#post-s2

In the little anteroom, heat radiates from more of those copper pipes, filling the space. It seeps in through his clothes, settles against his skin, chasing out the chill; Trevor stands there for a moment, just breathing it in and letting his lungs thaw out—giving the ward over the inner door a chance to recognize him. Boots toed off, then onward: through the labyrinthine passageways that he somehow has learned by heart and that have even stopped somersaulting on him, as if the castle has finally accepted that a little maze solving isn’t going to scare him away.

In the sitting room, there’s already a fire going. Adrian is lounging in one of the soft chairs that he’s pulled right up next to it, one steaming mug in his hand, another on the table next to him.

“You look comfortable,” Trevor says, only halfway meaning the dig, because that’s about all he ever manages these days. A lot of the time, he doesn’t mean it at all. He crosses the room, starts stacking the wood with the rest of it.

“Mm. I am, yes.”

“Must be nice to duck out of chores early.”

That earns him a raised eyebrow and an indulgent grin, Adrian turning his head to regard him. “I cut just as much wood as you did. It’s not my fault I’m faster at it than you are.”

Nope, that would be Dracula’s fault. Trevor grins to himself, shakes his head, doesn’t say it.

“Anyway,” Adrian continues, “someone had to actually start the fire and heat up the wine, else you’d never thaw out.” He picks up the second mug by the rim, holds it out in offering, and it smells incredible—mulled and spicy and sharp, steam curling lazily toward the ceiling.

But there’s no third mug, and as always, that dampens his enthusiasm a bit. Trevor sighs, takes it by the handle, takes a careful sip to gauge the heat. It’s perfect, it’s always perfect, but.

“You look stiff,” Adrian says, dodging the obvious.

Another sip, and this one goes down better, cloves lingering in his nose. “It’s just the cold,” Trevor says, because it is. He can remember waking up feeling this way every single winter morning for years, even with the thicker cloak—like he’d turned to ice overnight and his body was just gradually relearning how to be made of flesh. Wages of the wanderer. “Makes everything sort of seize up. I’ll be fine in a minute.”

“Or twenty or thirty, if left to your own devices.” Adrian takes a long pull from his own mug and sets it aside, points to the floor in front of his chair. “Sit.”

“Really?” Trevor smirks, doesn’t budge. “What am I, the damn dog?”

“No, the dog doesn’t argue half so much.” Adrian sits up straighter in the chair, beckons with a waving hand. “I’ve been in front of the fire long enough that my hands aren’t even cold. Stop being difficult.”

Stop being difficult; he may as well be asking Trevor to stop breathing air. But he’s trying, lately—and there’s also the thought of getting those hands on him without having to do any work for it—aside from all the wood-chopping—and that’s undeniably appealing.

“Fine,” he says, sweeping the cloak off and hanging it on one of the pegs near the fire to dry out. He unhooks the Morning Star from his belt, settles to the floor in front of Adrian’s chair, the weapon coiled up within easy reach. These are tricky times, and knowing he’s prepared for outside threats lets him relax more fully, falling into a lax, messy slump, sockfeet trailing out toward the fire.

Strong, delicate hands alight on his shoulders first, start working their way downward from there, and as usual, Trevor is all at once overwhelmed: the heat from the fire, from the wine, from Adrian’s touch. It’s too soft, too much—too much comfort, too much warmth, too much safety. It’s strange how he never felt this way back when the weather was mild; only now that it’s miserable out there and he’s experiencing these bursts of cold and discomfort again is his body reminding him that that is, in fact, what it’s accustomed to.

Whatever. It can fucking well get accustomed to this. He leans back into the touch, groaning as those fingers dig in under his shoulder blades with impossible precision, loosening the corded stiffness there, letting the tension drain away.

“Enjoying yourself?” Adrian teases, the voice right next to his ear.

“Fuck you, of course I am,” Trevor laughs, as Adrian drags his hands lower, thumbs sliding down along his spine and working the long bands of muscle that run the length of it. “That feels incredi—agh, Christ,” he cuts off, as Adrian finds a knotted up little locus of ache; the sharpness of the pain when he really digs in is enough to take Trevor’s breath away. “Right there, yeah.”

Adrian obliges him, focusing his attentions. “This isn’t just from the cold.”

“No, that’s from using the axe in the same hand all day,” Trevor mutters, wincing around the discomfort; this doesn’t feel good, but it needs doing. “Should have changed it up. Stupid.”

A momentary pause from behind him, hands stilling; then they resume again, and Adrian says nothing.

“What,” Trevor says, “no commentary on that? You’re losing your touch.”

A spike of pain as Adrian twists a finger into the knot, with just a measured touch of sharpness; then the ache fades, as Trevor feels the muscle release its torturous, twisted-up grip on itself. That is—that is basically magic, holy shit.

“You aren’t stupid,” Adrian mutters, distracted, soothing over the spot. “And you don’t need me to tell you that. If anything, you’re a little short on common sense, which—well, neither of us are very good about that, on our own.”

On their own. The two of them. So very much not the way this was meant to be, even if it is just temporary, even if it is so, so much better than actually being alone.

“I’d trade away common sense for what I do know any day,” Trevor grumbles. “Common sense stuff isn’t anywhere near as likely to kill you when you fuck it up.”

“In your case, I’d give it even odds,” Adrian says, the familiar, infuriating sass bleeding into his tone even as his hands keep up their work, gently easing the ache from his muscles. “I’ve seen you nearly killed preparing breakfast.”

Oh, for God’s sake. “That was one time.”

He can almost feel Adrian frown. “One time feels like once too many, given how many actual, serious threats we have to deal with,” he says, and there it is, there’s the real issue—the actual thing that’s causing both of them so much tension. The spectre that’s been hanging over them for days.

“Fine,” Trevor says, trying to keep the sudden swell of despair out of his voice. “I get it; I’m not stupid, I’m just a walking disaster.”

Adrian’s hands still—then he brings them up to the back of Trevor’s neck, thumbs digging into the base of his skull, forcing him to cant his head forward as the tension unravels. Fingers slide forward to card through his hair. “Trevor. What’s really wrong?”

“What, besides the threat of impending attack, the fact that we don’t have any real allies to speak of, and the cornerstone of our defense plans not even fucking being here?” The words imply irritation, but Trevor can’t find the actual emotion in his voice. He just sounds tired, at least to himself. He takes an awkward sip of the wine, finds he’s nearly at the bottom of the mug. Quietly: “God, Adrian. I really miss her. I’m not—I’m not used to missing anyone.”

Another long pause, this one contemplative; then Adrian slips down from the chair, lithe form folding itself effortlessly beside him. He leans into Trevor’s space, deliberate. “Am I not enough for you?” he asks, and it’s so obviously a joke, so blatantly an attempt to distract him, and that makes something warm flutter in Trevor’s chest.

“Nope,” he replies, not looking up; he can feel a smirk tugging at his lips.

“Oh, my wounded feelings,” Adrian sighs, dramatic. “However shall I survive?”

“You’ll make it.”

“I think—I think I’m going to swoon.”

“Oh my God,” Trevor mumbles, because this is so utterly ridiculous, but he makes no move to put a stop to it when Adrian sprawls across his lap in a theatrical faint, his back bowing in such a way as to pull his shirt taut against all the—frankly gorgeous—musculature of his torso, and he is so doing this on purpose, the utter bastard.

Which means he deserves whatever comes next.

Trevor puts his mug aside, sets his hand on the flat, tight expanse of Adrian’s belly. Lets it sit there a moment, heavy and warm. Gives the other man time to consider where the hand might decide to go next.

Then he crooks his fingers in tight against Adrian’s side, spider-walking them across his ribs—and Adrian lets out the breath he’d been holding explosively, curls his body around Trevor’s hand in a spasm of hysterics. He rolls out of Trevor’s lap and onto the floor, mindless with laughter.

Here’s a truth that Trevor had been delighted to learn, about a month ago: Adrian Țepeș, the cold, unflappable bastard, the stoic dhampir that can take a knee to the dick without flinching, is ticklish.

Another truth: he only tolerates exploitation of this fact for so long before retaliating with force he can’t necessarily control. Trevor ended up with a wall-shaped bruise down his side and a very apologetic Adrian on his hands the first time he pushed this too far, so he has learned to extract a little laughter from him and then stop.

And stop he does, and teases him about it like he always does, and lets Adrian use his lap as a pillow as repayment, and it’s nice—another day, other circumstances, and Trevor could fall asleep like this, sprawled before the fire, a warm hand tucked into his own, the weight of Adrian’s presence soothing against all the worries and tensions.

But they’ve heard wolves in the night, recently.

And something’s missing.

They’ve commandeered another of these generic parlors as a study-slash-strategy room; books sit in stacks on the floor, relocated here from both libraries, everything they could find on the history of vampire activity in this area, on the history of the town—even on linguistics, Sypha hoping to pin the archaic variant of French they’d found on the tree down to a specific region and time-frame. All she’s been able to figure out so far is that it’s probably been out of use since the 1200s, which neither makes any sense nor helps them in any way.

They’d made a charcoal rubbing of the carving, and it’s pinned to the wall here, in among Adrian’s rough house designs and floor plans, rough drafts of bestia—compendium entries and mockups of illustrations.

It was joined, four days ago, by a new rubbing—this one of a carving they found very near the first one, in the heartwood of a tree much more freshly flayed:

The longest night is coming. Be ready.

...or something like that. Again, his French is rusty, and this is the same stupid dialect again, so he’s relying on Adrian’s translation. It doesn’t really matter—the gist is clear enough, and it’s nothing but bad news, even if it’s more unequivocally a warning rather than a threat.

To make things worse, it had appeared only after Sypha had left, to visit her family—to delve into some of the deeper magics of her people. To visit her people for the solstice. Which means she won’t be here for whatever’s coming—and a tiny part of Trevor is grateful for that, but it shrinks in fear before the reality that they kind of need her, and also that she will be incredibly pissed off if she gets back in a month and finds them dead and the castle overrun by vampires. Possibly pissed enough to take up necromancy just so she can give them a piece of her mind.

It’s a shitty situation. Trevor, frankly, has no idea what to do about it.

They still have the mirror, at least—the one up in Dracula’s old study, the one that matter, and people, can pass through. Worst to worst, they can probably find her and bring her back that way. It’s something they’ve been loath to do too soon, given how useful this new bag of tricks will be if she actually pulls it off.

This is why all the firewood, though—stacks and stacks of it, more than they should need for the entire winter, in case of a prolonged siege. Trevor cleaned out the dry goods vendor in the Acasă market two days ago, and the stall selling preserves, and while he got some strange looks for it, he hadn’t been sure if it was on account of him being a Belmont or on account of him being a crazy hoarder that needed thirty-seven jars of pickled vegetables. Adrian’s been laying in bandages and medicines, and the hares Trevor’s managed to hunt up in the deep snow are drying into jerky in a cellar somewhere in the guts of the castle.

Trevor’s also gone through the hold, meticulously sorting every weapon he could lay hands on into ‘consecrated’ or ‘useless’. He’s stashed as many of the former as he can into hidey holes all around the castle; finding out that Adrian could actually use the damn things had been a bit of a game changer.

They’ve fortified every entrance, and some of the larger windows. Secured some of the internal doors too, to section off the castle into safe and compromised regions if necessary. He even managed to get his hands on a pretty large supply of holy water, though he hasn’t figured out what to do with it, yet.

It’s not bad, for four days’ preparation.

It has also been a monstrous amount of work. No, he doesn’t only hurt from the cold. But it all has to be done, if they want to get through this.

And Trevor’s still not afraid of dying, not by a long shot—but he does have a preference in the matter, these days.

“Ah, shit.”

He’d just been planning to board over this window. The wood and nails and hammer are right there on the chest of drawers. It'd  only been by some strange impulse that Trevor had decided to take a look out onto the grounds first—and there they are, eyes gleaming in the moonlight, creeping up the main path like the creepy vampire fucks that they are. Six of them. Tightly clumped, easy to take out all at once if he can get the drop on them.

It’s not the solstice yet. And this group is nowhere near big enough to be something worth leaving them cryptic warnings about. He still bolts down the stairs at speed to where he’s pretty sure he left Adrian working on one of the inner doors. “Adrian—!”

“I see them,” the dhampir says, damnably calm, appearing from around a turn in the staircase—forcing Trevor to pull to a stumbling halt. He’s got something made of cloth folded over his arm, burgundy and gold, and he holds it out. “Put this on.”

Trevor blinks, thrown off. He’s already got the Morning Star in hand, is gearing up in his head, thinking through attack strategies—and Adrian wants him to play fucking dress-up?

“It will earn you more respect,” Adrian says, response to his unspoken skepticism. “Which could prevent this escalating into a fight. If it does come to bloodshed, this will protect you more than anything you’re wearing now.”

Right. That whole bit, where Adrian’s trying to remedy their ‘no allies’ problem—and the closely related ‘all the other vampires think he’s a weird hermit with a human fetish like his dad’ problem—by reaching out to nearby clans and covens, offering protection and, maybe more importantly, a voice to those who would prefer coexistence to mindless slaughter.

It’s too low a bar for morality, as far as Trevor’s concerned. And the whole thing reeks of terrible, suicidally stupid idea. But he hadn’t had a better one, so here they are, about to go talk to a bunch of fucking vampires when all the chainwhip at his side wants to do is rip through them like a scythe through wheat.

“What the hell is this?” he asks, taking the garment with one hand, tucking the Morning Star back onto his belt with the other. Shaking it out as they take the stairs two at a time, he can see that it’s some kind of—it’s a coat, trimmed in gold like    Adrian’s poncey thing. Shorter though, and the same deep red as the tapestries down in the hold, with the Belmont crest emblazoned over the left breast in the same gold—

Crowned by the abstract silhouette of a dragon’s head, wings spread.

Oh, fuck no.

“There’s an inner silk layer,” Adrian babbles, “to protect against piercing weapons. The linen should be sufficient to—”

Oh, oh fuck no. Trevor grabs Adrian by the upper arm; he doesn’t have enough strength to actually stop him should he not want to be stopped, but Adrian comes to a halt anyway, spinning on Trevor with impatience flooding his features.

Trevor jabs a finger at the dragon like he could spear it right off the fabric. “That’s fucking Dracula’s.”

“No,” Adrian says, softening, sighing in frustration. “It isn’t.”

“I’ve seen—”

“You’ve seen a red dragon, facing the other direction. I understand your own family seal doesn’t use much in the way of traditional heraldic symbols, but please trust me when I say that those changes matter.”

“You didn’t tell us you were—”

“Trevor. This is very, very much not the time for this conversation.”

And damn him, he’s right. Fine. Fine, okay. He pulls the damn thing on; it fits surprisingly well, nestling across his shoulders like it was made specifically for him, and of course, it had been. No restriction of movement that he can pick up on. Nothing flappy to get twisted up or caught on an enemy’s weapon.

Okay. He can work with this.

“You do whatever you have to,” he says, as they reach the main hall. “I’m going to be ready to take their heads off when diplomacy breaks down.”

“Such little faith in my ability.”

“It’s not what you’re going to do that I’m worried about.”

The last time this had happened, which had also been the first time it’d happened, they’d been caught completely flatfooted. They’d been walking home from the night market, in good spirits, that damn chicken Trevor had been so insistent on sitting idiotically in its wicker cage, swinging from Adrian’s grip. They’d all been armed, but otherwise dressed for a trip to town—nothing fancy, just warm and comfortable clothes that wouldn’t draw attention. Sypha had been carrying some cabbage. Trevor’d been gesturing with a loaf of bread like it was a sword. They had been, in retrospect, completely ridiculous—and then they’d just about stumbled over a group of vampires, waiting on their front lawn.

Not attacking. Not making ready to attack. Tense and agitated, sure, but standing around like they'd wanted to talk. And that had, in fact, been what they’d wanted.

It’d taken some quick thinking on Adrian’s part—drop his hair into his face before they could get a look at him, pretend to just be another servant, promise to head up and get the master of the castle for them—but they’d gotten past the interlopers and inside, and Adrian had changed and held an impressively competent audience with them for having no time at all to prepare. They’d wanted nothing more than to promise the fealty of their small group; they’d stayed out of the war, had no particular love for humans but saw no need for killing them without reason, and of all of those vying for power in a world after Dracula’s fall, they saw Alucard of Wallachia as the most likely to pretty much just leave them alone.

It had gone middling-well. They hadn’t been eager to swear off killing for food—though they saw the logistical sense in keeping their donors alive when possible—and they had ignored Trevor and Sypha as if they were court pets, but compared to the throat-ripping murder-happy lunatics Trevor’s faced down in his day, it had been a start.

They’d left satisfied. Adrian had felt confident he’d pulled off his little deception.

Then Sypha had reached up and pulled a stray chicken feather from his hair.

The group had never come back, never called him out on it. Maybe they had been spectacularly unobservant. Maybe they’d had a good laugh about it, later. Maybe they just hadn’t given a fuck, as long as they were left alone.

Trevor’s chicken stew, full of rich, doughy dumplings and parsnips and carrots, and mushrooms from the woods nearby, and lots of Sypha’s herbs and just two little cloves of garlic—well within Adrian’s tolerance threshold—had been spectacular, for as long as they’d had to wait for it.

So now he’s following Adrian out to the main entry hall at a tight clip, grip on his weapon unfaltering. It’s a more inviting space than it used to be: more lighting, and the carpets all replaced, the new ones a detailed pattern in gold and black, less gloomy and more expansively regal than their predecessors. By the time they’re halfway down the top flight of stairs, the castle’s doors have started to creak open ponderously; Adrian halts them on the landing before the second flight.

Below, the group from the yard wanders nervously inside. They look like they expect the floor to suddenly turn to lava, or to open up and drop them into a pit of holy water.

Actually, that’s not a terrible idea. He’ll have to talk to Sypha about that when she gets back.

But: the vampires. They climb the stairs, when they could just float. They show proper respect. And in the end, their nervousness makes sense.

“We are a small order, but we’re growing,” the female vampire in the lead says, and even Trevor can hear the uncertainty underlying the veneer of confidence. “We choose to value the presence of humanity on the earth—not simply for food, but for their own contributions to the collective culture of sentience.” Her eyes drift away from Adrian, land on Trevor for a moment, then shift back. “We have heard that the heir to this court holds similar beliefs, and we’ve travelled far to reach you.”

Trevor has to admit: this is gutsy. They’re putting themselves out there, in a show of ‘weakness’ that any other vampire lord wouldn’t hesitate to punish with exile or death. On the basis of a rumor, with the only confirmation being the fact that the infamous Alucard’s got a human standing alongside him, neither enthralled nor bound. Armed. Wearing his seal.

“As long as that remains your practice,” Adrian says; the skepticism doesn’t make it into his voice, but Trevor can see it in the cant of his face, in his eyes, “then you will be welcome here. We will provide protection and representation when the need arises, in exchange for your allegiance to our causes.”

And that’s some serious bullshit—vague promises and requests for help with causes unspecified—but apparently that’s how these things are done, because the leader of the group seems unperturbed. “Of course, my Lord. My people are yours.”

So: suddenly, they seem to have allies. Maybe. If they can be trusted.

Maybe Adrian had been right about the stupid jacket after all. Appearances do, sometimes, matter.

The vampires leave a few hours before sunup, their destination unclear. Trevor boards up more windows. They catalogue supplies, weapons, defenses. Adrian helps him rig up some nonsense with the holy water and the system of pipes that are already feeding most of the castle; it’ll be diluted, but maybe it’ll still help in a pinch.

They crawl into bed together at the end of the day, exhausted and weary. Trevor knows he’s going to sleep poorly; has done so for the past week or so, ever since Sypha left.

Ugh, no. She went on a trip. She didn’t leave.

“So. That was new,” he mumbles into Adrian’s hair, after about ten minutes of trying, and failing, to drift off.

“Mm?”

“Those vampires,” he clarifies, tucking himself closer; it’s not an easy thing. It seems like they’re all angles and edges some nights, pieces that don’t quite come together, without—

“Ah,” Adrian says, understanding. His own posture softens, opens up, allows Trevor to find their fit. “They were a strange group, yes. I can’t say I expected any of my people to be quite that adamant about not killing.”

“They’re not really your people,” Trevor says, yawning. Maybe that’s rude, but it’s late and he’s exhausted.

Adrian is, apparently, too tired to take offense. “I know. Easier than spelling out the details every time; indulge me.”

“Fiiine.”

“You’re right, though.” Adrian’s voice sounds odd, distant. “I’m not completely sure whether to trust them. Perhaps it’s my own biases; all the vampires I’ve known have been kowtowing to my father’s court. But it isn’t an attitude I thought existed.”

Trevor sighs, pulling the blanket tighter around his chin. Vampires that don’t want to kill. No, more than that: that want to not kill. Truly unprecedented?

For a moment, he’s fourteen again, hungry and tired and injured and bleeding, the whip in his hands barely obeying him, desperate to prove himself and the honor of his name and how else to do that, except by killing vampires?

Through the window glass, the starlight makes no dent in the darkness, barely illuminates the snow. He closes his eyes.

Back off, kid, the beast taunts in his mind, and thirteen years past, his temper flares, indignant rage. Neither of us wants me to kill you.

He tightens his grip on Adrian, feels a reciprocal squeeze around his shoulders. In his mind’s eye: just another dead monster, blood slicking the end of the whip. Just another hunt. Just doing the work he’d been born for.

“They’re out there,” he murmurs, the truth of it sticking in his heart like a knife.

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