#vampire!anduin.

Wrathion shifted slowly into awakeness, the kind of stirring from a night’s sleep you had when you barely were aware enough of rolling over and finding a comfortable new position to drift off in again. But as he moved over and reached his arm out almost instinctively to pull the other body against his, he discovered that it was not there where he had left it. Gone was the chilly form of the young man whose ice cold fingers so often had found their way against his burning skin in search of comfort recently, and who had been soaking in his body warmth for a bit over a month now that they had found this arrangement that helped him rest more easily. ‘More easily’ was a rather relative term though, when the starting point had been no rest at all.

The dragon rubbed the pad of his palm over his sleepy eyes as he tried to blearily take account of his surroundings to see where the other man could have gone to. The room was only bathed in the cold light of the moon and the few candles that had not yet died out, casting the space into a blue midnight shroud. He shifted his legs under the covers, warm and soft, and raised his head from the pillow that still called for him, but the urgency to make sure that his companion was alright won over that yearning.

It took him a moment, blinking his glowing red eyes in the darkness of the room as he leaned against an elbow and brushed his wild mane of hair back with the fingers of one hand, before he finally spotted the familiar figure.

He sat there on the window sill of the giant glass panes with his knees drawn up and hugged close to his chest, threatening to sink into the shadows of the room while half of him was illuminated by the bright moonlight. Looking fragile like a porcelain vase positioned precariously on the edge, and equally as pale thanks to his condition that had quite literally drawn the warmth of life out of him.

Wrathion pushed himself into a fully sitting position on the bed now, the covers pooling at his naked waist as he watched Anduin’s quiet form.

The way his long hair had been released from its bindings and resting over his right shoulder, where even now the delicate fingers of his left hand were absentmindedly and slowly combing through it like a nervous tic. The way his loose white collared shirt rested against his body but did not betray the movements of a breath that were no longer there, the piece of garment looking over-sized on his slender figure and still not long enough to help cover the pale expanse of his legs or his bare rear that his small clothes surely did nothing to protect from the bite of the chilly stone he sat upon.

Of course, that chill no longer bothered him. He probably did not even register it, or how he surely should have been feeling cold from sitting for who knew how long so close to the big windows if he had still been fully human.

Anduin’s expression was set into a melancholic trance as he stared outside. No doubt once more thinking of how life simply continued on no matter what horrible things happened, and how his death, or undeath, had very little effect on that. His blue eyes, one of the only things to remain the same about him after everything, were staring off at nothing in particular, and his plush cold lips were lightly parted as if he was about to go and draw a breath again at any moment now, revealing the slightest sliver of his sharp canines.

When Wrathion had found him those few months ago the blonde had been a mess. Stubbornly starving and delirious as he refused any ideas of feeding from his father and others who were close enough to him to know about his newly cursed condition. And even after the dragon had managed to goad him into begrudgingly feeding there had been the trouble of sleeping.

Anduin did not sleep anymore, not in the traditional sense at least, but he required rest just like any other creature. But rest had been hard to come by, as the blonde had admitted in a whisper laced in shame, because how could he know rest when he was so aware of being a monster. It had taken them weeks of work, and trial and error, to finally have the blonde feel comfortable enough to settle into his version of sleep in Wrathion’s arms. Cuddled close into his warmth when he Keep lay quiet around them and the city outside slept, closing his eyes and lying so still and pale that at times the dragon feared that he would never wake up again.

His strong and steady heartbeat helped him to relax, Anduin had confessed to him once, saying that it felt like a comforting metronome that he could focus his thoughts on instead of the horrors that lurked in every corner of his mind. It seemed like such a pitiful comfort to offer, but Wrathion was ready to take any little win in this battle.

The blonde did not react in any way when the dragon rose from the bed and pushed himself to his bare feet, the loose sleeping pants that he wore settling to hang low on his hips. He did not make any attempt to conceal his steps through the space, but he might as well have employed full stealth with the way Anduin did not notice him approaching, just continuing to stare idly outside. Or perhaps out of this world completely, listening to whatever it was that his mind plagued him with and kept him only half present at any time, leaving the prince looking like nothing but a ghost as he occupied his own rooms day in and out.

Finally Wrathion was close enough that he could reach out and place one warm hand on top of the chilly one that Anduin had wrapped around his knees, and the blonde did a sharp inhale of breath in surprise more out of old born habit than any need. He turned to look at the dragon with the kind of startled confusion you felt when you were suddenly yanked from somewhere else entirely into this time and place, and it took a moment for the alarm to die off from his expression.

“You startled me,” Anduin confessed quietly, moving his hand so that Wrathion could slip his fingers between his cold digits and hold his hand more proper, and the dragon did, as he stepped closer to offer any faint comfort of his body heat as he stood next to the blonde’s shoulder.

“I did not mean to,” Wrathion confessed equally as quiet, not always fully sure how to handle this new fragile way the blonde was sometimes, except with the kind of patience and gentleness that he really was not known for but was discovering that he held a lot of potential for when it came to Anduin.

“You were staring off again,” he continued with a gentle prompt in hopes of either inspiring the once-human to talk about what was bothering him, or to break him out of this spell of melancholia so he could return back to bed. And Anduin looked oddly caught and guilty as if getting lost in your thoughts and staring off were some kind of a crime, or maybe it was more the nature of his thoughts that he shied away from admitting, and he turned to give a glance outside the window again even when it still looked like he wasn’t fully present and seeing the actual view.

“I’m sorry,” the prince said softly, even when there was nothing to be sorry for, but guilt and need for some kind of outer forgiveness had been dominating themes in his speech lately. “It’s just…” and he hesitated, his lips opening and closing like the words he wanted to say and the things he wanted to admit were right there on the tip of his tongue, but whatever it was that he was afraid of was still keeping him from spilling them. And when he turned back to Wrathion it was clear that he had given up the fight again and was instead taking the path of less resistance.

“It’s just hard sometimes. To rest,” Anduin admitted, a half truth at best but the brunette didn’t press. That had hardly helped at all as he had discovered fast, and it was best to allow the blonde to approach these things on his own. The only thing Wrathion had not been ready to compromise with was getting Anduin to feed before he withered away completely, no matter how the prince had resisted and argued against it.

There was a moment of silence as the dragon wasn’t sure what to say that wouldn’t just be him pointing out that Anduin’s words were nothing much but vague fluff to keep him from prying. But then he took that hand that he had been holding, and gently pulled the human away from the window where the sight of people always managed to only make him feel sadder it seemed.