This Yawning Need, This Endless Want

by wanderingaesthetic

Summary:

Regarding burying enemies and finding the arms of lovers.

After Lindenfeld, and after Sumi and Taka. Alucard, Trevor, and Sypha try to find a stable orbit around each other.

Chapter 1: if this is to be a grave

Trevor pulled the sheets off a bed in a long-empty chamber and brought them to the front entrance. He threw them over the bodies, the woman first, and then the man, so he wouldn’t have to look at them while he did his work in the dying sunlight.

Alucard found him, staring up at the shrouded corpses, trying to figure out the best way to lift them off the stakes. The half-vampire crept around the open door, a sight made comical by how huge the entranceway was, as if he could truly sneak out of it. He looked stricken when he realized what Trevor was up to.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Alucard said.

“You do agree they need to come down, though, right?”

“You shouldn’t be cleaning up my messes.”

Trevor looked at Alucard. He appeared less absolutely unhealthy than he had when he and Sypha had arrived, but still weary, smaller somehow. Sypha had described Alucard as an icy well. Now he seemed something equally sad but much more pathetic. A wet blanket, perhaps.

“I’m not going to be able to sleep in there with these out here,” Trevor said.

“Then I should take them down,” Alucard said.

“Not alone.”

Alucard let out a sigh, half exasperation half weariness. “I’ll go find a shovel.”

Alucard returned with two, and set to work lifting the bodies and kicking down the gore-covered stakes as Trevor started digging. As Trevor worked he saw Alucard’s face out of the corner of his eye, teeth bared in a grimace, as he lifted the second shrouded corpse in a mockery of an embrace. It came up from the stake with a sick squelch, and the rotten meat and shit smell of corpse intensified.

They worked in silence, speaking only to agree to dig one hole instead of two. Alucard’s greater strength gave him little advantage in the simple, repetitive task. They dug to nearly Trevor’s height, finishing as the sun set. Wordlessly, they carried the bodies, one and then the other, Alucard at the shoulders and Trevor at the ankles. Alucard wept as they dropped them in the grave. Trevor wouldn’t have noticed if it weren’t for the slightest hitch in his breath.

Trevor put a tentative hand to his shoulder once they had deposited their burden, but Alucard threw it off to pick up his shovel and start covering the bodies with earth.

A third quarter moon was rising as they finished their task, and Alucard wandered back to the castle to sit heavily on its front step. He was no longer crying, but he was shaking with more than the exertion of digging.

“Do you wanna…. Talk about it?” Trevor asked awkwardly.

“I want nothing but a bath, Belmont.”

For once, Trevor agreed. But Alucard made no move to stand. Trevor sat down beside him.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you,” Trevor said when Alucard didn’t say anything. “Sypha and I…. We owe you an apology.”

“What?” Alucard asked, snapping his gaze toward Trevor with narrowed eyes.

“We shouldn’t have left you here by yourself. Three months alone in a giant fucking castle is enough to send anybody mad, much less someone who’s mourning his family. That would have fucked you up even if the murder twins didn’t. It was an awful thing to do to a friend and the only thing that allowed me to do it was the fact that I wasn’t really… thinking of you as human.”

Alucard huffed out a little humorless laugh. “I think that’s the worst apology I’ve ever heard. “I’m sorry we abandoned you, but I didn’t think you had feelings.’?”

“What was I supposed to think, you… Vampire Jesus?” Trevor said, his anger rising. “That you needed us? That you wanted to come with us?”

“What does it matter if I did? I’m obviously a vampire, I’d attract too much attention.”

“D’you know why I told you to guard this place? Why I gave you the Belmont hold?”

Alucard didn’t answer.

“Because you were going to dig yourself a hole somewhere beneath this castle and sleep for about a century, right?”

“That was my plan.”

“And if you did that I’d never see you again. I wanted to see you again.”

For the barest second Alucard looked touched, but then his face hardened. “So you condemn me to a lifetime of solitude all so you can occasionally condescend to grace me with your presence?”

“I didn’t think it would be this miserable for you. That’s why this is supposed to be an apology! I don’t know, all right? I can’t imagine Sypha and I staying here, and I can’t imagine you going on the road with us. I don’t know how to have you in my life, but I want you in it. And if I’d told you that three months ago, you’d probably have told me to fuck off and that I smell like a dog, because you have the same stupid compulsion I do to hurt people before they hurt you.”

“Do you know, Trevor,” Alucard said thoughtfully. “That’s actually quite perceptive. And you don’t smell like a dog.”

“Ha.”

“You smell like a corpse! And so do I. I’m going to take a bath,” he said, standing. “I suggest you do the same. Meet me in the tower room on the east wing, after? Tell Sypha too, if you find her before I do. Warm fire. Another bottle of wine? And we’ll continue trying not to push each other away.”

Chapter 2: burning, bitter

Sypha was there when Alucard arrived, laying on her stomach, reading a book by the light of the already blazing fire.

“Did you light it with magic?” Alucard asked by way of greeting.

“Mmmhmm,” Sypha replied, looking up at him. “It’s easier than flint. With fire, making a big blaze doesn’t take much more energy than a tiny spark. It’s a matter of controlling it. Or feeding it.”

She rolled over on her side and rested her head on her hand, regarding him. Her heavy blue robe was gone, leaving her in a short, black underdress. It was hardly form-fitting, but it was far less clothing than he was used to seeing her in. “Probably more than you wanted to know, sorry. Trevor isn’t exactly an appreciative audience for the technicalities.”  

“I don’t think I’m able to do your sort of magic,” Alucard said as he sat in a high-backed chair a little further from the fire.

“And I don’t think I’d be able to turn into a wolf. This isn’t a relative, by the way, is it?” she asking, rolling back on her stomach and threading her fingers through the thick, skin rug she was laying on.

“No. I don’t think so. I’m afraid I don’t know what it was,” he said, cocking his head to the side. “Some night creature. A very, very large wolf, perhaps.”

“I like it,” she said, laying flat and putting her cheek to the fur. “Are you this soft, as a wolf?”

Alucard laughed. “I don’t know.”

“No one’s ever petted you?”

“No one’s ever expressed an interest.”

“I’d like to pet you,” she said, looking up at him impishly and kicking her bare feet.

Alucard laughed again and hoped she couldn’t tell he was blushing in the firelight. “Becoming a wolf takes more energy than I think I have right now. At least if you want me to turn back.”

“Yes,” she said, rolling on her back. “I suppose I would like more conversation than awoooooooooo,” she said, throwing her head back and howling.

“Finally gone around the twist, have you?” Trevor asked, entering the tower room from the sunken circular stair behind them.

“Ow-ow-awoooooooooo,” Sypha continued, clutching her book to her chest and throwing her head back.

“Stop! Listen!” Alucard snapped. There was a distant, answering howl outside, then a chorus of them. The three of them were silent for a moment to listen.

“Creepy,” Trevor breathed.

“No, it’s good, if there are natural predators it means there aren’t any night creatures nearby,” Alucard said. “Well, save one,” he said, smiling in a way that showed his fangs. “I haven’t seen any wolves out there, but it’s been a while since I went hunting as one.”

Trevor threw himself down on the couch. His hair was still wet, and he was in fresh clothes, but his feet were bare. He took a glass of wine when Alucard offered it, crossed one ankle over his knee and settled into the couch. His hands weren’t that much bigger than Alucard’s, but somehow they made the glass look small and delicate. Silly-looking. Trevor took and sip and tilted the glass to look at it in the firelight.

“You know I never quite trust wine. The drunk is better but the hangover’s worse.”

“Don’t drink yourself into a stupor and you’ll be fine,” Alucard said as he poured another glass. “Sypha?” he offered. Sypha hmmed and scooted over to the low table Alucard set it on to take the glass.

“I didn’t think you drank alcohol,” Trevor said to Sypha.

“We were never anywhere I felt safe enough. One of use needed to be sober, just in case, and you like it more.”

“You were watching my back?”

“Always.”

They feel safe here. Alucard held the thought in his heart like a treasure.

“What were you reading?” Alucard asked after a moment where the only sound was the fireplace crackling.

“A spellbook, I think,” Sypha said, palming the large, leather cover.

“Not the one with the penises?” Alucard asked.

“No. I’m not even sure this one is a spell book. It’s all in poems.”

“Penises?” Trevor asked, bewildered.

“Sypha found a book full of penis spells in the Belmont hold while we were holed up in there.”

“Spells to do… what?” Trevor asked.

“Spells to make them soft, spells to make them hard,” Sypha said, ticking off her fingers. “Spells to make all the fingers on your hands penises…”

“Ah…” said Trevor, looking a bit concerned. “You haven’t used any of them on me, have you?”

“No need,” said Sypha primly. “Maybe if you start boring me I’ll have to go find it again.”

They’ve fallen into bed together. Alucard realized with an unpleasant little shock. Of course they have. They’re a beautiful young woman and a handsome young man, on the road alone together. It would be more surprising if they hadn’t.

He looked at Sypha, her bare legs curled into her chest, her hair golden in the firelight, her eyes large and deceptively innocent. He looked at Trevor, the languid movements of a born fighter at rest, broad shoulders, dark lashes and pale eyes. Men had spent their whole lives writing sonnets to lesser beauties than these.

There it is, that yawning need again. You know where that got you last time, he thought, circling the scars on his wrists with his fingers. As if it would even get that far. Did you really believe for a moment that one of them might have wanted you? That either of them might have ever considered you as a partner? You’re an interesting exception in a class of things to be hunted. Their regard for you begins and ends with your help in defeating Dracula. They left you here to rot.

And they apologized. Another voice in his head pleaded. They came back. They feel safe here. They offered you their blood. The speakers might delight in snubbing God in any way they can, but Belmont? A vampire killer in a long line of vampire killers? Why would he offer you his neck for any reason other than deep seeded affection?

But they’ll leave again. And they won’t offer to take you with them, either.

They’re here now.

“Are you alright, Alucard?” Sypha asked.

“Yes, just…” he realized he’d lost the thread of what the two of them were talking about. “My mind was wandering.”

Alucard watched Trevor’s Adam’s apple bob as he drain his glass. He must have felt Alucard’s eyes on him, because he rolled his gaze in his direction and grinned. “Thinking about taking another bite?”

“No,” Alucard said honestly.

“Oh. Are you sure? I ‘taste divine’ after all.”

Oh god, he had said that, hadn’t he? What the hell was wrong with him? “It’s too soon to take more blood without risking you harm, and I don’t need it anyway.”

“Ah. Well. If you ever want to. Offer’s open.”

“You liked it,” Alucard realized. Torn between delight and desire to press this new angle of attack, he chose the latter. “The last son of the famed vampire hunting clan not only opened his veins for a vampire, he longs to do it again. What would your ancestors say to see their house so fallen?”

“Well,” Trevor said. “My ancestors never defeated Dracula, so they can go fuck themselves, honestly.”

“It was pretty ni-iice,” Sypha said from the floor. “Did my blood not taste as good, Alucard?”

“Your, ah, your blood was also very good,” Alucard said, remembering. “I just wasn’t as surprised that it tasted good.”

“Fuck you,” said Trevor.

Alucard picked up the bottle and poured the last of it in his glass. “I just remembered,” Alucard said a little guiltily. “The wine might hit you a little harder after the blood loss.”

Trevor waved a dismissive hand. “’Sokay. Kind of a perk, actually. Thought maybe my tolerance had gone down.”

“You have been drinking less,” Sypha said, wandering over to join Trevor on the couch, tucking herself up under his arm.

“You might be good for me,” Trevor said, dropping his arm to settle it on her waist. “Do you want to tell a story? Alucard might be a better audience than me.”

“Mmmm, tired,” she said and stretched. “Maybe just a short one.”

Story-telling was the most prized art of her people, and she was good at it. Her voice rose and fell as she told her tale, but Alucard struggled to pay attention to her, struck by the beauty of the pair of them in each other’s arms, and by burning, bitter jealousy.

Notes:

Just riding out this urge to write as far as it will take me.

Also, I changed the title because titling things when you're blearily finishing them up at midnight doesn't always work out so well.

Chapter 3: how do you like your eggs in the morning?

Summary:

Alucard starves in the midst of plenty.

Mind the tags.

Sypha woke early and padded through the castle in the gray dawn light. Eventually she would have to explore the place, full of books, strange rooms and devices, much of it ruined, now. She followed the smell of baking bread to find Alucard, sitting alone at the table in the little kitchen.

“Good morning!” she said.

Alucard gave her a weak smile. “I wasn’t sleeping, so I decided to make breakfast. How do you like your eggs?”

“Scrambled. You have chickens?” Sypha asked, sitting at the table.

“Duck eggs,” Alucard explained, and pulled down a pan to start her eggs. “Though. If anyone besides myself stays here for any length of time, keeping animals might not be a bad idea. I started a little kitchen garden, in the back. But I’m no expert and the only thing that’s really grown well are the tomatoes. I don’t need to eat as much as you do, so foraging isn’t… I’m babbling.”

“It’s alright. I like to listen to you.”

Alucard let out a sigh as he cracked two eggs and whisked them together. “How long are you planning on staying here?”

“How long are we welcome?”

Alucard stopped his whisking for a second. “As long as you like.”

“I don’t know. After Lindenfeld, I don’t think either of us is in a hurry to get back on the road. A night creature slaughtered a village to open a portal to hell. It feels like we should be doing something more important than ridding towns of flying goats.”

“I don’t know. Ridding towns of demonic flying goats is an important service.”

“I want to meet up with my people again, eventually, but the best way to do that is to continue traveling until we happen across a band of them, and then get word of my family from there.”

“You miss them?”

“Yes, but… I also want for Trevor and I to be married.”

Alucard dropped the kettle on the stove a little too forcefully. “Congratulations on your engagement, I suppose.”

“No, I… I haven’t actually… asked him. I haven’t said any of this out loud. I think he would be pleased?” She worried on her thumbnail with her teeth. “I think so.”

Alucard poured the eggs in the pan. “These are going to be rather poor scrambled eggs since I haven’t any milk.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers. I think… I think Trevor is worried that I’ll leave him. I think asking him to marry me would help? It bothers him, I think, that he can’t get married in the church, though I don’t think he’d ever say so. So a Speaker wedding.”

“Forgive me if this is a misconception, but I didn’t think your people did marriage?”

“It’s less of a requirement than it is for Christians, and easier to break. It’s normal among our people to see a woman with several children and no father in sight. We live communally, so her brothers and sisters will help take care of them. We will also…” Sypha said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Marry two men or two women, if they wish.”

Alucard was about to hand her the plate of eggs, and paused for a moment, as if he was trying to determine if she was making a joke. “Enemies of God, indeed,” he said. “Such arrangements aren’t uncommon among vampires,” he said, sitting at the table. “But actually sealing it with a vow is rare. My parents were…. Well, my mother was human. ‘Til death do us part’ wasn’t eternity.”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice that you—“ Sypha stopped herself short.

“What?”

“Well… that you like both women and men.”

Alucard blinked at her a moment, then groaned and squinted his eyes shut, massaging his brow. “Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me to be ashamed of that part of it. I forget that it works differently for some people, or that humans find it perverse. What Trevor must think of me.”

“Ennnh, I wouldn’t be so sure. Trevor’s a heretic, remember?”

“Goddamn right I am,” Trevor said, entering as if summoned. “Morning.”

“Good morning, how do you like your…” Alucard trailed off, processing the dual facts that Trevor was shirtless and was giving Sypha a good morning kiss. “Eggs.”

“Sunny side up. That bread smells wonderful, or I’d still be in bed.”

“It will need to cool a moment,” Alucard said, carefully looking Trevor in the face. “But it should be ready by the time I’ve cooked your eggs.”

“Thank you for breakfast,” Trevor said.

“You haven’t tasted it yet.”

“I have confidence in you.”

Alucard snorted at that and turned his attention to the eggs, grateful for the distraction from Trevor’s bare chest. He poured tea, plated the eggs, and broke the little loaf of bread in two, giving Sypha and Trevor each a half.

“Mmm, that tastes as good as it smells,” Trevor said between bites. “Still warm.”

Alucard smiled slightly at that as he sat beside them.

“You’re not eating?” Trevor asked.

Alucard shook his head. “I only need about one meal a day.”

Trevor narrowed his eyes at him.

“Oh don’t mother hen me,” said Alucard waspishly. “I’m fine. Really. Actually. I’ll eat lunch.”

“I feel a little guilty,” Sypha said. “You cooking for us when you don’t need to eat.”

“It’s fine,” Alucard said. “You two gave me your blood, it’s the least I could do in return.”

“Yeah, but that’s not any work for us,” Trevor pointed out.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad to have you here.”

“You’re being nice,” Trevor said. “You’re definitely not alright.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“There we go.”

“Trevor,” Sypha said with mild irritation.

“Can you believe that I actually missed you, Belmont? Damned if I can recall why,” Alucard said, but with a smile. He would much rather Trevor needle him than act as if he were made of glass.

The two of them were vague about how long they were staying, and Alucard didn’t ask again. They volunteered to help restorations while they were there, and Alucard put them to work cleaning out the laboratory. Alucard foraged for their food, and cooked their meals. Sypha and Trevor washed dishes. The three of them gathered in the tower room by the fire in the evenings and Sypha told them stories. Alucard tried to enjoy their presence without getting too used to it.

**

They came to his room by night. They pushed him down, and told him they would take care of him. This time it was Sypha that looked up at him with big, round eyes as she took him into her cupid’s bow mouth. This time it was Trevor that parted his legs with rough, tanned hands so that he could drive into him relentlessly.

Trevor had the Vampire Killer in his hands, and twined it lovingly around Alucard’s neck as he fucked him, and it burned, it burned, it burned, and Alucard struggled to say that he couldn’t breathe as Trevor--

His panic woke him. He wrapped his arms around his knees in bed, trying to slow his gasping breaths, to get his heart rate under control, to clear his mind of the mingled desire and fear. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep any further, he climbed out of bed and pulled a robe from the wardrobe. The robe was heavy, and wrapped him tight when he belted it. The weight of it eased the aching tension in his shoulders and his back ever so slightly, the ghost of an embrace.

Alucard realized, in retrospect, that Sumi and Taka had been very handsy with him. Sumi, especially, had liked to pet him, would climb on his back, would wrap herself around his arm whenever she wanted to ask something that Alucard could potentially find suspicious. It was a trick, he realized now, a play to his one perceived weakness, a ploy to soften him to them.

Other than that first day, when they had comforted him and he had drank their blood, Sypha and Trevor barely touched Alucard at all.

He wished they would. Even in the aftermath of his nightmare of them he wished they would. He wished that Trevor would throw an arm around his shoulder, or that Sypha would wrap herself around his arm, for all that the last time he had felt those things they had been poisonous.

It was a need far more basic than any sexual desire, a need to be touched with care. The last person who had really touched him with love had been his mother, and she had been dead nearly a year and half, now.

He could reach out to Sypha or Trevor, he supposed, but offering casual physical affection wasn’t really in his personality, and the fear of being met with awkwardness or tension if he did reach out always held him back.

“Pathetic,” Alucard hissed to himself, and walked out into the wide corridors of his castle.

 He found himself near the room that Sypha and Trevor were using, for all the world intending to crouch outside their door and listen to Trevor snore until he had calmed himself enough to sleep.

He didn’t hear Trevor snoring. He did hear Sypha’s slightly labored breathing, the soft, wet sound of a kiss, or… no.

Oh fuck me. Alucard thought. He didn’t dare move now for fear of being heard. He heard Sypha breathe “ah… ah… oh…” and yes, that was… definitely the sound of Trevor pleasuring her with his mouth.

Alucard put a hand over his own mouth to prevent himself from screaming. He felt not so much jealousy as impotent, illogical rage that they were glutting themselves on pleasure in his house while he was so starved for a scrap of affection that his nightmare memory of being raped had felt like a relief. He heard the low rumble of Trevor’s voice but didn’t make out the words, heard Sypha’s laugh, the creak of the bed…

He ran and phased back to his own room and lay, hugging his knees to his chest, imagining all too well the kisses, the caresses, the slide of skin on skin. A different, more sensible man might have masturbated. Alucard sobbed himself to sleep.

Chapter 4: recover some hope

Summary:

"Have you ever wanted to go to sleep and not wake up?" is a question on the Columbia Suicidality Severity questionnaire.

Vampires hate him! Wallachian man killed his dad, can walk in sunlight.

Sypha gathered up a pail of broken glass from the laboratory, added to it their leavings from the kitchen: eggshells, fish bones, vegetable peelings. She walked around the rear of the castle, where Alucard’s little garden was, and tossed it all on the midden heap. As she turned to go back inside, a bit of color caught her eye, a piece of blue cloth. She fished it from the trash and laughed to find that it dressed a little doll: orange yarn hair, button eyes, a blue robe. A little version of herself. She looked around by her feet and found another, a little doll of Trevor with a scar over his button eye and wooden spoons for arms. She prodded at them, smelled of them. She thought for a moment they might be part of some magical working, but other than being slightly the worse for wear for being in the trash heap, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about them.

“Oh, Alucard,” Sypha breathed.

That Alucard had made these and then thrown them away spoke volumes: That he had thought of Trevor and Sypha often while they were gone, that he wanted some token to remind himself of them, that he had perhaps hugged them to his chest, spoken to them, that he was ashamed of having done it. The dolls were evidence of tender fondness, and of loneliness bordering on insanity.

Sypha dropped the dolls back on the heap, covered them with vegetable peels and leaves, and left them.

**

“What’s the point of all this?” Trevor wondered out loud as they entered the second week of trying to clean and restore the laboratory. They had already swept out most of the broken equipment and glass. Trevor was clearing out the shelves that had been broken and putting back together the ones that could be repaired. Sypha and Alucard were reorganizing the shelves, sorting out books that had been damaged and repairing them where they could.

“My mother mostly used this room to create and experiment with medicines,” Alucard said. He was sitting on the floor near Sypha, and looked up from the book he was trying to decipher the smeared title page of. “My father had some interest in chemistry and astronomy at some point, but I rarely saw him work in here in my lifetime.”

“No. See,” the electric lights in this room at failed, so Trevor’s face was half-lit by the lanterns Alucard and Sypha were using to read by. “I get that there’s a huge amount of information here, maybe the tools you need to find out more. But what are we putting it all back together for? Who’s going to use all this?”

“You’ve happened upon the reason I’ve struggled to make any progress on this work in the past months,” Alucard said, snapping the book shut. “Well, part of the reason.”

“Yeah. What’s the point?”

“This is a very thorough library of the human sciences,” Sypha explained. “In addition to all sorts of works by vampire authors that I’ve never even heard of.”

“Sure, it’s a great collection, but if it’s just sitting in here, what does it matter that it’s all on the floor?”

“I have thought about going into a city and donating it all to a university or some eccentric chemist,” Alucard said. “But so many of these volumes would be incomprehensible even to well-educated humans. Some of it is in coded language known only to a few. Some of it would be heretical. Some would be mistaken as fiction. I don’t think it would be put to good use.”

“Do you understand this stuff?”

“Some of it. The medicine, mostly. But it would take me several human lifetimes to understand everything in this room. Honestly, I was always better at magic, anyway. Those books are in the master control room, in the tower.”

“And those are definitely heretical,” Sypha said.

“So,” said Trevor, struggling to put a shelf back into an empty case at the proper angle. “It’s like… I don’t know, some weapon I’m shit at,” he thought for a second. “Bad example. It’s like… if I had never used a bow before. You could give me the best bow and the best arrows in the world, and it would be no use to me. Because I’m an idiot. I don’t even know what a bow and arrows are. Never seen one before.”

“Are you really so terrible with a bow?” Alucard purred.

“I’m. No. Well I’m not great, but I know what one is, clearly. My point is—“

“No, I understand your meaning. There’s no one, no human anyway, that I could give the contents of this room to who would know how to use it,” Alucard said. “Which means, I think, that it’s my responsibility to teach people how to use it.”

“But you said you don’t even understand most of it,” Sypha pointed out.

“I have quite the task ahead of me.”

“Where do you start?”

“I had thought to start by restoring this castle, making it a place that humans and vampires alike flocked to…  making it a hub of all sorts of learning…. That idea may have been foolish. I don’t know, now. I’m beginning to suspect that by cleaning this place we’re only making it a more magnificent tomb.”

“You say,” Trevor groused. “After I’ve spent a week hammering shelves back together.”

“This place is also my home, and it’s somewhat unsettling to see it in ruins.”

Trevor let out a short, bitter laugh at that. “Why don’t you just leave?”

“Well, someone suggested, rather forcefully, that I guard this place along with the Belmont Hold.”

“That guy. Was an idiot. And you shouldn’t have listened to him.”

Alucard laughed, and Trevor with him.

“If you hadn’t suggested that,” Alucard said. “I was simply going to sleep here. Maybe forever. Let it rot, let it be plundered. What do I care?”

“Sleeping forever is the same as dying, isn’t it?” Sypha asked.

The three of them were silent for several long seconds. Alucard opened his mouth, closed it. Alucard grimaced against the wave of emotion that had suddenly hit him. Sypha scooted near him and put an arm around his back.

“My life is over,” Alucard said, not daring to look at them, his voice sounding thick. “Everything I knew. The life I thought I’d lead. It’s all gone.”

“You can start over,” Sypha whispered.

“Where? How?” Alucard said, swiping at his eyes with the heels of his palms. “I’ve never lived among humans, I don’t know how to act like a human, and the vampire world hates me.”

“Probably not all of them hate you,” Trevor pointed out. “You gave some of them an opportunity to grab more power.”

“Not helpful, Trevor,” said Sypha.

“Fuck me, I didn’t even think of that,” Alucard whispered, staring ahead, distracted from his misery for a moment. He dried his eyes on his sleeves. “I’ve been surprised that none have tried to contact me. Or kill me.”

“You’ve been expecting vampire assassins to swoop down on you and you didn’t think that was an important thing to mention?” Trevor asked.

“I suspect the reason they haven’t is that they don’t know where I am. But. Word will eventually get out that this is where Dracula’s castle is, and when it does, this will be the first place they look for me.”

“All the more reason for you to leave!” Sypha said.

“And go where?” Alucard asked again.

Sypha and Trevor looked at each other, looked at Alucard.

“Somewhere in this castle there has to be a spell for a glamour that could hide your teeth,” Sypha said. “You could pass as human. You can walk in daylight! The idea that you’re a vampire would never occur to most people.”

“Really?” Alucard asked.

“You’d still stick out in wayside villages,” Trevor said. “But you could probably pass as some fancy lad in the capital.”

Alucard shook his head. “I can’t leave this place.”

“Why not?” Trevor asked.

“Because you were right, Trevor, this knowledge needs to be protected. I don’t know who will use it, or when, but one day it will be put to good use. If I don’t protect it, my mother’s legacy, the good part of my father’s legacy, it dies with them.”

“I don’t think they’d want that at the cost of their son being…” Sypha cast about for words, winced when she found them. “Completely miserable.”

“Couldn’t you seal it off somehow?” Trevor asked. “With magic. Like the rock on the Belmont Hold? Sypha?”

“I would need to find the proper spells for it, and it would be a lot of work. We would have to get every entrance, every window. But… it would probably be less work than restoring the damage done to the whole castle.”

“Alucard?” Trevor asked. “What do you think?”

What did he think? Was it possible? Preserve his parents’ legacy without chaining himself to it?

“Please.”

Notes:

Still riding out this writing bug as far as it will take me. This is a slower burn than I intended, but Alucard's got a bunch of issues that need to be worked out. Trevor might have a couple too.

Chapter 5: a kiss with a fist

Summary:

Sypha smolders, Trevor spars, Alucard is a teenager with a crush

Trevor had gone out hunting, said he was going stir crazy while Sypha and Alucard were holed up in what had been Dracula’s study, sifting through books that might be useful to create a seal on the castle.

The pages Sypha was turning had gone still. Alucard felt her eyes on him.

“What is it?” he asked her, not looking up.

“Can I touch your hair?”

Alucard looked up at her, trying to remain casual. “If you like.”

Alucard scooted forward from where he had been sitting on the floor near the couch, to give her room behind him. She sat behind him on the floor and lifted his hair off his shoulders, smoothed it between her hands. “It’s so pretty. It’s good you can go out in the day or no one would ever see this in the sunlight.”

The book Alucard had been poring over was still open on his lap, but he had stopped reading. He felt a flutter of pleasure in his stomach at the compliment. She carded her fingers through his hair, hmming quietly.

“Have you ever braided your hair?”

“My mother did, when I was small. No longer. It makes me look more feminine than I would like.”

“I suppose. Still, I want to braid flowers in it.”

Alucard chuckled softly at that.

“Would you let me?” Sypha asked.

“I rather doubt I could stop you if you were determined.”

“I want to. Because your hair is so pretty it makes me think of a girl. But, when I picture it… you would look like some pagan forest god.”

Alucard felt another little flutter of pleasure at that. His closed his eyes.

“Did you ever wear it short?”

“No,” Alucard breathed. “I don’t think it would suit. I would look too young. Coltish.”

“Like an awkward teenager,” Sypha agreed. “It’s because you have such a long neck,” she said, and actually brought the hand she was carding through his hair down the side of his neck, making the hairs on his nape stand on end.

“What about you?” Alucard asked, forcing himself to carry on a normal conversation instead of groaning in pleasure. “Did you ever wear your hair long?”

“Mmmn-mmm,” she hummed. “My people don’t.”

“Never?”

“Not while we travel, so no. What do you think it would look like?”

Alucard tried to picture it. “Like a mane.”

Sypha laughed. “Yes, it would probably go all floof,” she said, pausing in her attentions to Alucard’s hair to hold her hands out a foot from her head. “Then I’d catch it on fire and that would be that.”

“Yes, best not to risk it,” Alucard said. He set his book to the side and drew his knees to his chest to lean on them, letting Sypha continue her work on him. She worked her way up to his scalp, massaging it as she combed her fingers through his hair. Alucard concentrated on keeping his breathing steady.

“You like this?” Sypha asked.

“Yes,” Alucard answered, because at this point it was senseless to lie.

Sypha hummed tunelessly. She was more massaging his scalp than playing with his hair now, and worked her fingers down to massage his neck.

“So tense,” she said. “Relax, relax.”

Alucard tried as she dug her thumbs into the muscles of his shoulders. He tried to trust her, tried to just enjoy the sensation instead of working to figure out what it meant.

Sypha spidered her fingers to dig them into the muscles of his back under his shirt, working her way down his spine. After she had touched every inch of his back she leaned into him, resting a cheek between his shoulder blades before standing and retaking her place in the chair with her book, as if she’d done nothing of note. Alucard tried to go back to research, but found he was entirely unable to concentrate. He kept stealing looks at Sypha, at the way the pale afternoon light filtering through the window limned her hair and gave her eyes the clarity of gemstones, how she chewed her thumb or her lip sometimes as she read.

She might have caught him at it once, because she met his gaze with a soft smile on her lips, and blinked at him once, twice before turning back to the book cradled against her chest.

**

“How do you know if it’s been consecrated?” Alucard asked Trevor later as they strolled through the bottom level of the Belmont hold.

“You can feel it,” Trevor said. “If it’s in your hands. It’s like it vibrates your bones if you concentrate on it.”

“You’re not entirely deaf to magic, then.”

“Magic and a blessing aren’t the same thing.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” Alucard said with narrowed eyes. They had approached a case filled with whips, leather and metal resting in little piles of snakelike coils, a few of them coming apart with age and rot. Alucard didn’t dare touch a one of them.

“You and your family’s fetish for whips,” Alucard said.

Trevor laughed at that for longer than Alucard found appropriate before Alucard realized that could be taken in an entirely different sense from the one he had meant. Alucard frowned.

Once he had stopped wheezing, Trevor unlatched the glass case and felt of one whip, then another. “No. No…. no.”

“Are you sure there’s one that isn’t consecrated?” Alucard asked.

“Fairly,” Trevor said, working his way through the collection.

“Would it be because they never blessed it? Or because the blessing wore off?”

“A consecration doesn’t wear off. When you consecrate something you reserve it for holy purpose. So, if I murdered someone with the Morning Star, or, I dunno, attach it to a bucket and use it to draw water from a well, the consecration could break and it would just be a whip.”

“Which is why you also carry a sword.”

“Right. Also it’s damned hard to kill a man with a bullwhip. Here we go.” His hand had fallen on a chain whip with coppery links, sitting on a bottom shelf. The handle was wrapped in worn, red leather, and where the Morning Star had its unusual, pronged head, this whip had a heavy, spiked ball.

“You’re sure?”

Trevor nodded and held a segment of the whip out to Alucard. Alucard reached out with some trepidation and brushed his fingers against it. Nothing happened. “Glad I could trust you, there, Belmont.”

“Not sure it would have done that much damage even if it was consecrated. Vampire Killer didn’t seem to hurt you much. I suppose because you’re only half.” Trevor hung the coppery whip on his belt.

“I prefer not to tempt fate,” Alucard said. “And it burned even if the wounds closed quickly. You named your whip ‘Vampire Killer’?”

“I named it when I was ten.”

Alucard almost asked him whether it had actually killed any vampires but thought better of it.

“Where do you want to do this?” Trevor asked.

“Inside the ruins of your family home might be the largest open space,” Alucard said. “If it won’t trouble you?”

“Eh, it’s fine.”

The two made their way back to the entrance, Trevor turning his head to look around as they went.

“So, I’ve noticed something,” Trevor said as they stepped onto the lift.

“Yes?”

“You’ve done a ton of work down here. The lights and this lift, even reorganized some of it. But you’ve barely touched the castle.”

“Is there a question in there, Belmont?” Alucard asked as the lift swayed its way back to the sunlight.

“Why?”

Alucard crossed his arms and looked toward his feet for a moment. “I find it more pleasant to be down here, even among your family’s macabre collections, than I find it to be among the poisoned memories of my childhood. And also….” Alucard paused, looked to Trevor. “I was doing it for you.”

The lift reached its height and Alucard stepped off and secured it. Trevor hung behind for a moment.

When they had reached what had once been the front entrance of the grand house, Alucard unsheathed the sword at his hip. Trevor stood about ten feet away, widened his stance, let the coils of the whip fall to the ground. Alucard raised his sword in salute, Trevor nodded.

“Begin,” Alucard said.

Trevor began swinging the first section of the whip in long, figure eight arcs, a guard, ready to strike in any direction. Alucard was gone in a flicker, too fast to see. He reappeared in his straight, one-arm-behind-the-back stance, making a stab for Trevor’s shoulder. Trevor blocked it with the whip, sending the blade wide. Alucard struck, again, again, again, each strike meeting chain, the silvery blade ringing out with each block. The last strike knocked the ball of the whip into the ground, fouling Trevor’s rhythm. Trevor responded by yanking the ball back, extending the length of chain he was using, flinging it back toward Alucard’s face in a snakelike strike. Alucard was forced into a backbend to dodge it. He let go of his sword so he could transfer his momentum into a backflip while his blade guarded for him. Alucard willed the steel into a flurry of strikes so that Trevor was forced to contend with the blade and unable to watch Alucard himself. Trevor managed to throw a knife in between blocks, but Alucard dodged it easily, flickering near Trevor to knee him in the stomach. Trevor huffed out a breath and staggered backward. Before he could recover, the sword was back in Alucard’s hands and he had brought it to Trevor’s throat.

Trevor’s eyes flickered from the blade to the vampire. He made a tch sound with his mouth, and said “Yield.”

Alucard withdrew his blade. “Again?”

“Yeah, but let me think a second.”

“When you’re ready.”

“The flickering. Is that magic or are you really that fast?”

“It’s magic. Though I am very fast.”

“Well that’s unfair.”

“You want me to go easy on you?”

“Never.”

Trevor stepped back, ready, and met Alucard’s yellow eyes with his ice blue ones. “Alright, go.”

Almost immediately, Trevor was swinging the whip in a wide, low arc that would have taken out Alucard’s knees, forcing him to jump. While he was in the air, Trevor snapped the whip back up, striking Alucard while he couldn’t dodge. The ball of the whip hit him in the ribs, knocking him back. Alucard landed unsteadily, and the whip was on him again, swinging around to ensnare his sword and wrench it from his grip, flinging it away with enough force to lodge it into a wall. Alucard dropped back, ready but unarmed as Trevor loosed the whip from the sword in a spinning, balletic movement. Trevor struck at Alucard again and again as Alucard dodged in efficient, dance-like movements, but without his sword to redirect the attacks, one of the blows did eventually find its mark, striking him in the chest. As Alucard recovered, Trevor spun the whip to catch Alucard’s arms, wrapping them tight and binding them together in the mockery of a prayer, he drug the half-vampire forward through the dirt. Alucard looked up in some alarm, but twitched his fingers. His sword quivered where it was lodged in the wall and sang forward, the tip holding just enough pressure to Trevor’s back to make its presence known.

“Do you yield?” Alucard said, though he was on the ground at Trevor’s feet with his arms bound.

“Nuh-uh,” Trevor said with a grin. “If the whip were consecrated that’d be a kill.”

Alucard’s gaze flicked from his own bound arms, to Trevor, and back. “Perhaps.” He returned Trevor’s grin. He found his heart was racing from more than just exertion. “We’ll call it a draw.”

Alucard let the sword point fall from Trevor’s back while Trevor freed his arms.

“Again?” Alucard asked.

“Yes.”

This time they circled each other before either struck. Alucard found himself grinning again with genuine exhilaration. It had been a long time since he had played this game. He had sparred with Sumi and Taka, yes, but much of that time had been dedicated to attempts at teaching. Trevor was already superb with his weapon, requiring only practice to stay sharp. On top of that, Alucard never had a real opportunity to watch the hunter fight with a chain whip. The only time Alucard had seen him wield it was in Dracula’s castle, while he himself had been too busy to see Trevor work, aware only of the explosive hits of his weapon.

The weight and length of the weapon required that Trevor throw his whole body into it in a dance equal parts finesse and brutality. Even as it was being turned against him, beholding it caused something in the pit of Alucard’s stomach to knot and quiver.

Alucard readied himself. When Trevor struck, he dodged and made a precision stab into the chain whip, catching the center of one of the links and wrenching the weapon from Trevor’s grasp. He sent both of their weapons sailing away and from there the match devolved into a fistfight. Alucard was pulling his punches, Trevor was decidedly not, but even at full strength his hits could barely move the half-vampire. The two grappled. Alucard made a push-pull motion that knocked Trevor’s feet out from under him. Alucard straddled him on the ground with a grin that showed fangs. “Yield?”

“No,” Trevor ground out and managed with a buck of his hips and a yank on Alucard’s hair to roll him on his back, reversing their positions. He pinned Alucard’s wrists to the ground with his hands. Alucard flinched involuntarily as something far beneath his conscious brain, something from the realm where nightmares lived, screamed.

Trevor must have seen it in his face because he released his grip on him. “Alucard? Alucard are you okay?”

Alucard punched him, a hook square in the jaw with as much strength as he could muster from his position on the ground. Trevor’s head snapped around and he lost consciousness in a classic knockout.

Chapter 6: no pride left to preserve

Summary:

May I offer you flowers in these troubling times?

Trevor awoke seconds later with his head in Alucard’s lap, Alucard’s hand fanning his face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Alucard said.

“’sokay,” Trevor slurred. “Issa fight, things happen.”

“That wasn’t part of the sparring. You stopped out of concern for me and I hit you.”

“Oh,” Trevor said, touching his lip gingerly. Trevor looked up at Alucard. All concern, no scorn. That was pretty nice, actually. “You panicked. You could see it in your face.”

“I lost control, and given my nature I should never,” he said, the words spilling out of his mouth. “What if I’d struck you with my sword? I was using a live blade! I could have killed you!”

“You didn’t, though, I’m no worse for wear,” Trevor said, pushing himself up. “Was it pinning you down that set you off? I won’t do that again.”

Alucard was still kneeling in the grass, his face downturned, his hands fisted in the fabric of his pants, trembling.

“Alucard? Hey,” Trevor said stupidly. “Hey.”

When Alucard looked up he was crying freely, rivulets of tears running down his face, hand over his heart, like some suffering saint in an altar painting in a church. The sight of him knocked the breath out of Trevor.

He was beautiful, sharp features cast into relief in the shadows of the ruined house, eyes brighter through tears. It was ridiculous. Infuriating. Who was beautiful when they cried? Sypha was one of the most beautiful women in the world to Trevor’s eyes and when she cried she looked like a woebegone turnip.

Trevor put a hand to Alucard’s shoulder, mostly because he didn’t know what the hell else to do without Sypha to save him. “Hey, stop this fucking Our Lady of Sorrows shit, I’m alright.”

Alucard’s head fell against Trevor’s shoulder, and Trevor hugged him because it was less awkward than not. “I’m so afraid I’ve killed you by letting you in the front door.”

“Come on now,” Trevor said, awkwardly rubbing circles on Alucard’s back. “I’m not easy to kill or I’d be dead already. I had no idea you’d be this upset at the thought of me dying, I’m touched.”

“Absence made the heart grow fonder,” Alucard ground out between hitching breaths.

“And we’re not--Me and Sypha--We’re not them. Both of us together, we could probably take you. If we were going to try to kill you we’d do it to your face.”

Alucard laughed at that through tears.

“You can trust us.”

“If you were going to kill me, Belmont…”

“Yeah?” said Trevor, expecting some sort of boast.

“I’d let you. Like my father let me kill him. Because I’d already be dead.”

The statement made Trevor sick to his stomach. He had no response to it other than to squeeze Alucard tighter.

**

“Forgive me,” Alucard said, breaking the silence as the two of them walked back to the castle. “For knocking you out, for weeping on you. You’ve seen my worst, and yet you remain here, trying to help me. I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude.”

“Sypha’s helping you. I’m only lazing around in your house and eating your food.”

Alucard chuckled, low in the back of this throat. “Nonetheless. Thank you.”

“You’re being nice again. Worries me.”

Alucard looked up at the turrets of the castle, sighed. “I have no pride left to preserve from you now.”

**

The one task Trevor consistently contributed to their daily lives was dish washing.

Since their mission had changed from cleaning and repairing the castle to researching and developing an appropriate sealing spell, Trevor didn’t have much to do, and it was beginning to wear on him. He continued to work on cleaning where he could, carrying out and sweeping up rubble, righting furniture, putting things back on shelves, but there were so many things that couldn’t be repaired easily, from the equipment in the laboratory to the collapsed sections of floor to the massive, melted gears of the mechanism that transported the castle. The extent of the destruction and the sheer size of the castle swallowed up his efforts. He understood why Alucard hadn’t bothered these past few months. He tried to hang near Sypha and Alucard to be part of their conversation and be available if they needed anything, but if they needed a book from somewhere else in the castle, Trevor was useless. He could barely read and the organization system of the books in the castle escaped him. Every book in the castle was the same to him. Even the ones that were bound in human skin were indistinguishable from their neighbors. He could hunt and forage for their food, but Alucard was much more efficient. Trevor tried to reassure himself by telling himself that it was because Alucard was a predator, a nasty night thing, but that argument was beginning to lose what little emotional weight it once had for him.

Trevor’s only skill as a cook amounted to dressing and roasting game over a campfire, and that only well enough to keep himself from getting sick by eating it. Sypha had more knowledge and skill than he in that arena, and Alucard was superb.

Trevor asked him if it had been his mother who taught him how to cook, but as it turns out it had been his father. Dracula, lord of vampires, who didn’t even strictly need to eat, so of course the culinary arts he passed to his son were focused on taste. And Trevor could just about kiss him for it after most meals.

Alucard, that was. Not Dracula.

The worst part wasn’t the idleness or the restlessness, but the fact that his idleness and restlessness tempted him to fall back on old habits, namely getting blind drunk to silence his own thoughts. Several times he walked to the wine cellar, took out a bottle, stared at it and then put it back, resisting because if he gave in he wouldn’t only be useless to Sypha and Alucard, he’d be less than useless.

It's not like Alucard wasn't generous with the wine anyway.

In the moments Sypha and Alucard didn’t both silently have their noses buried in books, they made jokes Trevor didn’t understand, sometimes in languages he didn’t understand. They discussed the strengths and weaknesses of Theban and Enochian, and had what he was sure was a very enlightening conversation regarding vampiric consensus views on religion if only Trevor had given one single fuck about the subject.

So when Trevor noticed that every time Sypha walked past Alucard she would put a hand to the small of his back, or his arm, or his knee, he perhaps read more into it than he should have.

**

Spring was growing into summer, and they carried their midday meal out into the forest in Alucard’s baskets and laid it out on a red tablecloth. Roast pheasant, greens from the garden, fresh bread, wild strawberries, and a bottle of slightly floral white wine from the cellars.

“I think we need to start charting out runes next,” Sypha said as they ate. “Is there a map of the castle anywhere?”

“The original blueprints are probably stowed somewhere,” Alucard said. “But it’s been added to so many times, it’s most likely inaccurate. Not to mention the… recent renovations.”

“The books in the hold might have more,” Trevor pointed out.

“Yes, but even they won’t have everything. We may do better to start from scratch.”

“There are secret passages too, right?” Sypha asked. “Maybe we should put all our sources together.”

“Maybe,” Trevor said. “We should talk about something else.”

“Agreed.”

“Thank you for the meal, Alucard. As always,” Sypha said as she chewed.

“Thank you for being here to share it with me,” Alucard said, raising his glass to them.

“Very fancy, taking all the plates out in the woods,” Trevor teased.

“I don’t want to eat with my hands and wipe them on my shirt, thank you.”

“No, it’s…  nice. It makes me think of when I was a boy. Probably did the same thing very near here.”

“Somehow I always forget…” Alucard started.

“That I wasn’t born in a pig barn? Yeah, me too.”

The three ate in companionable silence until Trevor spoke up again. “Alucard… if we seal off the castle, what are you planning on doing after?”

“I’ve given it some thought, but… I’m not entirely certain. I think you were right about going into a city. I would stand out less, and I think I would like to be among people. It turns out… I don’t fare so well alone.”

“A city can be lonely, too, if you have no companions,” Sypha said.

“Ugh,” said Trevor, all too aware of how lonely one could be in the company of strangers.

Alucard looked troubled, and swirled his wine around his glass. “What about the two of you? What will you do, after you’re done here?”

“Well, I want to meet up with my people, like I told you. And, Alucard… I would like for you to be with us when we do that.”

Alucard raised one pale eyebrow.

“Why?” asked Trevor.

“Because! I want my people to have our story from multiple sources!”

Trevor knew both of them well enough to know that wasn’t the whole truth, but he filed it away for later. “What about after that? Are we volunteering to take Alucard wherever he wants to go after, get him started at least?”

“I don’t know, are we?” Sypha asked in a way that clearly indicated they had never discussed it.

“We have no other plans and I’m sure we’ll find work in whatever direction we go. Pick a point of the compass, Alucard, we’ll follow you there. If it’s alright with you, Sypha?”

“Yes of course!”

“I…” Alucard froze for a moment. “Thank you. I… I really don’t know what else to say. I have been continually humbled by your generosity.”

“Good,” Trevor said.

Sypha finished eating before either of the boys and starting gathering up wildflowers in order to made good on her threat to braid flowers into Alucard’s hair. She’d come prepared, armed with a hairbrush and comb tucked in the pockets of her robes. When she’d gathered up the materials, she pulled his hair into a loose braid and poked springs of tiny blue flowers and white, star shaped ones with pink throats. Alucard silently accepted it, bowing his head to make it easier to reach.

“You look like a fairy princess,” Trevor said as he lounged on his side on the tablecloth. “And you blush like a maiden, wow.”

“Are you jealous, Treffy?” Sypha asked, poking one of the tiny blue flowers behind his ear. “Do you need flowers as well?”

“I will… accept? Flowers?” Trevor said as she stuck more springs of the little weeds in his hair.

“Perhaps something more manly, a wreath of evergreens?” she asked.

“Nah, make me pretty,” he said, flopping on his back.

“Uff, you knocked the flowers off!”

Alucard was standing, wandering off to collect flowers of his own as Sypha decorated Trevor and fed him strawberries. When he came back, he had made a little wreath of leafy vines, with a few little purple wildflowers he’d found poked in.

“Your crown, my queen?” he said as he offered it to Sypha.

Sypha stood and clapped in delight, and bowed her head to accept. Alucard placed it gently atop her hair.

“How do I look?” she asked, framing her face with her hands and batting her eyes at him.

Alucard didn’t have any words, but smiled so sweetly Sypha couldn’t help but plant a kiss on his cheek.

“Hey,” Trevor said from the tablecloth.

“Oh are you jealous? My big, pretty, bear of a man?” Sypha asked, and dropped to her knees to lean over him and kiss him, long and deep, with zero awareness or at least zero shame that Alucard was watching.

Alucard was so dazed with the kiss that she had given him that he hardly cared.

Chapter 7: mercy

Summary:

Trevor broods, Alucard pines, Sypha is powerfully horny

Sypha wandered through the castle in order to stretch her legs and consider her two men. Alucard was hers now too, she was nearly certain of it, nearly certain that she merely needed to extend her hand to him and he would take anything and everything she offered. Eagerly. Desperately.

She only needed to choose the right moment to seal the deal.

Yet her desire for Trevor had not lessened. Well, she was walking around more hot and bothered than usual with the thought of claiming Alucard, and that might have led her to fuck Trevor more frequently and more forcefully, but when she was in bed with him she still thought only of him.

Can I really have both of them? She wondered. Can I really do this thing? Without breaking either of their hearts?

The pair of them were a lot for one woman to take on, Alucard prone to fits of melancholy, Trevor to fits of drunken brawling, and they both seemed to have an instinct to compete with each other, to needle each other, which might, Sypha thought, be masking a desire to impress each other. Yes, if that was the case, if they also had each other, if they each of them had two lovers, wouldn’t that be beautiful? Wouldn’t that be the best way to square the circle? Thread the needle? Balance the equation?

Alucard, she was fairly certain, had a lingering passion for Trevor. He had made a doll of Trevor and not just one of her, after all, and she knew for a fact that Alucard was attracted to men. Maybe her own biases were shining through her, but she couldn’t imagine wanting any man and not wanting Trevor.

Trevor might be trickier, but Sypha thought there was a seed of desire there that could flourish if nurtured. Trevor offered Alucard his blood and he seemed eager to do so again, and Sypha knew that having her blood drunk from her veins had been pretty sexy. She didn’t know if it was something magical about vampire bites or if it was merely the feel of Alucard, eager with desire, putting his lips on her skin, but… she couldn’t blame Trevor for wanting to be bitten again. Trevor’s upbringing might make him hesitant to recognize his desire for what it was and go to bed with another man, but then again, Trevor committed all sorts of other sins seemingly without reservation. In fact, Trevor’s attitude often seemed to be that, since he was excommunicated, he may as well sin freely and really earn his damnation.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps she was greedy and horny and delusional and under the influence of being trapped in a castle with only the two most gorgeous men she’d ever had the pleasure of meeting, two worthy, courageous, powerful men who she could feel her affection for growing daily. Two men who, against all odds, seemed to want her in return.

Selfish? Greedy? Wouldn’t it be more selfish not to give them what they wanted? Oh, she would give them what they wanted. She would give and give and give.

The tricky part would be broaching the idea with Trevor without making it sound like a betrayal. His self worth was a little fragile right now. Alucard’s, for that matter, wasn’t much better. She would have to make them see that they needed each other and not just her. She was fairly certain that was the only way this scheme to have the both of them wouldn’t blow up in her face.

Her wanderings brought her, as if by fate, to the lower levels of the castle, where the giant gears that had transported it through space stood molten and stilled. I did this, she thought, running her hands over the dripping formations where the metal had liquefied and then cooled. I yoked this thing to my will.

I can do anything. I can have anything I want.

She wandered back to the front entrance. Perhaps she would meet with Trevor on his way in, broach the subject with him right away. Feeling a little mad with power, she thought of the way Alucard relaxed into her touch, how stunned he had been at her kiss on his cheek. She thought of the way sometimes Trevor would press her against a wall and take her roughly, and how sometimes he melted under her kisses, easy to command, eager to please. She thought of how they had looked, together, Alucard biting Trevor’s neck and lapping up his blood.

She thought of what they would look like, kissing each other. She thought of what it might feel like to be pressed between them…

Almost without thinking about it, she found herself straddling the end of the stone banister of the entranceway’s curving stair, leaning her body against it where it arced upward, grinding herself against the railing.

Oh, it was too much. How had she managed to turn the heads of both of these men, how could she claim such power? They were so much, too much. How could she have both of them?

How can I not at least try? She wondered, going limp with her cheek against the cold stone of the banister. They have me so mad for them I’m trying to fuck a staircase.

**

Trevor stood on bare feet on a rock by the stream bed. He dandled a simple, stripped branch fishing pole into the water. He couldn’t duplicate Alucard’s trick of catching fish with his bare fucking hands, but he could do this, and he needed the air and the silence and the solitude.

He felt eerie, being back here. This was the same countryside, the same woods and hills and little streams that he had run through as a boy. Everyone he had known then was dead or fled, the old house a crumbling ruin. He felt as if the woods should be gone, too, but their roots were deep and they remained. Some of the trees were taller, some fallen, some tender and new, but this was the same wood. There was something unmistakable about the air, about the exact angle the sun shone down at the same place, at the same hour, at the same time of the year. He had fished from this same rock, as a boy. Trevor felt unglued from time, as if when he returned with his fish the house would still be standing, and he would present them to Vera, his family’s matronly cook, and he would eat the fish with his mother and his sisters instead of with the sullen half-vampire and headstrong magician he would actually bring them home to.

Home. Had he really just thought of Dracula’s castle as “home?” Then again, this was the longest time he had stayed in one place, since, well, he had last stayed in this place.

“Idiot,” Trevor sighed and swept his line from side to side. The wine cork he was using as a float bobbed merrily in the water, making little ripples in its wake.

Trevor Belmont hadn’t been a man with anything to lose in a very long time. In fact, he had never been a man that had anything to lose. The last time he had anything to lose he was a boy.

Sypha… he had shared his smelly blanket with Sypha and the next thing he knew she was asking him to travel with her and the next thing he knew she was in his bed. Or rather, in his arms on a less smelly blanket in the back of a wagon. He never made a conscious decision about what Sypha was to him, never knew whether she was comrade in arms or friend or partner or girlfriend or friend with benefits or lover or….

There she was, exactly where he had wanted her to be, before he knew that she was what he wanted.

And now…

Maybe it was this place. Maybe it sucked the life out of everyone and not just sulky vampires who helped kill their fathers.

Or maybe Sypha was replacing him with the sulky vampire.

Trevor couldn’t say that he blamed her, if that was the case. Other than the glaringly obvious fact that he was not a human being, Alucard was a better match for her in nearly every way. He was intelligent, well-educated, and well-bred. He was a gentleman. He was altruistic. He was brave. He was not a drunk vagabond. He had more, quite a bit more, than an heirloom weapon, a family crest, one horse and half a covered wagon to his name. He was jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

Trevor couldn’t even muster up the will to be angry about it. If it were any other man, perhaps he would be, but it was Alucard. He was the only one who was worthy of her, really. The only other person who had faced down Dracula and his generals.

Yes, he would do.

What will I do when she leaves me? Trevor asked himself, because it is already a “when” in his mind and not an “if.”

His hands gripped tighter on the pole. His jaw clenched.

I’ll let her go. The thought was almost a relief. He had already clung to her for too long, already brought her down with him after the debacle in Lindenfeld. His life without her would be empty, brutish and pointless, as it was before her, before Dracula’s hordes gave him purpose, but he did not fear that emptiness, as he did not fear death. They were inevitabilities.

He would live one day at a time, as he had his whole life since the mob that the church didn’t stop destroyed his family. He would enjoy her like an ale and a fire and a warm bed, brief, transient pleasures against the endless dark of night.

Like this day, like these fish.

He filled his basket with fish and returned to the castle to find Sypha in the cavernous entranceway, sitting on the banister for some reason. She hopped up to greet him, and he dropped his basket and his pole to the ground to take her in his arms and dip her in a lingering kiss.

“Oh, did you miss me so much already?” she laughed when she was on her feet again.

“Just want to make the most of things,” he said.

He searched her face. There was nothing but happiness there, nothing but soft, easy warmth in her hands laced behind his neck.

Maybe he was wrong, maybe Sypha would continue wanting him against all reason, but he pushed that hope out of his mind. It was that hope that would kill him if it failed.

**

Alucard climbed to the uppermost levels of the castle after Sypha and Trevor had gone to bed, finding the top room of a tower with a domed, glass roof. An observatory or a conservatory, Alucard didn’t know its original, intended purpose, only that it was a peaceful place that he could lay, and look at the stars, and not sleep.

I love you. Oh, I love you, he thought, throwing himself onto one of the padded benches that made a ring around the little room. And by you he meant her, and by you he meant him and this was the first time he had thought that word to himself, love, but this feeling could be nothing other than love. It could be nothing other than in love, for any feeling more acute than this would surely kill him.

He thought of the lightning-struck feeling of her lips on his cheek in a kiss, a gesture whose only purpose was affection. She must return some measure of affection for him, then, she had to.

And then she had kissed Trevor in a manner far less chaste, but who could blame her? He was such a man, coarse and infuriating, but strong and charismatic and generous, so generous. The sight filled him, not with jealousy, not when Sypha’s kiss was still tingling on his cheek, but with gratitude that they felt enough at their ease with him to kiss like that in front of him.

It was a gift to see them like that, but a curse also, because he doesn’t know, he can’t ever know, what it is to be inside of that. He wanted to be him and he wanted to be her and he wanted to be himself, between them, but not to come between them because what a crime it would be to separate them for his own selfishness.

How could he truly be in love with two people, anyway? Perhaps that was why his throat was constricting now, why his heart ached in his chest, overfull. It was too much for one person to feel at one time. His loves for the pair of them were braided together, inseparable. He was faithless and fickle toward the both of them before he could even have gotten started.

And he never would get started because they’d be fools to choose him over each other, anyway. He was a monster, after all, a monster by blood and a monster in truth. He had killed, and taken joy in killing.

Mother loved Father.

Mother didn’t have another love before she met Father. And Mother was burned alive for loving Father. Burned alive before a jeering crowd.  

He thought of silver bands burning into his skin, of a flash of steel and the smell of blood, miles of olive skin and dark straight hair and dark eyes closed forever.

It’s good they’re touching each other instead of me. To touch me is to be cursed.

Sypha said they deserved it! You thought they deserved it yourself when you impaled them through their teeth!

They were what they were made. Desperate and self-serving in the image of their master, another of my kind.

What can I do? Should I turn them away, hide from them?

You know better than that, he thought in a soothing voice that sounded curiously like his mother’s.

By some miracle, he had realized over the past few weeks that Trevor and Sypha… cared for him? They had come back for him, given him their blood and their company, tried to pull him from his solitude, given him so much of their time and attention, promised to give him more. He couldn’t repay them by shutting himself away and making their efforts useless, particularly not if he claimed, even if only to himself, to love them. He had to try to enjoy his life.

He did, in their company. But it hurt, it hurt. It ached, but it ached sweet. Could he live like this? Near them, never touching them? Wanting so acutely and never asking for more than their friendship?

They wouldn’t let him bury himself, and living in this sweet agony was better than living the pale shadow of a life alone.

He stared up at the stars, at the shimmering band of the Milky Way, lovely and distant and uncaring. His life was small, immortal only by the reckoning of short-lived humans. His life was precious only to these two.

I’m going to betray myself eventually, Alucard thought. Stare too long, kiss one of them when I’m drunk, confess my love in a moment of madness. Then that will be the end.

Maybe they’ll have mercy on me.

 

 

  

Chapter 8: sitting in a tree

Summary:

Trevor and Alucard, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N---that's not what they're doing in the tree, sorry.

"You occasionally surprise me with your generosity,” Sypha said to Trevor one morning that their lazy schedule had allowed them to wake slowly, make love, and continue lounging in bed.

“You’d think eventually it would stop being a surprise,” Trevor said, his hands laced behind his head and his eyes half closed.

“You gave Alucard the Belmont Hold,” Sypha pointed out. “You gave him your blood. You’re offering for him to go with us until he’s settled wherever he’s going.”

“I can’t say that I thought about any of it that much. Is all of that alright with you?”

“It’s alright. It’s good, even. But I wonder whether you are a generous soul or whether you are particularly generous toward Alucard.”

“Am I not generous enough toward you?”

“You are generous enough,” she said, curling around him and throwing a leg over his waist. Trevor smiled, catlike. They had been making good use of a comfortable bed.

Sypha rested her hands on his chest and rested her chin on her hands to study his face. “How do you feel about Alucard?”

“I… he’s… I’m not sure what you’re asking,” he said, his ease of moments ago discomfited.

“You are still bad at feelings. What do you think of him, then?”

“I think… he’s a fangy bastard.”

“Trevor.”

Trevor let out a breath. “He’s brave as hell. And he’s miserable as hell.”

“Do you think he could ever… not be miserable?”

“Defrost the icy well? I don’t know. You could tell him a thousand times that he was right to kill his dad and I don’t know that he’ll ever truly believe it. And he’s… well, he’s neither fish nor fowl, right? He’s not quite a human and he’s not quite a vampire. He’s going to have a hard time no matter what he does.”

“If you thought we could make him happy, would you?”

“That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? Finding a way to seal the castle so he doesn’t feel guilty leaving this place, taking him somewhere else?”

“What if we don’t take him somewhere else? What if we stay with him?”

“Here? Sypha I don’t want to and I don’t think he does, either.”

“Not here, but somewhere. The three of us.”

“Sypha…” Trevor started, and swept a hair behind her ear with his thumb. How could he even begin to express his misgivings about that? I’m afraid you’re falling for him and you haven’t realized it yet. But you will and I’ll be the miserable bastard left behind.

Sypha rolled onto her back. “A hunter and a scholar and a soldier. A hunter and a scholar and a soldier,” she said, as if talking to herself. She rolled on her side to look at Trevor once more. “It’s a curious way to describe him, isn’t it? ‘Soldier’? Would that be in even the top fifty words you would use to describe him?”

Trevor looked up at the arched ceiling and ran through how he would describe Alucard in his head. He is a little perturbed that after sulky vampire bastard and after words that are just statements of fact: tall, blonde, pale, he has to run into a whole bunch of words that are more like gorgeous, angelic, princely and he has to shut that shit down before he goes too far.

“No, I don’t guess it would be.”

“He will have a very long life. I wonder if it refers to something that happens later? Maybe centuries later. A soldier and a scholar and a hunter will defeat Dracula and revive and preserve the Belmont clan.”

“W…ait,” Trevor said slowly. “‘Revive the Belmont clan?’ Was that always a part of it?”

“Yes. In some versions it repeats, like a chorus, like maybe it happens over and over and it’s a different scholar and hunter and soldier each time, or—“

“You always knew that part of it?” Trevor asked, turning over on his elbow to mirror her position and look at her.

“Yes.”

“You never told me.”

“We had to defeat Dracula first.”

“But, when you first met me, you knew that you and I…” Trevor didn’t go any further, didn’t want to refer to things that hadn’t happened yet, decisions he hadn’t made yet.

Sypha sat up, letting the sheets fall from her. She was still naked, unashamed. “I didn’t go looking for the hunter, I went looking for the soldier, but I knew that… if I had interpreted the story correctly,” Sypha said, watching him closely. “I would be the mother of your children, yes.”

Trevor rolled out of bed.

“Trevor…” Sypha said slowly, realizing she had said things she shouldn’t have.

Trevor turned back to her once he had put on his pants. “You went to bed with me in order to fulfill a prophecy.”

“Stories aren’t prophecies, they’re—“

“—‘information from the future,’ whatever. You went to bed with me,” he said, his voice rising. “Because you thought you had to? Because of, what, destiny? Because you thought it was your duty?”

“Trevor, do you really think—“

“I don’t know what to think! You knew this from day one and you didn’t say anything!”

“It was delicate. Knowing a future makes that future fragile, especially when it comes to relationships. I didn’t tell you because of the way you’re reacting now!”

“And wouldn’t you… If it were you, and I knew that we were destined to be together and I didn’t tell you, that wouldn’t upset you?”

“No! Because I know how these things work!”

“And I’m just too stupid to understand.”

“I never said that.”

“But you did only sleep with me because of a prophecy.”

“It’s not a prophecy, it’s—“

“Fucking. I don’t care whether it’s a prophecy or a story, or angels fucking... descending from heaven to deliver you the eleventh commandment. I care whether I was—whether I am--Just a… a means to an end for you.”

“I didn’t sleep with you just to fulfill the conditions of a story!” Sypha said, waving her arm with her words. “Do you think I did? Has our lovemaking really been so joyless to you that you really think I was doing it just for duty?”

“I don’t know,” Trevor said, yanking on his shirt. “Apparently you’re a pretty good liar.”

“I have never lied to you!”

“You just didn’t tell me the truth. About something… fucking huge!”

“And obviously that was the right decision!”

“Because then I would know, right?” he asked, and he hated, hated how hurt he sounded, how close he sounded to tears. “That you never wanted me at all?”

“Trevor,” she said, softening to him finally.

“Don’t,” he said, raising a hand to stop her. “Don’t.”

“Trevor, wait—“ she said, jumping out of bed and grabbing his arm. He shrugged it off and slammed the door open.

“Sorry I won’t be fulfilling my part of the story. So now you’re free to fuck Alucard like you want. Is that part of your story, too?”

Sypha let out a stifled scream of frustration, but let Trevor shrug on his cloak and press past her. He passed Alucard in the corridor, where the half-vampire was standing still, a look of abject horror on his face. Trevor met his gaze briefly but couldn’t stand to hold it, and stormed past him, head down, out of the castle.

**

Alucard found Trevor where he had expected to find him, in the lower branches of an old tree that had been split by lightning, the tree Trevor had described as his childhood fort and boat and whatever else he needed it to be.

Right now he apparently needed it to be a place to brood. He was leaning against the trunk, one leg cocked up on the tree branch, one dangling.

Alucard hopped up into the tree himself and stood on a branch near him. “Make a case for why I shouldn’t rip your throat out.”

Trevor’s head snapped up at him, as if startled. Alucard knew he had to have seen and felt him approach, but that apparently wasn’t what Trevor had expected him to say. Trevor looked back down, abashed.

“Look, you. You won, alright?”

“Won what exactly?”

Trevor shook his head. “Sypha.”

“Belmont, if I lose either of you to your jealous delusions, I really will rip your throat out because then I’ll at least have a good meal out of it.”

Trevor looked up at Alucard again and noted with a flicker of fear that his eyes were going red, fangs fully out. “Okay,” Trevor said, putting up his hands. “You are very angry.”

“There is nothing between Sypha and I that you haven’t witnessed,” Alucard ground out.

Trevor looked away from him to the middle distance, let out a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought you into this. That’s… not actually what we were fighting about.”

Most of the red went out of Alucard’s eyes, and he sat on a branch near Trevor, facing him. “What was it, then?”

Trevor looked away once more. “The Speaker story. The one about us. Defeating Dracula. Apparently there’s more to it.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah… apparently it says she and I are going to revive the Belmont clan. That, she’s going to be my… wife? That we’ll have at least one kid, I guess.”

“I know the story and that’s not necessarily what it means. It could mean that only you go on to revive the Belmont clan. That perhaps something about what happened redirected your life so that you would.”

“That’s not what Sypha thinks it means.”

“Are you displeased? Do you not want to father her children?”

“That’s… several steps ahead of me.”

“I don’t think you’re really communicating to me what troubled you about this.”

“Sypha knew from day one that we were going to be a… a thing. And she never told me.”

Alucard shook his head, still not getting it.

“She fucked me because of the prophecy. I knew… I should have known. She was never interested in me. She did what she had to.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Really took one for the team, there.”

 “Yes,” Alucard deadpanned. “I’m sure that was a real trial for her.”

Trevor snapped his head around to stare at him. He narrowed his eyes. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Oh, come on, Belmont, look in a fucking mirror.”

“You,” Trevor laughed. “You.Think I’m attractive?” He laughed again. “I mean I’m not ugly, but…” he stared at Alucard. “Wow.”

“Say what you mean.”

Trevor laughed again. “Sure, since you already think I’m an idiot I may as well say that you’re basically angelically beautiful and I have to actively stop myself from staring at you whenever I’m near you, but yeah, sure, I’m good looking.”

Alucard has been told he’s beautiful many times in his life, by many different people, so it really shouldn’t have this much of an effect on him for Trevor Belmont to tell him he’s beautiful, but it does.

“I made you blush again. That’s what? Three times?”

“You’re really quite…” Alucard said, trying to hide his face with a hand. He tried to say ‘ruggedly handsome’ but couldn’t quite get the words out of his mouth. “I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

“What?”

“You’re not an idiot. You’re ignorant, and you have a tendency to make very rash decisions, but you’re actually quite… what I suppose I would call cunning. Which makes it all the more tragic that you’re uneducated.”

“Thank you, I think?”

“It was meant as a compliment.” Alucard squinted his eyes shut. “So… Sypha? You think she only wooed you to fulfill the terms of the story?”

“Yes!” Trevor said. Alucard gave him a pained look. “I don’t know,” he corrected.

“Why would Sypha be invested in reviving the Belmonts if it weren’t for you?”

Trevor sighed. “I don’t know!”

“That is something you want, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never thought of it as something that could really happen. I mean I can’t marry, for Christ’s sake.”

“Speakers have their own rites. She was talking about marrying you, you know.”

Trevor stared at him, tried to take that in, failed. “Why?”

“I don’t know, Belmont, perhaps she likes you, is attracted to you, finds your company pleasant.”

Trevor seemed to sag in on himself on his tree branch.

“She’s never acted in any way that suggested anything to the contrary,” Alucard continued. “Not since the two of you have been here. Do you really think she’s one to obey gods or prophecies or do anything she doesn’t want to do? ”

“She deserves better than me! She deserves someone who isn’t penniless, who understands what the hell she’s saying when she talks about magic and history and language. She deserves someone like… well, like you.”

“Trevor,” Alucard said once he had rearranged his brain around that statement. “I am heir only to a crumbling castle and the enmity of half the vampires in Europe. And I’d have thought you’d be the last to forget what I am.”

“It doesn’t matter to her, and she likes you.”

“I don’t… want… to come between the two of you,” Alucard said, feeling something akin to panic rising in him.

“You don’t, do you? You don’t care for her? You’re not attracted to her?”

“Don’t make me do this.”

“What? Don’t make you lie?”

“Don’t force me to destroy what the two of you have! Do you know what I would give? Do you have any idea what I would suffer to have that? And you would throw it away over what bare amount of affection Sypha has given me. Can your jealousy not even endure that tiny insult? You don’t own her! I told you there’s nothing between us you haven’t seen.”

“I’ve seen enough to know you want more.”

Before Trevor could react, Alucard was standing on the branch next to him, grabbing and lifting him up by the collar, slamming him into the trunk of the tree.

“There are all sorts of things I want that I can’t have,” Alucard hissed in Trevor’s ear.

Alucard let go of him, let him find his footing on the tree branch.

When he had regained his balance, Trevor regarded him for a moment, as if he were calculating an angle of attack. He grinned. “Is it my blood you want? Or is it my cock?”

Alucard pushed him. Trevor lost his footing and fell. Alucard, regretting his attack almost instantly, dropped to his stomach on the tree branch to catch Trevor by the wrist. Trevor stared up at him in shock, swaying in his grip. Alucard slowly lowered him the last foot to the ground.

“Guess I hit a nerve,” Trevor said, dusting himself off.

“You seem to have a gift for compromising my self control,” Alucard said, swinging down from the tree branch.

Trevor straightened his collar as he looked at Alucard pointedly.

“Go apologize to Sypha,” Alucard said, trying and failing to regain his composure.

“It’s both of us you want, isn’t it? Greedy.”

“Are you going back to the castle or not?”

“I’m going.”

“Forgive me if I walk with you to make sure.”

Trevor said nothing, but kept cutting glances at Alucard as they walked. Alucard refused to look at him, instead staring straight ahead.

“There’s a point I should probably make to you, Belmont,” Alucard said after their silence had stretched thin.

“What’s that?”

“Sypha is the most accomplished human magician I’ve ever met or heard of.”

“So?” Trevor asked. “You’re saying she’s going to burn me to a crisp?”

“No,” he said with a smile. “I’m saying that magic is about will. About enacting your will on reality.”

 “So?” Trevor repeated.

“So. Whether it be you, or me, or anything else: Sypha is going to get what she wants.”

Notes:

I thought about breaking this where Trevor storms off and leaving you on a cliff hanger. This is what my instinct told me to do! But then the chapter would be too short so I had mercy.

Chapter 9: a taste

Trevor found Sypha poring over a diagram of the castle in Dracula’s study. She had the papers spread on the floor, and was laying on her stomach to look at them. She looked up when he entered, her eyes dry but weary. She said nothing, waiting for him to speak, leaving him in suspense, at the mercy of her judgment.

“I’m sorry.”

Sypha blinked at him, wordlessly asking him to continue.

“I thought…” he started, drew nearer to her, sat on the floor next to her. “Look, I don’t know why you stay with me, it doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Trevor…” Sypha started.

“Let… let me finish,” he sat on one hip, curled toward her, pale eyes looked down at her through dark lashes. “So… I saw some reason, other than me, that you might be staying with me, and I thought, well, that has to be it. I have no reason to doubt you, it’s been… well, better than everything I’ve ever known.”

“Trevor,” Sypha said. She sat up, raised a hand to his face to sweep the hair out of his eyes.

“And,” he said, looking down, smiling. “I should have known better because you’re a terrible actress.”

Sypha headbutted him softly. “I don’t know what I have to tell you for you to get it through your skull that I love you.”

Trevor swallowed. That wasn’t the first time she had said that, but she didn’t say it often, and each time it was a gift. “I love you, but…  I don’t have anything to give you, Sypha.”

“I don’t want things, I want you.”

“It’s not just poverty. I really do believe that I’m bad luck. Cursed.”

“If you are bad luck, then my luck will simply have to cancel yours out.”

“Your luck isn’t so good either though, is it? I mean, you’re an orphan, your people are outcasts.”

“I have always been surrounded by people who loved me. I have never starved.”

“I have.”

“You will not, anymore. I will make sure of it.”

“Where I came from… it was usually the man making the woman those promises.”

“This is not where you came from, and that is something you will simply have to become used to. You have my back, and I have yours.”

He thought about making some quip about this place being actually, literally where he came from, but instead he took her hand, and let her lean into him, and said, “Right, right. Alright.”

More than anything, more than the thrill of their little adventures, more than their lovemaking, Sypha’s true gift to Trevor was the warm, steady peace of her presence. He could breathe easier, loosen the muscles in his jaw when she was near. Like her presence healed hurts in him that he didn’t even realize were hurts, things he had accepted as part of his being.

Sypha let out a breath in a way that made a slightly horse-like snort with her lips. “I don’t know that now is the best time, but I don’t know that there ever will be a good time to talk about this.”

“Alucard,” Trevor said.

“Yes. I think… he is on the cusp of falling for me, if he has not already.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Sypha made the little horse-like noise again. “Mine, in part. He is very lonely. I wanted to ease that, if I could. He is a good man. He should not be suffering as he is.”

“And what about you?”

“How do I feel about him?”

Trevor nodded.

“I could love him,” Sypha admitted. “But I know that I love you, and I would not risk our relationship without your blessing.”

Trevor didn’t know what to say to that, so he just rubbed his hand up and down her arm.

“And there is another part of this,” Sypha said. “Which is what I was trying to ask you about this morning.”

Trevor’s heart pounded, knowing what she was going to ask.

“Unless I have misjudged, I think the two of you could also be lovers.”

“I…”

“What do you think?” she asked, looking up at him. “What do you feel for him? Are you attracted to him?”

“I’ve been trying not to be.”

“Which means that you are.”

“…yeah.”

Sypha nodded against his shoulder. “Then the circle will be complete.”

“Sypha this… this scares the hell out of me.”

“It scares me as well. But I think if we don’t do it we’ll always wonder. And in my imagination,” she closed her eyes. “It is sublime.”

Trevor imagined it. That lithe body pressed to his, shutting his mouth with kisses. He thinks of letting him drink from him until he is dizzy, of being pinned down with his hair falling over them.

“I liked seeing him drink from you,” Sypha said as if reading his mind. “I would like to watch the two of you kiss. I want to be pressed between the two of you while you are trying to get at each other.”

And Trevor imagined, experimentally, watching Sypha ride Alucard. Imagined Alucard and himself working together to bring Sypha to madness. What the images sparked in him was not jealousy.

“Yes?” Sypha asked.

“I am, as we speak,” Trevor said hoarsely. “Descending into un-foretold depths of depravity.”

Sypha pulled him down into a kiss.

“It seems I have company down here,” Trevor said when she released him. “How are we gonna do this?”

“Carefully,” Sypha said. “I don’t want to spook him after what happened to him.”

“I… may have already fucked up,” he realized.

“What? How?”

“I kind of… taunted him. Asked if he wanted my blood or my cock.”

 “What did he say?”

“He pushed me out of a tree.”

“Where is he now?”

“Don’t know. He came with me to the castle. He insisted I apologize to you. I don’t know where he went after that.”

**

Alucard gave Trevor and Sypha space, tried to continue his and Sypha’s research. He was looking for a book… what book had he been looking for? He was looking for a book.

He couldn’t concentrate. Trevor had called him beautiful. Said he had to stop himself from staring at him. That was… more than friendly, surely. He had taunted him about wanting his cock. Vulgar. He had said he knew that he wanted more from Sypha. He had called him greedy.

He had read him like a fucking book is what he had done.

And now he was, at Alucard’s request, making up with Sypha, and no matter how Alucard felt about Trevor or how Trevor felt about Alucard, they would arrive exactly where they started.

Unless Sypha decided otherwise. Did he want that? No, of course he didn’t want that. He would not want Trevor heartbroken. He would not want Sypha heartbroken either, for that matter.

“There is nothing in this situation that is advantageous to me,” Alucard said out loud. But Trevor thinks I’m beautiful and he said Sypha likes me.

I slammed him against a tree and all but told him everything I wanted.

If either of them want to keep the other they would be well advised to leave this place as quickly as possible. Without me.

He snapped the book he was not reading shut and slid it back home in the shelf. This wasn’t doing him any good. He needed to get away. He needed a distraction. He needed…

Blood.

Yes, he’d been putting it off. Left it too long, not really wanting to leave the castle with Trevor and Sypha here, not wanting to have to think about his nature any more than he had to, when it was what separated him from them.

But yes, the hunt, something simple, something carnal.

He ran toward the exit, shifting into a wolf already.

**

Alucard came back carrying the carcass of a deer, a young buck, over his shoulders. Trevor was in the entrance hall waiting for him. He stared.

“Sorry, I must look a fright,” Alucard said, wiping his mouth with a sleeve. Did he have blood on his face?

“No, it’s… you’re stronger than your body should be. It doesn’t look quite right. It’s like my brain stares to try to make sense of it.”

“Ah,” said Alucard, not really knowing what else to say. “You could help me with this.”

“Help you how?”

“Butcher the beast?”

“Ah.”

“I thought… stew, steaks… we’ll eat well the next several days.”

“Yeah,” Trevor said absently, pulling a knife from his belt.

“Let’s take it in the kitchen. So we can put what we have in the icebox.”

**

When they had skinned the animal, parceled out the meat and stored it away, Alucard washed his hands in the basin, and made room for Trevor to do the same beside him.

“Your nails,” Trevor said, nodding to Alucard’s hand. “Do you just… will them longer?”

“Ah…” Alucard said. He had grown the nails on his pointer and middle fingers out to skin the deer. It was something he usually avoided doing in front of people. It tended to bother humans, even moreso than the fangs. They were evidence that he wasn’t like them. “Yes.”

“Do they go back or do you have to cut them?”

“Cut,” Alucard said simply.

“Can I see?”

He extended his hand to Trevor. “Many vampires keep them long. It’s something like a status symbol.”

“You don’t, though.”

“No. If your nails are four inches long your hands are always weapons and never tools. No good if you want to write or draw. Or touch someone without slicing them open.”

They were translucent, pearlescent white. Trevor pressed his own finger against one of them. It did not give. “Strong,” Trevor said. “Could you tear a man’s heart out with these, do you think?”

“Yes,” Alucard said, a little too quickly. Trust a man who kept at least half a dozen knives on his person at all times to appreciate the utility of having a blade on every finger.

“Sharp, too,” Trevor said, run his forefinger along the edge of one nail. It drew blood. Alucard reacted more strongly than Trevor did, a little hissed intake of breath, as a fat drop of blood welled up from the pad of Trevor’s finger. Alucard jerked his hand away.

Trevor held out his bleeding hand. “Here, do you want it?” he asked. “I know you’ve fed, but. Dessert?”

Alucard took Trevor’s bleeding hand in both of his, put the finger in his mouth, licked it clean. Barely a thimble full of blood, and Alucard did not suck more from it. His brows knitted, and he closed his mouth and his eyes to savor it. He licked his lips, a little poke of pink tongue between his teeth.

As Alucard opened his eyes once more, the fact of what the two of them had just done fell between them. They were both clear eyed and facing each other. Trevor couldn’t claim that it was given out of necessity, and Alucard could make no claim that he couldn’t have controlled himself. It was a gift, given and taken for the sake of itself.

“Human blood is so much better than animal blood that it’s almost cruel,” Alucard said after he swallowed.

“What’s it like?”

“It goes beyond taste,” Alucard said, letting Trevor have his hand back. “Or any other physical property,” he was silent for a long moment. “I’m afraid in order to get my point across I’m going to have to resort to an attempt at poetry.”

“Go on.”

“It’s something like,” he closed his eyes as if to better remember. “Water if you’re dying of thirst. Or excellent cooking after days of hard work. Something your body needs. But it also carries a bit of the experience and circumstance of the owner of the blood.”

“If that’s the case I can’t imagine how my blood would taste very good, then.”

“No, it’s… not just the experience, but how that experience has molded you. It might be better to liken it to wine or liquor, the year and the part of the globe and how it was aged changes the vintage, but the wine isn’t the soil or the sun or the season that made it. It is itself.”

Alucard felt awkward, going on about this at this length, but Trevor was still listening with interest.

“Some vampires develop a taste for the blood of virgins or warriors or some such. I never drank enough human blood to develop a preference. But yours and Sypha’s blood are…” he closed his eyes, remembering. “Sypha is like… something sweet but powerfully intoxicating. Like ice wine, perhaps.”

“Something you could drink a gallon of and not notice until you realize you can’t stand up or see straight.”

“Just so,” Alucard said, pleased his metaphor was not entirely lost on Trevor. “And you are like…” he closed his mouth, tasting the remnants of his blood on his tongue. “Something complex. Something that has been aged a long time and begun to take on notes of the barrel. Something to be savored.”

“It’s yours,” Trevor said. “As often as you like. However often it’s safe for me to give.”

Alucard stared at him. “That would be a rich gift.”

“Good,” said Trevor.

“I would never… I would never ask it of you.”

“But you’d take it, if offered?”

“I’m beginning to think you might not let me say no.”

“Only if you convince me you don’t really want it. How often can you do it, without hurting me?”

“About every two months.”

“I’ll remind you.”

Alucard shook his head as if to clear it. “Why?”

“Because I want to give you something,” Trevor said, willing him to understand. I want to give myself to you. “And… I liked the way it felt.”

“That is… shockingly perverse, honestly.”

“With someone you trust, pain and pleasure aren’t far apart.”

“Oh?”

“And…” Trevor hesitated, looked at Alucard, considering, thought fuck it, we’re doing this, and took a step forward. “I liked you wanting me.”

“Oh,” Alucard said, putting up his hands but not taking a step back.

Trevor raised a hand toward him, paused, waited for Alucard to make a move. This part was taking too long. It never took this long.

 “Don’t tease me,” said Alucard. “Not about this.”

“I’m not.” 

Alucard let his hands drop, his gaze not leaving Trevor’s face.

“Come on,” Trevor said. “I don’t bite.”

Alucard let out a weak breath of a laugh. “I—“

“Yes, yes, fuck you, you do, we’ve established that I’m into it,” Trevor said, raising his hand to rest on the back of Alucard’s neck.

“Your heart’s pounding,” Alucard observed, putting a hand on Trevor’s waist. “You’re not frightened?”

“There’s something called anticipation, just—“ kiss me, you monster, he was going to finish when Alucard closed the distance between their mouths.

The kiss was quick, darting, chaste, dry, before Alucard pulled back to look at Trevor. “Is this--? Do you want…?”

“Yes. Christ, yes,” Trevor ground out, pulling him down into another kiss. Alucard’s mouth was tight against his, and only loosened slightly as Trevor moved his lips against his. Trevor pulled back, their hands still on each other, barely a sliver of space between them. “You want this, right?

“Yes, it’s just,” Alucard breathed shakily. “I… I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Oh,” Trevor said. “Oh,” he repeated with dawning horror. He moved to disentangled himself from him, but Alucard pulled him back.

“Please. I want you desperately and I don’t want you treating me like some broken thing.”

“Alright, but… I might have a little more care, knowing I’m your first.” Trevor laughed, cupped his cheek with his hand. “I’ve never kissed another man before. We’ll figure it out.”

Alucard nodded, closed his eyes tight. “I want to kiss you again, but… Sypha?”

“We talked about it. She’ll only be disappointed she’s not here to watch.”

“I’m trusting you, Belmont,” Alucard said, and kissed him once again.

The kiss was better this time, unsure but unafraid. Each slide of Alucard’s lips seemed to be a question that Trevor answered enthusiastically. Alucard’s face was smooth, his lips soft as a woman’s. Trevor had never kissed anyone taller than he was before, but he found he wasn’t against it. He slid his arm down Alucard’s back to press their bodies together. Alucard made a small, broken noise against his mouth and deepened the kiss.

It was so good, Alucard thought. Like drinking his blood only there was no reason to stop. There was no reason at all not to just keep doing it, and the more he did the better it felt. Trevor dipped his tongue into his mouth and Alucard had never imagined why people did that, how it could feel good, it seemed disgusting, but he welcomed it, welcomed being more tangled up in him, letting their tongues slide together. Trevor shuddered in his arms ever so slightly as his tongue slid against fang, but didn’t pull away.   

They pulled apart. Alucard drew in a shaky breath, searched Trevor’s face, found it less guarded than he had ever seen it. The look in his eyes melted his heart. Clearly the kissing had done him some good. He kissed him again, tasted Trevor’s mouth, the kiss became probing, devouring. Trevor let out a little moan against his mouth.

They broke apart again. “Good?” Alucard asked.

“Yeah. That’s more like what I thought kissing you would be like.”

“And that’s what you wanted?” Alucard asked, taking his chin in his hand.

Trevor closed his eyes and nodded.

“Far be it from me to deny you,” Alucard said, licking his lips and burying a hand in Trevor’s hair to pull him into another forceful kiss. He advanced on him, pushing Trevor backward until his rear collided with the stove. Alucard pressed their bodies together, wanting to somehow be even closer to Trevor, to be part of the warmth and strength of him. His hands gripped at his shoulders, his biceps, ran down the small of his back, loving everything they touched.

“Alucard,” Trevor said, pulling away for air. “Alucard. Adrian,” and Alucard realized he was saying his name to get his attention and not because it was the only word he could think. Alucard stopped and leaned his forehead into his, breath coming fast.

“We’re going to have to slow down,” Trevor said. “Unless you want to do more than kiss right now.”

Alucard moaned at the thought of it, but he wanted to savor this and he didn’t know what he was doing.

“We should at least talk to Sypha,” Trevor said. “Let her know we’re doing… this.”

“The cat bringing his prey back to his master,” Alucard said, pulling away from him finally.

“Making you the prey?” Trevor said, narrowing his eyes at Alucard and pulling him forward with the laces of his shirt.

“Oh,” Alucard breathed, falling into him. They kissed again, more slowly with now tender lips.

“Yeah, this was a good idea,” Trevor said when they broke apart.

 

 

Notes:

Sorry for no chapter last week I got eaten by a horrible allergic reaction and the Final Fantasy VII Remake, but there's kissing in this one so that makes up for it, right?

Chapter 10: to name the thing

Alucard sank into the tub until the water came up to his eyes and tilted his head back to wet his hair. He had expressed a desire to get clean after his hunt—he felt as if he smelled like blood whether or not he truly did—but then he had paused, saying he needed to prepare their evening meal. Trevor had insisted that he and Sypha would handle it, that Alucard had already done too much for them, that they should have food ready for him by the time he was clean.

Alucard submerged himself in the hot bath for only a moment. Normally he would have paused longer, letting the hot water unknot his muscles, but his purpose here wasn’t to enjoy the bath but to get himself clean, to make his body look and feel and smell as best it could. He wanted so badly to please them.

Perhaps he was being presumptuous, he thought as he massaged shampoo into his scalp, to think that Trevor and Sypha would lay him bare tonight, but if they were anything near as desperately pent as he was—and he’d read in Trevor’s lips and hands that he was—they would not hold out long. Trevor had said Sypha’s going to eat you alive in a low voice with Alucard’s chin in his hand, swiping a thumb over his bottom lip--

Alucard moaned as he tilted his head back again to rinse his hair. He couldn’t dwell on it or he was going to have to bring himself off in the bath before he joined them for dinner. And he wanted to save himself for them. He wanted to give them everything.

Not thinking, not thinking, scrubbing, he thought as he soaped up a washcloth, but the combination of hot water and arousal were making him dizzy and he had to grip the sides of the basin for moment.

He set to scrubbing himself with a soap that smelled of flowers and herbs. He stopped on the pink scars that roped around his arms. If they made love to him, Trevor and Sypha were going to see these. Not just a glimpse but the entire sorry picture. That thought was enough to ice his arousal and make his stomach clench in dread. He scrubbed his limbs hard enough that he would have rubbed the scars off if it were possible.

He never made any effort to hide the jagged diagonal scar that crossed his chest. He had tried to prevent his father from committing genocide and in response Dracula had attempted to rip out his own son’s heart. He felt sorrow over the memory it represented, but no shame or guilt. The fault was entirely his father’s. Adrian had done the best he could.

The thin, pink scars that criss-crossed his body from knees to neck, however, those were a result of his own foolishness. He wanted to give himself to Sypha and Trevor fully, but as soon as he tried they would all be reminded that it was impossible. These scars were the evidence that unworthy hands had touched him, that Alucard had allowed them to do it, had welcomed it, that he had nearly followed this shameful need to his destruction.

But it couldn’t be helped. He couldn’t hide the scars. And if Trevor and Sypha wanted him, he would not allow his shame to stop them from claiming him. They knew what had happened, and to doubt his own worthiness was to doubt them. He couldn’t do it.

But he could still wish that he didn’t have the reminder etched into his skin.

He stepped out of the bath and dried himself, lotioned himself smooth, trimmed finger and toenails, toweled his hair dry as best he could. He wanted to brush oils through his hair, but it would need to be fully dry for that, and he couldn’t wait. It would be a little frizzy and overly fluffy, but that was something he would have to live with for now.

The large bathroom held a standing oval mirror near the sink, fine but not magical. Alucard tilted it up to look at himself. He could find no flaw in his body, he supposed, beyond the scars, but his face looked drawn and anxious. He rubbed his face in his hands in an attempt to relax the muscles of his cheeks. He tried smiling at his reflection. It looked pained. He showed his teeth, raised an eyebrow, tried to give himself a sexy look. He was not impressed with himself. He snarled.

“This way lies madness,” he said, and turned away from his reflection to dress himself.

**

Alucard found Trevor and Sypha in the kitchen with a stew simmering and Sypha frying some sort of flatbread on the stove. He paused in the doorway. Trevor hugged Sypha from behind while she worked, humming a tune Alucard didn’t recognize and swaying gently.

He looked on them with fondness finally untainted by jealousy. His chest ached, his heart felt sodden with affection, as if his blood were syrup and each pump of his heart was sending the sticky warm substance throughout his body.

Sypha wiggled her rear and said “Back off or you might get burned,” as she flipped the bread. Trevor did and turned, unsurprised that Alucard was standing there. He smiled crookedly. His eyes swept quickly down Alucard’s body and back up to his face, and Alucard remembered what Trevor had said earlier that day, about having to stop himself from staring at him. He wasn’t stopping himself now.

Alucard felt his face cracking into what was probably a very stupid-looking grin. He closed the distance between them and kissed him.

He heard the pan drop on the stove. He felt Trevor’s smile under his lips, but he didn’t pull away, so Alucard followed his lead and deepened the kiss.

“H-hey!” Sypha finally said weakly.

Trevor pressed his tongue past Alucard’s lips, ravaging his mouth.

“This is unfair!” Sypha said. “You two would never have touched each other if it weren’t for me!”

Alucard broke with Trevor to look at Sypha, who was flushed and flustered. “Sypha,” he said, reaching for her hand.

“Kiss me?” she pleaded.

He did, reeling her in by the waist.

He was shocked by how small she felt in his arms. How his instinct was to wrap around her and protect her. Her lips were plush and smooth, easy and wonderful to kiss.

“You beautiful, wonderful thing,” she said when they broke apart. “How I’ve waited for you.” She gave him one more quick peck and rushed to the stove. “Oh it may be a little crisp! Trevor you are a terrible tease.”

“You love it.”

“It smells delicious, thank you,” Alucard said, taking a seat at the table.

“Nothing complicated!” Sypha said. “But you can’t enjoy complicated every day.”

Trevor stirred the stew and began humming again, swaying a little to the rhythm. He absently began singing aloud, and drew Sypha into his dance when she had finished the bread, twirling her around.

“What has gotten into you?” Sypha giggled as he dipped her.

“I don’t know,” Trevor said, rolling his shoulders awkwardly as he turned back to the stew. “Happy, I suppose. Enjoying it while it lasts.”

“You have a finer singing voice than I would have expected,” Alucard said.

“Thank you?” Trevor said uncertainly as he ladled out stew. “Do you want to find a bottle of wine for this?”

“I think I would prefer to be completely sober at the moment,” Alucard said. “That we all be, perhaps.”

Sypha nodded as she placed a plate of the little round flatbreads on the table. “Yes I think that would be best. We don’t want to pressure you into anything.”

“Likewise,” Alucard agreed. “Thank you,” he said as Trevor placed a bowl of the stew in front of him. Alucard blew on a spoonful of it and took a bite. It really was quite good, venison and root vegetables. Hearty. They ate in silence for a few minutes until Sypha broke it.

“Alucard, may I ask you something?”

“Yes?”

“Would you prefer we call you Alucard or would you rather we call you Adrian?”

Alucard thought about it. Neither bothered him enough that he would have asked they call him one or the other, but when he thought about it…

“Adrian is what my parents called me.”

“That’s not an answer,” Trevor pointed out.

“I know,” he tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in his stew, chewed and swallowed it as he thought. “I think, publicly, I would like to remain ‘Alucard.’ It is a statement of intent. Privately… whatever suits you.”

“You’ve really no preference?” Sypha asked. “Which is your name and which is a nickname? Which would you cast with?”

He thought about it. “It would depend upon the purpose of the spell.”

“What about a spell to heal yourself? Or to ward yourself from harm?”

“Adrian,” he said without pause.

“Then to me you are Adrian,” Sypha said.

He blinked at her. “Very well.”

Trevor was tapping a piece of bread on the side of his bowl, looking between them. “Should I…?”

“If you love him, yes,” Sypha said.

“Alright… Adrian,” Trevor said, regarding him, and Alucard, no, Adrian, felt something change, felt something slide and snap into place in the man’s perception of him.

“Thank you,” Adrian said, dazed. “I think you just caused me to understand something about myself I didn’t before. Alucard, Adrian, they are both equally myself, but different facets, the same thing viewed from different angles. Adrian is not a person I believed I would have the luxury of being again.”

“Words have power,” Sypha said, nodding. “Names especially so. I’m glad I could help.”

“I…” Adrian said, suddenly close to tears. “You two have done so much for me, more than I even could have imagined.”

“We want to,” Sypha said, taking his hand. “I’m sorry if it was painful.”

“No, it’s… a good ache,” Adrian said, swiping at his eyes with his sleeve. He swallowed. “I was going to try to say, at some time tonight, that if the two of you did not… care for me, if what you want from me was merely sex, then I didn’t think I could go through with it, but the truth is… I don’t even have to ask. Everything you’ve done for me speaks of love, of one kind or another, and that isn’t lost on me,” he said, looking between them. “I do feel that.”

“Then I suppose it’s a bad time to confess that we were planning on leaving tonight after we’ve had our wicked way with you,” Trevor said.

“Don’t even joke about it,” said Sypha.

“Of course not,” Trevor said with a crooked smile. “I plan on having my wicked way with you many, many more times.”

“When Adrian likes, of course,” Sypha said.

“Of course,” Trevor agreed.

“No one knows what the future will bring,” Sypha said. “But we do intend—or at least I intend—to keep the pair of you by my side as long as I can,” she said, reaching across the table to take Trevor’s hand as well.

Notes:

I split a chapter here, so next one soon, hopefully. <3

Chapter 11: crossing the threshold

Notes:

I split this chapter and it still ended up being about twice as long as any of the others. Mind the rating.

Adrian volunteered to wash their dishes, but Trevor and Sypha didn’t leave his side. The three of them would have made quick work of them were they not constantly distracted.

Sypha wrapped her arms around Adrian from behind and rubbed her hands up and down the front of his thighs. “Your pants do not leave much to the imagination,” she said. “My hands will have to catch up to my eyes.”

Trevor took the bowl Adrian had been washing from his hands, probably because it looked like he might drop it. He set the bowl aside and swept a hand behind Adrian’s neck, pulling him into a kiss while Sypha was still handling him, bringing her hands up the back of his thighs to squeeze his ass. Alucard gripped the side of the sink to hide the shaking of his hands.

“You’re so easy,” Trevor said, cupping his cheek.

Adrian made a little annoyed sound in his throat. “The two of you have been dangling in front of me for weeks. At least you had each other, while I’ve been—ah!” he stopped short as Trevor began kissing up the side of his neck. Sypha still had her arms around him and was splaying her hands on his stomach, pulling his shirt untucked as she caressed him.

“St-stop,” he gasped, but felt suddenly bereft as they both stopped touching him. “No, don’t—stop. I’m just—“ He put his face in his hands. “It’s too much. It’s too good. I’m sorry.”

“Nonononono,” Sypha said. “Don’t ever be sorry for telling us what you need.”

Adrian thumped a fist to his chest in frustration. “I don’t—I don’t know if I know what I need.”

“Just breathe, alright?” Trevor said.

Adrian nodded with his eyes squinted shut. He leaned against the sink with his hands, rocking slightly.

“We can take it slow,” Sypha said, gripping his arm.

“I think,” Adrian said after he steadied himself. “I do need to slow down. A little. But that still means me, in your bed, tonight, or I feel I may actually die. I mean, if you’ll have me, of course, ugh,” he said, putting his face in his hands again. He sounded needy and melodramatic, even to himself.

“It would be a tragedy,” Sypha said with a smile in her voice. “To cut your immortal life so short. With the cure so near you.”

Adrian groaned into his hands. “This is not how I wanted this to go at all.”

“Then what did you want?” Sypha asked brightly.

“To please you,” he moaned.

“Then you’re doing fine.”

“Here,” Trevor said, and Adrian realized with alarm that he was grabbing him by the waist and wrist to throw him over his shoulder.

“Ah, what are you--!” Adrian gasped, kicking his legs.

“You don’t have to worry about anything,” Trevor said, carrying him out of the kitchen. “Not tonight. We’re going to take good care of you.”

Adrian spluttered. He felt indignant, being so manhandled, but also a twinge of pleasure of at being carried off like a prize. The discordant feelings left him laughing hysterically. Sypha reached up to him where he was precariously balanced on Trevor’s shoulder to capture him in a kiss. He pinwheeled his arms trying not to fall into her.

“Sypha, where are we going?” Trevor asked, swinging Adrian around as he turned.

“You know the tower room with the fire we’ve been meeting in? It’s a couple of levels down from there.”

“Okay, princess, there is no way I’m carrying you up all those stairs,” Trevor said, sliding Adrian off his shoulder. Adrian brushed himself off, trying to regain his dignity.

“I took it upon myself to prepare a bed for us,” Sypha said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, I… wasn’t thinking clearly or I might have done it myself,” Adrian said.

Sypha put a gentle hand to the small of his back as they followed Trevor up a winding staircase. When they reached the room in question, Sypha directed a little ball of flame into the fireplace and it roared to life, lighting a huge oval shaped bed. Trevor laughed as he petted the duvet, a covering of rich, plum velvet. “This is obscene,” he said.

“Wait until you lay on it,” Sypha said.

Trevor kicked off his boots and did just that, groaning as he threw back his head into a mountain of pillows. “Bed like this, a man might never want to get up,” he said.

Adrian chuckled darkly, but his heart was beating rabbit fast as Sypha cupped his face. He covered her hand with his and nuzzled her palm with his cheek.

“What do you want, Adrian?”

“Everything,” he breathed.

Sypha shook her head in exasperation, but stepped back a little to unbelt her robe and pull it over her head, leaving her in her loose black underdress. She kicked off her sandals, and peeled off her arm warmers. It wasn’t quite a striptease, there was something matter of fact about it, but she already looked oddly nude to Adrian, unused to seeing her arms bare. He brushed his hand down her upper arm to her hand, thinking of how his hands sometimes felt oversensitive right after he took off his gloves. Gooseflesh rose on her arm under his fingers.

She pressed her body to his, palms flat against his chest. She breathed in deep. “You smell wonderful,” she said. “Like a meadow.”

Adrian laughed. At least he had done something right to prepare for this. Haltingly, he put a hand to the top of her hair, caressed the back of her head and her neck. Sypha tilted her chin up to look at him, and the beauty of her, this close, this his made something in Adrian’s chest and throat burn.

He wanted to say something, anything, about how beautiful she was, how he felt, but any words he could think of beggared the reality, so he kissed her instead, striving to tell her with his mouth in another way.

This was enough, he thought, the gentle slide of her lips under his, the way she wrapped herself around him, but she slid a hand under his shirt and suddenly it wasn’t enough. He wanted their bare skin pressed together. His kisses became hungrier, and she gave eagerly under them. His hands wandered her body, instinct daring where thought would not, his touch grazing over her hips, her breasts. His lips wandered from her lips to her cheek, her neck, her collarbone, every inch of her soft and perfect to him. He pulled at the neck of her dress, to show him more skin, and caught a glimpse of the swell of her breasts underneath. He pressed the flesh up with his hand to meet his lips, relishing the perfect, plush softness of her, longing to bite into her and resisting.

He could hear her heartbeat quickening. His ministrations weren’t only for his own sake. He tugged at the bottom of her dress, and she helped him pulled it over her head, leaving her only in the wrapped cloths that supported her breasts. These she loosened herself, unraveling them and throwing them in a puddle on the floor with her dress and robe.

She stood before him fully nude and unashamed, a little wicked smile on her lips as she met his gaze. He stepped back to take her in with his eyes. She was broader in the hips and thighs than he would have guessed under her robes. The soft, generous femininity of her pushed his desire to a heretofore unimagined pitch, and he found himself pulling her back to him, exploring the newly revealed skin with his hands as he kissed her hungrily.

His hand cupped her breast and his thumb caught on her nipple, and she moaned into his mouth. He kissed down to where his hand had been, licking her there. He found he loved the feel of it under his tongue, peaking under his attention. The heat of the blood under her skin made him long to bite her, but he resisted, confining himself to licking and sucking with more fervor.

He remembered suddenly that Trevor was there, and angled himself such that he could see him as he kissed his way back up to Sypha’s face, supporting her neck with his hand.

He was lounging against the pillows, legs crossed at the ankle, watching them silently. Blue eyes met gold over Sypha’s shoulder, and Trevor smirked.

Adrian couldn’t read what that meant--You’ll get yours, maybe—but it sent a zing of anticipation up Adrian’s spine.

Sypha was kissing him again, forcefully, angling him toward the bed, and Adrian found himself sitting with her astride his lap, tugging at his shirt. Up it went over his head. Sypha made a sudden pained hiss. Adrian was momentarily confused, she was sitting on top of him, he couldn’t be hurting her, but he realized with horror where her fingers were tracing across his chest and arms. He curled into himself instinctively, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his face away from her.

“No!” she said, slapping at his hands. “You are beautiful, don’t you dare hide yourself.”

Adrian slowly turned back to face her, and the look on her face broke his heart.

“It just hurts me that anyone did this to you.”

“Sypha…”

“We should have been here, you could have died!”

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine,” Adrian said.

“Don’t say that! It was those awful, evil little people, it wasn’t you.”

“It wasn’t you, either,” Adrian said, letting himself fall to his back on the mattress. “You know, I actually think you may have liked them.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Sypha said petulantly.

“It’s not like we’ve never been fooled,” Trevor said, crawling to lie on his stomach beside Adrian.

“And if we’re trying to trace blame,” Adrian said. “It was them, it was that vampire Cho, it was my father. Round and round it goes.”

Sypha ran her hands up and down Adrian’s sides, looking wilted. “I wanted to make you forget you’ve ever been hurt,” she said. “And here I am reminding you.”

“I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Adrian said, reaching to put his hands over hers.

“We just don’t want you to fucking think this has ruined you,” Trevor said, tracing the scars on his ribcage. “Hey,” he said suddenly. “You know where I got this,” he raised a pinky to the scar over his eye.

Adrian shook his head. He had wondered, but it had never seemed an acceptable time to ask.

“Mouthed off to a guy in a tavern. He waited for me at the back door. If I hadn’t been falling down drunk I could have taken him. As it went, I’m lucky he didn’t take my eye. He did take my purse. At least you can hide the scars. This is just part of my face now.”

Adrian looked up at him tenderly and cupped his face with his hand. “It’s made you no less handsome.”

Trevor gave a coughing little laugh. “Yeah, well, and you’re still a gorgeous bastard. Anyway. This,” he said, touching his finger to the scar over his eye again. “Is evidence that I’m an idiot that didn’t give a shit whether he lived or died. This,” he said, waving a hand at Adrian’s chest. “This is evidence that you’re more generous than this world deserves.”

“I hope you care whether you live or die now,” Adrian said softly.

“Yeah,” Trevor said. “I got a couple reasons to stick around.” He leaned over Adrian to kiss him.

“Oooh,” Sypha said, wriggling on Adrian’s lap. “The two of you are too much.”

“You going to undress this man or what, Sypha?”

“Mmmhmm,” Sypha hummed, climbing off his lap to jerk at Adrian’s trousers.

“What about you?” Adrian asked, grabbing Trevor by the collar.

“If you like,” Trevor said, deceptively casual, raising himself to his knees to tug his tunic over his head.

Damn the man, Adrian thought. He had a heavy, powerful musculature, not so starkly defined as Alucard’s own, but he knew that without the advantage of his vampiric blood, Trevor would be far stronger than he was. He felt a renewed wave of lust. He itched to get his hands on him, to memorize the placement of the handful of puckered scars that scattered his arms and chest.

“Like what you see?” Trevor sneered.

Adrian wanted to make him pay for that, but he was currently trapped by Sypha and the pants she was trying to pull off of him. He raised up his hips to assist, any self consciousness gone in his desire for them all to be naked.

Sypha ghosted a hand over his balls and half-hard cock and lay beside him. Trevor’s eyes scraped down his body.

“Like what you see?” Adrian returned, turning to face him, propping himself on his elbow.

“Fuck you,” Trevor said, and wrapped an arm around him, pressing his body against his.

“Please,” Adrian purred, but at the first press of their bare skin together, he gasped. Trevor was passing surprisingly light fingers up his thigh, his hip, over his ribcage. The teasing, loving touch was enough to make Adrian come unglued.

Sypha was curling around his back, throwing a possessive arm around his chest and kissing up his shoulder to his ear as Trevor kissed his lips. Adrian moaned, the contrast of Trevor’s firm weight and Sypha’s pillowy softness overwhelming him. He pushed Trevor’s shoulder, urging him onto his back so he could get him out of his pants. Once he got him naked, Adrian straddled him, taking in the image of his cock and the muscles of his thighs. He was so much man, Adrian thought stupidly as he ran his fingertips over his chest, snagging in the sparse, wiry hair over his breastbone. Not really knowing what to do, he bent to kiss him again, and hissed as the hardness of both of them pressed together.

Sypha was behind him, wrapping herself around him, caressing his chest, her breasts pressing into his back, burying her hands in his hair, kissing his neck and his shoulders.

Adrian was breathing heavily, rocking into Trevor. He had been afraid that their two pairs of hands on him would remind him of Sumi and Taka, but this was so unlike. These desires hadn’t been sprung on him, they’d been building, at least since he and Trevor had kissed in the kitchen that afternoon, perhaps since Sypha and Trevor had arrived on his doorstep weeks ago.

 Still, it was overwhelming.

“I…” Adrian breathed. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, the words spilling out.

“It’s alright,” Trevor said, looking up at him with hooded eyes.

“We’ll take care of you,” Sypha whispered in his ear and pushed him gently toward the bed, onto his back. They both curled around him. Their hands and their mouths were everywhere. It was so much, so overwhelming he couldn’t divide out who was touching him where. It was awful. For a moment he allowed it to happen, tried to just let them take him.

He turned his head into his shoulder as if afraid of being struck.

“Adrian?” Sypha said, her voice tight with concern. Their hands didn’t leave him, but stopped in their movement. Adrian breathed.

“S-stop,” he said reluctantly. “I’m sorry,” he said, curling onto his side. “It’s too overwhelming, and don’t—please don’t put me on my back,” he said in a small voice.

“It’s alright,” Sypha said urgently. “Tell us what you need. We don’t have to do anything tonight, we can just sleep.”

“No,” he moaned. “I want you so much I feel like I’m going to shatter. Both of you. But I don’t think I can handle you both at the same time. Eventually, but… I’m sorry,” he repeated. “And I think… I need to be somewhat in control, but I’m afraid… I don’t really know what I’m doing so that may be a trial for you.”

Trevor and Sypha seemed to have a conversation with just their eyes and jerks of their heads. Eventually, Trevor said “Ladies first,” with a half shrug.

He slid off the bed and over to a high backed chair by the fire. He turned it to face the bed. He hesitated. “You don’t want me all the way out of here, do you?”

“No, please,” Adrian said. “Unless you can’t stand to watch.”

“Oh I think I can stand it,” he said darkly.

“Adrian,” Sypha said, kneeling beside him. “What do you want?”

“Everything,” he breathed again.

“Yes, we tried that,” she said with a tight smile. “What do you want most?”

Adrian bit his lip, looked at her. “Your pleasure,” he said.

Sypha raised her eyebrows with a little silent oh. She seemed to think for a moment. “Here, sit up a little.” She got him to sit, leaning against the pillows, and laid herself across his lap, finding another pillow to rest her head on.

“Hands are maybe a little better than mouth if you’ve never done it before,” she said. She took his right hand and slid it between her legs, Adrian breathed in sharply at the feel, the hot slickness of her body welcoming him. “All is good,” she said, still guiding his hand to slide against her. “But here is best. Like a tiny penis, yes?”

He was familiar with the basic anatomy, but Adrian nodded.

“And,” she said. “Between the legs is most intense, but. The entire body is an instrument of pleasure. And my nipples are very sensitive.”

“Try the backs of her thighs,” Trevor said from the chair.

“You might try…” Sypha said speculatively, cocking her head to the side. “You can hear my heartbeat, yes?”

Adrian nodded.

“You could follow that.”

She released his hand, leaving him to his own devices. He slid his fingers down the center of her folds, taking her advice to listen to her heartbeat as he did so. He brought the pad of his finger to the keystone of that arch, rubbed against it lightly, increased the pressure a little, swirled around it. He bent to kiss the top of her breasts as he worked, flickering his tongue against her nipple. Together the attention of his tongue and his hand seemed to bring not only the sought after increase in her heart rate, but a little spasm of her sex under his hand. He slid his fingers down to press, there, into her, mouth hanging open at the way her body hugged around his finger, thinking of how it would feel to put his cock there. He slid in and out of her experimentally, altering the angle of his hand to suit her heartbeat. He kissed up and down her body without plan, only wanting his mouth on her, nipping a little at the flesh of her breast, careful of his fangs, loving the give of her under his teeth.

Her breath came a little quicker as he nipped at her breasts and her ribcage, and continued the work of his fingers. Her eyelashes fluttered. He bent to kiss her, supporting her neck with his free hand.

“You’re… toying… with me,” she sighed out after a time, and he realized that he had been, subconsciously pulling back a little as her heart rate ran high, pushing to bring it up again, repeating. He began to slide his fingers against her without relenting, fast but not as fast as he might have thought he needed to if he hadn’t been listening to the beat of her heart, and watched her begin to unravel in his arms. She moaned slightly whenever he hit at that angle…there. She pressed her hips up a little to meet him, splayed her legs further apart in an attempt to give him better access. She looked up at him, gaze unfocused and adoring. He was amazed that she could be in this state of pleasure without yet climaxing, amazed that he was doing it to her. Her pleasure exhilarated him, sharpened his want for her. His heartbeat felt as if it were being dragged behind hers. The muscles of her abdomen tightened as she threw back her head and gasped, and he almost felt an echo of it in his own body. He pressed a kiss over her heart, kept touching her through it as her heart raced and seemed to thud back to a more regular, slow rhythm.

“Was that…? Is that..?” Adrian asked, pulling his hand away from her tentatively.

“Yes,” she said after she had caught her breath. “Good,” she said, rolling off of his lap. “Amazing for a first time.”

“Can I…?” he started. “I want you. I want to be inside of yo,” he pleaded. “Is that too much?”

“No,” she said. “It’s just right.”

She took him by the hand and pulled him on top of her. “I’m not fragile,” she said. “You’re not going to crush me.”

Adrian nodded. He just looked at her for a long moment, leaning over her, hands planted on either side of her head, his hair spilling over them. She was somehow more beautiful to him in that moment than she had ever been, hair tousled, skin flushed, eyes hooded and pupils blown, looking at nothing but him. He kissed her, and her hands ran up and down his body. She reached to take his cock in her hands and guided him into her, pushing their hips together, and for a long moment he could neither think nor breathe. Being sunk into her, wrapped up in her, was both too much and like coming home. He rocked into her, struggling to establish a rhythm. Slowly, he let instinct and his own pleasure guide him. She rose a little to meet him, grinding her hips into his. As he worked his way into a more regular rhythm she began tightening around him on the upstroke. The tiniest little smile played on her lips and he realized, yes, that was definitely deliberate. He shuddered is he thrust into the heat of her. He wanted to make this last, but he was in a state of such desperate, full body arousal that he was already holding himself back from orgasm.

Sypha must have been able to read it in his face, because she said “Shh, shh, it’s alright, it’s good,” clutching at the small of his back. With her encouragement, he began to fuck her in earnest, quickening his pace and driving the force of his weight against her. He would have been afraid he was going too hard, but she continued to rut her hips up against him, and pulled her knees up to her chest to take him deeper.

He teetered on the brink, arms shaking, surprised to hear desperate, breathless cries coming from his own throat. His vision whited out, and his heart stuttered, stopped as he spilled into her, fucking his way through irresistible, wracking waves of pleasure.

He fell against her, boneless and brainless. She extricated herself from him and he lay on his face, panting against the pillow. Her hands caressed him, massaged his back and his arms and his ass, tousled his hair. When he had recovered a little, he felt another weight settle on the bed. Adrian raised up on his elbows to look at Trevor. He was sitting against the head of the bed, one leg straight and one knee bent, cock at full mast.

 “Well, Belmont, I just fucked your woman in front of you,” Adrian purred with reckless glee. “What would you do with me?”

It was a taunt, an invitation for rough use. Trevor said nothing but looked at him for a long moment with those pale, still hunter’s eyes. Adrian felt a thrill of near-terrified anticipation.

He moved, grabbing him by the hair and wrist to drag his face to his cock. Adrian pressed his head up against Trevor’s grip for a moment, reminding him of his strength, reminding him that Trevor wasn’t taking control, Adrian was giving it. Adrian looked up at his face, Trevor’s lip was curled in a half snarl of lust, reminding Adrian that even here, he had power over him. He turned his eyes back to the task before him, and wasn’t he just having all sorts of new experiences tonight? Trevor was a little thicker than him. Adrian thought he probably had length on him, but this, the moment before he was about to worship him with his mouth, wasn’t the time for literal dick measuring.

He licked him from base to tip and the taste of his skin was… not unpleasant. He shifted to get into a better position between his knees, Trevor’s hand still fisted in his hair. He licked him again, making a show of tongue and teeth. Trevor shuddered almost imperceptibly. Adrian wondered if he’d forgotten about the fangs up until that moment, but he knew pride would not let him back down now.

 Adrian took him in hand, sliding back foreskin to bathe the tip of him with his tongue. He lingered there for a moment before diving in to take him fully into his mouth. There was just enough space between his fangs to slide Trevor’s cock between them without nicking skin. Adrian slid tender lips down his shaft, trying to take him all the way in, gagging a little as the head of his cock touched his throat. He recovered and wrapped his tongue around him, sliding back up to lick again and taking him back down. As he found a confidence in his rhythm, Trevor’s grip in his hair tightened, guiding him, quickening the pace until he was practically fucking his mouth. Adrian’s eyes were watering and his saliva was escaping his mouth to drip in Trevor’s pubic hair and there was a part of Adrian’s brain that said he shouldn’t like this but it was barely audible under the part of him that was moaning with it. He brought a hand up to caress Trevor’s testicles.

Trevor’s pulse under his tongue and lips was so good, so tantalizing that Adrian almost couldn’t resist—well, why not a little? He let one fang scrape over the shaft, drawing a line of blood. Trevor cried out in alarm and tried to jerk away, letting go of Adrian’s hair, but Adrian gripped his hips and held him fast, sucking him with greater abandon with the taste of his blood in his mouth. Trevor gave in, his initial cry of pain collapsing into moans. It wasn’t long before he was tugging at his hair again, and Adrian realized it was a warning, a question, one Adrian answered by continuing his pace unperturbed. Trevor finished with a shuddering gasp, filling Adrian’s mouth with the astringent taste of him.

Adrian rose to sit on his knees, making a show of licking the mingled blood and come from his lips and teeth.

“Hell,” Trevor swore, and groaned. “Maybe should have thought twice before making a bloody vampire suck me off. Jesus.”

“Were you displeased?” Adrian asked archly.

“Fuck no,” he said, collapsing against the pillows. “Jesus.”

Adrian gave a self-satisfied chuckle. Sypha came behind him and hugged him. The soft warmth of her was somehow even more comforting, more inviting, now that Adrian was spent. They collapsed onto the bed. Trevor joined them after he had recovered, arranging blankets around the three of them.

Cuddled between them, sticky and warm and satisfied, Adrian slept more soundly and peacefully than he had since he woke from his hibernation beneath Gresit.

Chapter 12: before breakfast

Notes:

his one's mostly porn, sure you'll understand &etc

Adrian woke slowly. Without opening his eyes, he noticed only that he was conspicuously comfortable. Not only was he warm and lying on silken sheets over a soft mattress, his muscles were so relaxed he felt as if he could dissolve into the bed. Yet he knew when he moved he would feel light as air. He was naked, he realized as he shifted. The bare skin of his back slid against the sheets. He didn’t normally sleep naked.

His most recent memories came crashing back to him and his eyes snapped open.

There they were. It had been real. Sypha lay to his right, curled on her side just out of his reach. Trevor lay on his stomach to his left, breathing heavily in his sleep. Adrian could feel the warmth radiating from their bodies.

He reviewed the events of the previous day and night in his head, a heady mix of embarrassment and pleasure. Sypha and Trevor’s argument, pinning Trevor to the tree, kissing him in the kitchen, being carried off to bed, asking them to stop…. Sypha guiding him to her pleasure, Trevor in his mouth.

He could not have imagined this yesterday morning.

He sat, slowly, carefully, not wanting to wake them. Pale, early morning sunlight was filtering in through the diamond panes of the arched windows. He gazed tenderly at the faces of his friends, his lovers. Trevor’s face was soft, relaxed in sleep. A trail of drool was at the corner of Sypha’s mouth. It was somehow endearing. The covers had slid down Trevor’s back, leaving him bare to the waist. Adrian admired the muscles of his back, the barely visible curve of his ass. He hesitated a moment before he dared, but he lifted the cover to peek at Sypha, taking in the how her position on her side changed the shape of her breasts, how the way that she lay exaggerated the narrowness of her waist and the generous swell of her hip. He let the cover drop and rolled his gaze toward the ceiling, recovering from the sights.

Adrian had to stop himself from wriggling like a delighted child. He sat like that in dazed bliss until Sypha began to stir, stretching.

Adrian delighted as she took in a deep breath, as her lashes fluttered. He felt a little thrill to see her eyes open. She wiped the drool from her chin with the back of her hand. She saw him and seemed to do the same quick, mental review he had. Her mouth cracked into a grin.

“Good morning, beautiful,” she said, and scooted closer to him as Adrian lay back down, facing her. She hooked a leg around his waist. She closed her eyes for moment, still sleepy, and Adrian felt another little thrill as she opened them again.

Her eyes themselves were lovely, of course, large and blue, but it wasn’t their physical beauty which transfixed him. He felt as though he could see through them to her fiery heart, and the beauty of that, the beauty of that consciousness turned fully on him, held him spellbound.

“Oh to have you look at me like that,” Sypha whispered.

Adrian closed his eyes for a moment, and Sypha ran a hand down his back and his ribs.

When he opened his eyes again, Sypha was still looking at him, cupping a hand against his face. “Yes I see you,” she said, gazing deep into his eyes. “Trevor is so hard to get like this. I’m glad. That you don’t have so many walls up guarding your soul, yet.”

“Sypha,” Adrian could only breathe, the confirmation that she was feeling something like he was, something like falling into her eyes and catching a glimpse of her deepest self, made the whole experience a little terrifying. The sensation entered through his eyes, but he felt it as a kind of physical ecstasy. He could feel goosebumps rising all over his body as she caressed him, until finally he couldn’t handle the intensity of it any longer and he closed his eyes and pressed his face into her shoulder.

“I love you,” he said, not meaning to say it. It was too soon. But he meant it all the same.

“I know,” she breathed, clutching him. “I love you, you precious, beautiful creature. I’m going to have to love you so hard.”

They were still clutching each other when Trevor woke, and rolled toward them, and threw a heavy arm around them both, bringing them all back to Earth.

“I have never felt this good in my entire life,” Adrian said with conviction.

Trevor chuckled darkly. “I’m sure we can do better.”

“I’m having trouble imagining.”

“Some things have to be experienced before they can be imagined,” he said, kissing the back of his neck.

Adrian groaned. “I should probably make breakfast,” he said, not moving.

“It can wait,” Trevor said, letting his hand wander down his body.

Adrian pressed himself flush to Trevor’s chest, reaching behind him to grab his thigh and pull that closer to him too.

“Yeah, it’s not food you’re hungry for,” Trevor said, leaning to kiss Adrian’s ear and down the curve of his neck while curving his hand to caress the inside of his thigh.

Seeking more, ever more, Adrian pulled Sypha to him to kiss her, but she pulled away, saying “No, you shouldn’t! I have morning breath.”

Adrian gave a soft growl of frustration. Her toothbrush was probably on the other side of the castle and he wasn’t leaving Trevor’s arms. “I’ll simply kiss you somewhere else, then,” he said, and did so, kissing down the side of her neck, reaching out to let his hands run down her back, her rear, her thigh, getting lost in the haze of touching and being touched, loving and being loved.

He pushed Sypha gently onto her back and kissed down her chest, pausing on his way down to tease a nipple with his tongue. All the while, Trevor followed him, his hands barely leaving Adrian’s skin.

He settled between her legs, parting her with his fingers to get a look at what he had previously only touched. He followed the path his hands had the previous night, licking up the center. She was dripping wet, the taste of her earthy and sour-sweet. He liked the way she felt under his tongue and licked and sucked at her, without direction at first.

As he set to, Trevor was tugging at his thighs, urging his hips higher. He obliged him, not knowing why until a calloused hand wrapped around his cock.

“Oh,” he breathed against Sypha, and tried to set back to his work. He tried the trick of listening to her heartbeat again, but in the chaos of his own heartbeat, and Trevor’s, and Trevor’s hand, he struggled to follow it. He buried his face in her, savored the taste and the feel of her, and hoped for the best. He remembered what Trevor had said about the backs of her thighs, information that he had failed to put to good use the night before, and brushed the fingertips of both hands down the backs of her legs.

She gasped as goosebumps rose under Adrian’s fingers.

Adrian continued to lick her through a low buzz of his own pleasure, occasionally dragging his nails lightly over her skin. The pace Trevor was setting was slow, teasing, and at some point he paused to lick his own hand and bring it back between Adrian’s legs, slicking that slow slide. Eventually Sypha was moaning and her legs trembling around Adrian’s ears as he himself was pushing himself into Trevor’s hand, wishing he would give him more.

“You should fuck her now if you want to feel her come around you,” Trevor said, still working him slowly, a suggestion that somehow made Adrian blush, even with how open they all already were to each other now.

“What about you?” Adrian asked, lifting himself on his elbows.

“Don’t worry about me,” Trevor said, letting go of him and pushing him lightly forward.

Adrian met Sypha’s eyes, and she nodded, panting. He pulled her hips up to where he entered her while sitting on his knees, mostly upright. She was tight, tight around him, and Adrian had a moment to appreciate, in the morning light, how pink her face and her chest flushed, how her chest heaved with her breath as she rocked her hips up to meet him.

Trevor wrapped his arms around Adrian’s chest, caressing him as he worked, the hardness of him teasing against the cleft of Adrian’s ass. When he and Sypha had established a rhythm, Trevor hissed in his ear in a stage whisper loud enough for Sypha to hear too.

“Don’t worry about me, because after this she’ll take me too. Isn’t that right, Sypha?”

Sypha just moaned in response.

“That’s why I let you in our bed,” Trevor said slowly. “Could use a little help. Takes a lot of work keeping this one down,” he said, reaching to caress Sypha’s knee. And it was mean, really, but it was probably also true, because her rhythm was getting more ragged, moans getting more frequent, with Trevor’s words.

“That and because,” he caressed the column of Adrian’s throat with one hand, and lowered his voice to where only Adrian could hear, a low hiss in his ear. “You’re awfully pretty. Maybe I’ve made a mistake. It’s not going to be any less work for me, is it? Because you’re going to need fucking too.” He licked his ear. “You want it, don’t you? You’re thinking about it right now.”

“Fucking—hard not to with you right against my ass,” Adrian ground out.

“But you want it, don’t you?”

“Y—yesss,” he hissed.

“Ah,” Trevor said with delight. “Hilt deep in a woman and you want more.”

Why did hearing that, why did being so read, so caught in his greed, sharpen his arousal? How could it, when he was already at the pinnacle? He slowed in his pace, struggling not to end it there

“It’s alright. You were built for it, weren’t you? So pretty. Every moment you’re not being fucked is a crime.”

Adrian moaned and privately agreed, or least agreed that it was a crime Trevor wasn’t fucking him at that precise moment. Even with his heart stuttering a staccato as he drove into Sypha, even as Trevor caressed him and whispered in his ear, even as his senses were overwhelmed. He wanted to not just be overwhelmed, but annihilated.

Sypha came, with a long, low moan, seizing around him like her body wanted to keep him, dragging Adrian, who had been teetering on the edge, along with her.

Trevor urged Sypha onto her hands and knees as Adrian collapsed beside her. Trevor pressed into her from behind, building slowly to a relentless rhythm that rattled the huge bed. Sypha arched her back and fell with her face to the mattress, making meaningless, muffled noises into the bedspread while Adrian looked on in vague horror. Their animalistic coupling seemed like something that wasn’t supposed to be witnessed from the outside. He knew Sypha had to be thrumming with the aftereffects of orgasm as he was, and he couldn’t imagine taking this much more.

Does she like this? Adrian wondered. Will I?

Trevor and Adrian’s eyes met for a moment, and perhaps feeling as if he’d been caught in something, Trevor closed his eyes and looked away, but he flagged from his attentions to Sypha only briefly.

Adrian watched Trevor in his moment of release. Trevor pulled Sypha’s hips into him in one last, hard thrust as his mouth twisted and his brows knit, his face a picture of vulnerability in what was otherwise a show of force. Sypha, for her part, whimpered as they extricated and fell into a fetal position.

“You good?” Trevor asked after he caught his own breath.

“Oh,” Sypha answered, her voice slightly muffled.

Trevor chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said. Sypha only moaned again with her face still in the bedspread.

“She was still pulsing from you when I started,” Trevor said to Adrian as he made himself comfortable against the pillows.

“Agh,” Sypha said, still not moving.

“Sypha?” Adrian asked with a trace of genuine concern.

“I’m alright,” she said, raising a hand weakly. “Just. Recovering the ability to talk. Ugh, I know what you’re going to say and don’t,” she said as she crawled shakily to Trevor and curled against him.

“That I—we—fucked the speaker speechless?”

“Mmmgghh,” Sypha said against his chest.

Adrian knelt, looking down at them, unsure of which he wanted to touch, unsure if he should. Sypha looked at him through slit eyes and patted the bed beside her, and Adrian settled beside her, the press of his chest against her back still a new and glorious comfort.

The three of them did nothing but breathe until Sypha wriggled onto her back, looking between Trevor and Adrian in wonder.

“What?” Trevor asked, one arm around her, looking at her through barely open eyes.

“How is it possible that both of you want me?”

Adrian let out a breath, the ghost of a laugh, as he put his hand on top of Trevor’s where it rested on Sypha’s hip.

“I know the feeling,” Trevor said softly.

Adrian knew the feeling too.

Notes:

Oh if you want to follow me on Twitter I am @wanderaesthetic

Chapter 13: shopping

Summary:

that making out at stoplights kind of love

Notes:

I'm alive! And I intend to finish this fic one day.

Adrian stared into the pantry. There was a glass bottle of cooking oil on one of the nearest shelves. He gauged how much of the viscous, amber-green fluid was left. Enough for the next few days of cooking, or enough to… well. He had enough for one or the other, but not both.

“We need to go to market,” he said out loud.

There was a long silence from his two companions.

“Hmm,” Sypha said as she chewed on her breakfast, which was really more like lunch at this hour. “The nearest village is….”

“Gherdeal,” Trevor said.

“I take it you’re familiar with it?”

“We are on my family’s ancestral lands,” Trevor pointed out. “I did grow up here, in case you’ve forgotten. I take it you haven’t gone shopping in the, what, three months you’ve been here?”

“There was no need. My needs are few, the land provided for them.” Adrian watched Trevor closely.

“Lucky you,” Trevor said bitterly.

 “I know we avoided the village on our way here, last time,” Sypha said. “Is there a reason?”

“Those villagers killed my family. We knew these people. We protected these people. We bought bread from these people, and they killed my father, barred the doors, and set the manor ablaze.”

“Ah,” Adrian said softly. “Forgive me.” He was silent for a long moment. “Perhaps… Well, we can put it off for some time, but not endlessly. I’ve avoided walking among humans, myself. Given that they have to have noticed the castle by now…. They may be more prone to recognize what I am. Who I am.”

“How far is the next village?” Sypha asked.

“About two days ride,” Trevor said wearily. “It’s not worth it. I’m not cowering in here forever.”

“Do you think anyone would recognize you?” Sypha asked.

Trevor stared at the table. “I don’t know. A stranger coming from the direction of the old manor lands, they might put it together. However, of the three of us, I’m the least suspicious.”

“I’m not letting you face people who killed your family alone,” Sypha said.

“No,” Adrian agreed. He feared, not just for Trevor, but for whoever might come into his path.

“So a lone speaker, a heretic who’s supposed to be dead, and a half vampire walk into the village common to buy turnips. In a tiny village where gossip travels fast.”

There was a long silence that Sypha finally broke.

“The three of us defeated Dracula. Are we truly afraid to go into town to buy groceries?”

“Not so afraid I won’t do it,” Trevor said. “But I can’t promise there won’t be violence, and even if there isn’t, are you prepared for word to get out that you’re here?” Trevor asked Adrian.

“No,” Adrian said, reminding Trevor of the moment before they had faced off against Dracula’s generals. “But we’re going to have to rip that bandage off soon. And, I’ve been thinking, if I am going to enter into the world as… as my father’s son, I’ll need to make some preparations. I’ll need allies, if I can get them, I’ll need to hold court, in one way or another, which requires…. All sorts of things. Servants, probably, first and foremost.”

“What kind of servants? Demons? Vampires?”

“Humans, most likely.”

“Would you--would you enthrall them?” Trevor asked.

“No,” Adrian spit.

“Then why would any human want to serve you?”

“The same reason they would want to serve any human lord, Belmont, I would pay them. But this is in the future. I don’t want to hold court here, not yet, in any case, not with the castle in the state it’s in, and not… well, I’d hoped we could prolong our privacy a little further.”

“You mean you were hoping to stay in on a longer fuck holiday,” said Trevor.

“To put it crudely, which is what actually… put the thought of shopping in my mind,” he said, picking up the bottle of cooking oil again and wiggling it.

Trevor looked confused. “Were you going to… roast me?”

Funny, Alucard had imagined being more awkward about broaching this subject, but somehow in the context of teasing Trevor it was easy. “No, Belmont, I was going to slick your asshole with it.”

Sypha giggled, Trevor made a funny, purse-lipped expression. “You know I’ve never… actually…” he made a wavy gesture with his hands, smacked the heels of his palms against each other. “Done the… sex. That way. Sodomy.”

“Oh really? After you were saying how badly I needed to be fucked, you’re unable to commit the deed? I admit I am a novice in this area, but at least I know how it’s done in theory.”

“How’s it done in theory?”

Alucard snapped his mouth shut very quickly, but then began to laugh.

“Eh?”

“I can’t help but think of a pillow book I came across that said proceed then as two snails.”

“What?” it was Sypha’s turn to ask.

“Slowly, and with much slime.”

“Oh I’m sorry,” Trevor said. “I suppose you get bored, living forever, need to find new places to stick it, but….” He trailed off weakly, unable to find a place for his jibe to go. “There was never actually a man I wanted to, with, before now.”

“Really?” Adrian asked. “Never?”

“Well, I mean, I have eyes, but not to the point I ever planned on doing the deed.”

“I suppose I’m honored.”

“You should be. You’ve even motivated me to get the shopping done. Let’s go.”

“Now?”

**

The three of them gathered up the horses and piled in the wagon. Trevor and Sypha in the front, driving. Alucard sat in the covered back.

“You’re sure you’re alright back there?” Sypha asked.

“Yes, I’m comfortable,” Adrian said. In the time since he had last traveled with them, Sypha had made the wagon into a little home. Benches with assorted cushions lined the interior, with bedrolls stored underneath. Cookware and other necessary items were stored above and secured so that they barely shifted as the wagon swayed on its journey down the road. It occurred to Alucard that in a way he was visiting their home for the first time. It smelled like them underneath the smells of woodsmoke and horse. Adrian sat on the floor of the wagon, perched behind Sypha and Trevor, peeking out from the opening in the canvas. “I can’t see very well in full daylight,” he said. “It’s more pleasant back here.”

“Oh. Will you be alright once we reach the village?” Sypha asked.

“Yes, I’ll manage. It’s better in the shade. Mother always tried to convince me to wear a hat.”

“If you didn’t do it, it must not be so bad, then.”

“It makes my eyes hurt after a while, that’s all.”

In truth, as he leaned his hands on his arms to look up at them, the brightness of the sun to his eyes only made it seem like they were the only two people in the world. He stared up at them, utterly besotted and making no effort whatsoever to hide it.

Sypha looked down at him and laughed, and bent double at the waist to kiss him. Adrian turned his gaze to Trevor after she released him. He sat more stiffly than usual, and there was a downward tilt to the corner of his mouth, a tightness to his jaw.

Adrian marveled at him. They were riding into his old home town. To the people, some of whom at least, who had killed his family. He was discomfited, but not even so much that a stranger would be able to tell.

How had he ever thought this man was a useless drunk? He had resorted to some unhealthy habits, but Adrian himself had been left alone in far better circumstances for a scarce few weeks before he had begun day drinking and talking to the statuary. And he had been an adult who could easily provide for all his basic needs. What Trevor had survived when he was scarcely more than a child… it felt like a dart to Adrian’s heart.

“What?” Trevor asked when he noticed Alucard’s gaze.

Adrian shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, and took Trevor’s hand from where he had been resting it, and kissed his palm.

“Would you know those that killed your family, if you see them?” Adrian asked softly.

Trevor let out a breath through his nose. “No. I wasn’t there.”

Adrian hadn’t been there, either. When his mother was taken.

“But…” Trevor went on. “I have some idea. Of who did it. The church kicked us out, but they didn’t kill us. Didn’t try to stop it, either, but they aren’t the ones that threw the torches. There were people…. I know who did and didn’t like our family. But…” he let out a long, weary breath. “The people who shout in your face aren’t always the ones who try to stab you in the back. The truth is… I don’t know. I wish I knew.”

“Then you could avenge them.”

“Yeah. Can’t just kill everyone who didn’t stop it. I’d have to stab myself first, then, right? Anyway, it was a long time ago.”

Adrian wanted to ask him. About his family. About what they had been like. About whether or not the grief had truly faded. But they were riding into a place so full of memory. It seemed the worst possible time to ask.

“I’m sorry to reopen old wounds.”

“Can’t help it. This place…” Trevor trailed off.

“How do you want to do this, Trevor?” Sypha asked.” Announce ourselves on the village green like we’ve done before, or…”

“They’re going to figure out who Alucard and I are soon. We should go ahead and get it over with.”

“Belnades and Belmont and… Tepes,” she said slowly, glancing at Alucard. “Slayers of monsters,” she said, but with more misgiving than she’d had on her travels with Trevor. “Vanquishers of…”

“Slayers of Dracula,” Alucard said softly. “They’ve surely seen the castle. If they haven’t deduced my identity they will soon.”

“So you’re not even going to pretend to be human?” Trevor asked.

“I see very little reason to. I think the truth will serve us better than any lie that might be believed. If they aren’t grateful to us, perhaps they will at least fear us. What about you, Sypha, you’re the one of us that could retain some anonymity.”

“And let you boys take all the credit? Pffft, no.”

“Very well, then,” Adrian said.

“Belnades and Belmont and Tepes,” Sypha said.

“It’s too many names,” Trevor said.

“And you lose those alliterative ‘Bs,’” said Adrian.

“We need some sort of group name, then,” said Sypha.

“The Holy Trinity,” Trevor said, and laughed without much enthusiasm at his own blasphemy.

**

They arrived without fanfare. A woman sweeping her front step squinted at them curiously as they passed, but didn’t hail them. The village was small, an oval cluster of houses and shops situated around a church and a common lawn. A few merchants and farmers were settled in the town center, their wares in carts or resting on blankets on the green. The general mood was one of slow sleepiness, the market day winding down. Those that remained outside stared to watch the wagon approach in silence.

Sypha dismounted from the wagon and ran out ahead with her arms outstretched.

“Hello, village of Gherdeal!” she shouted. “We are Belnades and Belmont and Tepes! And if you’ve had any troubles with night creatures, we are here to help!”

There was no response to her shouts other than measured wariness and more stares.

“And if you haven’t!” she declared. “We are here to do some shopping anyway!”

A squat, balding man who had been chatting with one of the vendors widened his eyes under flyaway white eyebrows and turned and ran with surprising speed into a nearby building. A middle aged woman angled herself to stare at Trevor, who was folding his arms and sliding down on the bench seat.

“Belmont?” someone asked.

“Tepes?”  said someone else in a hiss.

“Yes!” said Sypha. “And I, speaker magician extraordinaire, Sypha Belnades!” she said with a curtsy.

The old man that had run off before was returning with a crowd behind him whom he seemed to have gathered from the public house. Alucard vaulted out of the wagon. Trevor stood and stepped down with extreme reluctance. There was a long moment where it felt like anything could happen. Alucard shifted his coat to reveal the sword at his belt but didn’t yet put a hand on it. A young man that had come from the pub strode forward to Trevor and stared him in the face. Trevor drew himself up to his full height in response, stiffening.

“It is you,” the young man said. “I wouldn’t have recognized you, you look like—“

“Gabriel,” someone said.

“He does.”

“How did he survive?”

“Did he survive? He’s traveling with—“

“Is he the younger son or the older?”

“They say it was Dracula’s son that killed him, and a witch, and a hunter with a whip, it has to be—“

“You are Trevor Belmont, aren’t you?” the young man who seemed to know Trevor said.

“Yes,” Trevor said after a pause.

The susurration went on, the crowd growing. Sypha drew back to stand near Trevor and put a hand on his arm. A well dressed man with slick, dark hair parted the crowd around Trevor. He looked Trevor in the face, his expression difficult to read, glanced toward Sypha, glanced toward Alucard with a closed expression, and back to Trevor. He seemed to do a long calculation in his head, and then dropped to one knee at Trevor’s feet.

“We owe you a debt we cannot repay,” he said to Trevor’s knees. “This village is yours if you wish it.”

Trevor looked to the sky with a flat expression and rolled his gaze back to the man in the dirt in front of him.

“Just let us buy fucking flour.”

Notes:

the snails thing is lifted from the sex ed comic Oh Joy Sex Toy (https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/) - that link is not safe for work

Chapter 14: blood and ale

Notes:

woo, how bout season 4, huh?

So, I was hesitant to continue with this fic previously, because I knew season 4 was coming for our collective asses and I had assumed (wrongly!) that as I got to the ideas I had that went beyond "3 idiots have feelings in a castle" everything I did would either happen in the final season or be totally erased by the final season. But in fact! Me n Warren Ellis had very different ideas about where this was going, and some things that I thought were inevitable definitely weren't. I generally like season 4, but I think it left some avenues and themes unexplored.

So if you'd be interested in another take on what game you could play with these pieces, stay with me as I write this slowly.

“This village is yours, if you wish it.”

Sypha had a supportive hand on Trevor’s left arm. Alucard drew up behind him, to his right.

“Stand up,” Trevor said in the voice of a man who had just woken up and was already exhausted. The man looked up at him and stood, slowly and shakily.

“Whatever you say now,” Alucard said in a voice that he hoped that Trevor, and only Trevor, could hear. “May alter the fate of these people and your offspring for generations.”

For a long moment Trevor was very still.

“I didn’t come here to rule this place,” Trevor said finally, in a voice that carried. “And I didn’t come here for revenge. If we stay here—if—it will be under the agreement between the people and the nobility as it was meant to be of old: we protect you, and you feed us. For now, I don’t want your land, I don’t want your wealth. I don’t even want your loyalty. I want peace, and a fair price on goods.”

 “And I want a drink.”

With that, he stalked off in the direction of the tavern. The man who was apparently the owner of the establishment ran after him, with a few others trailing behind. The townspeople seemed to return to their business, but there was a low buzz of unused energy, of hushed conversations happening behind hands, of furtive glances cast at Alucard and Sypha.

“Do you want to buy turnips or do you want to babysit our hunter?” Alucard asked Sypha.

Sypha watched Trevor’s departing back, her mouth in a small, tight frown. “I think it’s your turn to look after him.”

**

The pub was on the lower floor of one of the only two story buildings in town. There were a couple of steps down into it from the narrow entrance, which gave the place the air of a den. There was a hand’s breadth of space between the top of Alucard’s head and the ceiling beams. Only a few stragglers hadn’t rushed out to see the commotion on the green. All of their eyes fell on Alucard. He carefully did not return their glances, keeping his head high like the prince he was, and his eyes on his goal, who was standing at the bar.

“You realize your comment about feeding us could have been taken entirely the wrong way with me standing behind you.”

“Fuck,” Trevor said softly as he sat. He didn’t say anything else.

“I suppose this is the best outcome we could have hoped for.”

“The day’s not over yet,” Trevor said darkly.

There was a heavy silence that encompassed not just the two men but the entire tavern.

“What will you do?” Alucard asked.

Trevor peered at Alucard sideways over his tankard of ale, ice blue eyes narrowed. “What if I did it? What if I stayed here? Played lord of the manor over these people? What would you do?”

“Live here with you, if you would have me.”

Trevor wasn’t taken aback only because he didn’t believe him. “That easy? That simple?”

Alucard considered it. “Yes.”

Trevor scoffed. “Really? Some dirt village in the middle of nowhere? You’d be miserable.”

“Trevor…” Alucard sighed, leaning against the bar next to him. “I will live a very long time. Time enough to do anything I could wish. While you live, I would be where you are. Where you and Sypha are.”

The weight of that thought fell on both of them. How mad is it that I already dread losing them? Alucard thought.

“You’re serious. Til death do we part? You’ve known me, what, a few months?”

“Yes, but surely in those months I’ve seen the best and worst of you.”

“You haven’t. You haven’t seen the worst.”

“I don’t care!” Alucard said loudly enough that the nearest other patrons of the bar turned to look. “I don’t care,” Alucard repeated. “This is either love or madness, but it’s not something I can be reasoned out of. The only way you’ll be rid of me is if you make it clear you don’t want me here.”

Trevor hesitated, reached for Alucard’s hand on the bar, hesitated again, looking behind them, aware of being watched. “Fuck I hate this place.”

“That young man on the green seemed to know you,” Alucard said after a long silence.

“I knew all of these people, once. He… we used to play together. What was his name…? Cosmin? I think that’s right.”

The barman brought him a tankard, eying both Trevor and Alucard suspiciously. Alucard leaned against the bar, facing the room with faux casualness as Trevor drank.

He took a few draughts from his ale and frowned at it.

“Is it that bad?” Alucard asked.

“No, it’s…. pretty good, actually. I... It’s only….” He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t even really want this.”

The two laughed softly at that.

“Thank you,” Trevor said to his cup.

“For what?”

“For being where I am. A friend or… or, whatever you are, is better than… anything.”

Alucard, who had felt rather like he had thrown himself on Trevor and Sypha’s mercy, begging to them for some sort of salvation, said “I’m glad to return the favor.”

Someone entered the tavern, shadowed in the light from outside at first and consolidating into the figure of a young woman, her hair in a long, dark braid. Alucard straightened when he realized she was approaching them.

“Sir? You’re the one they call Alucard?”

“Yes,” Alucard said slowly. The last relationship that had started this way for him had not ended well.

“Then I would like to make you an offer,” she said, sweeping her braid behind her shoulder and pulling her high, embroidered collar down to reveal  her collarbone and a few inches of her neck.

“How very forward,” Alucard said, standing stiff.

“In exchange for payment, of course,” she said, releasing her collar.

“Of… of course,” Alucard swallowed.

She put a light hand to his elbow and said. “Come to the house two blocks behind here, door with stenciled vines on it, if that’s a yes.”

“Yes,” Alucard said dazedly. “I’ll… I’ll think on it.”

With that, she gave him a little curtsy and left them. Alucard turned away and leaned on the bar, shielding his face from view with one hand. Trevor, who had been watching the exchange over his shoulder, laughed.

“Going to take her up on it?”

“No!” Alucard said, horrified.

“Why not?”

“I don’t—I don’t need it.”

“You want it, though, don’t you?”

Alucard didn’t say anything, which was as good as a confession.

“She was pretty. Does that matter? Does that make the blood better?”

“Beauty is… generally an indicator of good health with is generally…. Yes,” Alucard said unwillingly. She’d had a sculpted face and near flawless skin, and her modest dress had not hidden her curves, but it was the few square inches of skin she had shown him, and the pulse underneath, that lodged in Alucard’s mind.

“Maybe she’d give you more than the blood, maybe that’s her idea of payment.”

“Do you really think I’m so fickle?”

“No, but it flusters you.”

Alucard gave him a murderous look. Trevor held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry, sorry, it’s funny. Why not bite her? She’s willing.”

“I don’t need it,” Alucard repeated.

“If she bares her neck to you the moment you walk into town….” Trevor said thoughtfully. “You aren’t the first vampire she’s done that for. I wonder who else?”

“That… is an interesting question. But it’s unbelievably reckless! I could easily kill her and pay her nothing! If I were more hungry or had less control, I would have! Have you any idea how tempting it is for someone to just offer themselves like that?”

“No, but I’ll keep it in mind,” Trevor said with a wicked, closed lipped smile.

“You are…” he cast about for a word that wasn’t loaded. Temptress. Devil. He leaned against the bar, putting his face in his hands.

“You wouldn’t have just sucked her dry. You’re having to talk yourself into biting her at all.”

“Why? Why do you want me to indulge myself like this?”

“Because you describe it like indulging yourself. What could it harm?”

Alucard scrubbed his face in his hands. “May I confess something to you?”

“Sure.”

“It frightens me. It frightens me how badly I want human blood. How I always want it. I fed yesterday, and I want it no less. I… drink animal blood until I have enough, until I am satisfied, until it meets my needs, but the thirst for human blood? I have never seen the bottom of it. I fear if I… make a habit of giving into it, that I won’t ever stop, that I won’t be able to stop.”

“I think I understand,” Trevor said, holding the tankard of ale in both his hands and shifting it in his hands, observing the contents. “Should I not have offered you my blood?”

“No! It was… an inspired gesture. I will ever be grateful to you for it. The trust, the willingness to break taboo for me, given your family history. It was… foolhardy, and extravagantly generous, and so… you.”

“But, should we not? Again?”

Alucard made a little miserable noise. It was terrible to think of never tasting Trevor’s blood again, even if he shouldn’t.

“Look, I saw you suck on Sypha’s wrist and the look on your face was… beyond pleasure. You need blood anyway, if some of it can make you feel like that, why not?”

“You are a devil. An enabler.”

“If you go too far, I’m the most qualified person in the world to stop you. When you go see this woman, will you let me watch?”

“Why? Why? What is this fascination?”

Trevor leaned down and said in a low voice. “I like seeing you look like you’re about to come in your pants, is that so hard to understand?”

Alucard made a light, offended, scoffing noise.

“Is it better than sex?”

Alucard stopped to think, thought long enough that he had to be honest. “Equal,” he confessed.

“If it’s an equal pleasure, and if you’re right and drinking more blood does whet your appetite…” Trevor leaned in to whisper in Alucard’s ear. “Then take it out on me and Sypha in bed.”

Alucard made a strangled noise.

“If it’s the same pleasure, then…. You should never want for anything, there. Whatever I can’t give you, Sypha can, with more to spare, probably.” He moved away so he was no longer whispering in Alucard’s ear. “You might need the blood for the extra energy.”

Alucard groaned. “You can stop, you can stop. You’ve convinced me.”

Chapter 15: ethical sourcing

Summary:

I swear I'm still writing this every now and then

“Ah, come in, Sir. Sirs,” the woman Adrian and Trevor had met in the tavern said as she bowed them into what seemed to be her home.

It was a modest wooden house that appeared to have two rooms, with a stone chimney and fireplace in the center, a fire burning in low embers in the hearth. She directed them toward a round, rough hewn table. Adrian felt quite awkward as he sat. Trevor’s eyes flicked to the exits before he sat on the edge of the offered chair.

“I suppose we should discuss payment,” Adrian said.

She named her price, steep, but fair, Adrian supposed. He pulled the asked for amount from an inner pocket. For most practical purposes, his personal wealth was infinite.

“And I won’t have you bite me, sir.”

Adrian made a little ah noise. “How do you intend…?”

“I’ll bleed myself into a cup, similar to how the leeches do.”

Adrian considered for a moment offering her more money to do it the old fashioned way.

Trevor chuckled and leaned back in his chair, peering at Alucard. “You’re disappointed.”

“I am not,” he lied. “It gives you more control over the process, Madame…?”

“Just call me Alina,” she said. “As I said, I don’t know you, sir, and I’m not trusting you so much as to put my life in your hands.” She said as she gathered up a stoneware cup and something from a box on the mantelpiece.

“Very wise,” Alucard agreed, reluctantly.

She sat beside the two men at the table, and unbuttoned and rolled up her sleeve. Adrian watched as she tied a cloth around her upper arm and pulled it tight with her teeth. The veins in her arm became visible as blood began to pool. Alucard felt his mouth water.

This is why I don’t do this. This is why I don’t give in to this. This is mortifying. I am looking at her like a dog looking at a steak.

She took the little instrument she had, a long, thin, hollow pointed needle, and poked it in the crook of her elbow. The first few drops spilled on her forearm before she deftly positioned the needle and the cup to catch it.

“May I ask you something, Alina?” Trevor asked her as they waited for the blood to flow. Alucard was very conscious of the pour and drip of the blood in the cup, the sound modulating with her heartbeat. It made the process strange and undignified, both more real and more alien. “If… bleeding doesn’t take up all your concentration. I’ve never found that it does.”

“Ask,” she said, smiling patiently.

“You’ve done this before.”

“That’s not a question,” she pointed out, her smile becoming a little wider.

“But you have?”

“Yes.”

“For who?”

“There’s a… coven? Brood? I don’t know what your term for it is, but a group of vampires that live to the east of here. A few of them have made this arrangement with myself and a friend of mine.”

“How many?”

“Three, I think.”

“Is that all?” Trevor asked. Alucard was dimly aware of their conversation, but was too focused on the drip of blood into the cup to participate.

“There’s more than that in the whole group. I don’t know how many. I understand that there are caves that way, and they’ve dug underground besides that.”

“Have there been any attacks? Anyone missing or found dead?”

“No sir, there haven’t. And from what my customers said, I don’t think most of them are drinking human blood at all. Their leader frowns on it.”

“So they’re getting by on just animal blood.”

“As I understand it, yes.”

They’ve more willpower than I, and I’m only half blooded.

“They were friendly? Didn’t cause you any trouble?”

“They weren’t making social visits, but no, no trouble.”

“Alucard, I think we might like to pay them a visit, don’t you think? Alucard?”  

It took Adrian a moment to register that he had been asked a question. “An underground vampire village, yes. I’m surprised I haven’t heard of them.”

“Well, they wouldn’t be the type to make friends with your father, would they?” Alina asked. “Sorry if that’s a sore subject.”

“As I knew him he generally wanted to keep to himself, in peace,” Adrian said softly. “But yes, those years went against his general pattern, in the end.”

“This should be enough for you,” Alina said. She pulled the needle from her arm and bound herself up with a cloth. She slid the full cup toward Alucard.

Adrian took a deep breath to take in the scent of it and swallowed before he took the first sip. He felt both Trevor’s and Alina’s eyes on him.

This is why I don’t do this! He chided himself again.

You’ve never done this before, fool. He retorted himself.

He held the first sip in his mouth and let it roll on his palate. He closed his eyes and let his eyes roll back behind closed lids.

“Oh that’s good,” he breathed out.

Trevor laughed. “Thank the lady.”

“Thank you,” Adrian said after another mouthful, apprehension mostly gone with pleasure.

“You have by far the strongest reaction to it of any of the others,” Alina said.

“I think Alucard is just… expressive.”

“What is it like?” Alina asked.

“The best food you’ve ever eaten and the strongest liquor you’ve ever drank. Or… no. Alcohol is a depressant. Blood is energizing. Some other drug. I don’t know.” He drank deeply again. “At least drinking it this way gives me opportunity to savor it, thank you.”

“This is a business transaction, no thanks needed, only coins.”

“You know, when I think about the best meals I’ve ever eaten,” Trevor said. “The food was good, sure, but it’s mostly that I was half starving when I ate it.”

“I know what you’re trying to say,” Alucard said. “And we’ll continue that discussion later. If I didn’t know better, I would think you were on the payroll of our new friend here.”

“Only just met him today,” Alina said cheerfully. “Though I would appreciate a return customer.”

**

“So you, what? Think that I’m starving myself?” Alucard asked as they left the little house.

“Maybe. It’s just. It doesn’t add up. A vampire drinks about a person a night, and that’s draining them. You’re drinking far less than half of that.”

“I’ve generally avoided drinking human blood, but…. I have to be in great need before animal blood is appetizing to me at all.” Alucard let out a breath. “It’s often said that there’s no manual for being a vampire. Even less so for being half vampire.”

“There’s not exactly a manual for being human either.”

“No, I suppose not. I suppose you do what your parents did, mostly.”

“Which isn’t an option for you.”

“No.”

“I guess we all just… eat when we’re hungry. Sleep when we’re tired. Drink when we’re thirsty.”

“So I’ll continue as I have been. Drink human blood when I can, ethically, but otherwise….”

“It seems unfair,” Trevor said. “Like if I had to live on beets or something.”

“I rather like beets.”

“You would. They taste like dirt.”

“They do rather taste like rich soil, which tastes like iron, which tastes like…”

“Blood. Did you ever…” Trevor seemed to chew on his words for a moment. “Have you ever…? Drained someone dry? Killed them?”

“Yes. Once. It was self defense,” Alucard said, answering the next question he knew Trevor would ask in a low voice. “A hunter. Not as good as you.”

“Would you have done the same to me?”

 “Do you really need to ask?” Alucard asked, glancing at him. “Yes,” he said, hissing out the s. “And I’d have relished it. I have sometimes wished…” he trailed off.

“What?”

“Well. That someone would attack me, just to give me reason. So I could… without guilt.” He glanced at Trevor sideways. “I’m surprised you’re not more disturbed to hear me say this.”

“Once you accept the idea that you can crave human blood without being a baby eating monster, the rest sort of slides into place as a logistical problem. And, I don’t know, I guess it’s professional interest. It’s not exactly something I’ve gotten to see before. Usually if you saw a vampire feed you’d fucked up so badly you were not coming back from it.”

“The fact that you’re trying to persuade me to drink more blood, though, that’s…”

“Were you disappointed she didn’t let her bite you?”

“At first, but drinking it from the glass has its advantages.”

“I was disappointed.”

“You’re…” Alucard stared at him. “Are you a voyeur? Are you… Oh. Oh. I think I understand.”

“What?”

“You’ve…. You’re…. This is a fetish.”

“What?”

“A… a sexual fascination with something that isn’t, strictly speaking, sexual.” He stared as Trevor did not meet his eyes. “I’m right, aren’t I? You find this erotic.”

“I…”

“When you were a little boy,” Adrian said, talking very fast now. “Did they tell you that only very, very bad little hunters got caught and bit by vampires and the thought was just oh so terrible you couldn’t.  Stop. Thinking about it?”

Trevor didn’t say anything, but his face was very still. Alucard grinned wickedly.

“And then, oh! You were a god-fearing little thing, weren’t you? Only the most terrible women desired your flesh, and only the worst little boys found themselves in bed with them. But if, if she were a vampire who caught you, and you had no choice. Oh! What if she tied you to the bed? What if she made it last for days.”

Alucard stood very close to Trevor and looped a hand around his waist. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you aren’t disturbed that I wanted to devour you when first we met, because some part of you actually wants me to do it. To just… give in.”

Trevor pulled away. He put a hand to his face, rubbing his stubble and covering his mouth. “You are. I am…”

“How near am I to the mark?” Adrian said, slipping away and walking ahead of Trevor as if he had said nothing unusual.

“I, uh, it was. In the fantasy. Nightmare. Dream? It was. It was… several vampires.”

“Oh, how greedy. I won’t be sharing you. Well,” Adrian amended with a laughing smile. “I will share you with Sypha but she doesn’t share… all of my appetites.”

“But I hope you know,” Adrian said, turning back to him, suddenly sincere. “I wouldn’t actually hurt you. Not so much that you wouldn’t recover quickly, and not even that without your consent. I value your person far more than I value your blood, which is… a very great deal. As much as I wanted to devour you when we first met, you’re far more tempting now.”

“Why?” asked Trevor, looking befuddled. “And don’t tell me it’s because I’ve had a bath.”

“It is that, but also…” Alucard paused in their walking to consider him, and Trevor followed suit, standing beside him. “You look better. Not just cleanliness. Your skin and your hair look better. I suppose because Sypha’s been taking care of you and you haven’t been pissing out all your nutrients with drink. You’ve put on a little weight as well.”

Trevor put a hand to his belly uncomfortably. Alucard laughed at him. “It’s mostly muscle. I’m telling you, you look good.”

“Good enough to eat, apparently.”

“Good enough to not eat despite my very great desire to,” Alucard said silkily. “Good enough to reserve for better purpose.”

 “I… I know I’m stronger. A lot stronger,” Trevor said. “I thought it was because I was actually staying in practice, but…. You’re probably right.”

“I would have you well and whole,” Alucard said softly. “Maybe even a little spoiled. Though…” Alucard said, stepping very close to Trevor. “If it goes much further, we’re going to need to buy you new clothes.” He placed light fingers on his chest. “Your shirts are beginning to struggle to hold you.”

Trevor reddened as he had somehow not done as they had talked of vampires and tying to bedposts. “Ugh,” Trevor said as they began walking again. “I like this shirt. It’s still new. Sypha bought it for me.”

“Oh, then, perhaps she merely liked the look of you in it.”

“Maybe I’ll take a leaf out of your book and start wearing my shirts open to the navel.”

“I do no such thing,” Alucard said, putting an offended hand to his (bare) breastbone.

Trevor raised his eyebrows at him.

“Should I cover up?” Alucard asked waspishly. “Do I have something to be ashamed of?”

“No, no. I just think it’s funny that you have absolutely no awareness that you dress like a whore.”

Alucard made a shocked, scoffing noise. “An expensive one, surely.”

Trevor laughed hard enough he had to stop walking to lean a hand on one knee for a moment . “You know, I actually,” he said once he recovered. “I… I really like you.”

Alucard’s mouth did a soft little twist. He twitched a hand out to Trevor, reconsidered the fact that they were in a public street, and shoved both his hands in his pockets. “Likewise.”

“Vampires don’t really….” Alucard said after a time. “The mores are entirely different. Clothes are to accentuate the body, not to hide it.” He frowned. “There are a thousand small things I don’t think about…. I… I really don’t pass as human at all, do I?”

“You, ah, should probably ask someone else about that. In daylight, it’s mostly that you stand out. So anyone is going to naturally look at you and realize that there’s something off. Or… possibly not. People don’t really notice things they’re not primed to look for. In a way, it’s a gift,” he said, scratching his back.

“I can’t see how.”

“You can’t hide who you are. I got the Belmont crests embroidered on all my clothes as a fuck you, I’m still here, and then I spent half my time hiding anyway.”

“I fear we’ve both made a terrible mistake, announcing our presence here. I’m afraid there’s going to be no safe harbor for us anywhere.”

“We’re going to have to form our own alliance out of necessity. Or… paranoia. I’ll see if I can get these villagers on our side. And we should probably pay those vampires in the east a visit.”

“Yes, I…  find I’m rather eager to meet them.”

“And the Speakers would probably align themselves with us.”

“This is adding up. Just how many allies do you think we need?”

“It depends on who our enemies are.”

“Any opportunistic vampires who want to grab power after my--Dracula’s death.”

“And the church, possibly. It depends on who’s taken leadership, after Targoviste. Maybe we’ll get a nice surprise and they’ll want to kiss our arses.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“We need information, is the key. I… should be more friendly, talk with the townsfolk. And….” He gritted his teeth. “There’s probably a priest here somewhere. I’ll go to the church, start there.”

“It… seems better if I don’t accompany you, there. What should I do?”

“Find Sypha, keep her company, make sure she doesn’t burn anything down. And… look forward to using your cooking oil.”

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of This Yawning Need, This Endless Want