Young Dracula (TV) // Robin Branagh/Vladimir Dracula
ft. memory loss, reunions, and boatloads of vlad's emotional baggage
he's leaning across the counter, white tee and black leather vest twisting with his body. he's taller, which vlad thinks may be obvious, but he hasn't grown an inch since he was sixteen, so it surprises him how differently he carries himself. broader, too. filled out into his body - not especially muscular, but wide arms, thighs, the body of a man. it makes vlad feel nauseous, and it's at that moment he knows tal is right. he wants him so badly he can't see straight.
or
vlad ends up in stokely before he realises
STOKELY, 2007
You're not actually thinking of anything. Anything else, that is - you're not imagining anything - you're actually just watching. You probably should be imagining something. Like, a girl maybe. Yeah, that's good. You can imagine a girl. A beautiful girl, with dark hair and brown eyes. She'd be pretty, and cool, and she'd be sitting on your bed next to you in a Slayer t-shirt and black jeans, and shit, no, you're just watching again. Close your eyes, maybe that'll help.
Don't think about Robin, whatever you do. It's difficult, because he's next to you, but don't. You're not supposed to be thinking about the fact you're doing this together, you're just supposed to do it. You wonder what the point is if you might as well be doing it alone.
But that's the point, maybe. That you're alone, but not alone. That your best mate is here, but he's not supposed to be here, and you're not supposed to be thinking about him, but you are. Just stop thinking.
Don't think about the sound of his breathing, harsh and hot, the rustle of his jeans, the sound that left his mouth when he put his hand on himself (you think, because you're not looking).
Don't think too hard about how you got here, cause it'll only make less sense the more you remember it. Only something about teenage curiosity piled onto the nest of your bedsheets and the nascent Internet and hammer horror and videos of increasing explicitness (women with corn syrup running down their tits, and sticky mess of their inner thighs) and Robin asking about drinking blood, if it’s like a sex thing, if you get a boner when you think about it, length of his thigh pressed up against yours and you telling him boner makes him sound like he's from a dumb American film, cause you can't tell him you got one watching him change into his shorts in the changing rooms after PE and now he's here, shoulder digging into your arm.
Don’t think about any of that. Just feel the weight of your dick in your hand (and don't lean over and kiss him) and try to get your breathing under control (because the windows are shuddering in their frames). You can do this.
Keep going, but not too far. Don't stop, but don't start. Get a grip. Get it right. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
Young Dracula (TV) // Vladimir Dracula/Robin Branagh, Vladimir Dracula & Dracula // Explicit // Graphic Depictions of Violence
vlad is ten, and he's being shaken awake by the cold, insistent hands of his father.
or
robin tastes like copper and menthol. he slips down vlad's throat easy as anything, fills him up like a three course meal.
or
vlad is twenty-six, and he still has nightmares.
read in full on ao3
Vlad is ten, and he's being shaken awake by the cold, insistent hands of his father. His face looms out of the darkness, grotesque mask, nightmare fuel.
Vlad had been having a nice dream: he was in a playground - the one backed on to the school down the hill. The children he watches through binoculars from the castle, that he sees in glimpses through trees, were surrounding him. They were playing marbles, or hopscotch, or some kind of game he only knows how to play a version of that he and Ingrid have made up themselves. The other kids had warm, bright smiles, and the sun was shining, and Vlad was happy.
He tries to hold onto this feeling as nails dig into his arms and tug him upright in bed, out of the dream world sun-soaked playground. Dad's hungry, he can tell that much - knows well enough when his eyes get dark like this to leave him alone. The only problem being, Dad won't let him.
“Get up, Vladimir, come on. We've got to get you out of this abominable diurnal habit.”
Vlad doesn't know what diurnal means. He doesn't understand why he's being shaken awake in the middle of the night and thrown his cloak to wear on top of his pyjamas. He doesn't even get chance to put any shoes on before he’s being set on the window ledge, trying not to look down into the spiralling dark.
Vlad doesn’t like the dark, or heights, or these excursions that his dad has started taking him on. He wishes he'd take Ingrid instead. He’s always exhausted the next day, can’t keep his eyes open for whichever stern Romanian woman is supposed to be tutoring them until Dad grows tired or suspicious of her. Or hungry. The last one whipped red lines into his palms after he dozed off over his Latin translations, while Ingrid laughed, and he at least got some satisfaction from tearfully showing his dad and seeing the brand new hire the next morning.
Then his feet leave the stone sill, and the wind whips his face, and he screws his eyes shut against the landscape rushing past, the sight of his Dad as some airborne nightmare, grasping his shoulders until they hurt.
--teach you a thing or two about hunting...
The words fly past him, he can’t tell if they’re spoken or thoughts, but there are others that press into his mind too - ones that are bloody and hungry, that he doesn’t understand, that scare him. Before he can parse too many of them, they’re back on the ground.
They're on the edge of the forest - he hasn’t been into the village enough to know where, but there’s what he thinks must be a bar through the trees, lights and music and laughter from inside. Dad disappears upwards in a flash of smoke. He scrunches his bare toes up against the mulch underneath them.
Dad’s gone for a while. Vlad can see the lights in the bar, and he's so tired - wonders how angry Dad would be if he fell asleep. He sits as comfortably as he can in the damp undergrowth, pulls his knees up to his chest to try and keep warm. Then, he sees it - on the far side of the building - two figures emerge from the back door, all pressed up against each other.
Vlad knows he's supposed to watch. It feels weird, though. Wrong. He doesn't like seeing them rub up against each other, but at the same time he can't look away. The woman has long, dark hair, and Dad manœuvres her behind the building, tilts her head to the side, and kisses her jaw.
Then he tips his head back, and clamps his teeth into the stretch of her neck.
It hits him all at once: the choked-off gasp, the smell of blood, the panicked wide whites of her eyes as she scans the treeline for someone to step in and save her. He wants to screw his eyes shut, but he can't, watches paralysed as Dad drinks the life out of her until her hands fall limp by her sides and she slumps against him. He thinks he might be crying, breaths coming fast and shallow.
Then the back door of the bar swings open, a man emerges and Dad's gone, leaving her a crumpled thing on the floor. The man staggers over to her.
He screams, (her father? husband?) and Vlad sees the way he falls to his knees, his face contorting in grief.
Then there's an arm around him, and his feet leave the ground, tugged into the air and pulled through the black night.
