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"Mind if I come over sometime tonight?"
Jennifer barely adds a lilt to the end of her sentence to make it a question as they leave their AP Lit class at the end of the day. Needy can't really blame her.
"Sure."
It's easier than resisting.
Even if she'd rather Jennifer use the front door rather than fly in through her bedroom window.
"I told you not to do that," Needy grumbles as she puts away her copy of The Crucible; it feels a little too on the nose for her liking. "We don't want you drawing undue attention to yourself, and besides, my parents don't even know you're here."
"Since I have these powers, I might as well use 'em," she snaps. "Even if I'm not maximizing them at the moment. Because I'm listening to you. Loser."
"Bitch."
Needy catches the signs after she tosses out the curse, the ones she'd missed in school since she also has to worry about Pre-Calc and Physics. Jennifer's eyes shining too brightly. The papery, gray gauntness in her face, the lack of color in her cheeks.
"You're hungry," she observes quietly.
"All my family has in the fridge is sad tofu, veggies, and Boca burgers. So not what I'm going for. And I'm trying to be 'good' so you'll stop bitching at me—"
"Because you're treating the town's male population like an all-you-can-eat buffet—"
"Mortals, morsels," Jennifer shrugs with appalling casualness, "they're one and the same to me. Hell, even your precious Chip." She barks out a laugh. "Heh. Potato chip. He's just food. Nothing more."
Needy should loathe how Jennifer sneers his name out, how she always, always manages to make it slant-rhyme with "shit," how she's perpetually dismissed him, practically cuckolded him.
She doesn't. She can't.
Sandbox love never dies, but it never lets her live, either. Just leaves her choking on exhaust, locked in limbo.
"How are you so cavalier about—about eating people?" she demands, trying to force some weight into her objection.
"I'm not. I'm eating boys, Needy. Boys," she repeats. "Stupid playthings," she mutters, with her patented condescending eye roll and hair flip included—some things never change, even when your best friend's possessed by a demon. "Keep up—I know you're smart, even if you're too dumb to ever wear anything that'd show your rack off."
"I don't need to dress like that. I've got Chip," Needy defends herself.
She expects another retort or insult, but Jennifer just shoots her a partially mocking, partially wistful smile and gives her head a little shake before she flops down on her bed.
It's rare that she shuts up, so the quiet is a nice change of pace. Until Needy's own subconscious starts talking.
"You say you've got Chip, but you lied and said you were busy with homework. Since you knew Jen might come over."
"Yeah, since I need to make sure she doesn't vamp anyone else right now," she decides. Sure. She's doing that. She's not spending time with Jennifer because even as a demon or a succubus, she's still got some type of magnetic hold on her. Chip wants to hang out with her, but Jennifer has to.
And if she put Chip and Jen side-by-side and was told to select which one of them she'd spend time with in, say, ten occurrences...well, she knows what she's supposed to do: pick Chip seven or eight times. Enough to show she clearly wants him while not completely ignoring her best friend.
But what she'd actually do—pick Jen at least seven times, if not eight, if not nine—sounds preferable.
"Yeah, there's no way this is healthy."
Nor is what she makes for them—okay, mostly Jennifer—to eat: frozen beef and cheese ravioli. She tries and fails to ignore how she licks her lips as she tops hers with heaping spoonfuls of chunky Ragu pasta sauce.
"Why do you even want Chip, Lesnicki? He's a high school boy. He's inherently gross," Jennifer comments through a mouthful of ricotta cheese, and the irony's not lost on Needy.
"Bet his cum tastes like expired sweet and sour sauce," she adds, wrinkling her nose at her own obscene observation, cackling at the blush in Needy's cheeks, at how she tries to fold her body in on itself.
She's used to bullies shining a spotlight on her inadequacies, but when Jennifer does it, she somehow feels...lucky. Chosen.
"Forget unhealthy. This is toxic," one of the few working parts of her brain notes.
"You've banged guys in our school," Needy recovers, her voice gaining an edge of stubbornness.
"But I don't care about them. And at least they smell good. And have a clue about what they're doing," she counters as she forgoes a napkin to lick the edges of her mouth cleaning with her unnaturally long, darting tongue. "And you're dodging my question."
"I don't know." Needy forces down another swallow of ravioli, but she's not particularly hungry anymore. "Besides sex, we—we mostly do hand stuff."
"I don't blame you, actually—there's a reason it's called a blowjob," Jennifer admits, eliciting a laugh from Needy—partially out of shock. She's never entirely sure what her best friend will deliver, and that's part of her allure: the unexpected. Jen's bent toward impulse married with her desire for order.
A frown suddenly marrs her less-than-gorgeous face, and the baser, crueler part of Needy's psyche wonders, as she studies the unnatural, broken agelessness to her features, "How long will she be able to skate by on her looks? How many times does she apply concealer every day?"
"Are you saying Chip hasn't ever eaten you out?"
"I don't—we've talked about it—"
He excuses her shortcomings and her consistent prioritization of a friend who, she'll be the first to admit, isn't always good for her. She can do the same for him for once.
Jennifer does that thing again, stares through Needy like she might have fucking x-ray vision in addition to her other insane powers, and she finally snaps when that insufferable smirk makes its way back across her face.
"You're never this quiet, so just tell me whatever sick shit is so entertaining to you, Jen," she spits out when they've gone back up to her room.
"It's just—it's funny. Really funny."
Her chuckle is pure evil and goddamn if the hairs on her forearms and the back of her neck don't stand up at the sound.
"You're brilliant, Needy, truly. You're gonna get into, what, the University of Minnesota with damn near a full ride—" maybe Jennifer does pay attention to her— "and you're gonna tie yourself, no, anchor yourself to a fucking loser who's too selfish to go down on you—"
"Don't talk about Chip like that!" she shouts.
She's surprised at just how loudly her voice rings out. Which is how she knows she's in trouble. Because when she means her threats, her insults, she goes for the quiet pointedness of a dagger over the showy volume of a shotgun blast.
Needy shrinks back as Jennifer stalks toward her, her blue eyes darkening like a hurricane. "You trying to tell me what to do, Lesnicki?"
She should say no. But she always caves to Jennifer, and she's only gotten even brattier since...
So for once, she puts her foot down.
"Yeah. I am, Check."
Her voice still trembles a little, but she doesn't sound pathetic, at least. She's got some faith in her ability to stand up to her so-called best friend.
"Figured you'd say no," Jennifer breathes. "I dig your moxie. A lot. Like, a lot a lot."
Jennifer's got an inch on her, but it might as well be six or seven.
Needy gives a little gasp of surprise as the backs of her thighs hit the edge of her bed, and she loses her balance, falls backward onto it.
Jennifer follows with disgustingly easy grace—she'd always been at ease in her body before, all lithe, coordinated limbs wedded with car-crash curves, but her body's even more of a weapon now, even in blue jeans that aren't skin-tight and a black, oversized Aeropostale hoodie.
"You wanna play a game, Needy? Do something fun? Goof around like normal teenage girls do?"
Jennifer's sing-song tone is sickly sweet like county fair cotton candy and she's almost grinding on her and she will not, will not, buck her hips up into her to capture the friction her body's craving.
"No."
She closes her eyes, makes herself think of Chip and the last time they'd fucked but all she remembers is thinking "that's it?" after.
She can feel Jennifer sinking closer to her, digging her nails into her jawline just enough for it to sting to tilt her mouth up and her breath trembles for a second before Jennifer kisses her, gentle and tender til they're swirling their tongues around each other and that's it.
It's everything: confirmation that their "boyfriend-girlfriend" routine was more than a joke, that Jennifer still has some of her old softness, even if she's deploying it to manipulate, that, goddammit, she'll always pick Jennifer and knowing that will only make her even more unbearable.
But Needy can't bear this ending. Not at this very second, as Jennifer starts to pull back, away from her, grinning like she can just take whatever she wants and leave scraps for Needy.
So she presses her hand to the back of Jennifer's skull, sucks her lower lip into her mouth, and bites. Hard. Until coppery, bastardized blood trickles onto her tongue and fuck if she isn't just as greedy as Jen sometimes.
She can feel her fangs lengthen and squeezes her eyes shut, braces for razor-sharp teeth to sink in somewhere, anywhere, to mark her up.
They don't.
Instead, Jennifer's hand snaps out, and it's around her throat almost before she can register the movement.
Her head's mostly pressed into the mattress, so it doesn't hurt much, but the top of it bumps the headboard with enough force to shake the damn thing.
"Shit," she gasps through white-hot, semi-blinding pain.
"That was your freebie," Jennifer whispers. It's a warning, but she sounds bemused, maybe even impressed.
She's still choking her—lightly, it's true—but with a random squeeze thrown in here or there to offer a reminder of her capabilities.
And God is Jennifer Check ever capable of...a lot of things.
"And by the way, you're a liar," she informs Needy with almost insulting coolness as she finally lets go and gets up.
Her head's spinning like the first time Jennifer fed her a couple Long Island iced teas, so she can hardly be blamed for croaking out, "What? How?"
If she shuts her eyes, she can almost feel her fingers tightening around her throat, so she wills herself to look at the most exasperating woman she's ever met, which is just as dangerous.
"You said you didn't wanna play. But you did."
"You made me," Needy mutters. It's a feeble lie, but she has to preserve some semblance of dignity.
"Please," Jennifer snorts—she's retreating toward the window, and Needy won't follow. Not tonight. She doesn't trust her klutzy bod any further than she could throw it, not after—
"Low-key making out with your best friend and getting way too turned on by it."
Jennifer licks at her bloody lip, swallows it, clearly savoring the taste, and grins.
"You do know," her nostrils twitch for a second, and her grin stretches even wider, "that I can smell how much you want me, right, babe?"
Needy doesn't usually respond poorly to frustration and confusion, but she thinks she's allowed an exception here. So, in an unseeing fury, she snatches for a heavy object near her bed—her American history textbook should do the trick—and chucks it at Jennifer's smug face.
She catches it, of course.
"I'm gonna go," she announces as she leaps up and crouches on the windowsill. "Since you obviously need some space."
"But my book—Jennifer, we have that quiz tomorrow—"
She laughs at her grade-grubbing whine, and Needy relaxes at the sound. It's her old laugh. Still the tiniest bit mocking, sure, but she's mostly letting Needy in on the joke rather than centering it around her.
She springs down from her perch and walks over to where she's still laying in bed. She hands over the book, but doesn't quite relinquish her grip on it.
"You play tonsil hockey with your best friend, who's kind of a demon, and you're still concerned about memorizing the highlights of Zachary Taylor's presidency," Jennifer murmurs just before offering her one more soft kiss.
She shrugs. "One of us has gotta stay normal."
"Yeah. Sure. You're normal, Anita," Jennifer snorts, and Needy's laughter joins hers.
The thought pops into her mind as Jen pops out of her window without another word.
"I'm so going to hell for this."