Work Text:
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enameling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Excerpt from Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
*
The Demeter was not, strictly speaking, a passenger vessel, but in such times as these when no sailor could predict how the sea would greet him in a week nor what cost would be levied against him for ease of passage from one port to the next in even a day, to declare oneself or one’s ship strictly anything was a privilege few could afford to exert. To that end, there existed on the Demeter an additional cabin not used by Captain or crew. A cabin that was not used at all for every nine voyages out of ten, but on the tenth was considered passable enough accommodation for whoever had the coin necessary to afford it.
While such an event wasn’t the norm, neither was it unheard of. Men, the Captain of the Demeter knew, could be possessive of their property and mistrustful of foreigners in equal measure and experience had taught him that the sum of those conditions only exacerbated their parts. There had been enough occasions in the past where a client insisted on having a man of his own aboard to keep an eye on their cargo (and, it went without saying, the men hired to transport it) that keeping a cabin for such occasions only made sense. The Captain had no objection to this, of course, so long as the man in question was well behaved and his occupancy paid for.
To have a client who had already employed the Demeter to transfer some cargo offer additional payment to also transport a passenger was then not so out of the ordinary to cause alarm. For that passenger to be a young man who the Captain was instructed to be left entirely to his own company was less ordinary, but Mr. Billington’s explanation for the request was sound enough that the Captain had no objections to it.
Life at sea was not without its risks. The Captain knew injury, both in himself and others. He knew, too, the way injuries to the head in particular could change a man. That one who had suffered such while traveling through Europe and was being delivered back to his family in England required solitude for the sake of his frayed nerves was nothing to arouse alarm. Mr. Billington had written that the man was healthy enough that he could take care of himself and attend to his own needs, that all that was required from the Captain was to be assured he was not interfered with and provided access to basic necessities. These were fair requests by the Captain’s standards. It would be no hardship to comply. The Captain had certainly taken on passengers who asked for far more than that and paid far less for the trouble.
That his first mate had made the comment that allowing invalids aboard a ship was bad luck was a warning easily discarded, particularly after pointing out the additional fee they’d been paid for their agreement which his first mate had already received his share of and that this passenger would not be the first of fragile mind to be brought on board.
“After all,” the Captain said with a sidelong glance, “do we not allow for yourself?”
His first mate sucked his teeth and shook his head in as much annoyance as fondness and then let out a bark of a laugh that settled the matter.
At the beginning of July they would take in their cargo – some boxes of silver sand and earth, and a single passenger – and begin the journey from Varna to Whitby where each would be delivered in no worse a condition than which they were loaded aboard.
The Captain only hoped, as he did on every voyage, for calm seas and that the bribes extracted from him along the way didn’t make their payment out to be a paltry compensation by the time they came ashore.
*
Later, Jonathan would think it a cruel sort of irony that after spending so long attempting to escape the castle that he could remember nothing of how he left.
He would never recall the day the Count rose from the bed they’d shared for nearly a week and smiled down at him with his red-wet mouth and declared it was time for them to depart. How he was pulled from sheets stained with blood and sweat and seed and led to a tub of scalding water where he was thoroughly bathed by the Count’s own hand or how he was dressed in the Count’s own clothing, the Count gently smoothing out the wrinkles in his shirt, buttoning his trousers and slipping on his shoes the way a mother might for a son not yet old enough to dress himself. He’d recall nothing of the way he limped down the stairs with the Count’s hand at his elbow, a strong but gentle grip guiding him. The moment the door opened. The way the sun shined on his face bright enough to burn his eyes and make him sway. The Count’s hand leaving his elbow and coming to rest on his shoulder, grip harder, steadying him, making sure he didn’t stumble. Or run.
Later, Jonathan would remember nothing of leaving the castle or anything of the journey to Varna, the carriage only occupied by himself and the Count, or the liberties the Count took of him along the way.
He would not remember anything of boarding the ship, either, but only of the moment he woke up within it.
He would remember gasping as he shot up from an unfamiliar bed, the first glimpse of the unfamiliar room around him and the oddity he felt at being in it, these four walls made not of stone but wood and the sense of being misplaced, of being wrong-footed at having gone to sleep in one setting and having awoken in a different one entirely. He would remember standing and stumbling as much because of the aches in his body as due to the rocking of the ship and the realization that he must have been on a ship at all. He would remember making his way to the door and his elation when he turned the knob and it opened for him so easily. He would remember leaving the cabin and nearly running to the edge of the ship to take in the bright blue of the ocean, heedless of the looks shot to him by the sailors onboard as they took in his pallid face and his white knuckled grip on the railing and the way he breathed so quick as though in panic. He would remember the sudden sense of overwhelming relief washing over him as though it were the tide coming in at last. How he’d been so sure in that moment and in the hours after that somehow he’d managed to escape after all, regardless of whether he could remember it or not.
He would remember thinking: finally, I’m free. Mina, my love, I’m coming home. God, please forgive me.
More than anything, however, Jonathan would remember that night.
He would remember how all of his relief died when the Count returned.
*
In a way, it was the greatest cruelty Jonathan had suffered thus far for his first day aboard the Demeter to have been something of a good one. It was as cruel as it was naive how easily Jonathan had been lulled into thinking everything was all right.
He stood at the edge of the ship for what seemed like hours. His breathing, too fast; his heartbeat, frantic. The entire ocean stretched out before him and inexplicably his first glimpse of it was more enclosing than the inner walls of the castle had ever been. Jonathan gripped the banister until splinters bit into his palms as he tried to stifle the sense of panic creeping up his spine, the crawling sense of wrongness so at odds with his relief. It took a long while for the feeling to leave him and be replaced by something resembling calm and then for his calm to be met with curiosity as all at once Jonathan realized he wasn’t alone.
There were other men aboard, of course – normal men, men nothing like the Count. Jonathan cast sidelong glances at them and took in their forms, swallowing hard at the nervousness that assailed him. He was being foolish, he knew. It was not so long ago that he had longed for any company besides that of the Count and now that he had it, he found himself frightful of the prospect. He squeezed the banister harder. He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths of salted air. Only once his heart was not beating as though a drum played inside his chest did he allow himself to turn around fully, away from the ocean and towards the deck.
None of the men were paying any real attention to Jonathan, much to his relief. He caught the occasional glance, but he sensed nothing hostile in the looks. Only curiosity, if that. Jonathan watched them for longer and found himself growing calmer as he took in the mundanity of it all. They were only sailors, these men, no different from the sailors who had taken him away from England, all hard at work at their own tasks. These men were rougher than any company he was used to, but there was a sort of relief in that, too. Better their rough, well worn shirts and trousers than the intricate clothing the Count had worn. Better their tans, sunburn, and swarth than the Count’s pale skin. Better they see Jonathan as of no consequence at all than to lavish on him the singular, gentle smothering sort of attention he’d never quite become used to.
Jonathan assured himself of these things until he began to believe them and only then did he gather enough courage to approach one of the men in hopes of questioning him.
Yet, it seemed his courage was for naught as the man he approached knew not a word of English and only spoke in languages Jonathan couldn’t identify. None of them were the language he’d heard in Transylvania, he didn’t think, but a cousin to it perhaps. The same was to be said of the next man he found and the next, each of them shaking their head at him in incomprehension before they went back to their work as though he’d never approached them at all. His luck only changed when one fellow apparently took pity on him and gently took Jonathan by the elbow, only smiling at him the way one might smile at a stray cat he was trying to coax when Jonathan flinched at the touch.
“Captain,” this man said in his accented voice, and nodded his head in a certain direction. He stressed the word again, “Captain, da?”
Jonathan’s attempts to make further conversation went nowhere as ‘captain’ seemed to be the only word in English the man knew, but Jonathan supposed that was enough. He followed the man to the helm where they approached a tall, grizzled sort of fellow who must have been the Captain. The man who led Jonathan there exchanged some words with him before the Captain nodded and the man left them with a friendly pat to Jonathan’s arm.
This time, Jonathan was more able to suppress the flinch.
The Captain inclined his head at Jonathan kindly and he seemed such an assured and competent sort from his bearing that Jonathan hoped that his luck would change then, but while the Captain knew more words and phrases in English than did his crew they were not enough to make much conversation. Still, he was open and patient and knew enough of Jonathan’s language to answer some of his questions though it was slow going and required some bit of miming.
It was enough for Jonathan to know the important things, at least: that they were en route to Whitby, that Jonathan was the only passenger aboard, and that when he said the name Count Dracula, the Captain showed no recognition at all.
Jonathan left the Captain with as much of a friendly parting as he could with the language barrier between them and for a lack of anywhere else to go, slowly made his way back to the edge of the ship where he stood, awkward and unnerved. He stared out at the ocean and his throat tightened as he took in the vastness of it.
There was nothing but sea before him now, but it was only a matter of time before they reached familiar land. The reality of it seemed impossible. Overwhelming in a way that his first voyage by sea had not been. To think after all the time he’d spent in the castle, trapped with Count Dracula, he was now so far away and so close to returning home. How he had gotten there seemed less relevant in the face of the fact that he was there at all, that he might actually see Mina within a matter of weeks when he had been so convinced that never would he be able to lay eyes on her again.
The thoughts were as sweet as they were bitter for it was impossible to think of returning home without also thinking of where he was leaving and all that had occurred in that wretched place. Jonathan’s thoughts went to the Count against his will, to the last memory he had of him, to the Count’s bed...to the things Jonathan had allowed the Count to do to him there.
Something twisted in Jonathan’s stomach as the images of those acts replayed themselves in his mind. Acts that Jonathan had complied with. That he’d done so under the notion that he would secure his escape seemed to mean so little now, a bit of protesting too much after the fact. Jonathan hadn’t wanted it, but he hadn’t fought the Count, either. He had, in fact, kissed the Count back. He allowed the Count inside his body. He allowed the monster to drink his own blood. He allowed it even after he knew the key he had been so determined to find was not to be found within the Count’s chamber at all and there was nothing for him to gain by continuing the ruse of reciprocation – and yet reciprocate was exactly what Jonathan had continued to do.
And he found pleasure in it.
Heat crawled up the back of Jonathan’s neck as he thought of it and he swayed because of more than the rocking of the ship. To recall how he’d spilled himself in the Count’s hand that first time and then countless times after in the Count’s own bed, to feel even now how his cock stirred at the memories even if his stomach also clenched with nausea.
It would have been so much easier to tell himself that it was all just to ensure his own survival had he only bore the act, but Jonathan knew his own behavior went beyond just allowance and compliance. He’d not only complied, but participated. His body enjoyed what the Count did to him and there was nothing more shameful than that, not only for who the Count was or what he was but for the fact that Jonathan broke the promise he’d made to Mina in the process. He’d been so weak, so pathetic. He’d disgraced Mina with another and such vile another at that. His own body disgraced her even now as it reacted to the memories with more than just the shame and sickness he should feel. To think that he was looking forward to seeing her, that he was overjoyed at the prospect – as though he was worthy of it!
How could he bear to ever look at Mina again knowing what he’d done? God, how could he return to her arms knowing what he’d done in the arms of the Count? As though any reunion they had wouldn’t be tainted as Jonathan had tainted himself and the promise he’d made to her that she would only ever be the one for him as he would be the only one for her. As though he had any right at all to embrace Mina when he’d accepted the Count’s embrace for days on end.
Any joy he felt at the prospect of returning to England was muted in the face of the reality that the man Jonathan had been when he left would not be the man who stepped off the Demeter when they reached Whitby. For so long he’d thought only of escaping the Count, but only now did he realize that he’d not thought nearly enough of what would happen should he manage.
And now, too, Jonathan knew there was no escaping some things. He might have put the Castle behind him, but the memories of what happened there remained and those were no less a prison than one made of locked doors and stone walls. More of one, perhaps, for Jonathan could see no way possible for a man to escape his own mind.
*
Jonathan remained in his maudlin solitude there at the side of the ship even as the sun moved ever lower across the sky and the sailors moved to and fro in their various duties. It was only when the sun seemed about to sink beneath the ocean and the deck was nearly deserted that Jonathan took a last deep breath and turned away from his post.
His legs ached as he made his way back to the cabin he’d awakened in, a consequence of standing still for far too long and older hurts in his body besides. He found himself grateful that the walk was a short one. Once at the cabin door, he opened it and stepped through a few paces before pausing, taking the time now to observe the cabin more deeply than he had after first waking – though, truthfully, there was nothing of particular interest to observe. The cabin consisted of very little: only a bed big enough for a single man to be comfortable in one corner, a small table next to it with a lit lantern and box of matches atop, a large chest at the bottom of the bed, and a single round window high in the center of the wall. There was no decoration, no personal touch, no excess that might have made the cabin more welcoming. It was only a spartan room meant to take a man from one place to the next with no invitation to linger in its sparse furnishings.
Still, Jonathan could find no fault with it. The room was clean and far more importantly it was nothing like any room in the Count’s castle. For the latter reason alone, Jonathan would have been pleased with it even if it had been a hovel covered in filth.
He’d only just considered his observations at an end and made the decision that he would close the door and make his way to the bed to attempt to sleep when suddenly the door shut from behind him by no hand of his own. Jonathan’s heartbeat spiked in his chest at the shock of the sound and he spun around in haste only to freeze as he took in the figure of the person leaning back against the closed door.
The figure which was all too familiar and not a person at all.
“I apologize for startling you,” said Count Dracula as he stepped forward, closer into the lantern light. Another step followed, then another, and another – closer into the light and closer to Jonathan himself whose heartbeat not only spiked at every one of the Count’s steps, but ratcheted harder and harder on every beat until his very chest ached with it and he feared his heart would break itself free from beneath the bone white prison of his ribs. “Though, I see how well you look when startled, my young friend, and perhaps I am not so sorry after all.”
The Count smiled fondly from beneath his mustache as finally he came to a stop, so close to Jonathan that they were but a breath apart. He brought up a hand and cupped Jonathan’s face, his thumb stroking softly across Jonathan’s cheek. The gesture was intimate, fond. Unbearably gentle. Jonathan couldn’t help how he shivered at the cool touch, how he swallowed thickly at the brush of the Count’s thumb and then shivered all the more when he noticed the Count’s eyes drop to the bob of his Adam’s apple and stayed there, gazing with hunger at his throat.
“I have missed you these last days,” the Count went on. “I had the notion that perhaps having my fill of you in the carriage to Varna would sate me, but I fear the indulgence has only given me more reminders of what I have to miss.”
“The carriage?” Jonathan found himself repeating faintly. He recalled not how he’d escaped the Count’s castle, but until that moment he had not considered there was any other possibility other than that he had escaped to begin with, whatever the means he’d used to do so.
To hear the Count describe it, to think that he had not escaped at all, but that the Count had absconded with him –
The Count raised his eyes from Jonathan’s throat as though he had to force himself to look away and his smile sharpened with a wicked humor as though he could hear Jonathan’s thoughts. That feeling and the lantern light flickering across the Count’s face did nothing to make Jonathan any less paralyzed at the sight of him. In this light, the Count’s eyes seemed to burn red and the ravages of age were less obvious as though the meager firelight was yet strong enough to burn it away. The Count’s skin seemed smoother, some wrinkles vanished, and the light hid some of the white in his hair in such a parlor trick as to make it seem as though there were actually streaks of grey in it.
Only then did Jonathan realize the oddity of the lantern. It had not been lit when he left the cabin. Only the sunlight had illuminated the room then. Jonathan had been out of sorts after waking, but not so much as to not recall that.
He should have noticed the lantern before, he scolded himself. He should have seen it as soon as he walked in. Perhaps then he would have been warned – though what good such warning would have done, Jonathan could not answer.
“I regret that you cannot remember,” said the Count, his hand trailing from Jonathan’s cheek down to his throat and then around until he was cupping the back of Jonathan’s neck. “Such wonderful memories they are for me. But with our union so new, you must forgive an old man his insecurities. I preferred to keep you well in hand until we were safely at sea.”
“And I had nowhere to run,” Jonathan said what the Count did not, unable to help the accusation that crept into the words for an accusation was exactly what they were.
The Count did not miss it, either. His smile dimmed. He gazed at Jonathan with those blood red eyes, something unflinchingly earnest in them that made Jonathan’s stomach clench with discomfort even as the hand at the back of his neck tightened and he felt five pinpricks of pain in his skin like he was being pierced by claws.
“Would you have run?” the Count asked him in a voice like an open wound. “Such a long way it was to Varna. You would have had no lack of opportunities had I allowed you to be of a mind to notice them.”
Jonathan thought of those opportunities. He thought of the loss of them. Escaping a carriage surrounded by villages and townships and perhaps even cities where he might turn for help seemed a much simpler goal than escaping a locked, secluded castle. It certainly seemed more simple than escaping a ship at sea. Something inside of Jonathan swelled with the desire to weep and howl and rage at never having the chance to try.
And yet more than anything, he thought of the claws digging into the back of his neck. He looked into inexplicable, horrible vulnerability in the Count’s visage and thought of what it would mean to lash out in the face of it.
He swallowed, his throat so tight he nearly couldn’t manage.
“I came to you,” Jonathan said, and somehow his voice didn’t shake on every word. Somehow he managed to not make them sound like the self-recrimination he knew them to be. “Every night, in your castle. I came to your table. I came to your bed. I stayed there of my own accord. I may not remember what occurred between us after we left, but I remember before. I still bear the feeling of it inside me. One might call that the opposite of running.”
“So one might,” the Count agreed softly, and the pierce of those claws lessened, just so. Just enough that Jonathan knew he’d said the right thing. “Will you forgive me?”
‘I will never forgive you for anything,’ Jonathan thought.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he lied.
And when the Count smiled at that and he used the grip he had on the back of Jonathan’s neck to pull him forward and pressed his lips to Jonathan’s own, Jonathan opened his mouth and let him in.
And he thought then with even more hatred burning in his heart: I will never forgive myself for any of this, either.
*
The bed in the cabin might have been big enough for one man to sleep comfortably, but with two men it was impossible to maintain any semblance of distance even if the Count would have allowed it to begin with.
As it was, the Count did not allow it and inevitably Jonathan found himself laying on his side in the bed, his forehead pressed against the wall and the Count pressed flush against his back, trapping him there between the two. It was not a new state of affairs – trapped was always how the Count had him, wasn’t it? It was how Jonathan was sure the Count preferred him. Still, he found this position better than the alternative. Better to face the wall so that he might hide his face. Better this than to have to gaze upon the Count’s visage and have the Count gaze back at him, their nude bodies entwined in each other and Jonathan all the more aware of both the Count’s desire and his own body’s betrayal of him.
It made Jonathan feel braver, too, to not have to look the Count in the eyes. It felt so much easier to speak when all he could see was the lantern light flickering against the wall.
“What will we do when we reach Whitby?” he asked.
It had been preying on him since the Count finished with him, his lack of knowledge as to what the Count planned to do with him now. The question pressed as tight around his throat as the Count’s body pressed against his back. Keep him, yes, that was apparent now. Bed him, that was obvious enough. But Jonathan knew not whether that would be the end of it. Neither did he know whether it would be better if it were, if the Count only wanted him as a plaything or if he had some other sinister designs for him in mind.
The Count made a small sound against his ear, something like a sigh. His hand was on Jonathan’s side, petting him from shoulder to thigh and back up again. Jonathan tried to ignore the touch. He tried to ignore the way his spent cock began to stir at the feel of it. He tried – but this, it seemed, was another thing from which he could not escape. A shame that lingered in perpetuity, growing as though a worsening illness.
“We will go to Carfax from there,” the Count replied. “After all your descriptions, I am eager to see this abbey you have procured for me with mine own eyes at last.”
“And in Carfax,” Jonathan pressed, “what will we do?”
“We will do what men do anywhere. Live.”
It was too vague an answer to satisfy, but then the Count’s hand slid over Jonathan’s hip and across his stomach, his nails lightly scratching there before his hand sank even lower, and Jonathan found his breath hitching despite himself.
His mind scrabbled to hold on to his train of thought as the Count grasped his cock, as he pressed even closer to Jonathan’s back and Jonathan felt the Count’s own hardness obvious against him. Jonathan tried, another question on the tip of his tongue – what will I do, he wanted to ask the Count, what will you have of me that you haven’t already – but it was lost at the first push of the Count back into him. All he could do then was bite into his pillow to stifle his sounds, though whether they were questions or only moans Jonathan didn’t even know himself.
*
Jonathan didn’t know how many times the Count had him that night. He only recalled falling asleep after the second time still in the Count’s arms and even more vaguely of waking up some time later, blinking into the nothingness of the pitch black room to the feeling of two points of pricking pain at his throat and a cock moving languidly in his body. He was not able to stay awake even then, so exhausted that not even the violation of being so used in his sleep could arouse in him more than muted resignation which he was shamed to admit was not as strong as the quiet pleasure that coursed through him before sleep reclaimed him again.
The next time Jonathan awoke, sunlight was shining through the window above him and he was quite alone in the cabin. Were it not for the ache deep in his body and the dried spend and marks spread across the outside of it, he would have thought the Count had never been there at all. That it had all been a nightmare he’d been lucky to awake from. But Jonathan now knew he was not so lucky, that if lady luck had ever been friend to him at all she had abandoned him the moment he set sail away from England and had not returned to him once in the months since. The nightmare he now found himself in was not the kind which he might awake from – this, Jonathan now knew as well as anything.
Further evidence of the Count’s visit was apparent when Jonathan arose, muscles shaking from exertion as he pulled himself to sit with his back against the headboard, and caught sight of what had been left for him atop the chest at the bottom of the bed: a basin of water, a stack of neatly folded cloths, a plate of food, and a flask of some drink. Jonathan stared at them for a long while, caught by them as much as he’d been caught by the Count’s reappearance the night before. They all sat in a neat little row, this small group of offerings. All innocuous things Jonathan would be grateful for at any other occasion and yet now found himself oddly disquieted by, knowing that it must have been the Count who left them there.
To think of what the Count had done to him throughout the night, to think that the monster could have left the bed he’d so used Jonathan in and looked down at Jonathan’s sleeping form and considered that Jonathan would be hungry when he awoke, that he would be thirsty, that he would want to clean himself. To imagine the Count extending such care here as he had even in the castle – it made something twist inside Jonathan. Something unpleasant. There was a part of Jonathan that longed to do nothing more than sweep these items to the floor in a great crash of anger, of denial of anything the Count might see fit to give to him, of denial that the Count could possibly feel anything resembling consideration for his well being – yet Jonathan found himself unable to follow through. The truth of it was that he was hungry, yes, and thirsty, and he did not care to go about the day covered in the evidence of what had been done to him and what pleasure his body had taken from it. He found himself too weak now to deny these gifts in the face of his own needs.
And so Jonathan wet the cloths and cleaned himself with them as best as he could, scrubbing hard enough to tinge his skin pink. He drank the wine from the flask and he ate the bread and fish and dried fruit which had been left for him. And as he did, he tried not to think of how grateful he was for any gratitude he felt for these things was gratitude towards the Count which his mind would not allow. Shame, he could feel. Pleasure, he could not help no matter how fervently he wished otherwise. But Jonathan would not allow himself gratitude. Never that.
And after, when Jonathan sat the remains of these offerings aside and at last opened the chest to find a collection of clean shirts and trousers that all fit him well, he swallowed down his relief as he dressed and continued to tell himself that he was not grateful at all.
*
Jonathan’s second day aboard the Demeter was no different from the first in many regards. Now, however, Jonathan knew that Count Dracula was aboard and this changed both everything and nothing.
Jonathan once again stood at the edge of the ship, this time watching the sailors out of the corner of his eye and the Captain where he manned the helm in particular with more suspicion than he had the day before. The Captain had seemed kind enough previously and perhaps he still was. Perhaps he hadn’t lied to Jonathan when he’d only blinked in perplexion and shook his head at the Count’s name. Perhaps he had no idea the Count was on his ship at all. Or then, perhaps he did. Perhaps he hadn’t any idea of the Count’s true nature and only thought him another passenger. Perhaps he knew and the Count had threatened or bribed him into silence. Perhaps the Count had even used the same wicked power as he had to make Jonathan compliant and unknowing on the carriage to Varna on the ship’s crew to make them unaware of his presence.
Jonathan attempted to question more of the crew, yet found himself at a loss every time. The language barrier was too much to overcome – or, at least, the crew pretended so. They shook their heads when he attempted to speak to them. Some of them ignored him outright. None of them so much as flinched in response to the name Count Dracula. Eight men and the captain were aboard with Jonathan and yet he may as well have been alone for that was what their company amounted to. He gave up on getting anything out of them soon enough as it was obvious there were no answers to be found in that corner.
Instead, Jonathan abandoned his post by the ship’s edge and decided to explore the rest of the vessel. While some of the crew eyed him in curiosity as he walked about, none of them made any attempts to bar his way or prevent him from going anywhere onboard.
Yet, the Demeter was not so large a ship and if Jonathan had hoped to find some evidence of the Count’s hand at work in it, he discovered nothing of the sort either above deck or below. From all Jonathan could find, the Demeter only housed enough room for the Captain, crew and Jonathan himself to live in relative contentment if not true comfort. There was a galley and a scullery and a mess which were in no way what could be called generous in size though Jonathan found the cook to be generous enough in giving him more to eat than what the Count had left him. And then there was the hold – the largest portion of the ship of all besides the deck – whose cargo consisted of some many large boxes.
Jonathan cast a surreptitious glance back up the stairs he had only just descended from before prying open several of their lids, heart heavy as he expected to find something ghastly packed within, and yet all he discovered was great amounts of dirt and sand. Odd enough, certainly, but hardly sinister. It took Jonathan little time to consider possible reasons one might want to ship such things from one place to another. Construction, perhaps. Botany. Something scientific.
As Jonathan returned to the deck he considered that if the Count were aboard then he was hidden in such a way that Jonathan had not been able to discover him. While a part of Jonathan was disappointed by the continuing uncertainty that the Count’s absence evoked in him, he was relieved to not have to meet the Count again so soon. Had he found Count Dracula, he would have had to explain why he had sought him out and Jonathan could only think of one explanation the Count would accept. To have to pretend to have missed him, to have missed his touch so much that he couldn’t stand to be without it for even a morning – Jonathan was not aggrieved that he’d managed to avoid such a farce, though perhaps it was not as much of one as Jonathan cared to admit.
The passage of the day was a dull affair. There was no company to be had and nothing Jonathan might do to amuse himself aside from gazing out at the sea or watching the men at work. It was all a marked difference from his time in the Castle where he’d had at least more space to explore, the Count’s library to peruse and the Count’s own company to keep him occupied for many hours at a time. If it seemed a grim thing to Jonathan to compare one prison to another and grimmer still to long for the company of his captor and their conversations, he couldn’t help either. He couldn’t help but to find that old tedium preferable compared to the new. He couldn’t help but feel that whatever loneliness ailed him while in the Castle with none but his captor to offer him reprieve was nothing so bad as being surrounded by men who treated him as little more than a ghost among their number. It had only been two days and Jonathan already longed for the voyage to end, longed for the day they would dock at Whitby for all that he had no reckoning of what would await him there. London was bigger than a castle and it was bigger than a boat and if there were any mercy left in the world then Jonathan prayed it would grant him the favor of still feeling like home, no matter what company he arrived to it in.
The time it took for the sun to sink across the sky could have been an eternity. Yet, by the time night truly fell and Jonathan turned away from his view of the full moon reflected upon the ocean’s surface, he found his feet dragging on the way to his cabin. Suddenly an eternity seemed to pass too quickly. Suddenly he found himself thinking the day had gone by rather fast after all and that here he was returning to that room far sooner than he’d ever wished to.
It was like Jonathan already knew what awaited him before he opened the door, but still he felt a sharp bolt of surprise at seeing the Count already within.
Count Dracula sat with his back to the headboard, some book held aloft in one hand while he turned the pages with a single finger from the other. It was impossible that he hadn’t noticed Jonathan’s presence yet, but still he did not look away from the book.
Despite himself, Jonathan was grateful. The Count’s apparent preoccupation gave him enough time to steady his breathing, to calm the increased pace of his heart.
It gave him a moment to observe the Count as he so often had back in the Castle.
It was because of those previous observations that Jonathan was able to tell that something had changed with the Count, that there was some difference in his appearance. He’d noticed the same the night before but believed it a trick of the light then, so subtle the changes were and so shocked he was that he could not pay them particular heed regardless – yet now he couldn’t credit the lantern alone and his shock at seeing the Count was not as strong. The Count’s face was smoother, yes, and his hair now more grey than white. If he had been changed the night before then now he had been changed again. The Count would still never be mistaken for a young man, but somehow within the span of a day he looked as though he’d lost another ten years of his age.
Jonathan stared at him, disquieted, for a long moment.
It was only the Count’s voice that broke him from his trance.
“Close the door, my friend,” the Count said softly as he turned another page. “We would not want anyone passing by to look in and know you have company, would we?”
Jonathan spared a moment to wonder if that meant the sailors didn’t know Dracula was aboard after all, but still. He spared only a moment.
When the moment passed he took a breath, reached a hand out behind himself and closed the door with the softest of sounds.
Only then did the Count look up from his book. He gave Jonathan a once over, his eyes dragging down Jonathan’s body in a way that made heat crawl up the back of his neck and had him wanting to shift nervously on his feet. It was with an effort that he held himself still, breath bated and waiting. The Count’s lips tilted upwards once his gaze made its way back to Jonathan’s face.
There was something sharp in the Count’s eyes, something knowing. Amused. It was not the first time he had looked at Jonathan in such a way that it made Jonathan feel as though the Count could see into everything in him down to his very soul and Jonathan knew with a marrow deep resignation that it would not be the last.
“You seem taken aback,” the Count remarked at last. “You cannot have truly expected me to keep away from you tonight, my dear, not after you so whetted my appetite for you the night before.”
Heat blossomed in Jonathan’s face, a match for the heat at his neck mingling with it until he could feel his scalp prickling.
“I did expect your company,” Jonathan replied evenly. “It is only…”
He hesitated and the Count did nothing more but to tilt his head at the silence.
“You look different,” Jonathan finally said. “Younger.”
“Ah, that,” the Count said, as though it was an afterthought he had forgotten about until Jonathan mentioned it. As though it was nothing to him at all to regain some youth in the span of a day. For all Jonathan knew, perhaps it wasn’t. “And is the change not to your liking?”
‘Nothing about you is to my liking,’ Jonathan considered, but he knew better than to say such a thing aloud.
“You are the same man no matter what face you wear,” Jonathan answered. “I have no preference as to how that face may appear.”
If he meant his honesty as any sort of rebuke, it was immediately obvious that the Count did not take it that way which Jonathan supposed was only for the best. Yet, when the Count’s lips spread in a terrible smile at the perceived compliment, Jonathan couldn’t help the shiver of unease that went up his spine.
“Regardless,” the Count replied, “I ask you to not get used to this visage yet. I will be changed further still by the time our voyage is at an end.”
The statement sparked curiosity in Jonathan, as much as he loathed being curious about anything regarding the Count. It was, he thought, his greatest weakness when it came to the monster for Count Dracula knew so much and Jonathan had enjoyed being his apt pupil from the start. If such a thing could have been excused in the beginning when he was none the wiser to what the Count was capable, then Jonathan thought it was only unforgivable now. He wanted to ask how the Count could possibly do such a thing, why he hadn’t done it before, why he was doing it now. What would the Count look like by the time they set foot in London? How much younger would he seem?
The only thing that stayed Jonathan’s tongue was the smile still on the Count’s face. It was too inviting, too amused. It felt too much like he’d be sticking his hand into the maw of some great, fanged beast to ask anything more of exactly what manner of monster the Count himself was.
Perhaps the Count understood what he was thinking. Perhaps, instead, he misinterpreted whatever look was on Jonathan’s face.
Either way, the silence and the stare were both becoming too much. Both made Jonathan antsy, his throat tight with nerves.
“What are you reading?” he asked suddenly in an effort to break the moment. It was still a question, yes, but it seemed a far less damning thing to ask. It was the kind of question that had gotten him so far in the castle, after all. So many long nights he’d spent with the Count discussing literature while he pretended to ignore the sounds of the wolves baying outside or his certain knowledge that every door leading to possible freedom was barred to him.
He was relieved when, after the Count’s eyes flicked down to the book as though he’d forgotten it was there, he was as cooperative in conversation now as ever.
“It is only some poetry,” the Count replied. Something shined in his cold eyes when he looked back up to Jonathan. “Would you care for me to read it to you?”
Jonathan did not care for it, but he considered the alternative. Pictured it. Quietly refused to acknowledge the twist low in his stomach at the images his mind conjured and that he could not tell in the moment whether they were more memory or fantasy.
“If you’d like,” Jonathan replied.
The Count beckoned him forward and Jonathan hesitated for only a moment before coming as he was bid. He sat at the foot of the bed, lowering himself gingerly to the surface and forcing himself to relax as much as he was capable. The Count’s mouth tilted with approval and he held Jonathan’s eyes for only a second longer before he looked back down at the open book in his hand.
“Brief ecstasy and wonder,” Count Dracula read, “a blink in time when life held you to me…”
The words washed over Jonathan, the Count’s voice soothing him despite himself.
*
Awareness came back to him slowly, a gentle tide lapping at the shore of his mind.
Jonathan groaned as he stretched, the blanket sliding down his body as the soft pleasure of the movement washed over him. It was only after opening his eyes and blinking into the empty, sunlit room that he realized how much time had passed. Other realizations came after: that he wasn’t in the same position on the bed he last remembered being, that someone had righted his body and tucked him in, that – most prudent of all and yet somehow the last thing he noticed – he was now completely alone.
The Count was gone and the only evidence he’d been there at all were the offerings sitting upon the chest at the foot of the bed. Another basin of water, more cloths, more food and drink – just as the previous morning. The book the Count had been reading to Jonathan from was nowhere to be seen, however, once Jonathan recalled the night before and had the thought to look for it.
Verses of poetry filtered through Jonathan’s mind, the memory of the Count’s accent as he read of love and longing as soft as a whisper. The whole thing seemed like a fever dream in the light of day, so much so that Jonathan wondered if it happened at all, if he hadn’t just imagined it.
It was disquieting. Jonathan pushed the feeling back as quickly as it came, but he couldn’t shake the oddness entirely.
He rose from bed with a tentativeness he couldn’t define. It lingered in him as he washed up. It stayed as he slowly ate and drank and then it permeated the cabin as Jonathan decided that perhaps he would stay in today. He felt too queer to go out. Too ill at ease, as though something vital had changed in the night and he could not put his finger on what. Yet even beyond that, the thought of meandering about the ship held little appeal now that he’d seen all that there was to be seen. Jonathan hadn’t found the Count’s hiding place before, he hadn’t found much of anything, and the thought of being surrounded by men who would spend the day ignoring him appealed to Jonathan very little.
No company was preferable to company that hadn’t a care whether you were among their number. Even the company of a monster singularly fixated on you was preferable to that loneliness – though this made Jonathan wince as soon as he thought it, the sting all the sharper for the fact that it was true.
Still, Jonathan stayed inside.
He finished the food and then the drink and ignored the urge to leave the cabin to ask for more from the kind cook when his stomach twinged with hunger some hours later. He slept and woke and slept again. He was only aware of the passage of the day by the gradual change of the quality of light in the room. At a certain point – in the afternoon, he thought, by the position of the sun he saw out the window – Jonathan got up from the bed and began to pace.
The exercise helped some, but it was a dull affair with nothing but his thoughts for company – no plans in mind, no goal to work towards, only recollections of the past and the nebulous thing that was the future. An antsiness was born in him by mid-morning and it continued to grow throughout the day as Jonathan longed for something, anything, with which to occupy himself. It was not particularly surprising – he’d never done well with idle hands, not as a boy and certainly not after Mr. Hawkins took him in and put his natural drive to use. A book would have been a blessing no matter the subject, a blank journal and pencil even better. For all that Jonathan doubted any of his letters to Mina had been sent – for all that he believed they’d been burned or, if not that, were still languishing forgotten in some desk drawer back in Transylvania – Jonathan still missed the act of writing them. Even if Mina would never know his thoughts or experiences while in the Castle, Jonathan was sure that being able to put them down in writing was one of the only things that had kept him sane.
He spent a time thinking about Mina and wondering what it would mean that they would soon be on the same continent again until the thoughts felt too much like sifting through broken glass with bare hands and he had to stop thinking about her lest he bite off his own tongue to distract himself from the pain. His thoughts turned to the Count instead and though that subject was no less fraught, Jonathan could at least wonder at it without flinching.
Where was the Count now? What was he doing? Where was he secreting himself away while Jonathan was in his cabin?
And more pressingly – what would they do when they reached Whitby? When they went to Carfax? This plagued Jonathan more than anything else. He worried at it like a scab, poked at it like a lump of something soft and decaying he’d found under his bed.
Live, the Count had said, as men do anywhere.
What in god’s name did that mean?
The light in the room continued to change. Bright to burnished to overcast, yellow to orange to grey, until it receded to such a point that Jonathan had to light the lantern so he would not be left in the dark. It was only when the sun set entirely that he finally stopped his pacing and lowered himself back to the bed with aching legs that began to shake pleasantly when they were finally allowed to rest, yet the unease remained. It was a stone in his chest, a heavy weight thrumming with life. For all that it was night now, Jonathan was more awake than he’d been that morning. It was as though he was suspended on a wire, pulled taut high above the ground. The feeling coiled in him like a serpent anticipating the need to strike. Jonathan shut his eyes and tried to will it away. He tried to control his breathing to instill in himself some calm or tiredness so that he might go to sleep, but he feared his napping throughout the day had only ruined the night for him.
It was a touch to his cheek that startled him into opening his eyes, heartbeat ratcheting as a gasp was torn from him at the touch.
The Count stood before him. Grey hair gone darker than before, face ever more free of wrinkles. Another decade gone. It was his hand on Jonathan’s face – a hand that cupped his cheek more firmly once Jonathan’s eyes were on him, tilting his head further up.
The Count’s presence was little surprise – nor, Jonathan supposed, was that he’d entered the cabin without making a sound or the further changes to his visage – but Jonathan found himself taken aback nonetheless. The jolt of his heart at the initial touch was only the first hard beat in a line of them. The thing in Jonathan’s chest coiled tighter, thrummed harder, grew heavier. His skin crawled with the need to do – something.
To be distracted, to spend this restless energy inside of him.
“My dear Mr. Harker,” the Count said, an amused lilt in his voice to match the knowing edge to his smile, “how agitated you are. Do not tell me you’ve grown weary of this voyage already.”
Jonathan swallowed hard and the Count’s hand drifted immediately, sliding down his cheek, to his throat. His thumb rested over Jonathan’s Adam's apple. It stroked there and Jonathan’s hands clenched harder into the bed beneath him as the need to claw them into his own skin instead only heightened and he barely held back a shiver.
“I’m simply not used to having so much free time,” Jonathan replied evenly. He swallowed again and the Count’s thumb pressed down, almost painfully. “Or such little company.”
The last part was little more than an afterthought, a consideration for the reality of being surrounded by men he couldn’t communicate with and who would likely have no desire to speak with him even if they did share a language. Jonathan hadn’t meant it as a rebuke, he hadn’t meant it to be about the Count at all, but he could see that the Count took it much differently than he intended.
The Count, however, did not seem angered by the assumed reprimand regarding his absence. It was the opposite, in fact.
“Are you truly so lonely without me?” The Count’s voice was unfailingly gentle. It was somehow not at all at odds with how his smile suddenly grew sharper. Jonathan knew the monster’s moods enough by now to see that he was amused by the notion of Jonathan’s loneliness, but more than that he was pleased by it. The Count’s pleasure burned in his eyes with such heat that Jonathan could nearly feel it scorching his skin. “I left you to your rest last night, thinking it a kindness, but perhaps I was wrong. Would you have preferred I took you in your sleep and left you to find the traces of me upon you in the morning? Would you be more well rested if I’d made use of your body in the night?”
Jonathan couldn’t suppress his shiver then.
“I –“
Jonathan’s words, whatever they were, stayed on his tongue as the Count’s thumb pressed in even harder and the almost pain of the previous touch turned to a sharp stab that radiated down his throat.
A sound escaped him, an embarrassing whimper crossed with a moan. It made the Count’s smile widen and his eyes darken as he stared down at Jonathan.
“I had you in your sleep often on the way to Varna,” the Count told him like he was imparting a fond memory of times he was still hungry for. “Do not misunderstand, my dear, I do so prefer you awake and aware, but ah – if only you could see yourself. You would be surprised at how well you take it even when consciousness has fled you. How your body remembers who it belongs to even as you dream.”
Heat burned in Jonathan’s face at the same time as it felt like ice had been dropped down his back. Something turned in his stomach while something throbbed lower down.
Jonathan realized only belatedly that he was aroused, that his cock was hard.
His stomach turned ever more violently. The tight coil in his chest felt all the more like a noose. Yet, the Count continued to gaze down at him. He continued to smile. Then his thumb pressed even harder and for a moment Jonathan could not breathe at all. The moment lasted until the need to choke began to rise in his throat and only then did the Count release the pressure.
Still, his hand stayed there on Jonathan’s throat. Lingering.
“Or if you prefer,” said the Count, “I could recite more poetry. I have no book with me, but there are verses I’ve memorized. Some, even, from your fellow Englishmen. Perhaps that will settle your nerves.”
Neither choice was appealing, the fact that it wasn’t really a choice at all doing little to help the matter.
“Or,” the Count went on, “perhaps I might save you the trouble of deciding and do both. You distract me terribly, my friend, but it keeps a man sharp to challenge himself. Think! How much of an epic might I be able to recite with the greedy clutch of you around me? How long do you believe I might keep my voice steady before the pleasure of your flesh has my words stumbling out like the sputtering speech of a nervous boy eager to spill himself for the first time? How much might I accomplish before the longing to prove myself becomes weak in the face of my longing to put my mouth upon your skin, the taste of you all the more alluring than the taste of any other man’s words?”
Jonathan swallowed hard, his heart pounding. His mouth was as dry as a desert and speech failed him.
Still, it seemed speech was unnecessary.
The Count’s lips spread wider and a flash of too sharp teeth shined in the dim light. It was a wolf's smile there for but a second and then gone just as quick.
“Alas,” the Count lamented, “I shouldn’t tease you so for our time together must be put to rest far too soon for me to indulge you as I wish.”
And suddenly, with those words, Jonathan’s racing heartbeat seemed to stop for a full breath and the heat pulsing throughout his body was awash with a terrible chill.
“What do you mean?” The words spilled from Jonathan’s lips and his heart began pounding again just as abruptly as it had stopped – harder now, the heavy thump of it nearly painful as it seemed the organ was trying its damnedest to force its way up his throat. Jonathan swallowed hard and he would swear – on his life, on his very own grave – that he could feel his heart being forced back down with the motion.
“I don’t understand,” Jonathan went on, voice shaking. “Why would our time together be cut short?”
‘Have I bored you already? Has your so strongly proclaimed ardor for me flickered out so soon?’ The questions flitted through his mind, inexplicably cutting, but – thank god – he found the will not to speak them aloud.
“We are ever nearing our destination,” said the Count, his thumb stroking across Jonathan’s throat, “and there are things I must do before we arrive that I cannot be distracted from. As pleasant as I find such diversions, it will be far easier for us both to have you...otherwise unoccupied for the remainder of the voyage, as you were on our journey to Varna.”
The silence that followed throbbed between them and the Count’s gaze on Jonathan was most keen – and still, his thumb kept moving. Kept grazing across his skin.
Jonathan wondered, vaguely, if the Count knew he was doing it. He wondered if the monster meant his touch to be a comfort.
“You mean to make me sleep through it again,” Jonathan concluded for Count Dracula’s words could mean nothing else. The laugh that tore itself out of him then was not humored. It was not joyful. Yet, the sound came all the same. “Surely you cannot think there is any risk of me running now. Not when we’re out at sea, not when there is nowhere I could go even if I had any such inclination.”
“I do this for your sake as much as my own,” the Count insisted, a thread of heat weaving its way into his tone that sent a shiver down Jonathan’s spine. Still, the Count’s eyes were gentle enough. Still, the heat – for all that Jonathan knew he hadn’t imagined it – was not of the angry kind. “You know I see through you, my dear Mr. Harker. You fear the unknown. You find yourself discomforted at the prospect of your own vulnerability. But there is no cause for such concern. The matter – it is no different than falling asleep. You will drift into the dark, softly as though you are but a feather drifting through the wind and you will dream only the most pleasant dreams. Time will not pass at all and when you awaken we will be in Carfax, you returned to your homeland and myself at your side as you help me to make it my own. And then –“
The Count hesitated and so rare was the sight that Jonathan’s breath caught in his throat, nerves buzzing beneath his skin.
“Then,” the Count began again, the very word ringing with confidence, “it will be the last time I affect your will in such a way. Your conscious mind will be your own. I will not take the reins of it again unless you request it of me. I would swear this to you upon my own blood – if only you will agree to allow it now, one last time.”
‘And if I don’t?’ the sudden impulse rose in Jonathan to ask, but he swallowed it down before it could make its way to his tongue.
Not agreeing wasn’t a choice available to him. The Count my phrase it otherwise – he might even genuinely believe that he was offering Jonathan a say in the thing – but Jonathan wasn’t so lost in the dark the Count had brought him to that he couldn’t recognize that his only options were to do as the Count wanted by his own word or to refuse – and end up doing it anyway, though likely with far more pain.
“You swear it?” Jonathan asked. He held Count Dracula’s gaze. He held it – even when he began to feel as though he were about to drown in the depths of those eyes. “It will be the last time.”
“I swear,” proclaimed the Count.
‘Liar,’ Jonathan thought, but he nodded regardless
And the Count smiled and his thumb stroked across Jonathan’s throat one last time – one last, lingering time that burned as though a knife had cut him across the neck instead – before everything was dark, Jonathan falling into the Count’s stare as though he were spiraling up, up, up and away into a starless night sky.
Jonathan’s dreams thereafter were pleasant. The Count, at least, had been truthful about that.