.

Tagged: KRISTA MAY * Word Count: 1076