Sweater Weather (Bjorn)

[Emerson (DELETED 8699)]

The “**** you” that Emerson let out came in the form of a breathy gasp as she felt the second grip around her wrist. Not only was it an added restraint, stopping her first attack and limiting her next, but it was, once again, all too familiar of a hold. Her sharp tongue was not so much directed at Bjorn as it was directed at the blurred figure that was taking form and molding in the girl’s mind as more puzzle pieces seemed to fall into place. The words that the Bjorn spoke were barely even recognized as so. They were replayed in her brain through a different voice and tone, both that made the girl’s skin crawl.

Emerson was truly trying her hardest in each attack, but she was panicking too much, lacking the guidance and guidelines she piggy-backed in every waking moment, leaving her motions too quick and too sloppy. The foot that was raised to kick back at Bjorn’s knee all but hit the side of his shin (because she had yet to calculate their height difference, so it seemed), but the force of the kick was enough to make her lose her balance. At the same time, Emerson was opening her mouth and biting - biting, for goodness sake - the skin of the male’s arm as hard as she could. Luckily for him, there were no baby fangs poking out of her gums. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt any less.

[Bjorn]

Bjørn’s eyebrows shot up at the reply.

He didn’t relinquish his hold, though it tightened slightly when her heel hit his shin and their combined weight shifted unsteadily. That’s when the teeth—blunt and wide—sunk into the skin of his forearm. It was not simply uncomfortable, but painful too.

He dropped his arm from her neck and took a step back to give her space.
The hand around her wrist remained, though his grip was relaxed.

Perhaps it was better to wade through the shallows rather than drown in the deep end.

“Knock me over,” he told her, widening his stance to better distribute his weight, “I just came up to you and grabbed your arm, and I’m trying to drag you away. Knock me down.”

If she tried to pull away, his grip would tighten.

“I’m tall and my centre of gravity is higher. Use it against me.”

[Emerson (DELETED 8699)]

As soon as Bjorn released her, Emerson’s free arm came to cover as much of her head as she could while she crouched into herself, a breathy mantra of “m’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry” tumbling out of her lips. She’d instinctively prepared herself for a blow that never came, blinked at her actions in confusion, and lowered her arm at the sound of the male’s voice. When she looked back, Bjorn was there. Not one of the men, not the one she was stitching together in her mind - just Bjorn. She relaxed, slightly, dropping her arm to her side and straightening back to her full height.

Instructions. Instructions were good, better than the sudden jump-and-go approach they’d tried earlier. Emerson could feel her doubt on learning and improving her attacks growing, but she swallowed it down and focused on what Bjorn was saying. Knock him down. It had to have been possible somehow, but the girl couldn’t think of a way to do so successfully. He was too tall, too strong, too alert, too heavy. Not to mention that she only had the free accessibility of one arm and hand. The grip he had on her was a loose one, but only in that moment. She knew he could tighten it and keep her from getting away in a heartbeat.

Against all odds, she still had to try. Emerson took half a step back and rammed into Bjorn with her side - shoulder and ribs and hips and all - but he didn’t fall over. Not only did it make her feel defeated and weak and completely useless, but it made her angry at herself for not being able to follow his directions. The girl backed away again, using the same tactic, but instead hooked one of her legs around Bjorn’s in the process, hoping that the impact and interference with his balance would send him (and her, evidently, since she was relying on whatever body weight she had to knock him over) toppling to the ground.

[Bjorn]

As Emerson purposely flung herself at him, Bjørn took two short steps backwards to avoid the brunt of the impact. He bent at the knees to better absorb the shock when she crashed into him, both too flexible and too rigid to destabilise. If he’d been breathing, she’d have successfully knocked the air out of him however.

The brunette bounced back (literally and figuratively) from her failure and wasted no time to throw her weight at him again. The foot she hooked around his shin had its desired effect. With a breathless huff, Bjørn stumbled on a singe foot in hopes of maintaining his balance, but her weight made it impossible to keep himself upright.

Relinquishing his hold on her wrist in order to break his fall with both forearms, the vampire fell onto his ***. The padded mat kept his elbows from getting fucked, but Emerson toppling over on top of him outweighed any benefit. Legs wide open, he felt the brunt of the fall where it hurt the most.

Bjørn tried to bounce back, to push her off by pushing himself off the mat. He sought to use their toppling over against her, but found himself too awkwardly sprawled to gain the upper hand.

“Good. Ow, but good.”

He smiled at her, expression a little tense due to the pain radiating through his groin. He’d wait until she righted herself before prompting her to do it again. This time, if she pulled the same move, he’d be ready.

[Emerson (DELETED 8699)]

Emerson let out a surprised squeal as she and Bjorn crashed to the ground - but it shouldn't have come to her as much of a shock. Regardless, now having access to full rotation of both arms, the girl's limbs were windmilling and she was lucky (or, rather, Bjorn was lucky) that the male didn't get whacked in one spot or another by her flailing. He was deemed unlucky, however, when her knee connected where her fist had been intended to go the first time. She considered it a success. Better late than never.

However, this time, the incident was unintentional. "Sorry!" she squeaked, quickly pulling away her knee to move it to a spot on the mat. She sat back on her knees, not yet ready to stand as she pushed back the hair that had ruffled in the collision and fall. "Oh, thank you," the brunette replied happily to the praise. She returned his smile. "And then I could..." Her hand, now free, was balled into a small fist and was slowly brought towards Bjorn's nose, imitating a punch to the face. She wouldn't actually punch him, of course, and her fist stopped short just fractions away from him. "Oh! Or-" she retracted her hands, waggled her thumbs, and positioned them in front of his eyes, making the motion of squishing his baby blues into his skull. Emerson was beaming then, and she rolled away from him with a giggle before getting up to her feet. The first success of the night (and hopefully not the last) was enough to lighten her mood.

A hand was held out to help Bjorn up - it was his choice to take it or to not, and either way, Emerson wouldn't mind all that much. "I didn't mess you up too bad, did I?" she asked. Of course, she was too nice of a girl to not check up on him.

[Bjorn]

Emerson’s display amused him, though he kept his critical opinions to himself. If she dared put stock into her ideas, then he’d show her how unreliable they could become in the heat of the moment. Too close to his eyes and her wrists would be at his mercy; an easy snap of metacarpals would incapacitate her significantly should the presumed aggressor possess the strength to do so. Not that he was intent on breaking her bones to teach her a lesson.

Bjorn had considered a repeat, wishing to test every possible outcome before moving onto something else. However, when Emerson held out her hand to him, asking about his well being, the telepath did the unexpected.

Allowing his upper body to fall back into the mat, he drew inspiration from wushu technique. What might have looked like an attempt to show off a regular kip-up turned into rapid spin up, his extended legs gyrating and caching Emerson behind the knees.

[Emerson (DELETED 8699)]

Emerson felt Bjorn’s legs connect to the back of her knees too little, too late. She had only just recovered from the first fall before she was suffering under the wrath of another, knees uselessly buckling under her. Her small frame all but crumpled to the mat, and she let out a small sound that a puppy might make when swatted once or twice with a newspaper. Her only success, then, was in catching herself from falling face first as her hands shot out to meet the mat beneath her. Emerson shifted so that she was laying on her back, ran her hands over her face (careful not to ruin her makeup, obviously), and willed herself not to cry. She really couldn’t do anything to defend herself. What somehow made her think that she could? She was small and she was weak and she was slow and those men were going to pluck her off the streets without breaking a sweat.

Pushing herself to stand, the brunette was, once again, back on her feet. She turned to face the male, stance wider and knees slightly bent as she had seen him stand before. As if it would help her in some way. “I’m trying,” she said, half to reassure herself and half to reassure him.

[Bjorn]

Bjorn swung himself into a seated position, long legs strewn before him. He’d manoeuvred himself out of the way as to avoid her falling on him (again), and caught the tail-end of her fall. At least she managed to catch herself…

His nostrils flared as he frowned, watching Emerson roll on to her back. What was he to do? Even he’d started on this path with some semblance of self-defence. Should he be harsh? Should he encourage her to keep trying? Even if it was at the expense of his own patience? He was realising that maybe he’d overreached in offering to help; they’d only just started and he was already frustrated.

Letting out a sigh, he drew his knees up and braced them between the loop his arms formed when his fingers hooked loosely together before him. He watched as she rose to her full height, but didn’t follow.

“I learned all this the hard way, Emerson. It took me months. Living on the streets as a newly turned vampire forced me to push myself beyond my limits. I ended up with bullets in my head more than once. Even had my arm hacked off by another vampire—that was fun. This here,”—he patted his shin—“Only a few months old. Point is, I learned to defend myself under pressure—I risked a hell of a lot more than you are right now. You did pretty ******* awesome the other night. Maybe we should take this somewhere where the danger is real.”

Hoisting himself up, he glanced around at the used weaponry, the pristine condition of the walls despite how many dents there should be given the training room’s purpose. Compared to the scored walls of the catacombs, the splintered furniture in the deserted bar, the broken weapons littering the sewers, this place harboured no true potential.


Bjorn reached for his jacket, jerking it off the wooden dummy before shrugging it on.

“Grab your stuff.”

[Emerson (DELETED 8699)]

Emerson felt so stupid, standing there while Bjorn sat. It was probably the only time she would ever be taller than him, the only time she’d ever have to look down at him rather than up, and that should’ve blossomed some sense of power or strength or the upper hand in the situation or something positive in her, but it didn’t. It made her feel stupid, and it made her feel small. She got rid of the wide stance and the bent knees, standing straight with feet together. When Bjorn spoke, she listened. Her eyes wandered, not because she wasn’t paying attention, but because she knew she couldn’t maintain eye contact without panicking. Which was also stupid.

Everyone had their stories and everyone had their backgrounds but Emerson’s mind had failed to remember most, if not all, of the ones that she had already heard. Even her own pencil-written story was smudged grey, erased beyond readability no matter how hard she squinted at the words. The trouble that she’d heard Maddison fall into, compared to this, seemed like almost nothing. The blonde friend had Robin, who protected her and helped her as she had been changed. Prudence had done nothing but the same for the brunette girl, too. By the sounds of it, that had not been the case for Bjorn. This made the girl frown. No apology or show of sympathy was going to change anything that had happened, and because of that, she kept her mouth shut and only nodded her head.

Emerson watched as the male got to his feet and grabbed his jacket, suggesting - it wasn’t much of a suggestion, actually; more like a demand - that she do the same. The girl hesitated. She knew danger was real around almost every corner and down every alley in this city, meaning Bjorn could take her anywhere. The options, in that sense, were endless, but Emerson wasn’t exactly sure if she wanted real danger. She didn’t think these men, the main reason why she was trying to learn to defend herself in the first place, were going to shoot her, or cut off her arms, or **** up her shin. But she could think of other things that made her shiver, and if preventing those things from happening meant going up against another Fadebeast or whatever was lurking where the male would be taking her, then so it would be.

Letting out a breath, the girl retrieved her backpack and put it over her shoulders. “Okay,” she nodded. “Lead the way.”