#vampire graves

(inspired by bluegiragi and docdudo)

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The tall trees seemed to go on for miles and miles. The bitter cold of the wind left stinging prickles along your tender flesh. Vast expanses of trees loomed overhead miles in every direction. North, trees. South, trees, East, trees. West, trees. stabs of electricity run up and down your shins with each step you take. Looking back, there is no sign of the cave in sight, not even the mountains which the hybrid's cave is. Theres nothing. oddly enough, it feels right. It's hard to tell how much time has passed; the sun went down ages ago. The woods bathed in darkness under the cover of night and the light of the moon.

'Should've paid more attention to the travelers back in town.' Spitting at the very notion of them. They never helped you, not even once. But the stories they would tell in exchange for coin has proven helpful more than once. Which mushrooms to avoid for one, how to make a simple snare, too bad one of the traveling men shooed you away when he was telling how to pinpoint direction by light of the moon. with the past in the past, there was no use in ruminating over what could have been. especially now more so than ever with the way the wind picked up in baleful gusts. It was as if even the very forces of nature were against you and your plight. Moisture gathers, sticking to your eyelashes. Making the act of opening your wind swollen lids ache with a strange sort of burn. Wiping your running nose on your forearm, the feeling of mucus drying on your cold and clammy skin sends a curl of disgust to your face. A small grimace that only grows bigger over the span of seconds as the wind dies. The sudden change leaves you near breathless as shivers wrack your being.

"Well now, aint you a small'un."

Jolting at the sudden voice. your eyes widen as large as dinnerplates. Looking to your right, then to your left. Swirling around until you can find the source of the voice.

"H-hello?" it's almost pathetic how small you sound. How you barely sound intelligible.

"Cold? Well, can't have that now can we." Automatically it's as if the shadows of the forest curl in around at your ankles. Before you can jump away out of instinct, a heavy arm drapes itself around your shoulders at the same moment a solid body presses itself at your side.

"Dragon, Harpy, Werewolf and even a wraith. My, my, you are a strange creature indeed."

Turning, the arm around your shoulders doesn't move to stop you. Even in your state, you could feel how if he wanted to, he could do so much worse than hold you still. Looking up, it's strange how the moonlight makes this stranger's form pop into being. Scowling, you bring you gaze to a face so pale that it rivals the moon in all its glowing splendor. Pale blue eyes flash red for only a moment; you could swear that it was as red as blood.

"w-what? who-"

"ah ah, not important. however, what is important. Is why a small little thing like you, is out alone at night. It's quite late, and dark. Are you scared of the dark?"

"No!" the feeling of indignation wells in your chest. You're certainly not a small child anymore. Not a baby. Even being treated similarly to one for these past months couldn't dampen the rage at being asked something so demeaning. recoiling, you stamp your foot on the ground to solidify some sort of boundary.

"Who are you." The man doesn't flinch at your tone, nor at the fire in your eyes when you settle him with a steely stare. 'He's blonde' you notice. The more you look at him the more it seems like the shadows that were clinging to you earlier dissipate.

"Just a friend, a friend who is worried about a child wandering around my woods at night."

"Your woods?" You blurt out. Embarrassment follows swiftly as the man cocks his head at you. Amusement or something of the like graces his lips.

"That's right, my woods. And you're trespassing."

Crossing your arms over your chest for warmth, the wind makes it moment to pick up again. Being labeled as a trespasser stings, but the woods have no one owner.

"No I'm not, these woods-"

"-Are no place for a child, and a barefooted one at that. Cold?"

The scowl on your face only grows deeper as you start to shiver again. The evidence of your disposition is clear on your face and the cold clear remnants of snot on your arms as well as your body language. Nodding silently, the stranger's face doesn't even change when you admit to what he can see as clear as day. Without wasting a beat, the man smiles. Not condescendingly, but softly. A smile that looks unnatural on his fine features. He almost looks handsome you think, almost.

"I'm-m cold...yeah." Whispering, it's a miracle he can hear your voice through the call of the wind.

"How about this, I take you to my campsite and get you warmed up. Food's almost ready." You find yourself nodding along in agreement. 'But if there was a campsite nearby, wouldn't you have seen the glow of a fire nearby, or the smell of smoke?' Your brain fizzles out a last-ditch rational thought as you slip your hand into his larger, outstretched palm.

"How..why did you say..dragon? and all that stuff?" You find yourself asking as you allow the man to lead you in an entirely different direction than you were walking before. His shoulders sag as he heaves out a sigh. Almost sound over-exaggerated, his tired sigh gives way to a stifled laugh. The type that has you wondering if you said the wrong thing or if he finally cracked his gourd by travelling in the dark for so long.

"I've got a good sense of smell. It's rare, mighty rare to meet the child of all four creatures as those. But you're just a lil human. Same as me." The way he tightens his grip on your hand leaves you with a bitter taste, his accent slipping out catches your attention more than anything else. As if sensing your confusion, he shoots you another small smile. A glint of white from behind his pink lips draws your eyes to his mouth. Gently, he shakes your hand. Your focus momentarily shifted from teeth to hand to the darkness surrounding you both. Squinting, just up ahead you can see the small glimmer of a campfire.

"Is that your camp?"

"Sure is. And now it's yours to."

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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.

“How good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it.”

- Bram Stoker, Dracula

Credence walks into a bookstore on a rainy day, and the world changes. 

"How good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it." - Bram Stoker, Dracula

"How good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it." - Bram Stoker, Dracula