Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's note: This was my first attempt at fanfic of any sort. Be merciful to me. This is my take on what went on in that bathroom in the desert during the ML episode "Fever" (1x04). Rated PG-13 for a feeding scene and implied sexuality.
Fever Dream
“Stay here,” Beth told Leni, and she ran into the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind her.
Mick was lying in a filthy bathtub, fully clothed. The water was full of melting ice, and all Beth could see of him were his soaked knees sticking out of the dirty water. His head was below the surface.
“Mick!” Beth shouted, and threw herself down by the tub. “Mick!”
She reached under the icy water and found his face. She dragged his head back to the surface and started gently slapping his cheeks to revive him.
“Mick! Stay with me…stay with me,” she implored him, as his head lolled in her hands. He seemed completely unresponsive.
Beth patted his face, holding the back of his neck so his head wouldn’t submerge again. “Mick!” She felt his forehead in alarm. Despite the freezing water, he was obviously suffering from a severe fever.
“You’re burning up!”
Mick’s eyelids flickered, and he gasped as if in terror.
"I bit her! I'll die before I feed on her!" His eyes opened wide, and she saw that they were jaundiced, his face hideously pale.
Beth held his face in both hands and tried to force him back to consciousness by sheer willpower. “Mick, Leni’s in the other room. She’s fine.” She smiled tenderly into his eyes as he recognized her. His face lighted up a little as he realized she was there with him.
“I guess…I guess I am a delicate flower,” he said gently, and Beth smiled into his eyes, caressing his face.
“I guess you are,” she said, with a little catch of nervous laughter in her voice.
Mick lay in the water for a few seconds, just looking into Beth’s eyes. Then he seemed to make some sort of decision.
“Take Leni back. Get her out of here. He’s coming,” he ordered Beth. She knew he was signing his own death warrant.
“I’m not leaving,” she declared.
Mick looked so tired, but determined. “You have to protect her now,” he gently urged her. He was saying goodbye, sending her away, sacrificing himself to save Leni’s life. She was about to lose him for real this time, and she just couldn’t take it twice in one day.
“You’re dying,” she said, her voice breaking. She stared deeply into his eyes for a second, then came to a decision of her own.
Stumbling to her feet, she shrugged off her coat. She was trembling, and her breath caught in her throat as she pulled her collar away from her neck and swept her hair to the side, offering herself to him as sustenance. "I don't know how to do this, but I know you need it, so..."
His wet, haggard face showed naked disgust. "No! Get out! Get out!" he shouted at her, and turned away as much as he could in the cramped confines of the bathtub. She could see the terror and refusal on his face, but those were nothing compared to her terror at the sight of his cracking lips, his deathly pale gray skin, his eyes seemingly so alien and yet so dear to her. She was his only hope of survival, and suddenly she was overwhelmed by a rush of almost maternal concern for him.
She knew he’d rather die than betray what he saw as a sacred trust to keep her safe. How could she make him see that losing him was the most fearsome thing of all? Remembering her anguish when she thought she’d lost him earlier that day, she knew she must do everything in her power to keep it from really happening.
"You need blood!" she insisted.
”No, not yours,” he protested, and his horrifying eyes were full of horror at the thought of feeding on her.
She had to convince him—to save him. “Look—” she knelt down and almost roughly grabbed his face in her hands, forcing him to look into her eyes.
“Not like this,” he groaned in shame and self-loathing.
Beth shook his face a little in her hands, trying to shake some sense into him. “I want to do this,” she said, looking earnestly into his face. Slowly, gently, inexorably, she urged him to sit up in the tub. She half-rose, fidgeting with her collar, baring her throat for him.
“I know you won't kill me, and I know you won't try to turn me either. I— I've got this vampire friend who's been explaining this stuff.” She was beginning to be really afraid, panting as if she had been running for miles, but she knelt down next to the tub and shakily offered herself to him. He had held her life in his hands before, and she trusted this strange man more than anyone, even Josh.
Hesitantly, barely breathing, he reached slowly for her arm. She saw defeat, and shame, and hunger, and...maybe...something else in his strange eyes as he gently took her arm in his hands and cradled it for a moment. She closed her eyes, afraid to look, but then opened them again as he bowed reverently over her wrist. Suddenly, something in him changed, and she knew there was no going back.
“At some point,” he said, trying to be gentle, but succumbing to the blood-hunger as his fingers gripped her wrist more tightly—“You're gonna have to stop me." His voice was a low growl. Inhuman.
And then his grip turned to iron and his mouth opened wide and he— snarled as he impaled her wrist on those sharp, awful teeth. She gasped in fright and pain as his fangs pierced her arm and he began to suck. Some cool, dissociated part of her mind remembered a summer afternoon when she was a little girl, the day her cat killed a gopher in the back yard. The cat had pounced on the little creature with a lightning-fast, pitiless bite of pure animal hunger, and the gopher had given one tiny squeak and gone limp. She was suddenly very glad he had refused to take blood from her neck, and a chill ran down her spine at the thought of how very, very easy it would be for him to kill her. To snap her neck, or tear her throat out, or drain her dry and leave her draped over the edge of that filthy tub.
All this ran through her head in an instant as she gasped in shock at that fierce bite; then she forced herself back to a kind of calm and rested her cheek against his shoulder as he fed at her wrist. She realized that he was even more afraid of hurting her than she was of losing him, and that thought was comforting.
She could feel the unnatural fever radiating from his skin, despite the ice floating in the water. Heat rose from him, through his wet shirt, at the same time that the freezing-cold water began to make her shiver with cold. The edge of the tub was digging into her ribs; she was kneeling awkwardly on the floor and she knew her knees were going to start cramping soon.
Shuddering with shock and cold, she sighed as she nurtured this powerful, yet oddly vulnerable man the only way she could. He had turned away from her, as if he couldn't bear to see her watching him feed, to see her face as he exposed himself as the monster he truly felt himself to be. The knowledge of his despair brought her near to tears, and she gently stroked his hair with her other hand.
Moments passed, she wasn’t really sure how many. After the first blaze of pain, the sensation was oddly pleasant, even sensual. His teeth were no longer cutting into her, and she could feel his lips and tongue moving over the skin of her wrist as he sucked rhythmically, almost like a nursing child. The cold water, her aching knees, the tub bruising her ribs, all faded into the background as she sank into the sensation of the vampire feeding at her wrist. A languor washed over her, a feeling of peace and comfort. His tongue caressed her as his mouth drew at the wounds on her arm. His grip had relaxed now, and he held her arm gently, propping his hands up on his knees as he sat in the water. She found herself rocking in time with the rhythm of his sucking, her cheek moving gently against his shoulder, and she shifted position a little so that she could put her free arm around his shoulders. She cuddled him in the circle of her arm as his mouth moved on the skin of her wrist, as his tongue pulsed against her. She could feel the pulling deep inside her. It had become almost a sexual pleasure to feel him drinking from her in this way.
Taking a deep breath, she sighs, almost moaning, as the pleasant sensations move up her arm and through her body. She is now feeling deliciously warm and sleepy, miles away from the woman crouched by the tub in that filthy motel bathroom. Time stands still as the vampire feeds on her, as she gives herself up to the sensations. Time is meaningless in this delicious, warm world of the vampire’s lips and tongue moving on her flesh, his rhythmic sucking as she nourishes him and he fulfills her.
“Mmmmmmmm,” she breathed dreamily, but the sound brought him back into himself with a start. Gasping, he pushed her arm roughly away from his mouth, his tongue, his sharp teeth. Her shock was enormous—she was suddenly brought back to her senses, suddenly feeling the cold, the ache in her knees, the dizziness from loss of blood. She leaned sideways against the tub, her arm still hanging over the water. Blood dripped from the wounds in her wrist and she dazedly watched the drops gather and fall into the bathwater. She realized that she’d been sitting on her knees so long that her feet had fallen asleep. She painfully changed position so that she was sitting on the ground with her legs in front of her. They burned and prickled as the feeling returned to them.
Mick lurched to his feet and grabbed the one clean towel from the rack, towering over her and splashing water on her from his drenched clothes.
“Beth, Beth…I’m so sorry,” he said brokenly, kneeling back down in the tub and tenderly lifting her arm to inspect the damage he had done. She was afraid to look into his face at first, but when she looked up she was overjoyed to see the Mick she knew. His eyes were their normal, warm hazel, his skin pale, but not that deathlike gray-white.
His fear for her was palpable, and she wanted to comfort him, but she was so dizzy she couldn’t talk for a moment. She licked her dry lips and cleared her throat. “I’m fine, Mick. I’ll be fine. Are you OK? Did you get...enough?”
"Yes," Mick said uncomfortably, his eyes refusing to meet hers. He wrapped the towel tightly around her wrist. “You have to hold your arm up, keep it higher than your heart, till the bleeding stops.” He lifted her hand high above her head and pushed the towel against the double puncture wounds on the inside of her wrist. It hurt.
“I know, I’ve given blood lots of times. It’ll just take a minute till I stop feeling dizzy,” she murmured. He found the snacks Leni had tried to give him before, when he was dying. There were cookies, and he opened the packet for her.
“Can you eat? Try to eat one of these. The sugar will help.” He looked around frantically for something he could give her to drink. “You need fluids.” There was a bottle of water next to the sink. He twisted it open and gave it to her. She sipped it slowly, then propped the bottle in her lap and nibbled at a cookie.
“Thanks, that does help.” She was getting tired of holding her arm up, and cautiously brought it back down into her lap. She looked curiously, and a bit squeamishly, at the twin bite wounds. They were bleeding only very sluggishly now. She pressed the towel against her wrist again and took another sip of water. It really did make her feel better. She sat up straighter and was pleased that she didn’t feel so faint any more.
Mick stepped out of the water and sat down on the edge of the tub. She looked up at him and saw the worry on his face. She needed to give him something concrete to talk about, other than endlessly apologizing to her.
“Mick, we have to get Leni out of here,” she said. She unconsciously leaned her head against his thigh as she gazed up into his face. His hand stole forward and stroked her hair gently.
“Are you OK to get up now? You’re right, we should leave as soon as we can. I can drive your car. If you don’t mind telling Leni to get ready, I’ll wring myself out a little so I don’t ruin your upholstery.” He gave a lopsided grin and held up his arm to show her that he was still sopping wet. His shirtsleeve dripped into the tub. She smiled back at him.
“I think I’m fine. Can you give me a hand?” She started to struggle up.
“Of course!” He jumped up and lifted her to her feet. She could tell his strength was returning. He still looked like he thought the end of the world had come, though. His eyes were terribly sad and he seemed almost afraid to touch her.
She swayed a little at first, and he gripped her elbows to steady her. Then the wave of dizziness passed and she put her hand on the doorknob. “I’ll go get Leni, and we’ll be ready to go whenever you are.” She smiled at him. “It’s OK, Mick, I’m fine. I’m glad.”
“I should never have put you in this position,” he replied heavily. “I can’t tell you—“
“No more of that. Let’s go,” she said, and smiled over her shoulder at him as she opened the bathroom door.
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I miss it...
