miraclewhip | (for cryptsleeper)

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(for cryptsleeper)

[ He remembers- maybe about half of what happened last night. A little more, perhaps. He remembers the comments that initiated the fight. Vaguely remembers being dragged back to the inn. Remembers throwing cold water on his face to wake himself up to do the terrible fucking job of stitching himself back up that he found himself with this morning (if there was ever a chance to keep that fucking cut from scarring, well, he's gone and botched it).

And he remembers telling the fucking vampire things that he probably should not have told the fucking vampire. He doesn't remember the specifics but he knows that he said too much. More than he's told anyone in a decade maybe. All for the sake of a petty victory that he doesn't even remember if he achieved.

He's uncharacteristically quiet today, even for being as hungover as he is. He forces the almost-solid porridge down his throat when it's pushed in front of him. He drinks half the water that he was using to wash himself last night and pours the other half over his head to wake himself up after maybe an hour of sleep. He only interrupts Sypha's long, long 'discussion' when she stares at him for an indication that he's still awake. It's after that that he's dismissed to the back of the wagon, either because Sypha can't stand his presence right now or because she doesn't trust him not to fall off and end up tangled under its wheels.

(Can't blame her, being tangled up under the wheels of a wagon sounds better than being in his own head right now, even without the throbbing pain.)

He doesn't sleep, mostly because he's been told not to and he is, even more uncharacteristically, on his best behavior right now. The day is mostly uneventful until sometime in the afternoon, when a particularly foolish highwayman sees a wagon driven by a single speaker woman and tries to take advantage of the situation. He's driven off within moments, of course, harmlessly to both them and himself, and the worst that happens is that the horses are startled by Sypha's display and the wagon lurches to one side, knocking Trevor onto his side against the wooden floor. It's only after everything has been confirmed okay, once the horses are calm and they're moving again, that he places a hand to his lower chest. ]

Fuck.

[ It's warm. And damp. He's gone and opened his shitty stitches, hasn't he? ]

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[Alucard brings both arms around Trevor, drawing him in close. The reaction was what he expected. Tame, all things considered. And for minute or two he says nothing. He holds on, strokes Trevor's hair because the tables are temporarily turned and now Alucard has the strength for that burden.]

It did not taste as if there will be too much loss. [Sorry, Trevor. He knows how that sounds.]

But this is going to go against every instinct you have. [He knows what knife to use. But as for the rest...]

Not your neck. Your wrist is an option. Or the inside of your thigh.

I need to be able to fight.

[ Is enough of an answer for him, but probably not for anyone else. He hates this. He hates every bit of this. And there are only a few things remaining that havn't been spoiled. The intimacy the three of them share, as far as any of them yet know, is one of them. And this- this will spoil it. How could it not?

The one fucking thing in the world that makes him feel safe. But he needs his hands. If he can't use the whip, he's as much nothing as if he was turned. ]

Ugh. Thigh. I don't use a whip with my thigh.

[ He wants to cry and scream and vomit, possibly all at the same time. He wants a drink. He wants a drink so, so badly, to be in that space where everything is warm and softened and muted and all he needs to do is sleep. ]

Pull your pants down.

[Alucard lets go of Trevor with great reluctance. Stands up. Goes to find that one sharp knife that Trevor always cuts himself with, because that's the sharpest and probably the cleanest knife they have. The incision has to be clean. It has to be perfect. And he has to make sure that nothing goes wrong.

He returns with the knife. He kneels in front of Trevor, knowing full well that this violates certain things too. There is only one thing Alucard tells himself. This is surgery.]

[ The lack of a dirty joke there is- honestly probably the most telling sign of how bad this is. There's no joke. No comment whatsoever. The only indication that he's even heard the instruction is that he follows it. He removes the breeches rather than simply pulling them down. Somehow that feels less exposed than having them bundled about his ankles. He even folds them, which is almost certainly a first.

And he sits with his knees spread enough to give access for the bloodletting (he had made a joke about this, hadn't he? the first night after they left Gresit. he doesn't find it quite so funny anymore). Eyes closed tightly, hands on his knees, fingernails digging into the flesh of them. ]

Sit on your hands. It's going to be easier. Instincts will...[They'll kick in.

But they both know it, and this is delicate work. Alucard's mother did surgery rarely. It was for those true emergencies, and he had only ever watched once. He was in his current form then, and his mother needed help. His father was away. Traveling. A man had been gored by a great stag, and there were so many fragments still inside. His mother cut through with a sharp knife, his mother removed every fragment, and his mother managed to sew it all back up.

He makes the incision as small as he can, cutting through skin to reach the vein. Trevor's left thigh, because when they're in bed, Alucard always goes for the right one. Habit. Trying to preserve what remains.

He puts no finger into the wound, pulls no skin back, and he curses himself for being at this point. Years ago he promised himself he'd never put fang to vein, never mind skin. All his administrations in bed were always careful of this fact, it was one of the reasons he was so happy to shower them both in affection: because he could be so very human in doing it. Teeth and fangs and tongues sometimes found each other, but that was it.

And now this.

He bites into the vein as gently as he can. If he fed, he'd break the vein, pull it out and glut himself on the spray. As it is, he lets his instinct take over for finding spoiled blood, and he drains it. Vampires drinking the blood of others is uncommon, but it not unheard of. These kinds of battles over familiars happen.

But it is not that. It is no battle. It is surgery and his is the son of a doctor. He will not allow it to be anything else.]

[ He doesn't breathe. He doesn't open his eyes. He does as he is asked, immobilizes his hands.

It would be better if it were feeding. He had been willing to be fed from. He'd been willing since before they were what they were now, before he'd given anything close to a shit about Alucard. He'd made his peace with the concept the moment he knew that they would be working with a vampire. Feeding was- it seemed more practical than this. More necessary. Something that could be hidden behind a thing that must be done.

This only needed happen because he was foolish. Because all of his family's methods had failed. It isn't the location alone that is too intimate, too wrong. It's that he allowed this to happen. It's that this is for his sake, and not for anyone else's, and he cannot rationalize anything that is done for his sake as necessary when he himself is so completely, utterly unnecessary.

He tries to imagine that the pain of it is a loose nail on a tavern floor. He came close to cutting himself at the vein on one of those, once. The sailors- they will have liquor, and they seemed friendly enough. He could ask them for a drink. Perhaps he will. It's a comforting thought.

By the time Alucard is done, the shaking has stopped. He is still. Perfectly. His eyes are still closed, his breathing steady. The only indication that anything is wrong is a slight glassiness to the skin beneath his eyes. ]

[Alucard doesn't pay attention to how long it takes to draw every last bit out of Trevor. It...it's about half a pint, all told. And hadn't they agreed on three? Alucard had tried to cheat and make it two.

When he pulls away, the puncture wounds remain. His mother would be horrified as Alucard puts one finger to pretty down on the marks. He isn't Sypha, he can't channel intent to heal the damn thing. But he can try, and maybe it's the pressure from his finger, maybe it's real magic, but the bleeding stops. By the grace of God, it stops.

The rest is routine. Stitches over the incision, because while it is small, the cut was deep. Alucard's gotten better about stitches, and the wound closes the fastest that it has ever closed. On any other day, he'd be proud.

As it is, he's disgusted and shamed to have come to this. He'll have to wake at dawn and take Trevor's face into his hands again to ensure the connection was broken, but...he was just tasting Trevor at the end. So it should all be gone.

So Alucard just stays there on the floor. Reaches up to find Trevor's wrist and to tug gently at it, to let him know all is said and done. He's silent again, but this time not from pain or sleep, just mute horror in all the new ways their principles had broke.

That was how they managed, wasn't it? They had their lines in the sand. ]

[ He opens his eyes for a moment, sees his bare legs, and closes them again.

A drink. He needs a drink. It won't take much - not when he's lost as much blood over the last hour or so as he has. A drink, and- dully, he wonders where the sailors sleep. If any of them have enough privacy-

-that thought he drives out of his mind. No. No.

Fuck.

He reaches for his breeches, stepping away from Alucard and pulling them back on. It's only once he's decent again that he's able to open his eyes and lie back on the cot so that Alucard isn't even in his peripheral vision and- ]

How will we know if it worked?

[ His voice is- not his. It doesn't feel like it belongs to him. It's just a throat pushing out air and making noises as it does. His face feels damp. ]

I'll wake you at dawn to be certain.

[The most Alucard moves is to allow for Trevor to stand up and put his pants back on. He's still otherwise, he'd be a hell of a statue if anyone looked in suddenly.

Finally, he stands up. Neither one of them wants to look at each other, but there's still things to do.]

You need food. And water. [Not alcohol, he thinks. Thins the blood.] And to not exert yourself, you've given...[every part of yourself] you've given me all the trust and care I could ever ask.

[ Dawn. Good. That makes it impossible to go bed a random sailor just to not be thinking or feeling anything for a little while (and god, that hasn't been a temptation in years, since before they were even what they are now, since Sypha put a wall of fire in front of him and he realized there was nobody he wanted in his life as much as he did her, and since Alucard had shown up and proven him wrong).

He is divided, half of him desperately tying to find something that will make this all not and the other half (the one that spoke in Alucard and Sypha's voices) carefully pointing out why all of those plans were stupid. ]

No food.

[ The first half wins, deciding on picking a fight as the best solution to this. How the fuck is he supposed to eat, anyway? It's a battle just to keep what is in his stomach down. ]

[Alucard doesn't fight it. He knows Trevor needs food because that's what's required. But he isn't about to pick that fight, there's no fight in him. Not right now, not over this.

He gets up silently and takes care of what he needs to do. Sypha's been the most skilled at the three of them with making friends. Storytelling, it's all there is to do on a ship, and she is a Speaker. Her birthright is stories. This is her element, as much as magic is.

Alucard returns with water. He has food too, but he won't force it down Trevor's throat. (He wants to. But this situation is too fraught for them both. Trevor has all of his emotions, and Alucard just feels raw.) The water is placed beside Trevor, but then Alucard goes back down onto the floor. He's not even going to try to play nursemaid in this situation. It'll end in hideous yelling.]

[ There is no fight, and he hates that more than anything. More than any of the others, he thrives on anger - not his own, but that of others. Hatred, seething hatred, is his childhood home just as much as the Belmont House ever was. He knows it, every little hidden passage and hiding place. And it used to be so easy to go back to that lonely, cold, safe place where he could be as shitty as he wanted, because nobody deserved him to be better.

He wants a fight. He wants to hurt. He wants to drink and scream and jump off the fucking boat. And his mind stops at that last one, because he really does want it, and hasn't that part of him been quiet for a fucking long time. So he lies still. Perfectly still, staring up at the ceiling

It's a long time before he finally reaches for the water. His throat aches and he doesn't know why, like there's some sort of pressure on it. His skull still feels like it's splitting open around the bad eye.

He chokes on it.

He chokes and then there's water coming out of his nose and he's coughing his throat raw and tears are streaming down his face and he can't breathe and he doesn't fucking want to breathe anyway and fuck this is pathetic.

Breath comes easier after a few moments. He lets himself slide from the bed and onto the floor with a graceless thump, then brings his knees up to his chest and buries his face in them, a soft, quiet stream of curse words and choked sobs. ]

[Alucard's thoughts zone out, eventually. There are monks in the east that try to do this, to still their minds, to do nothing more but be in the moment. What Alucard manages is almost that. He stands in a raging torrent of his thoughts, all shame and anger and disappointment and regret, the part of him that wants to tear Carmilla to pieces under his own hands, the part of him that wants nothing more to be in their bed unscarred and unscathed, the part of him that fears that their time together shall be undone by this. Past torture doesn't factor in. And eventually is is numb from all of it, unwilling to engage. All of this is and he will not give it more acknowledgement.

Again, time fails to work. He could be sitting for minutes or hours. But there are no chains, no restraints, just...just him. Just him and broken principles. Carmilla will break her fast on Alucard's fist and she will choke on it, and even that thought slips by without any more consideration.

It isn't until Trevor really moves, reacts, makes a noise that Alucard can't place for a moment (choking) that he snaps back to the reality of the situation. He doesn't have enough time to rise to his feet to see what has happened. Trevor's on the floor already, and no, no no, not this. This can't be what breaks.

There are arms pulling Trevor into Alucard's lap before Alucard can even register what he's doing. Or if Trevor's going to fit there, because Trevor has girth (heh) that Alucard doesn't.

He'll try and hope that he isn't shoved away.]

[ Dully, he wonders if shoving Alucard away would be enough to start a fight. There's a careful balance to it, now. A long time ago, he just wanted to hurt him, in any way he could, because He Hurts Vampires and that was the only thing that he could do that felt right. Now, he just wants to make Alucard hate him without hurting him. It should be possible. It should. He's a horrible, unsalvagable wretch of a creature and he has been since the burning and Alucard and Sypha are so bright, so beautiful, so perfect together in a picture without him.

He doesn't shove Alucard away. He doesn't do anything. He just sobs and of course he would be the first thing to break. Not Alucard, after all he's been through. Not Sypha, after all the sleepless nights and work and watching that awful mirror. Him. the one who hasn't done anything but fucking bleeding on things. ]

Can't do this. [ He manages, and 'this' could be pretty much anything at this point. Can't drink the water. Can't make any of this right. Can't go five fucking minutes without doing something stupid. Can't retake the castle. Can't fight Carmilla's army. Can't keep going. ]

If you can't, we can't.

[Alucard just keeps Trevor there. Holds on because what else can any of them do right now? He's already a broken thing, but he's kept it together because they have to. He'll lie about how ready he is for this fight if he must, because he can't stand anything else now. He'll die in service to the other two, because if there's anything worth sacrificing his life for, it's them.

He doesn't do anything else but hang on. He keeps his eyes closed because Trevor probably doesn't want to be seen in this state.]

Two never works. For your God, it's three. For how we met, it had to be three. [He'll babble, because he's spent so much time with this particular thought over the past few years.]

They called it triumvirate in Rome, when three shared power. Magic, science, myth. Scholar, soldier, hunter. [God now he just sounds mad. It make sense at the time.] Three to make a stable shape. Three to hold fast to so many things. A tripod for all those ancient oracles who inhaled vapors and let their gods speak through them. Three is divine, it is blessed, and even if your Church believes you otherwise you are.

...making no fucking sense.

[ His voice is shaky, hoarse. But he uncurls a little. Enough to look at Alucard again, at the same level as him now rather than below. He leans his head to one side, so that it can fall against the vampire's shoulder, eyes focusing on the wall at the other side of the room - Alucard is in his peripheral vision, that's all he can manage for the moment. It's slow, it's awkward, it's painful. But it's progress.

So many voices are screaming that he doesn't deserve this. But 'this', at least for the moment, is affection. Support. Things that aren't given because they're deserved. So those voices- what they say isn't relevant.

The laugh is bitter. It sounds downright painful. But it's not a sob, and that's probably progress. ]

Never fucking mattered whether we could or not, did it?

Good.

[Because maybe that's the best way to pound it into Trevor's head that this outburst is all Alucard wants to do, but he's too stupid and proud to allow for. They never saw him after his father's death (murder), not really. Not in all the horrible sleepless nights, because space was so very needed. And that had been on purpose too. It was stupid, doing the suffering nobly in solitude thing. He should have asked them to stay. But everything was so fresh and they hadn't known each other enough for that bedrock of trust to be there.

Alucard's not looking. He has both of his arms around Trevor, one hand on the man's shoulder, the other on the forearm. There's no thin overcoating of protection, there's a childish fear to it, because they're both scared out of their minds right now.]

Didn't have to have that be included. Faith, Trevor.

Faith.

[ The laugh goes from bitter to hollow and then stops. He lets the silence linger deliberately, almost testing it to see how it feels. It's not comfortable, not quite, but it's better than before the outburst. Unsteadily, he uncurls himself further. Arms around Alucard's chest. He's still too cold, but far less than he was before.

They're probably going to die. They've lost everything, and they're probably going to die. But they aren't dead yet, and that's something. Even if part of him still wants to get drunk, fuck a sailor and then jump off the boat. ]

You deserve better than an ungrateful shit.

[ Which is to say. Thank you. For the treatment. For catching the problem. For everything. ]

Mm, an ungrateful shit who managed to hoist two people through a castle with a vampire army behind them, pull all three through a viewing mirror, managed to invent a language to ensure safe passage, and then spent half a week performing completely improvised surgery to keep a man from dying.

[Alucard can't laugh. He can try and inject humor in his voice, but it will just fall flat. He buries his face into the top of Trevor's head and keeps it there, breathing in the familiar smell.]

It's very good that I love you. Repaying all of that would be impossible.

Fuck off with that.

[ He can take a punch. He can take a knife to the gut. He can take bottles of blessed wine from a church without getting caught. He cannot take a fucking compliment.

But he also doesn't try to minimize his work further, no matter how much of it was poorly thought out. Which is a pity, because he might actually get a good fucking argument out of that. ]

I shouldn't have left you. We shouldn't have. We almost lost you. [ He wants to reply in kind. Wants it more than anything, but he can't quite make his mouth make the words. ] Almost doomed me to a lifetime of Sypha's fucking cooking.

[ Close enough. ]

[Finally, there's a laugh. It is thin and fleeting, but ripping on Sypha's cooking is what finally does it.]

That last point alone is worth fighting to avoid.

[And there's no smile on his face, but there's just a little bit of warm inside. A flicker of it, and he nuzzles the top of Trevor's head gently.]

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(for cryptsleeper)

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there is no good in character alternative for 'NERD' and that makes me sad

THERE IS NOT god thanks 15th century wallachia

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