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On a crisp Saturday in late spring, Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades returned to Castle Tepeş to discover that in their absence, Alucard had bought a canoe.
Sypha took it as a positive omen - a sign that if Alucard wasn’t yet feeling better, he might at least be ready to feel better. Trevor, on the other hand, had a question.
“Bought? What do you mean, bought?”
Alucard raised a single eyebrow. He did this, Trevor was certain, because he knew Trevor couldn’t. The two of them had conversed at length about it on the road from Gresit, and it was a conversation Trevor sorely regretted.
“I mean bought as in purchased,” said Alucard. “There’s a town thirty miles hence. I exchanged money for goods and services. Are you unfamiliar with the custom, Belmont?”
Trevor approached the canoe, which sat upended across a boat rack beside the threshold of the gatehouse, as if it were a wild beast in need of taming. “You mean to tell me,” he said, “that there are fifteen hundred thousand rooms in this castle---”
“There are three hundred and eleven, counting parlors and excluding foyers.”
“---and not one of those rooms had a canoe in it already?”
Alucard blinked. “I didn’t check.” He went back to brushing tar onto the hull of the boat in neat, efficient strokes.
With his back to them, Sypha took the opportunity to shoot Trevor a peculiar look. He’s not ready, her eyes seemed to say. And Alucard clearly wasn’t, so they left him alone.
There was much to be done elsewhere in the castle. Splinters of stained glass the length of Trevor’s forearm sat in wooden crates, piled high along the walls. Trevor had wondered, in the idle moments of long days spent traveling, what Alucard was doing with his time now that doomsday had come and gone without so much as a backward glance. He and Sypha had even discussed it at times, trading speculations over breakfast porridge - was Alucard fending off villagers with pitchforks, or had he managed to find some semblance of peace? Did he await their return, or had he gone back to sleep after all?
“He’s probably jerking off,” Trevor recalled suggesting once, mere seconds before Sypha had landed an exceptional punch to his esophagus.
But now they saw the truth, which was that Alucard had, from the look of things, spent the past five or six months deeply immersed in a strictly-coordinated one-man home renovation initiative.
The place was far from immaculate, of course - the north wing’s kitchen was currently obstructed by half a stone gargoyle, which appeared to have landed in the middle of the fireplace after falling from a great height; rubble lay strewn across the hearth, leftover fragments of the gargoyle’s other half. Deep below, the gears and cogs of what was formerly the castle’s engine lay melted, overlapping each other in outlandish shapes, cold metal sitting pooled in the crevices of the flagstone floor. The place was far from immaculate, yes - but all over the grounds, the evidence of someone tidying up was impossible to ignore.
As Trevor passed another box of broken glass, he tried and failed to picture Alucard with a broom in one hand and a dustpan in the other, solemnly sweeping up the mess his father had left him. The picture made Trevor’s skin crawl and his stomach feel hollow, so he banished the image. Certainly, Alucard was still sweeping up his father’s mess, but that was a very different kind of spring cleaning.
But Trevor’s mind wasn’t kindly disposed to metaphor even on a good day, and he dropped it in favor of thinking about all the items he planned to loot from the castle. Alucard couldn’t possibly notice one missing halberd in two hundred. If Sypha asked Trevor where he found it, he would tell her it washed ashore on the banks of the Danube.
. . .
On Sunday, the day of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Trevor took it upon himself to fix the roof.
In retrospect, took it upon himself was perhaps too strong a phrase. Agreed under duress was more accurate. Sypha told him to do it.
“The roof needs fixing,” was how she initially put it to him.
Trevor shrugged, and returned to his lunch with a singular zeal. Food was scarce in Castle Tepeş - its usual occupants had no need to eat, and most of the cattle vampires typically kept for emergency purposes had long since fled the premises. Trevor had had to track down a wayward pig that had gotten lost in the castle’s labyrinthine corridors. He found it making a ruckus in the oratory, and dispatched the pig accordingly. Why the fuck did Dracula’s castle have an oratory in the first place? Trevor had mused as he roasted his catch in the kitchen that wasn’t occupied by the remains of an enormous stone gargoyle.
Trevor was having a meal, but Sypha wasn’t having Trevor.
“Let me clarify,” she said, removing the plate from reach by way of sorcery. “You should fix the roof.”
Trevor twirled his steak knife. “And why the fuck would I do that?”
Sypha glowered. Her glower was one of the most impressive Trevor knew, and he counted himself lucky he’d only had occasion to experience it a handful of times. “I didn’t say would, because you wouldn’t. I said should.”
“Return my pork loin before I crucify you upside-down like a martyr.”
“You should fix the roof,” she said again.
“Which roof?! The castle is mostly roof - roof and dungeon!”
Sypha’s glare glued Trevor to the seat of his chair. “Be grateful I’m not asking you to fix the dungeons, then.”
“Why the fuck should I fix the roof?”
“Because the roof needs fixing.”
On some level, Trevor suspected Sypha was afraid - afraid that he’d start drinking again the minute he had free time. On the road, they’d been busy. Here, things were different. Time felt thick inside the castle, like honey. The whole bloody building was like a great canopic jar, with three souls embalmed inside it while the world beyond continued to turn on its axis.
“And what’s preventing you from fixing the goddamned roof?”
Sylpha’s face broke into a smile so radiant, it was as if she’d forgotten she was supposed to be playing the tyrant. “I’m going to reorganize your library.”
“You mean Alucard’s library.” Trevor leaned back and picked at his teeth with the steak knife. “I gave him everything, remember?”
Sypha beamed. “Most of its contents have already been relocated, but there are still entire shelves rotting down in the Belmont hold, exposed to the elements.”
Trevor contemplated his lunch, sitting captive at Sypha’s end of the table. He let out the weariest sigh in his repertoire, and began shrugging on his cloak.
“Where are you going?”
“To fix the fucking roof,” Trevor said. “But that pork loin had better be here when I get back. Not a single bite, you hear me?”
Sypha smiled at him, which was hard to do around a mouthful of roast pork.
. . .
On Monday, Alucard stitched up a hole in Trevor’s hand.
The hole in question was nestled directly between Trevor’s left thumb and forefinger, in a fold of skin which Alucard informed him was called the purlicue. The purlicue stung like a bitch.
“You’ve bled all over my rug, Belmont.”
This was the first remark Alucard had addressed to Trevor all morning, and was delivered from the landing of the staircase in the westward-facing hall. Trevor winced, and craned his neck to look up at where Alucard sat perched on the banister like a woebegotten parakeet.
“Did you smell my blood all the way from the gatehouse?” He called up.
Alucard made a noise that sounded distinctly like a muffled snort. “I heard you curse in three dead languages all the way from the gatehouse.” The air blurred, and suddenly the vampire stood at the foot of the stairs, only a hair's breadth from the tip of Trevor’s nose.
“You’ve punctured your purlicue,” Alucard said, taking Trevor’s hand and dropping it again once he’d confirmed his suspicion. “It’ll bleed until it’s closed, which could be a while. There are some important veins running through there.”
“Excellent,” said Trevor, with what he reckoned was as little relish as possible. In his line of work, opening a vein now and again was practically a guarantee - but he usually tried to do it as far away from vampires as possible.
“I can sew that up for you in the infirmary,” said Alucard. “Follow me.” He began marching up the stairs at a breakneck pace, slowing only when he realized he wasn’t being followed. “Trevor,” he said with a sinister incredulity. “You’re bleeding onto my rug.”
Trevor looked down at the rug. “What a travesty.”
“That rug was gifted to my father by the Margrave of Bohemia, over a century ago.”
“Maybe,” Trevor said, “but it’s ugly as shit. The Margrave of Bohemia had worse taste than the pope. I’ve improved this rug. Tell me I’m wrong.”
For a fleeting moment, Trevor thought he saw the corners of Alucard’s mouth tweak upwards just a bit. Then again, it may have been a trick of the light.
“You’re not wrong,” said Alucard. “Now stop bleeding on my ugly rug and come to the infirmary.”
The infirmary was one of the most unsettling rooms Trevor had ever visited - and he’d slept in crypts on more than one occasion. Strange implements glinted in their cases: steel and glass and every one of them wickedly sharp.
“How did you manage to put a perfectly circular hole right beside your index finger?” Alucard rummaged around in an open drawer for a needle and surgical thread.
“I was on the roof, affixing shingles using some sort of tool I found in one of your storerooms. It was spring-loaded, and fired nails like a crossbow.” Trevor watched as Alucard lit a candle and held the needle over the open flame, sterilizing the metal. “It’s gone now,” he said glumly, “I dropped it when I shot myself, and it fell over the side of the turret. It’s a damn shame. Would’ve made a great hunting tool. Imagine a weaponized version of---OUCH!”
“Terrible shame,” said Alucard as he began to stitch the wound closed. “Hold still.”
He worked in silence, bent closely over the workbench and with a firm grip on Trevor’s wrist all the while. When he finished the last stitch, Alucard pulled back to admire his handiwork. Then he leaned in and bit the thread in twain.
“I’m amazed that you managed to defeat a cyclops in single combat without so much as a scratch,” Alucard said, pouring a basin of water to wash the blood from his hands, “and yet you cannot complete simple household tasks without impaling yourself and needing medical help.”
But Trevor wasn’t listening. His eyes had wandered around the room and landed, inevitably, on a case of smooth glass objects instantly recognizable to him in a room full of unfamiliar instruments.
Alucard peered over Trevor’s shoulder. “What are you looking at---oh.”
“These are arse plugs,” said Trevor. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. He may not have figured out how to raise a single eyebrow, but by god he could waggle them both.
“Those,” said Alucard judiciously, “are bottle-stoppers.”
“Oh, come off it.”
Alucard opened his mouth and closed it again.
“Where do you reckon they came from?” Trevor’s voice bounced gleefully off the stone walls. “Wait, don’t tell me - a gift from Charlemagne?”
“Die of dysentery, Belmont.”
Trevor’s parting remark was expertly crafted, but Alucard did not hear it because by the time it was said, he had transported himself back to the gatehouse and was tarring the hull of his canoe once more.
. . .
By Tuesday, Trevor and Sypha had grown tired of pretending they’d come to Castle Tepeş for any reason other than to visit Alucard, and Alucard himself was growing tired of his friends hovering like gnats on the periphery of his vision.
The three of them quit the canoe’s company and rode out into the hills surrounding the castle. It was Alucard’s idea.
“Oh, thank God,” cried Trevor when he’d proposed it. “Thank fucking Christ.”
“We didn’t think you’d really registered our presence,” Sypha said, her voice amiable and light as her hand on Alucard’s shoulder.
“We thought we were going to have to renovate your great big impossible house for months while you brooded handsomely over your grief boat,” Trevor cried, already pulling on his riding boots.
Alucard looked at him curiously. “Did you just admit that I’m handsome?”
“He did,” Sypha confirmed.
Trevor was already halfway out the door. “Yes, fine, whatever. Please, for the love of all things sacred, let’s get out of this fucking castle.”
And so they did.
At first they road south, alongside the streams that crossed the land like arteries pulsing blue in the afternoon light. Later they rode west in pursuit of the sun, and turned back only when it dipped below the trees.
. . .
On Wednesday, Trevor put his head in Alucard’s lap. Alucard felt vaguely as if he were a table somebody was propping their feet upon, and stood up at lightning speed, causing Trevor to hit the ground with an audible crunch.
They were seated on the gatehouse lawn, waiting for the canoe’s hull to dry and listening to Sypha read aloud from a book she’d found in the hold earlier that morning.
Trevor stayed where he fell, sprawled on the grass, and contemplated nothing at all.
. . .
On Thursday, Trevor put his head in Alucard’s lap and was allowed to keep it there. This was because Alucard could not shove him off and stand up, for fear of capsizing the canoe.
“So you’re impervious to running water as well then, are you?” asked Trevor sleepily. He took the Lord’s name in vain a couple times for dramatic effect, and began counting on the fingers of his right hand. “Impervious to sunlight, impervious to running water, and bloody fast, and strong to boot. I’m beginning to think my family shouldn’t have bothered with vampires at all - it’s you halfies we should’ve been worried about.”
“Thank you, Trevor.” Alucard’s voice was smooth as silk and softer too. “As always, your insights are irrelevant and unappreciated.”
Trevor searched briefly for a witty comeback before Alucard absentmindedly threaded his fingers into Trevor’s hair, forcing Trevor to settle on a mild “fuck you” before every thought that had ever occurred to him vanished instantaneously from his brain.
The canoe held up surprisingly well - it was a wonder the added weight of Alucard’s thousand coats of tar hadn’t sunk it. It rocked pleasantly, bobbing up and down in time with the lapping of the water against its sides. They could even see the castle from the lake.
The atmosphere took a nosedive when Sypha elbowed Trevor in the ribs. “Look!” she hissed. Trevor raised his head to catch a glimpse of what she was pointing at, and the sight of it made his blood run cold.
“Geese.” The word struggled out of Trevor’s mouth through gritted teeth. His muscles tensed, preparing to strike.
Beside him, Sypha was brandishing a boat oar like her life depended on it. “We can take them,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “We defeated Dracula together.”
“My mother taught me to pick my battles,” Alucard said quickly, before turning elegantly on his heel and fleeing the scene in the form of a wisp of smoke; his posture as he transformed was a mix of panic and abject grace.
. . .
On Friday, all the pent-up tension of the past week collapsed spectacularly in on itself when Trevor decided to dispense with subtlety altogether.
“Let me get this straight.” Alucard’s brows knit. “You are suggesting we --- fuck, because I need endorphins?”
Trevor made a face. It was his closest approximation of raising a single eyebrow without actually raising a single eyebrow. “What in God’s name is endorphins?”
Alucard sighed. “It’s a chemical that animals produce. In the brain.”
Trevor stared blankly, and Alucard had a sinking feeling that this might be one of the fragments of knowledge his mother had taught him about - a piece of science lost to mankind, for now. “Oxytocin?” He asked, failing to keep the note of desperation from his voice.
Trevor shrugged. “Sounds like a creature of the night. You need me to kill it?”
Alucard exhaled through his nose with such ferocity that Trevor flinched. “I told you, it’s a brain chemical!”
“Never heard of it.”
Alucard pressed his knuckles into his eye sockets for a long moment. “What were we discussing?”
“Getting fucked,” Trevor supplied helpfully. “One of us, by the other. Not terribly complicated.”
Alucard merely squinted in response. He squinted goldenly of course, which Trevor found infuriating and thrilling in equal measure. He exercised good judgement and decided to look somewhere else, settling on a nearby floorboard.
“And by what reasoning did you arrive at the conclusion that this would be a good idea?” Alucard sounded so tired. Trevor reminded himself to keep his eyes on the floorboard.
“You need to relax.”
“Ah, yes. The endorphins. How could I forget?”
“Right, the dolphins, exactly.”
Alucard looked, for a moment, like a man caught very quietly in the throes of his first apoplexy. Then he stood. “And fucking you is going to help me relax?”
“With any luck, it should help us both relax.”
Alucard unbuckled his swordbelt and began unceremoniously unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Very well.”
Trevor cast a dubious glance around the gatehouse. “Don’t suppose you have any oil stashed away in that billowy coat of yours? I’m not putting boat tar up my a---”
Alucard decided this was as good a time as any to put his tongue in Trevor’s mouth. When he removed it some time later, he said, “That seems a rather high standard for you, Belmont.”
Trevor grinned. “You didn’t notice? I’m a classy guy.”
. . .
It was Saturday again and the week was over as soon as it had begun, when Trevor announced that he was extending his stay at Castle Tepeş - something to do with feeling abruptly disinclined to get on a horse.
Alucard was disposed to agree, as he’d recently discovered that Trevor talked less with Alucard’s tongue down his throat - and a Trevor Belmont who did less talking bordered on the tolerable.
Sypha had no complaints either. She now anticipated having free reign over the library - the boys, it seemed, were finally capable of entertaining themselves.