Chapter Text
The rain drizzled over the cobbled streets of Gruyère, mist curling around the lights of the village like smoke. Dorian pulled his coat tighter and paused before the silhouette of the HR Giger Museum, looming within the castle walls like a fortress carved from nightmares. He had come seeking art that haunted his mind—yet even the legends of erotic biomechanical creatures and Xenomorph sculptures did not prepare him for the surrealism of the place.
Inside, the air pressed against him—cool, metallic, faintly charged—and beneath it, a tension that tightened his spine. Sculptures twisted overhead, bone and steel fused into intimate, unsettling embraces. They suggested rather than demanded, breathing around him like a held secret.
Dorian moved deeper into the galleries, but the art failed to hold him for long.
He felt him first.
A presence slid into his awareness—quiet, deliberate, unavoidable. Not sound or movement, but intent.
When Dorian turned, a shadow detached itself from the red-lit edge of the room.
Tall. Impossibly elegant.
He was exquisite in a way that resisted category—clean lines and deliberate angles, beauty neither masculine nor feminine but something older, intentional. Dark, sleek hair fell in silken sheets around a face too refined to feel accidental. High cheekbones. A sculpted mouth that promised restraint rather than mercy. Lashes shadowed obsidian eyes that fixed on Dorian with unnerving patience.
Pale skin caught the light like polished porcelain—cool, immaculate, inhuman.
Those eyes locked onto his, steady and unblinking, with the unsettling focus of something that had already knew him.
“You shouldn’t wander here alone,” he murmured. His voice was smooth and low, velvet drawn over steel. When he smiled, the faintest suggestion of fang flashed—more invitation than warning.
Dorian’s breath caught.
He brushed a strand of long, honey-blond hair from his sun-kissed face, grounding himself in the small, intimate motion. The gesture softened sharp cheekbones and drew attention to a mouth too sensual to belong to someone harmless. His blue-green eyes met the stranger’s without retreat—bright, alert, quietly defiant.
“I… didn’t realize.”
A slow smile curved the stranger’s lips—unhurried, knowing. Predatory without haste.
“Most things of consequence,” he said softly, gaze lingering at Dorian’s mouth, his throat, the pulse there before lifting again, “are unplanned.”
He stepped closer—not invading, but inviting. The space between them tightened until Dorian became acutely aware of contrast: his own warmth, the other man’s impossible cool.
“I am Valerian.”
The name settled into Dorian like a touch.
“And I haven’t felt interest in a mortal for centuries,” Valerian continued softly. “Yet tonight…”
His fingers brushed Dorian’s shoulder—barely there. The contact sent a liquid thrill through him, lightning under skin. Dorian’s pulse jumped, heat blooming where the vampire had touched him.
He should have stepped back.
He didn’t.
“Im not sure why I’m drawn here,” Dorian admitted, his voice unsteady—not with fear, but with want.
Valerian’s gaze dropped briefly to Dorian’s mouth before lifting again, darker now. “Some places awaken what sleeps,” he murmured. “Some souls recognize each other.”
The museum seemed to recede, its twisted forms blurring into shadow. Deeper within, a red-lit corridor glowed—the restricted gallery unmistakably charged with carnality—but Valerian’s presence sharpened everything, eclipsing even that pull.
“Would you like to see more?” Valerian asked, his breath close enough to carry a faint coppery warmth.
Dorian swallowed. Words failed him. Valerian’s hand slid into his—not clasping, just curling fingers enough to promise. Enough to claim attention.
He let himself be guided.
Before Dorian could answer, Valerian took his hand, guiding him through galleries of sinuous flesh and machine, toward the castle’s bar — the HR Giger Bar itself, carved from vertebrae and bone, its dark curves illuminated by pale ambient light.
The bar was a world apart, a cathedral of erotic terror and delight. Chairs twisted like spinal columns, the ceiling arched with ribs, and the walls breathed with biomechanical life. Patrons drank potions from glasses shaped like skulls, the air heavy with the tang of alcohol and some ancient, intoxicating thing that seemed to emanate from Valerian.
Valerian guided Dorian to a chair, his hand resting briefly—intimately—at the small of his back.
“You’re alive,” Valerian said quietly, his gaze lingering as though he were memorizing something he would never be allowed to keep. “Warm. Luminous.” His voice softened, almost to wonder. “I had forgotten what that felt like.”
“Why me?” Dorian asked, his voice roughened by something dangerously close to hope.
Valerian leaned in, cold lips hovering just shy of Dorian’s ear, his breath a whisper along his throat. “Because you see without flinching,” he murmured. “Because you desire without shame.” A pause—measured, unguarded. “Because you move something in me I believed long dead.”
His fingers traced Dorian’s collarbone—slow, reverent, as though touching something sacred. Heat unfurled low and deep inside Dorian, a coil of longing tightening until it ached.
“I don’t want to leave,” Dorian whispered.
Valerian’s smile shifted—not cruel now, not distant. Intent. Possessive without force
“…Then don’t.”
******
The bar emptied around them, shadows stretching like protective arms. The castle’s pulse echoed in Dorian’s chest, drawing him closer.
Valerian’s fangs grazed the hollow of Dorian’s throat—not piercing, not yet. The contact alone sent a shudder through them both, sharp and reverent, as though an unseen threshold had been crossed.
Valerian stilled.
His breath caught—an involuntary thing, as if centuries had drawn short all at once.
Dorian felt it too. A pressure beneath his skin, low and deep, like a second pulse awakening. Not pain. Not fear. Recognition.
Valerian pulled back just enough to look at him. His expression was no longer predatory, no longer amused. Something ancient and unsettled moved behind his eyes.
“This…” Valerian said quietly. “This should not be possible.”
Dorian’s voice was unsteady. “What do you mean?”
Valerian’s hand remained at his throat—not holding, but anchoring. “Some souls resonate,” he said. “Rarely. Once in an age, if at all.” His thumb brushed Dorian’s pulse point, slow and deliberate. “It is not hunger. It is not desire alone.”
The air between them felt charged, intimate, unbearable.
“It is a bond,” Valerian continued. “One that forms only when a mortal’s essence aligns with an immortal’s—when something unfinished recognizes its other half.”
Dorian’s breath came shallow. “You’re saying we’re… connected?”
Valerian searched his face, almost vulnerable now. “I am saying that whatever you are, Dorian, you have awakened something I believed extinct.” A pause. “And once awakened, it does not loosen its grip easily.”
His fingers slid from Dorian’s throat to his jaw, tilting his face up—not claiming. Asking.
“You’re mine,” Valerian whispered—not as possession, but as revelation. “And I am yours… if you choose.”
The word if mattered.
Dorian didn’t answer immediately. His heart thundered, every instinct screaming both danger and inevitability. He felt seen—known—in a way no one ever had. The bond hummed beneath his skin, unfinished, waiting.
“I choose you,” he said at last, low and certain—but not naïve.
The kiss that followed was restrained, deliberate. Valerian did not devour him. He lingered—learning the shape of Dorian’s mouth, the warmth, the fragile humanity anchoring the bond. It was a kiss filled with promise rather than completion, heat banked rather than spent.
When Valerian finally drew him close, arms wrapping around him with impossible gentleness, the world narrowed—but did not disappear. The art still watched. The shadows still breathed. Time still existed.
“This bond,” Valerian murmured against Dorian’s temple, “will test us.”
Dorian exhaled, steadying himself against that cold, unyielding presence.
“Then we don’t rush it.”
Valerian smiled—slow, approving, darkly pleased.
“No,” he agreed. “We master it.”
They remained like that, not sealing fate, not claiming eternity—just standing at the edge of something vast and dangerous, bound not by promises yet, but by choice, restraint, and a connection neither of them could undo.
The HR Giger Bar hushed around them, bone and shadow bearing silent witness—not to an ending, but to a beginning.