Sleeping Messiah

Indie Adrian 'Alucard' Tepes of Netflix's Castlevania

[miphasdream]

VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST

[cagastri]

"Me? Never. ... ....... Have you even ever been kissed? I can't imagine the child of Dracula had anything but a sheltered childhood and from your own admission it was spent studying. Just how much of a life have you lived?"

[prescit]

"I said don't make it weird and what do you go and do? Really Belmont you are one of a kind."

[prescit]

"Stew. Is that sufficient?" Something to fill the stomach, dilute the alcohol faster, something which doesn't require full attentions be held while he babies a man he...shouldn't have given vampire's alcohol. Hindsight and all.

A sizeable portion of meat cut into small squares, vegetables, potatoes, herbs, and water all divested into the large pot he hangs over the fire to return to his wine greedily. Leering over the rim of the glass as he drinks.

[cagastri]

"A bit of bread and it'll be heavenly.......Alucard...can I ask you something?"

[prescit]

"Don't make it weird, Belmont."

[cagastri]

He's handled as a child plays with a doll and it infuriates him to what end he does not understand. All that strength in those hands... If he had half that power-

Well he wouldn't be human then would he. Fair play.

The vampire leans in and Trevor sucks in a breath, skin crawling at the sudden and intrusive thought of those fangs coming anywhere near his throat. He's thankful his instincts still writhe vehemently against the idea, fostering in him the need to turn his head and watch. Closely.

The subtle smell of a field of flowers in the peak of spring fills his lungs and in spite of himself he breathes in deeper. It's...nice. Better even than...no...no. Fuck that. He wants away. Get...

But the body pushes in closer, the harsh edge of the counter digging into the small of his back and he makes his discomfort known in a quiet grunt of disapproval. Ah-dishes..right. Can't eat with your hands and..

In the next moment his space is vacant, the weight of another human being vanished. He stares dumbfounded across the distance afforded him and watches that face contort into something akin to disgust. Wait... Did he think...?

Nothing said, nothing happened. Alucard's attentions are elsewhere in the kitchen once again and Trevor breathes a sigh of relief that whatever that was will be buried. Good. Whatever thoughts are rattling around in that pretty little brain of his can wither.

The silence is killing him. Sypha never shuts up, Alucard... Well this is the longest conversation he's had with him that hasn't devolved into petty jabs. He...misses it?

"What're you making?"

[prescit]

"Stew. Is that sufficient?" Something to fill the stomach, dilute the alcohol faster, something which doesn't require full attentions be held while he babies a man he...shouldn't have given vampire's alcohol. Hindsight and all.

A sizeable portion of meat cut into small squares, vegetables, potatoes, herbs, and water all divested into the large pot he hangs over the fire to return to his wine greedily. Leering over the rim of the glass as he drinks.

[cagastri]

"Th' thing about that is...I can't. The room's spinning like a...it's spinning." It's hard to think through the pleasant numb, the quieting of thoughts and fears, the nagging gloom of death reaching from below to drag him down to meet his ancestors. So Trevor doesn't think. Offering instead a sheepish smile.

[prescit]

"You're insufferable..." He could move him. Toss him about like a ragdoll and enjoy the way his limbs flail mercilessly to protect himself from the inevitable fall. He could stand and chuckle and amuse himself with the image of Trevor Belmont, Last Son of The Belmonts struggling to get his arms beneath him and pick himself up off of a dirty floor and know that the future of the Belmonts is doomed because Sypha Belnades would surely choose another suitor to see her beloved so pathetic.

But he is a kind and merciful man who would never stoop so low. What he does, is hook a long and boney finger in the loop of the vampire killer's belt to pull him to one side. Just far enough to open the cabinet door and fetch the bowl, a cutting board, and a plate. Balancing with one hand, while the other keeps the drunk steady.

Though he has to lean in, half of him pressed against the woolen clad, thigh brushing thigh, shoulder against shoulder, the heavy breathing of the oblivious panting in his ear. The soft grunt of discomfort as he's pressed into the counter, trapped between half a creature he hates.

The dishes clatter to the counter as he steps back, abrupt and uncommunicative, golden eyes like daggers as if it were his guest's fault. How dare he...

How dare he what? Wordless still, he turns to rummage for the cured meats.

[cagastri]

"I can finally drink without having to empty a coin purse and you're trying to shoo me off to sleep? Don't be selfish Alucard, I'm finally realizing my dream." Fine then, if he won't be hosted proper he will fetch the drink himself. On...wobbling feet.

"Christ you vampires brew potent." Have the walls always tilted that way or has the world finally been upheaved into some vacuous void? Just a moment, he's got to sit. Or- lean. Against a counter.

"Got anything to eat?" Could settle his stomach if so. Perhaps some bread.

[prescit]

"Re-thinking my offer of a bed now?" Yet he rises all the same to fetch a remedy for a stubborn hunter he was never prepared to host anyways. Auric eyes drift through the dim light of the hearth fire for- oh.

The click of his heels against stone is rapid, swatting away two sack dolls into the cupboard below, fetching a loaf of bread and a half wheel of cheese.

"This should satisfy you while I find something heartier to make." Which...is in the cabinet behind the drunkard. Of which he stands before, accusatory.

"I need you to move."

[cagastri]

"Shut up." Exasperation seems to mild a term for it, but he begins his story where instructed for all the sense the bastard makes. Recounts every detail he can manage and four refills later he leans back in his seat to pat his stomach, pregnant with decent drink and the warmth overbearing.

"So- I need to figure out just what the fuck it is if that's going to be a recurring nightmare."

[prescit]

"Hmm. I certainly will be of no help to you, my childhood was spent studying useful things. Practical. Learning histories and patterns to predict futures. I think my mother would've wanted me to be a diplomat.." A joining of his halves, two civilizations at war for eons. Ever the optimist. They could never have co-existed in peace as long as one consumed the other to sustain themselves.

"And you will be of no use until you've sobered up. Come, I'll make a bed for you. I'm sure there's one room left relatively unscathed somewhere."

[cagastri]

You can't have it back if it's all gone, Alucard. Down the hatch it goes as desperately as when he was prepared to beg for it. He's gasping for air by the end, evidence of his sloppiness dribbling down his chin.

"You're hilarious. What was it again... Long...corridor? Straight corridor...? ...INFINITE corridor, that's the one! A Saint Germain, crazy bastard that he is, first introduced us. Can't say I can wrap my head around it. Still don't know if we've done the right thing."

[prescit]

"Once more, you're terrible at telling stories. Generally, they start at the beginning." Slender fingers curl around the stem of a wine glass, lips cup the rim to welcome a delicate sip. Half the glass might have been gone by now should he be alone. A bottle maybe. Two. It's only been...how long now? The stores will need replenishing well before the year is out.

"Start where all things do. When you met this...Saint Germain."

[cagastri]

"I think I love you..." Not coin, not busy work, not killing a man eating night creature, just a story. Trevor has plenty.

"Something I'm sure some ancient part of my family encountered before in lands they occupied before Wallachia. Ever hear of a...what was it...something corridor...?"

[prescit]

"I want my ale back." Hairs bristle along the nape of his neck, pleasant ripples sent skittering through alabaster skin. I think I love you.

"You tell terrible stories, Belmont. Plenty of homes have corridors. For instance, this one. It has many."

[cagastri]

"You can have the answer...for a drink." As if he's lived here all his life, Trevor takes a seat at the table. Icy blues study the red wine glittering like watered blood.

"Though preferably something less...dainty than wine yeah?"

[prescit]

"That's extortion, Belmont. Let me see...your preference is piss, correct? I think I could fill a bottle." It is the swill his father kept for the nords, the vikings, the brutes of his council who could not be tamed in their fervor for the rougher things. Plenty of it is left at a last resort. He is thankful he has not had to touch it yet. A mug all his own filled to the brim.

"There you are, now my payment."

[cagastri]

All his misgivings having a half vampire as an ally against its own kind, against his own father, and not once had old fears reared their head. Not an eye batted at the notion his neck might make a meal, or Sypha's, or any other poor bastard they stumbled across. Countless night hordes cut down in their wake, things that arguably Alucard could have sided with. Should have. Trevor had...once upon a time.

All that contempt in his voice when speaking of his father, the love when reminiscing about his mother, the generosity and foresight in dealing with a Speaker Magician and a Belmont come to kill him.

Those fangs could have sunk into his throat, but didn't. A dagger in his stomach and he laughed.

To be pushed to enact the same penance his father gave for the poor bastard who simply stepped too far into his territory... Trevor swallows.

"Ran into something unusual on the road. Came back to check the family bestiary, update a few things. Sypha's coming around to the written word so I figured Belnades and Belmont needed a record keeping all their own. Times have changed since the dawn of the Belmont's legacy, need to keep the archive current." Tone softens to a feather's touch, gaze locked onto the glass of wine sitting lonely on the table before the vampire.

"Is the archive still as untouched as your decimated childhood home?"

[prescit]

"I haven't moved it into the castle yet, if that's what you mean." Let the dead rest where they lie, let old tomes of the best methods of murder fester and grow new life in its decay.

"What is it that you've come across that has you returning here?"

[cagastri]

Though his brows furrow it is not an anger directed at the vampire himself but at the circumstances in which two bodies found their cavities which should never be filled, filled in the most gruesome of ways. His voice drops octaves like flies, softens despite the fury budding in his chest.

"Then tell me what they did to deserve that. Put my mind at ease."

[prescit]

"At ease...?" What easement could be had in taking a life wrought with struggles of their own? Innocence taken, innocence lost, hunger and greed crammed into places that innocence used to fill. Packed so full it seeped from every orifice, blinded and deafened.

"Don't...don't make me say it aloud." He could not forget if he spoke its existence. He had hoped the birds and beasties of the forest would sup until there were naught but bones, and the sinew which held those bones together would rot and turn to dust and so their skeletons would crumble to the ground. He would have put them to rest then.

"Why are you here."

[cagastri]

"Alucard..."

[prescit]

"I did not do anything to them which they did not deserve.. Know that I tried, Belmont."

[cagastri]

"Oh she's taught me plenty. Answer the fucking question."

[prescit]

"You're disgusting."

[cagastri]

@prescit

"You're a piss poor conversationlist, Alucard and you haven't gotten any better. Don't change the subject."

[prescit]

"Still as dull as a shovel aren't you? I'd have thought Sypha could teach you something on your journeys at least."

[cagastri]

“Go on then.” He knows what the vampire meant. But he’s nothing if not an insensitive asshole.

“It’s not me that’s worried. It’s the locals. You know how squeamish they get.”

[prescit]

"The locals." Yes, how well aware he is that the locals are worried. They will come with their pitchforks and their torches and braids of garlic hung round their withering necks and they will drive their stakes into the ground in protest. And he will have no where else to go, the castle will not move. The Belmont trove has not been sorted and archived.

"Where is Sypha?"

[prescit]

"The locals." Yes, how well aware he is that the locals are worried. They will come with their pitchforks and their torches and braids of garlic hung round their withering necks and they will drive their stakes into the ground in protest. And he will have no where else to go, the castle will not move. The Belmont trove has not been sorted and archived.

"Where is Sypha?"

[cagastri]

prescit​:

    A laughter ringing church bells in the quiet of the morning, stone echoing back an angel’s chorus, lips pursing in the dim of the castle as if to silence the outburst. Strange that he should welcome a Belmont’s cursed tongue wagging in the presence of his family’s ghosts.

    “Moping about a desolate and desecrated home, the usual. What brings you back to this graveyard?”

     For fuck’s sake. He has never hated a sound so much in his life nor found comfort in it quite so much as the bastard’s deep laughter, brushing at his clothes as he stands and wrinkling his nose at a patch of old blood smeared across his expensive ‘new’ cape. Fucking hell this place is a shithole.

     “Desecrated is right. You haven’t even bothered to clean up. In fact, you’ve added some…choice decorations. Mind explaining that one?”

[prescit]

"Not particularly, no." Angelic locks of fine woven gold frame a joyless face, guilt a knife between his ribs twisting ever deeper. Memories of fluttering nightgowns, his mothers, in rivulets of red. Inlets leading pathways into one another, pooling around soft breasts, between cold thighs. A shudder caresses his spine.