hhhHHHHHHH dude. Buddy. My pal. It is not often someone gives me whumperflies with my own characters. So, congratulations!!! This idea swept in and took me for everything I had. 

Warning for needles/stitches/blood/mild gore up ahead! It should also be noted, for those who haven’t followed the last few exchanges, that vampire venom in this universe (from a young vampire) doesn’t turn people, but has pain-numbing qualities! 

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His hands are covered in blood. There are tears in Ash’s eyes, and an itching in his gums, as he tries again to get the needle through the hunter’s skin. Callum has stopped screaming; now he’s limp, ashen pale as Ash’s clumsy fingers grip the needle.

The hunter is lying on the cot in his room, the third of four renovated cells. Golden hair sticks to Callum’s cheeks and forehead as Ash works. It’s worse like this, when the human is limp and unconscious, because at least when he was conscious and hurting he could tell Ash what to do. 

5: “I’m the King. I can do whatever I want.”

Summary: Matteo tells Therrin why he found him slowly dying in a Muirkeep cell. It is not a small secret.

CW: medieval and fantasy whump, royal whump, captivity, power dynamics, captivity, torture, death, implied sexual relationship, poisoning, betrayal, manipulation, hurt/comfort, self-indulgently long chapter ok

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For two days, Therrin was distracted from his work by thoughts of Matteo upstairs in his bed, sweating out his fever.

He listened at length to his advisor, pored over old accounts with his tax collector. He heard a fisherman complain of a nomad come down from the foothills. He said the man stole his precious and already sparse fish from his nets, and the accused argued it was only so his starving children might see the morning. The people of the river village thought that a poor excuse for thievery and he ought lose a hand. Since loss of life or limb could not be carried out legally without the approval of King or Lord, both parties looked to him for justice.

Therrin retired after nightfall to his chambers, hoping Matteo would be feeling better or at the very least, not worse. He found him sleeping, his forehead cool to the touch.

@octopus-reactivated request "Villain in a blanket", and I felt inspired to draw a scene from one of my personal favourite chapters.

4: No One Is Going To Hurt You

Summary: a short in-between where Therrin has to find a way to remove the shackle on Matteo’s ankle. Matteo, still feverish, misunderstands what is happening to him.

CW: feverish whumpee, restraints, manhandling, misunderstandings, royal whump, fantasy/medieval whump, infection, prisoner whump, fear of amputation, past torture

It was early still on a chill April morning, and Therrin had Matteo wrapped in a fur-lined cloak to ward off the damp. Even so, he shivered in their arms as he and Rudy carried him out of the castle and across the yard.

Snowmelt and foot traffic had turned the yard to intersecting trenches of mud, and long planks had been laid across the worst spots to keep them passable by cart. Rudy and Therrin made an awkward pair, shuffling sideways across the planks in the squelching muck, carrying a barely-conscious Matteo in their arms.

It was possibly the iron manacle on the prisoner’s ankle, the healers agreed, making him stay so sickly. It had chafed and never been allowed to heal, and the skin underneath was red and inflamed like a bad cut. It had to come off, they said, and only then they could hope to treat it.

Therrin would not be responsible for delivering the news to Saxon of his brother’s death a second time.

Matteo whimpered in his fever-sleep when they set him down in the smith’s shop, lying on an unsanded bench.

Therrin clapped Rudy’s shoulder in thanks. They had a shorthand, he and Rudy. Rudy had been with him in the long months spent on horseback and sleeping on frozen ground before the siege. Rudy was a man of few words and flaming red hair, with thick smatterings of freckles on his face and forearms. He was quick with a sword, and he knew all the same southern songs that Therrin did. “Too big to take offense”, Lord Barrman once said of Rudy while they were on the road, “and too noble to give it.”

“This it, Your Grace?” asked the smith, eyeing the shackle with doubt. He was a burly man, black of hair and with deep wrinkles in his forehead and at the sides of his mouth, suggesting ample experience in his graft. Good, Therrin thought.

“I need it gone,” Therrin replied. “It may be contributing to the fever.”

The smith wiped his calloused hands on his apron and examined the rusted shackle that was nearly fused with Matteo’s ankle.

“I’m guessing you wouldn’t be comin’ to me if taking the foot was an option, Sire?”

From the corner of his eye, Therrin saw Rudy’s glance.

“You guess correctly.”

“And if we run clean outta other ideas?” the smith asked.

“I’d ask a second opinion first,” Therrin said cooly. “Begging your pardon.”

“Not at all, Your Grace. Just seeing what we’re getting into. But I’ve got something that will do the trick, I think. The rust is stopping the key being any use, but it weakens the iron. Hold him down? I can’t have him rollin’ off the bench.”

Therrin and Rudy each knelt on the dirt floor and took one of Matteo’s shoulders loosely on either side.

The smith observed several angles before trying anything, standing at Matteo’s feet and then his hip, assessing where he would have the best leverage for his arm, the best grip with the tool.

“Hold him,” he muttered in warning before clamping the iron teeth into the shackle and giving it his first go. The sound was unpleasant, a grinding resistance of metal on metal.

Matteo moaned and his eyes fluttered as if to open. Therrin and Rudy tightened their grips.

“Stay asleep,” Therrin murmured. “Stay under.”

The next inch of work required a wrenching motion of the smiths arm, like he was putting all his weight into the torque of the tool to bite into the rusted shackle. Matteo’s eyes opened and he stiffened, taking in his alarming surroundings like he’d been dropped into an ice lake.

He screamed hoarsely, pulling his foot away from the smith and trying to roll off the bench. Therrin and Rudy held him fast, pressing his shoulder blades back down to the wood. He cried out, frantic, eyes glassy.

The smith cursed and grabbed him by the shin to straighten the leg beck out. He pulled a length of slim rope from his utility belt and wrapped it round the bench, securing Matteo’s leg at the knee. Matteo arched his back, bucking his hips like a wild thing.

“Nonono,” he sobbed. “Don’t do this. Henry…ask my father, he will pay you! Hell give you— whatever you want…anything you… please, what do you want?!” he sobbed. With the rest of his body immobilized, he banged his head back against the bench.

Therrin grabbed a fistful of his hair and held fast. “Shh. No one is going to hurt you, Mattie. Lie still.”

Still, he tried to writhe out of their grips. Rudy adjusted his knee on the ground so he could put his upper body into stabilizing Matteo, using not just his hands but his forearm and upper body to hold him still.

“God, please, stop,” Matteo sobbed, going limp with exhaustion, maybe finally realizing the futility of fighting three stronger men and a coil of rope. “I’ll do anything you ask,” he rasped. “Ask me and I’ll do it, I swear. Don’t do this— don’t do it…I can… I can be good, I— you can cut my hands again, I—I won’t scream…” Feverish eyes fixed on Therrin, bright with tears. “Y-your Grace… please, mercy.”

“No one is cutting anything off of you,” Therrin said gruffly. It was strange to imagine the boy he once knew was the same as the one on this bench, those same eyes, once fearless and proud to the point of snobbish. “We’re taking the shackle off of your foot, Matteo.”

“Don’t take it,” he begged, confused and frightened. “Nonono, I’ll pay you, my— I didn’t kill him… I didn’t…you don’t understand, I can—”

“The iron, Mattie,” he said, and risked letting to of Matteo’s dark hair to cup his cheek in his palm. He held him there, hoping to get through to him. “No one is hurting you. Do you understand? We’re not taking your foot.”

“Please,” Matteo whispered, his cheek hot to the touch. “Therrin.”

“That’s right. It’s just me. It’s alright,” Therrin said. “Lie still, Mattie. We’ve got you. Good boy. Lie still.”

His eyes were closing against his will, like he might drop into sleep again, after all that.

“No one’s going to hurt you,” Therrin promised him. “Close your eyes. You’re alright.”

Matteo’s brows knit in some troubled final thought before slipping back under the pull of his fever.

Rudy looked from Matteo’s face to Therrin. “He trusts you,” he said mildly. An observation.

“He doesn’t trust me as far as he can throw me when he’s lucid,” Therrin muttered. “Thinks I’m going to take him back down there and put him on the rack.”

“Perhaps it’s more telling that he trusts you in this state,” he mused. “If not in his lucid one.”

The smith gave a short snap of a powerful arm, and the last of the shackle fell open, revealing the infected skin beneath it.

They carried Matteo back to the castle, and Rudy helped lay him back in the King’s chambers among the furs.

-

Summary: the new King Blackmuir was once a child ward of the Osier noble family. He finds the youngest Osier son, Matteo, badly kept in his dungeons and pulls him out. Matteo does not expect mercy, or favor.

CW: fantasy/royalty whump, mistreated prisoner, recalling past whump of a minor (corporal punishment), distrust/fear of caretaker, execution mentions, sort of hinting at prefering death over other fates, touch starved

Matteo woke from dreams of terrible thirst. He had the sense he’d woken before, but that it had not truly been waking. He must have drifted close to the surface, his physical pain throbbing like a separate heartbeat.

One: King Blackmuir 

Summary: A newly crowned King Therrin remembers a task he’s been putting off for days. He’s been told there is a prisoner in the lowest, coldest cell of the dunegons who might be of interest to him.

CW: fantasy medieval setting, royalty, prisoner whump, captivity, abuse, starvation, political prisoners, child ward/political prisoner, drunkenness, referenced corporal punishment when character was a minor, feverish whumpee, hurt/comfort

Therrin Blackmuir reached up and adjusted his new crown.

It was the crown of a king; not a slim, moonjeweled circlet of silver for a prince but a hearty crown of gold, with speared peaks like a trident. Held in the center was a single ruby, like the molten eye of a dragon.

It pleased him, but wearing it all evening had bruised his head. He took it off for a moment’s relief as he walked alone down the hall, holding it at his side as if it were a tin helmet. His footsteps echoed in the dak corners, and shadows leapt on the wet stones from the light of the braziers.

Masterlist

[A/N: Thank you everyone who voted! This is not the reunion yet, but next Villain chapter will have that, don't worry.] CWs at the bottom

Vigilante helped Villain stand up and get out of the cell. Although the thin man moved his feet in an approximation of walking, he had to be basically carried, with Vigilante’s arm around his waist. Together, they shuffled to the stairs leading out of the basement. Vigilante decided that the risk of falling was too big with Villain’s stumbling, and they were going too slow.

“I'm gonna carry you now. Okay?”

The dark-haired man frowned a little and tensed up, but didn’t say anything. There was a moment of silence in the bare hallway.

“Is that okay?” repeated Vigilante. Villain blinked, as though he’d been startled from a daydream.

“Uh, what? I’m sorry, is what okay?”

“Carrying you.” There was a pang of annoyance at repeating himself, but this was immediately crushed by an overwhelming sense of guilt. Villain had his brain scrambled like eggs, Vigilante should be able to deal with speaking clearly.

“Is it okay if I carry you?” He carefully pronounced each word, a little louder than usual. That appeared to be the word move though, because Villain flinched and dropped his gaze to the floor.

“Ah, sorry. I’m not... I didn’t realize ‘t was a question. You can carry me, I won’t struggle.”

“That’s not..” Vigilante sighed. How come he felt like he was already screwing up at this, not even a minute after getting Villain out?

Although the frustrated sound was made at his own fumbling, he could feel Villain curl up even tighter. Looking over, he saw that his eyes were staring somewhere far away.

“Shit, no, I didn’t mean... Okay, nevermind. Sorry Villain, you’re doing fine.”

(A/N: So.. this one kind of got out of hand, lol. Don’t worry anon, your hug is in there, it’s just near the end.  This is part of my ‘hero and villain’ series, I’ll make a masterlist tomorrow.) CWs: blood, head wound, beating mention (not featured), nerve damage, implied starvation, drugs, yelling, (in an very accusatory way), implied abuse, slight dehumanization, begging. If I missed any, please let me know. 

Villain and Sidekick (3)

Sidekick heard Hero return from the basement before he saw him. He was whistling. Sidekick, who was standing in the kitchen, called over:   “How’s it going?”   “Oh, it’s going very well.” responded Hero. He stepped through the door, and Sidekick turned to ask some more. His voice stopped when he saw the blood splatters on Hero’s knuckles. The man walked over to the sink, still whistling, and started washing his hands.   “Oh, uhm. Did he act up today?” asked Sidekick. Hero looked puzzled for a second, before he laughed.   “Oh, because of the blood? No, he’s actually very well behaved now. I even let him out of the chair. He should be almost ready for the show.” Right away, there were numerous questions buzzing through Sidekick’s mind. What show? If he was well behaved, why did you hit him? Just what are we doing to him? Before he could decide which one to ask first, Hero interrupted his thinking.   “Actually, could you go and clean him up for me? Use the hose in the garage.” Sidekick’s stomach churned. He hadn’t gone back to the cell since his secret trip. If he was honest, he didn’t want to see how Villain was doing. He didn’t want to know.   "Uhm, can I do it later? Or maybe-”   “Sidekick.” A chill ran down Sidekick’s spine at Hero’s tone. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His voice was low, calm. Dangerous.   “Don’t make me ask twice.” Sidekick almost let the chair fall to the ground in his haste to get up.   “Right! Okay, yes, uh, right away, Hero.”  

Cw: bloodbag whumpee, vampire whumpers, vampire caretaker, mild drug use, wishing/asking for death to avoid torture and abuse, pet whump, past abuse and starvation, hurt/comfort, fluff

Carlo loved nothing more than staying up late being this new Vampire’s beloved pet, only going to bed when the birds began to call in the trees and sleeping until early afternoon.

The Vampire that had become his master was often gone for nights at a time, and Carlo would wait diligently, full of longing but warm and provided for.

When the Vampire returned, Carlo got butterflies in his stomach, like it was the first time all over again. He was always greeted warmly, like he was something the Vampire liked coming home to, too. Tonight his master came inside with snowflakes on his overcoat. Carlo pressed tight against him anyway, not caring that the snow melted on his cheek. He’d taken his vitamins and put scentless lotion on his wrists and neck, to make the skin as smooth and pleasing as possible despite his faded scars. He ached for the almost itchy nip of fangs, like the kiss of a needle.

Maxim held him warmly. “Hello to you too. You’re so warm. Like you’ve been sitting by the fire.”

Carlo leaned into the touch, already woozy with happiness. “Are you… do you want to feed off me?” he offered.

His master laughed and scritched the base of his neck like he was a kitten. “Yes. But let me take my coat off and get some things settled first.”

Carlo backed off, blushing pink. He was overeager, sometimes. He forgot himself. “Yes sir,” he said towards his feet. His socks soaked up the melting snow from his master’s black boots. He would get down on all fours and lick them clean, if he asked. He would trust him not to kick him in the mouth like the others.

Later, he sat at the Vampire’s feet in his study. He was on a video call with Stella in Stockholm. She looked beautiful but cold, with her hair red as autumn and her skin like frost. He was glad he was not responsible for pleasing multiple Vampires at once anymore. He was less exhausted this way. He couldn’t see his ribs anymore without twisting sideways. His hair was shiny again. The circles under his eyes had faded and now seldom showed at all. His feet didn’t get numb and white anymore, and the constant low grade headache that dogged him was gone too.

Max rested a hand on his hair, petting absently as he talked to Stella on the screen. They talked driftingly of Stockholm and of Baltimore, of their friends and people they used to know, places they had once been together. To Carlo it seemed they had known one another for all of time. Carlo dozed, his face pressed against the inside of his master’s knee. He barely registered Stella’s voice anymore, distant and tinny over the laptop speakers, until a new voice shocked him from his half-sleep.

He knew this voice. It brought him to attention as if he’d been slapped. He opened his eyes, listening intently. He recognized the timbre and diction as if from a bad dream. It was Erik.

Max was cordial, warm even. It sent chills up his spine to hear the two of them speak like old friends. He didn’t understand it. How could Maxim be the way he was, and still be friends with Erik Holstrom, a Vampire that thought of mortals as food and a nuisance? Who enjoyed letting lesser Vamps pass him around like a champagne bottle at a party? What was he missing? Was Maxim just humoring him for a little while?

The conversation turned to mortal pets and Carlo stiffened, holding his breath to listen like a prey animal.

“We’re doing just fine,” Maxim said, and ran a finger down the bridge of Carlo’s nose as if to illustrate the point. Carlo was very glad Erik could not see him from the laptop’s webcam, if it was even on. It might just be an audio call. He bit his cheek, hard.

“It’s been months,” the other Vampire replied. “Come pick out a new toy, why don’t you?”

Maxim laughed. “I don’t need a new toy.”

“You didn’t want that one, either.”

He hummed in mock-thoughtfulness. “I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks.”

“Bring that one back when you come, won’t you? I want to see him.”

Carlo’s heart seized with dread.

“Sure thing. Take care, Erik.”

The silence that followed was heavy. Maxim pushed back his office chair an inch and tilted Carlos head up to look at him. “You’re shaking.”

Carlo tried not to look reproachful.

Max tilted his head. “Erik and I have known each other for a very long time, Carlo. I know exactly how to handle him.”

“Please,” Carlo whispered. He pressed his forehead to Max’s knee. The inside of his cheek had bled where he’d bitten it. He always wondered if blood tasted to Vampires the way it tasted to him. “I’ll do anything to stay here.”

The Vampire was silent. Listening.

“If you don’t… if you don’t want me anymore I—I understand. But please sir, don’t send me back there. I’d rather…” his throat was tight and his nose was suddenly stuffy. “I’d like it better if you did it. If it was you.”

“If I did what?”

He didn’t dare look up.

“If you killed me instead of… of giving me back to them. To him. However you wanted. It— it would be kinder. It’s how I’d like it to be.”

The Vampire stood, pulling him easily to his feet. He lifted him under the armpits and sat him on his desk, holding his face so he could not look away anymore. Carlo was reminded how the hands that so gently held him could snap his neck like a flower stem. He still felt the pressure under his arms where he’d been so easily lifted by a body that sometimes felt more like steel than flesh. But the Vampire’s eyes regarded him kindly from that ageless face.

“Don’t talk like that, please. I don’t like it.”

He felt chastised. Something in his chest curled inward like paper burning, even as thumbs stroked his face lovingly.

“I understand why you think we have little regard for human life. But I’d hoped by now you wouldn’t confuse that with me and you. Yours is very close to my heart.”

There was a long pause, but Carlo didn’t trust himself to speak. He’d done enough of that tonight.

“Diplomacy is the best policy with Erik,” Maxim continued eventually. “He’s all bark no bite. For me, anyway. But you have to trust me. I’m not letting him anywhere near you.”

Carlo made a sound that was half whimper, half unhinged bark of laughter. His feet hung a foot off the ground and he was wrinkling unknown documents on the desk like the paper on the table at the doctor’s office. The Vampire didn’t seem to care. It only had eyes for him. The sting of being reprimanded was slowly wearing off.

“You’re mine. Do you know that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I know what you need,” the Vampire muttered, nudging Carlo’s knee to one side so he could open one of the desk drawers and fetch a yellow pill bottle.

Carlo began to feel warm and happy just from seeing its familiar shape in his master’s hand. Max popped the cap and shook a single tiny pill into his palm.