but vampire!graves with werewolf!reader is amazing. love that idea.

plus graves is 1000% right in the fact that having a werewolf would be an asset in the field. i’m sure it’s at least somewhat known amongst shadow company’s enemies that they’re vampires. i can imagine some enemy trying to attack with some kind of vampire weakness. like garlic or holy water and reader is just… completely unaffected. or their enemies thinking they’re safe during the day only to get attacked by a wolf.

wonder how he’d react to reader’s wolf form (shadows: can i pet that dawg? graves: nO-) or them absolutely mauling the hell out of their enemies…. 👀👀👀

So, really, let's be honest with ourselves. Graves 100% tailed (hehe) the wolf after running into them the night before the full moon. Couldn't leave his questions unanswered, now could he?

Why did they smell so heavily of a werewolf? That wasn't something he could simply shrug off. This was vampire territory.

Maybe they had simply, unknowingly, been around a wolf? Surely, there's no way a wolf actually made it into his company and stayed, right?

But whatever he was expecting on the night of the full moon, it wasn't finding them writhing on the ground, fighting their transformation. The notion felt wrong, it was so common knowledge that wolves shouldn't fight against shifting that even vampires like him knew.

So why did this pup not know?

It wasn't something he dwelled on for long, instead watching the painful process with interest. It wasn't something he got to see. A wolf was more likely to bite his head off than let him watch such a vulnerable moment.

He could easily pinpoint the exact moment when he decided he needed to keep the mutt, though. It was always so easy to forget how big these beasts were until you were faced with one. Bigger than normal wolves, for certain.

So what if the pup needed some tips and a guiding hand? As he watched those eyes turn wild and their fur glisten in the moonlight, he knew it'd be a small price to pay for such an important asset.

You came back wrong.

It took a while for the team to get back into Las Almas Base. Even then it was a challenge for the Monsters and Hybrids of 141 and Mexican special forces. Gaping maws in the earth filled with drip stone like teeth would suddenly open up beneath their feet. The trees would violently sway in the thunder shrieking winds as fat Heavy rain clouds let loose on the torn soil. All the while they couldn’t get the image of your corpse leaning in the doorway of your cell turned tomb, smiling over Graves’ shoulder as the earth gave way to teeth and blood at your cry.

The vampire had barely had enough to time to turn before concrete slicked into mud. He went tumbling with his thralls into a gaping chasm lined with obsidian fangs. Pain wracked his body as Those under his control were dashed against glass stone. He tried to pull his thralls to him. To call to The piece of his essence in each and every single one. No one came. He growled and tried again. No one. He looked up to the top of the pit only to see your dead eye’s mere inches from his, head cocked to the side as if listening.

A slow creeping smile stretched your pale blue lips, revealing rows of obsidian teeth. Graves barely had the energy to scramble back. He ignored the sting of glass piercing his palms as He pushed himself, further and further from whatever the fuck you were. A wail cried high in the pit and Graves flinched as Your head snapped to the noise. He would never forget the grinding crunch of bone if he made it out of this. Between one blink and the next, you were gone. Nothing but the clicking of volcanic glass in your wake.

Graves gathered himself, breathing harshly. The reports had said you were The 141’s weak link. A fragile human among powerful monsters. He had thought of Turning you into one of his Thralls. Making You a shadow. But, then. Well orders were orders, and Graves was nothing if not decently loyal to the people writing his check.

Shepherd wanted to rile The 141 up. Make them show their true colors. You were just the poor little human, that had wormed your way into the team’s heart.

He had drawn it out, after The transfer of the base went to shit with Ghost, Alejandro, and Soap escaping. Had taken his time with draining your life, drop by drop over the course of several days. Till your dinky little Cell became your tomb. After that it was a waiting game, and He got so tired of waiting. He decided to send a message to entice the 141. You weren’t supposed to come back.

Gaz stared at the massive black maw in the middle of Las Almas base. The place was deadly quiet. Not even the rain seemed to make a sound in the presence of the Obsidian Mouth. This was your doing?

He landed on a crumbled building at just the edge of the pit. He peered down trying to make sense of where shadows ended and black volcanic rock began, when he saw it. Bodies. Lots of Bodies. Twisted, Broken Bodies Lined the lowest points of the pit. Spiked through with Glittering shards of obsidian.

The harpy leaned further, flexing his wings and burying his talons in the concrete of the building to keep himself stable. A little red patch caught his eyes. Graves private little army. Shadows, then. He squinted. Something was off about the bodies though. They were pale. Not lack of sunlight pale. Blood loss pale. He finally let go of his perch and smoothly dropped into a swoop, right into the pit. The temperature hit him first. One would expect a deep maw of rock and earth to be cool maybe even cold. No, it was warm like a furnace, bordering on Hot.

Gaz’s mouth tightened in concentration as he landed next to one of the Shadow bodies. The obsidian had torn the poor thing apart but that didn’t explain the complete blood loss. The harpy kicked at the body. Something was off and Gaz was lost.

“Captain.”

The Dragon’s voice crackled through the radio clipped to his flight harness.

“Yes, Gaz?”

“Do you know any creatures that would drain a thrall dry?”

The captain humphed. “No.”

“Well something did. Every single body in this pit is completely drained.”

“Could be a ritual. We haven’t ruled out possession.”

Gaz flipped the body over. There! A thin channel formed into the glass, almost like someone was melting the glass as they dragged their finger through it.

“No we haven’t. I’ll keep poking around.”

“Be careful, Garrick.”

“Always am, sir.”

The harpy followed the trail. Meeting more and more thin little channels of dried blood. He barely noticed as the ground sloped. Pooling the channels into rivers til finally a deep pool formed at the very bottom of the pit.

Gaz stood at the edge of a massive dip, a single pillar of obsidian erected in the center. The walls of the pit were eating the sky, as Gaz peered up at the sun. The sun? Gaz had flown in under storm and wind. Is this what you saw before you left?

Gaz threw himself into the air. He knew you were long gone. The obsidian maw proved it. The maw’s spewed heat when formed. This one had long cooled. None of the bodies were burned.

The ruins are dark.

It sounds cliched to say it, like the opening to a bad horror story, but - it’s true.

Newt is in the old castle ruins, and the ruins are dark.

He shifts his grip on the candle in his hand, freeing up two fingers to clutch at the crucifix round his neck. It brings the flickering flame uncomfortably close to his chin, but he needs the reassurance. His other hand is weighed down by the heavy, oversized bible he carries, held shut with iron clasps to keep anything touched by evil from reading it. The cross etched in the cover is inlaid with silver and Newt holds it facing out like a shield.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” he reminds himself. “I shall not want.”

“Shall you not?” a smooth voice asks. Newt spins towards it but he can’t see anything beyond his circle of candlelight. “Doesn’t seem a very good shepherd, if he allows his sheep to wander here.”

Newt swallows. “I will fear no evil! For thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me!”

The voice snorts, an inelegant sound somehow made sinister in the way it echoes off the worn stone. “Oh, I bet they do.”

Newt falters in confusion for a second, then his ears burn in realisation. “You can’t say that about God!” he squeaks.

“Why not?” the voice asks, this time from behind him. Newt spins to keep facing it, lifting his candle higher in a futile effort to try and see. “He’s already cursed me, what else can he do?”

“No, that’s not - that’s not how God works, you can’t -”

“I didn’t curse myself,” the voice hisses, and Newt is sharply reminded that it’s not a man, this thing he’s talking to. Not anymore, and he can’t allow himself to think of it as one. “Your loving shepherd chose for me to become what I am. Seems a bit rich for him to blame me for it, doesn’t it?”

“He is loving,” Newt protests, then continues, stronger: “And he didn’t chose you to be, to be evil, he’s good, that’s the whole point of him.” He brandishes the bible, taking a step forward in annoyance. “You’re twisting words. You’re trying to trick me!”

“What would be the point? I’ve met your kind before, little sheep. You’re not interested in truth.”

“Of course I’m interested in truth,” Newt says, fear fading into his growing frustration. He steps forward again, and thinks he sees the trailing hem of the other’s long cloak as they step back out of the light. “That’s what I do, I learn things and I write them down and I teach them to people so that eventually everyone knows the truth. Would you please stop walking away? It’s very rude.”

He’s all but trotting at this point, awkwardly shielding the candle so it doesn’t blow out. He’s not prepared for the figure in front of him to stop suddenly and has to scramble back to avoid walking into them.

“I’m rude?” the voice snarls, startling close behind him, and Newt nearly trips as he spins round. There’s nothing there though, just black, and when the voice continues it seems to echo from all sides of him at once. “You come to kill me, and I’m rude?”

The black, Newt notices with a sinking feeling, is solid in every direction. He doesn’t even have the vague outlines of windows to tell him which way he’s facing. He’s not sure he could find his way out. “You murdered people,” he says, trying to keep his voice level. “In the town, they told me. I have to stop you. And besides, I’m not killing you.” His voice cracks, and his throat seems too dry. He licks his lips to wet them, but it doesn’t help. “I’m freeing you. Your soul. It… I, um, cleanse it of evil and it goes to heaven.”

There’s a long pause. Newt strains his eyes, but it’s still futile. He hopes the creature can’t hear his heartbeat, because it’s deafeningly loud to Newt.

“Poor little lamb,” the voice finally says. It sounds vaguely amused, slinking around Newt in a lazy circle. “What on earth were you trying to teach them?”

It’s a non sequitur, but Newt answers anyway. “The truth. That we are all of God’s creation, that salvation is freely offered if only we accept it, that if we are to love the Lord we must first love what he has made -”

“That we are all equal and all worth the same salvation?” Definitely amused now, there’s no doubting it, and Newt bristles at the mocking.

“We are,” he protests. “I know what some people are saying but I’ve read everything, and it says wealth doesn’t matter so I don’t understand why everyone pretends you can buy your way out of purgatory because as far as I can see you love your neighbour a lot more if you feed them with that money -”

“So you taught them to ask for more and their masters sent you to me. Did they also tell you to come at night, or was that more of your learning?”

The implication is impossible to miss, and Newt wonders with a vague sense of terror if it’s supposed to be a threat. If it is, it’s a bitter one, but that somehow makes it worse; like the creature is fully aware he’s being used as an executioner, but is already resigned to it happening. Newt stays rooted in place - there’s no point turning, but it’s intensely unsettling to know that there’s someone circling around him like this. “You have to be awake for the ritual,” he says, and he hates how unsure he sounds. He tucks his arms around himself and reaches for his crucifix again. It’s on a silver chain, and even if the cross doesn’t keep the creature back - which it will, it has to - the silver is a comforting barrier to have over his neck. “You can’t attack me,” he continues, steadier. “I’m a monk. God will protect me.”

“Will he,” the creature asks, and between one racing heartbeat and the next he’s standing in front of Newt, close enough to almost touch. Newt stumbles back but the man - creature - merely raises an eyebrow and doesn’t move. He’s slightly shorter than Newt, but clearly stronger, and even in the orange light of the candle his skin is unnaturally pale. His eyes, Newt is horrified to note, are a dark shade of red, and though there’s nothing so crass as a fang showing at the edge of his amused smirk, Newt knows his teeth will be far longer than any human’s.

“Here I am, little sheep,” the vampire says. “Awake and not attacking you. Aren’t you going to save my soul?”

It’s a trap. It feels like a trap. It has to be a trap, but the vampire just stands there, waiting. He’s so still he looks unreal, all his edges too sharp, like Newt would cut himself if he got too close.

“You’ll die,” he says, less as a warning and more to make sure the vampire won’t change his mind and rip Newt’s throat out half way through. “Your soul is purified and your body returns to ash, and you die. And - and there’s an afterlife, it’s not an end death, but. You die.”

“So you say,” the vampire agrees, and that doesn’t exactly sound like informed consent but Newt came here to do a job and he’s going to do it. He balances the bible against his wrist, fumbling with the iron clasps to open it. He holds the candle awkwardly in the same hand, then fetches amethyst and anise from his pocket, along with a small bunch of wormwood. He places them around the vampire in a rough triangle and, after a second’s hesitation, unloops the crucifix from around his neck to wrap around the amethyst. He makes this the head of the triangle, sitting between him and the vampire as an extra level of protection.

“For purification,” he explains, answering the unasked question. “And for peace for the dead. It’s not in the book, I know, but knowledge is still knowledge and I couldn’t see why it wouldn’t be true, so.”

“So you learnt it and you wrote it down and you tried to teach it,” the vampire finishes for him. He laughs, a soft sound that’s more an amused huff than anything else. “Maybe I was wrong when I said I’d met your kind before.”

There doesn’t seem to be much Newt can say to that - the idea that the vampire’s met other monks is worrying, because despite how oddly obliging he’s being now Newt can’t believe that the other meetings ended well. The vampire is, after all, a murderer, and no monk would just walk away from an evil creature terrorising a local town.

He turns instead to his bible. “Deus,” he begins, angling the candle to read the words without dripping wax on them. “Deus meus, respice in me…”

The rhythmic latin is soothing, and Newt loses himself in the familiar rise and fall. He’s aware, in a vague, distant sense, of the vampire’s barely suppressed snarl, the way the candle seems incrementally brighter, the comfort and confidence he feels; he notices when the vampire is forced to one knee, lips pulled back in a growl and claws digging in the dirt for grip. He feels disconnected from it, as though the words are the only thing that matters, and he’s not sure he could stop the measured cadence from spilling out even if he wanted to.

“In conspectu ejus cadent,” he finishes, “omnes qui descendunt in terram.”

The candle flares, then dies so low Newt can barely see. He blinks to adjust his eyes, looking down at the vampire to see if it worked. His head is bowed and he’s statue-still and unmoving.

Newt hesitates. Should he… ask? If the vampire’s ok? Is the body meant to still be there when the soul is gone, isn’t it meant to be ashes?

“The lamb has bite,” the vampire says, breaking into Newt’s thoughts. He looks up, eyes now a burning crimson and open mouth clearly showing his fangs. “But there’s something you missed in your research.” He stands slowly, keeping eye contact with Newt the whole way, and grabs the amethyst in an almost lazy move.

Newt pales, his hand going to his throat. His crucifix. It was wrapped round the amethyst.

“You can’t save a vampire’s soul,” the vampire says, letting the amethyst roll carelessly out his fingers and leaving the crucifix in his palm. “Because vampires don’t have souls.” He closes his hand. When he opens it, the heavy silver cross is a misshapen lump with indents to match his claws, and the chain is a tangled, half-melted mess.

Newt takes a step back, then another, then turns and runs. He can’t remember which way he came in but it’s panic driving him forward, not reason. He can’t see far enough ahead to properly anticipate the walls and he nearly runs straight into one, skidding into a turn at the last second and dropping the bible as he flings a hand out for balance. He goes to push himself off again and keep running when the vampire slams him back against the wall, grip punishingly tight on Newt’s shoulder.

“Let me go,” he gasps, trying to slip out.

“Go where?” the vampire asks. “Deeper into the castle? You won’t find anything there. Back to the town that’s already tried to kill you? Hardly seems like a good idea.”

“They didn’t try to kill me,” Newt says, kicking out viciously at the vampire’s ankle. The hands holding his shoulders down disappear and for a second he thinks he’s free, then the vampire grips his thighs and lifts him up effortlessly to pin him against the wall. Newt squeaks, torn between fear and mortification at the new position.

“They sent you to a vampire at night, armed with a ritual that doesn’t work. You don’t even have a stake, a sword - nothing. If they weren’t trying to kill you then they were doing an awful job of keeping you alive.”

Newt shakes his head, pressing himself back against the wall to keep as much space between them as he can. “That doesn’t make sense, they need me to stop you because you keep murdering people.”

“I don’t, actually,” the vampire says, shifting his grip to hold Newt in place with his hip so he can use his hand to pin Newt’s wrists above his head. He tilts his head consideringly and Newt flushes an embarrassed red. “They murder each other and blame me when anyone starts asking questions. The only ones I kill are the ones that attack me, and that hasn’t happened for a while now.”

“But that - you’re a vampire, killing people is what you do.” Newt moves to gesture with his hands but the grip around his wrists tightens in warning, and he tilts his head instead to illustrate his point. “You drink people’s blood and kill them and…” He trails off. The vampire’s gaze has zeroed in on his neck. He’s smirking again, amused, almost indulgent; he’s got Newt pinned in an entirely too suggestive position he can’t fight back from, and Newt’s just reminded him that vampires kill people and then all but offered his neck in invitation.

He bites his lip to keep from saying anything more and hunches his shoulders protectively.

“For someone so keen on truth, you have a lot of misconceptions about me,” the vampire says. He leans forward, pressing his nose into the soft skin behind Newt’s ear, and Newt shivers at how cold it is. “Perhaps I should correct them,” he rumbles softly. “If you’re staying, you should know who you’re staying with.”

“Staying?” Newt squeaks. “I’m not staying, you can’t just keep me here!”

“And yet, it’d be highly irresponsible of me to let you leave. Your shepherd might not care where you wander off to, little lamb, but you’ll find I’m not so negligent as him.” He draws back, but doesn’t relax his grip on Newt’s wrists. His other hand, balancing Newt’s thigh, is comparatively gentle; Newt can feel the faintest hint of claws catching on his clothes as the vampire traces a pattern with his fingers. “What’s your name?”

“Newt,” Newt answers on reflex. “I’m still not going to -”

“Newt,” the vampire cuts across him, eyes burning crimson and over-bright. Something tugs on Newt’s thoughts, but he shakes it off and the vampire frowns. “Stubborn,” he chides. “A nickname, perhaps? Could you be a Nathan, or something different altogether - no, simpler. Newton.” He smiles, and Newt stares, transfixed. “Newton,” the vampire repeats in a satisfied purr; it rolls through Newt’s mind like a fog, wrapping around him and leaving him boneless and pliant in the vampire’s hold.

“Doesn’t seem fair,” he says in a voice verging on breathless, “you knowing my name if I don’t know yours.” Distantly, he recognises the feeling of warmth creeping through him as the vampire’s thrall, but the only thing he can think of to fight it is to pray, and he’s forgotten the words.

“Very stubborn,” the vampire amends approvingly. “But not particularly subtle. My name is my secret, but you can call me… Graves. Now, Newton. Sleep.”

What kind of a name is Graves, Newt thinks, and in a flash of inspiration he remembers: Pater noster, qui es in caelis -

The thrall makes his limbs heavy and his thoughts sweet and slow like honey. He feels Graves rearrange him into a bridal carry and makes a soft noise in protest.

Warnings: NEAR-character death

Fate forces his hand, as it was so prone to do. He didn’t want to do it. To spread his curse, the curse of his family. A family only allowed to exist so long as its kin served the President. Complete subservience, a life of glamours and holding back. He didn’t want that for anyone else. He didn’t want that for Theseus.

But one look at the way he fell - a man turned into a doll with its strings cut the moment the bullets struck him - Graves knew he had no other choice.

No other choice, that was, that didn’t end in living a life with Theseus.

In the hellfire that was war, he cut a path as though it were nothing. He was young yet, but for the first time he felt the frailty of time as an immortal would. His expression lost all mock-worry he had been projecting over bullets or bombs. They were nothing to him. Ground was ripped from the very earth beneath his feet in chunks, but he did not sway. Never had he moved so elegantly, for never had he dared lest his peers know.

Now…

He parts the sea of war like light through the darkness. Metal bends around him, unable to pierce his skin. His glamour fades, magic rolling from his skin like water, leaving only the truth behind. His flesh is pale like the moon that barely lights his way. Eyes naught but embers that burn in the night, hotter than the muzzle flashes of the enemy. Fingernails that grow, sharp and deadly. Bones like marble, his visage more attractive, more otherworldly.

His men stop, hunched over in their trenches, and look on high at him as though a deity had laid foot on earth. And in a way they were not wrong. He was, after all, going to rip a soul from the greedy hands of death.

He nears and suddenly, he can hear him. Sharp, whistling, wheezing breaths that can’t quite catch in his throat. He’s panicked. Polished and brave as he is, even Theseus wilts beneath the weight of the realization that his human flesh is limited and that life is fleeting. Looking so small in the uniform that once made him look larger than life. Like a boy in his father’s clothing. Graves watches as the redhead, hair muddied, scrabbles weakly at the small holes that weep in his flesh. So small, so insignificant, these oozing dimples. But they will kill him.

Graves has seen it happen before.

So he kneels, fine knees sinking into mud, and gathers the man he had come to call brother into his arms. Brother. Lover. Friend.

Mate, he had hoped. Had fought with himself. For he did not want to pass the curse, but a life without Theseus seemed just as cruel.

“Graves,” Theseus whines through a scared mask of a smile, through bloodied teeth, through pleading eyes. “Percy.”

“I’m here,” he says, and holds him tighter as though that alone could cease the man’s shivering.

“I’m… you’re,” Theseus sucks in a breath, one pupil dilating while they other hung heavy and dull in his iris. “Fuck, mate, you look like an angel.” He barks out a weak, wet laugh. “Kind of fitting.”

“If only I were,” Graves says, and there’s a heaviness on his heart he has never felt before. The knowledge that he would be snatching this light from the world. That this light would change, invisible to death but no longer glowing with life. “Theseus, I’m so sorry.”

Theseus whimpers through a tremulous laugh. He is afraid. Graves can feel it in his pulse even as his heart heart begins to slow. “You didn’t shoot me.”

“No,” he says, “But I can’t let you go.”

There’s a question on Theseus’ lips. A confusion that Graves kisses away, but it is not the goodbye that the man was clearly expecting. It is ‘I’m sorry’, and it leaves his love tense in his arms. He pulls away to then pepper a line of apologies down Theseus’ stable jaw. Through the soft skin of his ear. Down to the thready echo of his pulse, numbered and fleeting. It is warm, but slowly cooling. Damp with fear and pain. He murmurs a soft “I love you,” into the flesh there, and kisses it one last time while a pulse still beats beneath it.

“I love you too–” The word cuts out into a sucked in gasp, like the hush of a gut wound, short and sudden. Sudden like the fangs that pierce Theseus’ throat, then retract, leaving a trail of venom behind. He doesn’t suck - there isn’t much left to take, nor time to take it. He wishes he could though. If this had been his choice and not his ultimatum that fate had given him, he would have taken his time. Would have crested Theseus gently through death so that when he changed, he wouldn’t even notice it between the sighs of pleasure Graves would draw from his parted lips.

He uses a nail to cleave his own flesh and make way for salvation. Blood seeps from the wound, bright and inhuman, and in his eyes he can see a horror awakening in his friend.

“You’re a vampire,” Theseus whispers. A question, a statement. Graves is not strong enough to hold his accusing gaze. He wilts, wrist raised and weeping, and nods.

When he looks back, Theseus has clenched his jaw. Has braced himself. And the weight of that gaze, that courage returned, sucks the strength from Graves bones in a rush. His wrist falls to his side in the mud, and he suddenly feels as old as the mountains his nana always spoke about returning to.

He…

He can’t do it.

“I’m sorry,” he says and red fills his eyes, hot and heavy on his lashes. “I… I just don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

He knows Theseus has a dozen questions. Why didn’t you tell me? How did this happen? Who else knows? How are you even allowed in society, America is anti-beasts! But there isn’t time, and he knows Theseus realizes that when his stomach contracts and his fingers tremble around one of the sluggishly leaking wounds. There is no time for questions, only decisions.

Theseus’ lower lip trembles, and Graves feels horrible for having robbed the simplicity of “the inevitable” from him. Because now he has a choice. He can choose to die and stick to his morals. Or he can choose to live, and all the costs that come with it.

He’s pale. His freckles hidden amongst the mud and the blood and the fear that makes the redhead look so fucking young.

“I…” he starts, and when he looks up at Graves, all fear of him is gone - replaced by a gnawing terror of another, much darker thing. “I want to see what Newt becomes. I want to go by to my pop’s farm when this is over and fix it up the way he would’ve wanted me to. I want to… Jesus, I want to do all the things we said we’d do after the war, Percy. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to want that, but I do. It’s not like they fucking tell you, it’s not… “

“There is no glory in death,” Graves says, because he has seen hundreds die – in alleys beneath his teeth. In the mud, in the trenches, in the streets. By his hand, by others. No one dies with grace, death is not so merciless as to spare some concept that any part of life is graceful. We are born into the world wriggling and screaming and we die slowly, messily, and just as scared.

“There’s not,” Theseus says. “I don’t want to die.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But I should.”

Graves sucks in a guilty breath.

“You should…”

But a hand grabs his nonetheless. Slowly, his wrist is brought to his lover’s mouth and willingly, Theseus draws from him. Hesitant at first, lips hovering over the raw wound, then fast before he can rethink it.

Back Alley Feeding Sessions Can Be So Intimate

Finally, finally got around to doing the art request @artistijojo1228 asked for a month ago (soooooo sorry it took so long man) asking for some Vampire!Graves.