Work Text:
Star leaned against the rail of the lighthouse and stared out at the ocean. The moon was new, and a heavy scattering of stars filled the sky. She tilted her face up toward them and closed her eyes. She clutched her tarot cards tightly in one fist.
There was death here, on this cliff, in this city. Death in the water, surfers drowning, disappearing into the fog and the chill and the saltwater. Death on land, in the darkness of the beach, far beneath where the light cut through the sky, and here in the shadowy concrete against the lighthouse itself. The surfing museum was new, but some of the death old. Some recent. Some still to come. The edges of her cards scratched against her palm.
Some deaths were natural. Others, here especially, very much not.
“Sta-ar.”
Dawn’s voice rose on the wind, calling her. For a long moment, Star remained where she was, head tipped back, the smell of the ocean all around her.
The brine of it wasn’t enough to block out Dawn’s perfume, or beneath that, the sick, delicious smell of fresh blood. Star breathed in, salt from the ocean, salt from the blood, and dizziness swept over her.
“Sta-ar.”
Lighthearted. Sing-song. Filled with laughter and amusement. It made Star’s skin crawl, made her throat tighten and her breath come fast.
She turned with a sigh, put her back to the water, and circled the lighthouse until she found Dawn standing in the shadows near the door. Everything was bright and shiny still, the museum only a year old. There was the lingering smell of people, sweat and candy and beer, surf wax and spandex, patchouli and weed.
Humanity everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
Dawn tipped a bottle toward her. This one was plain glass, simple, filled with something dark and thick. Nothing at all like the ornate bottle Star had first drank from ages ago. There had been ceremony then, all of Dawn’s girls dancing around her, bonfire flickering, their voices rising in her name, their chant running beneath the crash of waves against the cliff. Star had laughed, and tipped back her head, shaking out her curls, drawing Dawn’s eyes to her breasts and hips and long, long legs, and then she drank.
Star’s mouth went dry and her fangs pricked the insides of her lips.
“Star.” Dawn smiled at her. There was no happiness to it. “You’ve kept me waiting.”
She breathed in carefully through her nose, out through her mouth, trying to avoid the taste of blood wafting out of the bottle. It was no use. She could feel it on her skin, taste it across her tongue, and it hadn’t even touched her lips yet.
“Sorry,” she said, and her voice cracked. She tried to swallow, but her mouth and throat were too dry. She held up her deck of cards. “I’m trying to see.”
“Mmm.” Dawn’s expression was unreadable. “And how is that going?”
Star shrugged. “Not well.” She held her breath, hoped it was enough.
Dawn watched her for a long moment. Star watched her right back, careful to keep her shoulders down and relaxed, her body loose. Moments like this, Star noticed again how gorgeous Dawn was. She was tall and whip-cord thin. Her bright blue eyes, wild blonde hair, and easy smirk drew people in; the black clothes, heavy boots, and dangerous curl to her expression drove them off.
Her hair was naturally curly, a frizzy golden crown teased up in the front, longer in the back. Sometimes she hung upside while spraying hairspray just to get it fluffy enough.
She stepped forward, and her leather trench coat swung out, stretching for Star. Darkness wrapped around her, drawing her close. It wasn’t real. Dawn could play with her mind easy as anything.
Dawn brought one hand to Star's mouth and touched her lips with delicate fingers. “Come on,” she said. “They wait for me.”
Star tucked her cards away into their velvet bag and let Dawn take her hand. Offered Dawn her hand. There was no letting Dawn do anything. She did what she wanted, took what she wanted, and swept everyone else along with her. Star loved that about her. Loathed it.
There were too many ways this could go.
*
Star sank down onto the ground, letting her skirt cover her legs and feet, then curled her fingers into the sand. It was cool and damp, and carried no trace of the sun that beat down on it all day. What must that be like, to so easily lose the light?
She hoped never to know.
Peg sprawled on the weathered wooden steps nearby, her legs spread wide. She wore tight white pants, a black mesh shirt with torn edges over a bright red bra. Her breasts were small, her dirty blond hair wild, her smile wide and sharp. She kicked off her boots, rubbed her bare feet across the edge of the sand, leaned back on her elbows.
Mary brushed sand off the top step before she sat, fussed with her jean skirt, smoothed her white tank top across her stomach. Her patchwork jacket was a work of art, leather and fabric and beads, hand stitching, though Star had never seen her with a needle. Her blonde hair was tightly curled, longer pieces tangled into messy braids. She rarely smiled.
Darcy stood a bit away from them, closer to Dawn, black hair hiding her face, black clothes blending into the darkness. That’s where she stayed, most of the time, Dawn’s sneaky, silent shadow. It was almost too spot on, the Peter Pan metaphor. Star had loved that story once.
It hadn’t been nearly as bloody in her picture books.
Dawn’s smile was angelic. The starlight seemed to catch in her hair; even in the dim light, it glowed. “I’m hungry,” she said, voice light as anything. Her fingers traced delicate, invisible designs through the air. “Tonight, we hunt together.” Her gaze settled on Star. “All of us.”
Star swallowed, gripped her bag of cards tight.
“You can’t force her,” Darcy said, her voice rough like gravel. She hoarded her words, but when she did speak, she used them up all at once, a week’s worth of speech, a month’s worth. “She had to choose to drink the blood, and she has to choose to kill.”
In a movement almost too fast for Star to catch, even with her enhanced vision, Dawn sprang for Darcy and struck her across the face. Darcy landed hard, sprawled across the sand, her cheek laid open to the bone; thick, black blood oozed slowly from the cut.
“Do not presume to cite rule and verse to me,” she said, her voice still light, even with Darcy’s skin beneath her nails. She could easily have ripped out Darcy’s throat, torn off her head, but that wasn’t her way. There were better, more painful, punishments.
Darcy didn’t touch the wound, didn’t bother wiping away the blood. Instead, she simply stared up at Dawn. Like this, Darcy a dark slash across the sand, Dawn glowing in the moonlight, it was even easier to see Peter Pan and his mischievous, wayward shadow.
“You chose,” Darcy said. Blood dripped down her jaw, splattered against the damp sand. The smell of it reached Star, sharp and rich beneath the scent of the ocean, salt water and dead things. “She chooses too. Those are the rules.”
Dawn giggled, high and bright. “I think you’ve forgotten who makes the rules around here.”
Darcy sighed. Star wasn’t certain, but she thought Darcy might be even older than Dawn. “Have you?” she asked.
Dawn flung back her tangled nest of blonde hair. Her throat was a thing of beauty in the starlight. Star’s lips ached, and her mouth was dry. She wanted to press kisses there, to that pale, smooth skin, sink blunt teeth into that flesh.
“Come, old friend,” Dawn said, and held out her hand. Darcy took it without hesitation, and Dawn pulled her upright. “We will hunt.” She flashed Star a saucy grin. “You will come with us,” she added, “but whether you hunt tonight…” She let her voice trail off.
The edges of her tarot cards cut into her fingers through the soft fabric bag. Star nodded, and had to look away.
*
It was summer, but the warmth of the sunlight faded fast at night, and the air was cool. The press of people on the boardwalk made up for that. Their body heat rose around them, and the breeze carried salt -- sweat, seawater, blood; she could breathe in through her mouth and taste each separate flavor across her tongue.
It was too much of a tease, and at the same time, too little. She breathed in, fast and hard, and tried to sate herself on nothing.
The nights when Dawn gave her the bottle first were better. She was never fully satisfied, could never be, not on bottled blood, and always the thirst burned in the back of her throat, but when she gulped blood out of the bottle, licked it from her lips after, she could almost (not quite) ignore her thirst.
Tonight was not that kind of night.
Of course not. Dawn pushed her to drink, to kill, to choose -- that boy her victim, that girl her first kill, that man, that child. Star rejected them all, kept her eyes wide open, her gaze distant, her mind on the sun. Her shoulders locked in a tight line, and the tension down her spine hadn’t let up for months.
She has held out longer than anyone else Dawn has tempted before. That, she knew, was the only reason she still lived. (However much what she was doing could actually be called life.)
But she had hope. Ever since she first drank from Dawn’s bottle, she struggled to see her own future. She saw Dawn’s, and the girls', and each individual human’s she chose to focus on, but her own wavered too much to tell any sort of truth. Maybe it was Dawn messing with her mind, manipulating all her senses into exactly what she wanted Star to see. But maybe not. Star thought, when she took the time to consider it, that she struggled to see her future because she didn’t yet have one: until she fell fully into neverland or back into the light, she had no future, she had no past.
She just was, not human, not monster, something else entirely. Half formed, and, she hoped, more dangerous. Dangerous enough to save herself. Dangerous enough to find her way home.
*
Star saw a knight in the cards, but there was no boy in shining armor on a white horse. There wasn't even a boy in a car, offering her safety and family and home. There wasn't a boy at all, though boys came to Santa Carla by the dozens, and died just as fast.
There was, though, a girl.
Star first saw her in person across the crowded beach, exactly where she expected her to be. Her dark hair was cropped boyishly short, just long enough the riotous strands started to curl, and she wore a shirt with the sleeves torn off, muscled arms bare. Her breasts were pressed flat beneath it, her jeans baggy, her boots thick. She had a solid waist, wide hips, big hands, and a smile like the sun.
Star’s desire struck her hard, visceral and unexpected, and for too long, all she could think about was the push of those blunt fingers inside, the feel of those small breasts beneath her mouth, and the taste of her cunt, salty on Star’s lips and teeth and tongue.
Salty like blood, and her thirst raged.
*
“Your parents too, huh?” Maggie asked, and Star blanched. “Ex-hippies.” She laughed, nudged her shoulder into Star’s. The press of their bodies together made Star buzz and thirst bloom strong in her throat. “I was almost Moonbeam or Sunshine or something ridiculous like that.”
Star, who named herself while she wandered, falling inexorably toward Santa Carla, and who felt, sometimes, like the second star to the right, like this path she was on was inevitable, and there was no way to stop herself from that final long fall -- Star forced herself to shake back her hair, to smile and to laugh.
She hoped, deep and desperate, that Maggie wasn't drawn to the stars, or, if she was, that she turned away before morning.
*
Star saw Maggie coming, and in her, Star’s own salvation, but never, not once, not in one single card, did she see Dawn’s response.
*
“Please,” Star begged Maggie. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go far away.”
Maggie laughed, and kissed her soundly, hands hard on Star’s hips. “I’ll keep you safe,” she promised, brash and young. She didn’t know what she said, not really, and Star’s heart lurched. Maggie was wild and gorgeous and so viciously human that it hurt Star to look at her.
“Please,” Star begged, but she know what it was like to stumble into neverland, and Maggie had already started to fall.
*
“Sta-ar,” Dawn sang, and pressed the bottle against her mouth. She wanted to hold out, to prove herself strong, to make a point she’d already forgotten, but she parted her lips, let the blood pour down her throat, coat her tongue, blunt her teeth. She drank and she drank; she didn’t need air, not with blood in her mouth. Dawn’s hands curled under her shirt, under her skirt, thrust inside. “You’ve been holding out on me. I’ve seen your girl. Your savior. Your Maggie.”
Star choked on the blood, and still it came, and darkness with it, and pleasure.
*
Maggie came for her in the evening. Star was still drowsy, half asleep in her bed. The others were out, hunting, or maybe standing in the room, watching Maggie slam into her, twisting her perceptions, and Maggie’s, to hide their presence. Maggie gripped her arms too tight, demanded to know what she was, what she’d done.
Star shook her head over and over, eyes bright with tears -- eyes bright like stars, and she’s falling like they do -- and all she could do was press her mouth to Maggie’s again and again, breathing life into her (death like old blood), and push her down into Star’s bed.
Maggie’s mouth was a treasure, her body a joy, and with her lips and teeth, fingers and tongue, she made Star’s body sing.
*
“I know what I am now,” Maggie told her. There’s blood on her mouth, fangs behind her lips, and her eyes were bright. Her face was twisted, ridged like the others, and Star’s eyes burned. She refused to show them her tears, not Dawn, not even Maggie. Maggie smiled at her, somehow gentle despite the monster wearing her face. “I know what you are too.”
Maggie held out her hand. Didn’t say anything else.
Star breathed in salt, breathed out her thirst. Then, as she reached for Maggie, as their fingers touched, she closed her eyes and let herself fall.
*
She drank until the stuttering heart beat stopped, and for the first time since she came to Santa Carla, since she disappeared into neverland, her thirst faded and was gone; she waited for guilt to strike her, or terror, but the only thing she felt was peace.
Star opened her eyes to Maggie, watching her, waiting. She held out her hand. Star didn’t hesitate this time, reached out and took it, laced their fingers together tight. She stood, and together, they walked away from the fallen body, bloodless, face twisted into a silent scream.
Together, they walked straight on ‘til morning.