#[ vampire ] to feel the sun is to taste ash

[walkedfire-a]

ENDLESS EDITS FT VAMPIRE VERSE . DONT REBLOG UNLESS MUTUALS

[zorosdimples]

DUSK, RESPLENDENT

pairing ⟢ astarion x gn!reader

warnings ⟢ minors: please do not interact! i will block you. not sexually explicit, but highly suggestive… smut-lite! descriptions of blood, blood sucking, bite marks, scars, etc. this occurs after astarion first feeds from tav. reader has breasts and a vagina and is called “beautiful” once (i swiped a line from the game).

word count ⟢ 1208

notes ⟢ this particular scenario has been rotting my brain since september. my first official bg3 fic—please enjoy!

It’s impossible to miss the heat of his crimson gaze scorching your flesh.

You’ve felt it ever since the night you discovered his secret: that quiet evening when the stars shined as silent sentinels, the embers of the campfire danced into ash, and the ghost of a breath roused you. You offered Astarion your neck—swanlike, untouched, vital—prey allowing predator a taste of divinity as he buried his glistening fangs into your skin. Agony bled into a hazy euphoria as the vampire fed on your lifeblood. You barely had enough stamina to push him off (lest he leave you drained and lifeless), rivulets of you the color of his irises running from his gums to his chin, dripping onto the forest floor.

Many moons have since passed, though your mind always revisits the feeling of his weight atop yours, the strength of his jaw, the vitality in his sated stare. The sun starts its golden descent as you bathe in a creek by camp. You scrub your skin with vigor, almost without care as you seek to shed layers of sweat, grime, and gore. The midsummer air is stifling and the cicadas play their shrill song, but the chilly caress of the water makes you giddy.

It takes no small effort, but once your hair and body are stripped bare (clean enough), you remain in the water and watch pinks and oranges and yellows bleed and bloom across the wide sky. Some may say that resting for even a moment in a situation like yours—with a mindflayer parasite in your brain—is to accept death. But if you were to die at this very moment, surrounded by beauty? You couldn’t dream of a more peaceful end.

You feel your visitor’s presence before you see or hear him. It starts as an itch at your nape, nagging and unsettling—insistent. “Enjoying the view?” The playful lilt of Astarion's smooth voice never fails to set your nerves alight.

As you turn to face him, the water laps at your collarbone. You spy the pale elf along the bank, donning only his breeches. Cheeky bastard. “I could ask you the same,” you quip.

“I am indeed.” Lithe fingers tease the waistband of his pants. “But I can't help but feel as though something is missing.”

Walking a few steps toward the shore, you reveal more flesh, water skimming the top of your breasts. “It wouldn’t happen to be a rogue vampire, would it?”

“And if it is?”

“He should join.”

You sink beneath the creek’s surface, allowing him some privacy and urging your face to cool down. When you plant your feet on the silty ground and stand up, you rub crystalline droplets from your eyes and blink a few times before your companion comes into focus.

“Hello, beautiful,” he greets with a smirk before approaching you, dexterous fingers grasping and pulling at the fat around your hips. “I can't help but feel as though you’ve been avoiding me.”

Without thinking, your fingers weave through Astarion's moonbeam hair, gently tugging on the curls. The elf pulls you closer with a pleased hum. “Whatever gave you that impression?” you ask.

“Don’t play coy; I haven't so much as gotten a breath alone with you.” His gaze softens; you see a flash of vulnerability, but all too soon, it disappears. “Do you…regret this?” A chilly thumb grazes the puckered scar on your neck. The featherlight touch plucks a shudder from you, your spine bowing—strung for him.

“Quite the opposite,” you admit. Your attention flits down to his lips. Maker, you know they would feel divine dancing with your own, slipping down to carry the tune across your flesh, skating lower and lower until—

“So,” he says, palms sweeping up your arms and the slope of your shoulders until they rest on either side of your neck. He strokes the delicate flesh, his touch unhurried yet charged; restless. “You wouldn’t begrudge me another taste, hm?”

Perhaps you should be embarrassed by how eagerly you want this to happen, how many times you’ve envisioned him tasting your blood again—and perhaps tasting something more (such thoughts have fueled many solitary searches for pleasure within the canvas walls of your tent). But living in the dusky shadows of near-certain death has made you hopelessly brazen.

You lean in, petal-soft lips grazing one of his pointed ears. “It’s yours for the taking.”

Astarion’s irises darken at your words, pools of congealed blood. He drops his head and presses a lingering, open-mouthed kiss to your scar, his molten breath warming your body, melding you to his touch.

He bares his fangs and bites you, piercing the puffy tissue, a satisfied groan rumbling his throat and resonating in your veins. The pain is dizzying but dulls quickly, the jarring sensation of knife-sharp incisors tearing your flesh carried away by the flow of the creek. Fuzzy pleasure soon clouds your mind. The sloppy lap of the elf’s tongue against your wound is all you can discern; you want to feel him everywhere.

The vampire’s moans shudder deep within his chest and reverberate through your body from where you’re connected, vibrating lower until they settle in your core. A delicious pressure rocks against your belly and seems to relish the softness. It feels like he gluts for an eternity—like this is all you know—housed within a single, precious breath.

When Astarion surfaces, fangs retracting, you stumble in his embrace, coming down from your high. The ache of want remains as you rest your forehead against his freckled shoulder, and morphs into need as your vision clears. His eyes are unfocused, crazed with bloodlust; you’ve never seen them so red, glowing like moonlit wine. His chin is slick with ichor, and—absentmindedly or not, it’s impossible to tell—his tongue darts out to mop up some of the remnants of your sweetness.

One, two, three heaves of your chests pass before you crash together with a swiftness that betrays desperation, errant waves succumbing to the tide.

You never liked the tang of your blood until you tasted it on Astarion’s silken lips. It’s…cloying. The syrupy copper overwhelms your senses as the elf smears a claret gash across your mouth. He drunkenly sucks on your tongue, fangs nicking the muscle, urging you to give him more. Your fingers twist and twirl the pearly down that covers his chest as he squeezes your ass, pulling you so close that not even a whisper could get between you. You’re engulfed in a heady fire, one that can’t be put out by the cool water around you—especially as the vampire’s cock nestles between your clenched thighs, bumping against your clit.

A crashing sound in the surrounding forest interrupts your shared bliss. The moon ascended and the stars awoke while you were wrapped up in one another. Lightning bugs glimmer and flit through the dark woods, and you know that you both need to leave. Supper will be soon; any absences will be noticed. But before he pulls away, Astarion places a prim kiss on your lips.

“Meet me by the campfire after everyone else has fallen asleep,” he whispers against your cheek.

Your heart trills as you watch him disappear into the night—excited for the adventure to come.

[frenchkisstheabyss]

♱ Ｃｉｔｉｅｓ Ｉｎ Ｄｕｓｔ ♱

♱ Pairings: vampire!hyunlix x chubby!fem!vampire!reader, vampire!bang chan

♱ Genre: vampire au/horror/angst/fluff

♱ Summary: After their lover’s taken by vampire hunters, Hyunjin and Felix are willing to do anything to get her back but finding her is only the beginning of a journey down a twisted, blood soaked path where they find there are much scarier things in the world besides them and the biggest threat of them all may be closer than they think.

♱ Word Count: 3.9k-ish

♱ Warnings: vampires, blood, violence, expressions of pain/loneliness/heartbreak, some fluffy kisses. this chapter’s more emotionally driven than ultra bloody (future chapters will for sure get a lil gory), & that’s all

♱ A/N: I’m literally so nervous posting this. It’s the first fic I’ve written in a while and moody vampires are my happy place so I really hope this finds the people who love them too and you guys enjoy it.

I'm also thanking @anyamaris for giving me the confidence to post my writing and for always taking the time out to read my stuff🖤

A vampire can meet her end in any manner of ways. She might find a sharp object driven through her chest, the bones of her ribcage fractured around her faintly beating heart.

Or she could find herself cast out into the sun for a minute too long where she’d roast fiercely from the inside out until she was nothing more than ash in the wind. 

The list goes on, if only briefly, and every hunter knows these methods like a prayer. But there’s another list. One that only certain hunters hold knowledge of. Not a list of ways to kill a vampire but of ways to make them wish you had.

You had the misfortune of coming across the latter. For you there was no archaic wooden post whittled into a stake, no afternoon spent sunbathing in the park. Locked away in the mausoleum of a dead man you've never met, you’re as alive as you’ve ever been.

Alive but paralyzed by the deprivation of the only two things that made eternity worth living. The taste of blood, warm and sweet on your tongue, and the euphoria of a love whose absence has rotted a hole in your heart. 

100 days you’ve been here, turning to stone like the angelic statues that guard your tomb, and the pain grows impossibly deeper as the next approaches.

But you’ll not have to suffer another night in this hell. You’ll be free, you’ll taste blood again, feel truly alive. Your loves will see to it. 

Standing at 712 ft tall, the Žižkov Television Tower looms above the romantically gothic city of Prague. It’s breathtaking beneath the night sky. Endless miles of beauty in every direction begging to be admired.

Most humans couldn’t dream of ever reaching the heights necessary to indulge but one man’s found himself lucky enough to take it all in. Maybe dangling upside down by your leg doesn’t technically count as luck but it’s all about perception. 

“Please! Just let me go!” the bloodied man begs, the wind cold and sharp as it whips his tears back against his red cheeks. All of the blood’s rushed to his head and his view of the horizon has blurred into something reminiscent of watercolor painting. 

“Let you go?” Hyunjin giggles, perched atop a platform. “That’s a really bad choice of words but okay.”

The dark haired vampire loosens his grip on the man’s ankle, reveling in the cry of desperation that leaves the man’s lips. Hunters are always this way when you catch them. So very pathetic. So weak. 

“Wait! No! No! Please!” the man cries in the split second before his ankle’s secure in Hyunjin’s grasp again. “I don’t know where she is. I swear to God.”

“You swear to god when you lie?” a deep voice questions, unamused with his hypocrisy. “Do you not claim to do his work? And you take his name in vain?” 

Hyunjin looks to the blond haired companion at his side, “Felix, are you telling me you don’t believe the words of this upstanding gentleman?” 

“I’m telling the truth!” the man insists, his nose beginning to snot, turning him into a blubbering mess. “I don’t know where they put her. After we took her…” 

Felix’s eyes pulse a deep, electric red at those last four words. After we took her. “So you took her! Where?” he shouts, his voice near animalistic as he reaches down, grabbing the hunter by the neck. 

It’s dizzying for the man to find himself upright for the first time in what seems to be an eternity but there’s no time to breathe a sigh of relief. Indeed, he can’t breathe at all. Felix’s hand is tight around his neck, crushing his windpipe at a torturously slow pace.

When he saw these creatures cloaked in back, their elegantly sharp features forming in the darkness of his apartment, he knew what they were and what they wanted. Who they wanted. And death inevitably lay before him.

Truth or lies? Would either change his fate? He hasn’t come to decide and there’s little time now for contemplation. 

“You need to calm down” Hyunjin cautions, razor sharp nails drumming against the metal railing. 

“Calm down?” Felix snaps, his fangs glinting in the moonlight, “You heard him. They took her. He took her! Why aren’t you angrier? Or do you even care?” 

In the blink of an eye Hyunjin is on his feet, his hand hovering near Felix’s throat, prepared to choke him the way he does the poor limp man he dangles like a ragdoll. 

“Bad things happen when we let our anger get the best of us and we don’t want that. Do we?” Hyunjin warns through gritted teeth. 

His gaze still locked on the man, Felix’s rage calms barely enough to sense. Hyunjin rests his hand against the porcelain skin of Felix’s neck, violence melting into its own strange form of empathy as he pats it gently.

They came here for the same reason and the success of this, like all they’ve ever done in their afterlife, depends entirely upon their ability not to kill each other. But other people? Well, that’s a different story. 

“One last chance. Where’d you take her?” Hyunjin presses the man, knowing every second spent here is a second wasted. 

With two sets of immortal eyes burning a hole through his very soul, the man makes a decision on his life. A decision he regrets in an instant. 

“Don’t r-remeber” he croaks out.

“Yikes” Hyunjin hisses, disappointed but almost equally excited to finally be rid of this scumbag, “Wrong choice of words yet again. Seems to be your thing.” 

Felix frees the man from his grasp, tossing him out into the night like garbage. It’s been said that when you fall from a building you black out before hitting the ground but there’s much more that happens before that final moment.

A fear so overwhelming you find yourself going borderline insane. Collapsed blood vessels. Rupturing cells. All before you hit the ground and become a piece of abstract art to be washed away in the morning. Messy, messy stuff. 

As the hunter’s screams fade into the distance below, the two vampires are left in an uncomfortable silence heavy with the weight of questions unanswered. They dropped everything to come here, chased down every lead possible, and now their most promising one is hurling towards the ground at 120mph. 

“I know she’s here somewhere” Felix sighs, breaking the silence, “I can feel her. She’s so alone, Hyunjin. She thinks we forgot about her. I can’t let her think that.”

Felix’s voice begins to crack, the heartbreak almost bringing him to tears. 101 days and every single one of them has been like a living hell. Getting closer was supposed to make things better but the closer they get the more the pain clouds their vision, thickening like fog until it’s impossible to see beyond it. 

Hyunjin can only wish for the words that will make this all better. Anything at all to cool the pain searing through their chests. Even with Felix’s eyes almost pleading for him to say something that will make him feel less alone—less like he’s the only one hurting—Hyunjin can’t manage to let the wall down. Building it was all he could do to keep from burning this city to dust and any chance of finding his love right along with it. 

“Right. Why do I bother? Why don’t you go back home, Hyunjin? Go rot with all your paintings. You always did like them better.”

Hyunjin parts his soft, rosy lips to issue another passive threat but, as quiet as his next breath, Felix disappears, abandoning him to a new brand of silence. The kind that leaves Hyunjin’s mind to race uninterrupted, sending memories washing over him so viciously he can’t resist being swept away. 

Painting by moonlight.

Hyunjin has done it countless times in the last 300 years and it never loses its charm. There’s something so romantic about it. So relaxing. Tonight’s hunt had demanded a brutality of him that he seldom likes to reveal but with every stroke of the brush against canvas the beast within him calms, lulled back to sleep by the sound of water rushing from the ornate fountains of the back garden.

The subject of Hyunjin’s painting sits peacefully in the distance. A sprawling English manor that he’s called home for the past 50 years. Despite an external appearance that might have one think people were once beheaded on these grounds by some temperamental tyrant—they likely were—it emanates a sense of warmth from within and the source of it just sped past in a blur of light, nearly knocking his painting over. 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” you apologize, stopping to catch your breath. Carefully straightening the canvas back out on the easel, another blur whisks by, knocking you into the grass. 

“Tag! You’re it now!” Felix declares gleefully, his limbs intertwined with yours as you struggle to sit up.

“I can’t be it if you break my back.”

“Your enemies don’t care if they break your back, my little flower” Felix hums, picking blades of grass from your hair. 

Hyunjin rolls his eyes, turning his attention back to his painting as he mouths every word that Felix says next. 

“You have to keep your endurance up. Never let anyone get the advantage. Life may seem sweet behind these walls but trust me…”

You let out a giggle at the faces Hyunjin makes as he mimics a dead serious Felix. It isn’t that you don’t take Felix seriously. He’s lived much longer than you have, gone through things you couldn’t imagine. All he wants to do is protect you, it’s more than anyone ever did for you in your mortal life, but sometimes you wish he’d stop worrying. For his own sake. 

Felix frowns, your giggles drawing his attention to Hyunjin. “Are you making fun of me?” 

“Making fun of you?” Hyunjin gasps, crossing his legs. “I’d never make fun of you baby brother.”

“Baby brother? You’re older than me by 5 months!”

Hyunjin grins, never bored with his ability to get under Felix’s skin. “5 months and 26 days. Can’t forget the 26 days.”  

As much as you adore their trademark bickering, the grass is itchy and your back actually hurts. You’re hardly in the mood for this tonight.

Grabbing Felix by the collar, you kiss him before he can take Hyunjin’s bait. You only intend for it to be the faintest peck, just enough to shut him up, but he wastes no time pulling you on top of him and enveloping you in his arms.

The kiss deepens as his fingers massage the fullness of your figure through the plush cotton of your dress. His touch makes any bit of pain you feel melt away, replacing it with a tingling sensation that spreads throughout your entire body.

You forget in this moment that anything else exists in the world. There’s only the feeling of his lips pressed against yours, your hearts matching each other’s rhythm as the heat grows between you. 

Hyunjin can feel it too. Every sensation Felix takes in. It snuffs out his own senses, replacing the feeling of the carved wooden brush in his hand with the sinfully tempting softness of your flesh. He can taste you on his tongue, smell the delicate floral scent of your perfume. It’s everything he wants and nothing he needs right now. 

“I guess I’ll leave you two lovebirds to it. Go hurl myself into the sun or something.”

Hyunjin makes no attempt at hiding his irritation as he walks off, leaving his things behind. 

“Is that jealousy I sense?” you tease, appearing in front of him with an innocent pout on your face. 

He shoos you away,  offended at the accusation that he’d ever waste his energy on such an insignificant human emotion.

“No. Just bored” he lies, attempting to step around you. 

You block his way, placing a hand on each of his cheeks to keep his eyes fixed on you. “You’re both very special to me. I love you and I never want you to get so…bored that you forget that.” 

It’s silly to imply that your love is something he could ever question. There are many things he’s come to question in this world but the day will never come where that’s among them.

No matter how close he finds himself teetering on the edge of that thing called jealousy. Just having you near him, staring at him with stars in your eyes like he’s the center of the universe, is enough to bring him back from it. 

Hyunjin takes you by the waist, pulling you closer and into a kiss much deeper than the last. He has a way of enchanting you so completely that you’d swear you were under a spell. A spell cast on your soul, laced within his kiss, and sealed with the fingertips that trail their way up your spine. If there’s a way to break it may that secret remain buried for the length of eternity. 

“I love you too” he whispers, sending all of the blood from your last meal rushing to your cheeks.

“Good because you…are…it!” You tag him on the shoulder and disappear into the surrounding forest, cloaked by the shadows of the trees.

Felix hops to his feet, knowing Hyunjin’s competitive streak won’t let him sit this one out.  “Do I get a head start?”

Hyunjin laughs, baring his fangs, “Just shut up and run.” 

Felix follows your lead and Hyunjin wastes no time taking off after the two of you. Suspecting that you’ve found yourself a hiding space by now, Hyunjin focuses on who he senses closest to him. Maneuvering through the trees with a graceful swiftness, Hyunjin zones out the symphony of the night to isolate the sound of Felix’s breathing.

Felix has managed to make it imperceptible enough that a less experienced vampire may not know he was breathing at all. Picking up speed, he circles around Felix, slamming into him as he jumps to perch atop a branch.

Felix hits the ground with a thud, rolling through the dirt and into a small pile of leaves. 

“I really have to learn how to fall.”

Hyunjin helps him to his feet but not without rubbing it in. 

“All these years and you still can’t outrun me.” 

Felix shrugs, dusting himself off, “Maybe I just wanted to slow you down.” 

“Betrayal!” Hyunjin gasps, “You’ll pay for this later.” 

He turns to chase after you, determined not to let you get one up on him, but Felix grabs him by the arm, a look of concern painting his face. 

“Do you smell that?” Felix frowns, sniffing the air.

His nostrils are assaulted by the bitter smell of something burning nearby. He takes a few steps back towards the house and the air grows thicker with the scent of wood burning like kindling for a campfire. But it’s more than that. 

Hyunjin picks up on it too, glancing back to spot flames dancing in the windows of the place you call home. Without thinking, they race back through the forest, effortlessly closing the distance between them and the burning manor.

They make it to the backdoor in time to see it engulfed by flames that climb the side of the building, torching the rose vines you spent all summer tending to.

“Stay back here!” Felix shouts, already charting an alternate course into the house, “I’ll go around front and find another way in!”

Hyunjin watches in shock as the windows of the top floor shatter, sending glass cascading to the ground. The way the fire’s burning, it doesn’t make sense. There’s no pattern. No source. Something’s not right. 

And that’s when the true panic sets in. The realization that something’s missing. Someone’s missing.

“Where is she?” he asks, his heart sinking. 

The question stops Felix where he stands and his eyes drifts back to the forest. He may nag you about the need to sharpen your abilities but you’re the most perceptive vampire he’s ever met. If they picked up on the scent of smoke you would’ve too. You’d be here by now. 

A new possibility opens up, turning his stomach. You wouldn’t have gone back into the house. You couldn’t have. He shakes it off, venturing back into the garden to find you.

Hyunjin has the same worry but can’t bring himself to quiet it. Taking a few steps back, he closes his eyes and hurls his body through a first floor window. His body slams against the floor, dislocating his shoulder. The pain is blinding, shooting through his right side like a jolt of electricity. 

Flames roar around him, swallowing up everything he ever held dear and none of it means a thing. There’s only one thing he cares about and he’ll lose himself before he loses you. Crawling to his feet, cuts littering his once perfect face, he calls out to you but is met with only silence. 

Outside Felix has abandoned the garden to search for you in the woods where the only creatures returning his cries are those of the woodlands. They scream for you until their throats are raw. Beg for any sign you’re there until tears sting their eyes and stain their cheeks. Until the flames eat the walls like acid and the forest becomes a black barren sea. 

They search for you, weep for you, but you’re gone—ripped away from them—and the pain they feel now is nothing compared to what’s to come. 

Flowing through the city’s center, the Vltava River is said to be a place where one can find peace. Amongst all the lights and buzzing tourism, this spot on the bridge was supposed to be soothing but, unfortunately for Felix, he can only muster up annoyance and something he’s yet to recognize as a drop of envy. 

Below him private yachts and ferry boats float their way up and down the river. They’re brimming with humans laughing and partying. Their joy permeates everything, giving the city a feeling of lightness that he promptly rejects.

A few months ago he might’ve found this city charming, maybe even smiled at the simple joys humans seem to find in life, but now all that’s beautiful feels tainted. 

“It doesn’t have to be,” a friendly voice reassures him. 

Felix jumps back, startled by the sudden appearance of a young man not much older than he is. Dressed in all black designer clothing from head to toe, he still manages to carry himself with the laid back energy of the type of guy who’s everyone’s best friend. But there’s something off about him and it makes Felix’s skin crawl.

He extends a hand to Felix, a peace offering of sorts before the war has even begun. 

“It doesn’t have to be what?” Felix asks, staring at his hand as if it were laced with poison. 

“Tainted. Darkness and beauty can coexist, yeah?” 

“How’d you…”

The man’s eyes pulse red, answering Felix’s question in an instant. Another vampire? He recognizes that accent. It’s similar to his own. This one’s not from here. 

“I’m from Australia. Name’s Chris. Nice to meet you, Felix.” 

Felix’s skin’s no longer crawling, it’s crawling off.

Chris keeps his hand out, a sugary sweet grin stretched across his lips. He’s immovable and something tells Felix if he doesn’t give in now they’ll be here all night.

He cautiously shakes his hand, trying to assess the vampire’s intentions without giving too much away. Mind reading isn’t a gift all vampires have. It’s a power said to fall to the eldest or craziest amongst them and it’s much too early to say which to file this one under. 

“A vampire who can read minds,” Felix sighs, unimpressed. “I’ve never met one of you before. So is this what you do? Just go digging around in people’s minds without their permission? I already hate it.”

“You’re sassy. I like you” Chris laughs, taking a moment to admire the view. “Too uptight though. It won’t kill you to unwind a little. Take in some of the sights. Ever been to Olšany Cemetery?”

“A vampire hanging at the cemetery?” Felix scoffs, turning back to the river. “A bit cliche, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. Would you risk being cliche if it meant finding her?”

Felix’s blood runs cold, rage melding with confusion. Chris pats him on the shoulder, a superficial display of familiarity for the blissfully ignorant humans walking by. 

“Probably wanna rip my head off now, hmm? But you can’t” he taunts, “Not in front of all these people and even if you tried to fight me I can assure you that you’d lose and your little Hyunjin would be left all alone in the world again. How depressing.”

Felix grabs him by the wrist, threatening to crush it as he peels his hand away from his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

Amused by the whole ordeal, Chris sees no reason to hold out. That isn’t why he came here after all.

“In Olšany Cemetery there’s a mausoleum. It’s guarded by two marble angels. An architect’s buried there” he trails off in thought, pretending to forget where he was going with this, “Oh yes, but he’s not there anymore. There’s somebody else.” 

“Somebody like who?” 

Bone should be splintering right now from the force of his fingers contorted around Chris’ wrist but nothing’s happened. It hurts like a pinch from a child, barely enough to bat an eye at, let alone inflict genuine pain. Maybe this vampire isn’t older or crazier than he is. Maybe he’s both.

“The girl you’re searching for. Go there and you’ll find her but be careful…” Chris warns but his words fall on deaf ears as Felix shoves past him, having heard everything he needs to abandon the unpleasantness of this interaction. 

There’s nothing about this stranger that he trusts. In fact, he’s never met anyone he disliked so much so soon but this isn't a lie. There’s no logic for it, no sound reasoning to justify why he’s digging his phone out to find the fastest way to some old cemetery on the edge of the city.

He knows nothing of the vampire’s motives or how, even with his abilities, he knows all that he does. They’re questions whose answers will have to wait until he finds you and nothing in the world, not even his own doubts, can stop him.

“I was just gonna tell you to be careful. She’s not who you think she is anymore” Chris mumbles to himself. “Actually I think she’s something far better.” 

[theonewiththefanfics]

Dare to Hope, Dare to Dream (Part 1/?)

Synopsys: For three years now, Astarion and his love have been relegated to living in the shadows as he lost his ability to walk in the sun. But one day hope is reignited, and the vampire can't help but reminisce how he got where he is now.

Pairing: Astarion x fem!Reader

Genre: angst, fluff

Warnings: violence, abuse, talks of SA (if there is anything else that should be tagged, please do let me know)

Word count: 3240

A/N: I have not played Baldur's Gate 3 (I don't own a PS or a PC where to play it. all of this is based on the info gathered online and through Neil's own gameplay etc. Please be kind :) )

There had been a time in Astarion’s life when all he knew was pain. Physical. Emotional. Mental. Pain.

Two hundred years could be simply wrapped up with one word – abuse. What he wanted didn’t matter, what he thought meant nothing, all Astarion was reduced to was a piece of meat to lure victims for his master.

He was flayed for the most minor things, starved and entombed; he had his skin carved apart and then told to lay on his ruined back just to appease the vile tastes of the vampire he was sired to.

But now… now Astarion knew nothing but peace.

In a house which had been rebuilt from top to bottom, walls coloured cream and accented with gold to bring in as much light as he could, he got to live out his life in complete and utter bliss. He never expected to create a home for himself, never expected to live long enough to know what peace meant. Every second of his life had been shrouded by Cazador and his looming presence, like a dark cloud over the summer sky, but the vampire was long gone. Astarion no longer had to watch over his back whether a snap of a twig would be a boar or his old master.

Now the snaps of twigs meant a warm fire being lit in the hearth, a soft body curling against his as they enjoyed their time together.

That was another thing he never thought of having – someone who cared for him. Astarion was aware that years ago, there had been two loving elves, who’d cherished him, loved and worried for him. They called him Astarion for he was their “little star”. From time to time, he did wonder whatever happened to his parents, but then he thought of who he was now, what he was, and pushed those wandering thoughts away. Maybe one day he’d be strong enough to seek them out, but for now, he would enjoy the start of his new life with his love. His fearless leader. His Y/N.

As she lay against his chest, her back to him, he couldn’t help but be grateful for this crazy human to have entered his life. It was that damned tadpole that’d started to push the domino tower over, but it had been her that toppled the pieces that still threatened to stay standing. And despite all the horrors they’d had to go through, he would willingly put himself in the line of fire if it meant finding her once more.

Though as much peace as he had, not all of it was perfect to Astarion’s chagrin. He’d killed Cazador, slain him with his own hands, yes, but as Y/N had begged him to not ascend, pulling him away from the dark urge, the tadpole had been the only thing keeping him walking in the soon. And soon enough, it had to be eradicated as well, unless he wanted to turn into a mind flayer.

It hurt, that realisation as when he stood at the port and felt the sun kiss his skin, but where he’d come to relish in the warm feeling, it was now poison, turning him to ash, making him resign to live his life in the shadows of the night once more.

For two hundred years he’d been deprived of day, and the pain of losing that was even worse than the pain of the sun blistering his body. Tears had sprung out of their own volition and he dashed to hide, raising his cloak and trying to keep any of the rays at bay. As he ran for cover, quick steps followed behind, and when he curled in a ball behind some crates, body rocking back and forth, gentle arms had wrapped around him, a dark cloak pulled over their heads.

Astarion had already accepted to have to spend his life alone, he’d never make Y/N go with him to live like a spawn, but he wasn’t alone. Sure, they had created a bond he had hoped would last well after their adventures, but with the issue of walking in the sun back on the table, he knew it was too large of an ask. To give up one's life in the sun and forever live in greys and blacks – Astarion would never request Y/N such a thing.

Even as she adjusted the material over their heads, he stared up at her, trying to memorise each and every feature for the last time. He was prepared for the heartbreak. As painful as it would be to go on alone, the thought of Y/N happy and thriving would be enough to staunch his bleeding undead heart.

And yet, when he tried to say goodbye, tried to ask for one last kiss, she knocked him on the back of the head before pulling him in a bone-crushing hug.

“You stupid vampire,” Y/N muttered against the skin of his neck. “Where you go, I go. The sun doesn’t matter.”

Astarion wanted to argue, to tell her he didn’t deserve her giving up her life for him, but she silenced him with a gentle press of her lips.

“You love me, right?”

“More than anything,” came his sure reply, tears still rolling down his cheeks, and his hands clutching at her waist.

“Then please believe it when I say I love you. I want to spend my life, however long it may be with no one but you. Where doesn’t matter, as long as we are together.”

Once again, Astarion was ready to argue, but with a single shake of her head, Y/N silenced him. “You told me I cannot make decisions for you. But you can’t make decisions for me either. I want this.” She cupped his face between her loving palms. “I. Want. You.”

And that sort of settled the argument. The guilt still gnawed at Astarion from the inside out whenever he saw how tired Y/N got as she had to adjust to a new sleeping schedule, the couple of months while moving from a life of day to a life of night made his heart ache in sorrow. And the moments when he caught a glimpse of her on their balcony, the last rays of the day beaming down onto her body, making her glow like a deity seemed like a cruel reminder of what Astarion had conscripted Y/N to.

But she never complained. She never even mentioned how much she must miss the world when it wasn’t bathed in shadows. Instead, Y/N always turned to him with the brightest of smiles, one that could rival the burning star in the sky itself, and it made all his doubts vanish to some secluded corner of his mind.

At that moment though, Astarion rearranged himself in the settee, a large book in his hand as he studied embroidery patterns while Y/N ventured off only whoknowswhere.

It had been her idea he should look into tailoring not only as a pastime activity but as a profession. His eye for detail and fashion was unmistakable, and well, it gave him something to do, something to occupy his mind, and, potentially, once he gave into Y/N’s pestering, he could be persuaded into opening up a full-blown business. But for now, Astarion simply entertained the idea and turned to studying new patterns and fabrics.

For the better part of an hour, his darling had lounged with him, discussing what threads would suit best with what colours before disappearing between the rows of the library.

When the larger renovation of the house had been completed, and they at least had a bedroom and a bathroom, the two had taken on a project to present to the other. Astarion had taken it upon himself to convert the rooftop into a beautiful garden with blossoms that would bloom under the moonlight, having scoured the markets and paid ridiculous amounts of money for the bioluminescent flowers, while Y/N had decided to forego having a ballroom and turned it into a library for Astarion.

It’d been a gift unlike any other, and he’d cried the day she finally pushed open the large oak doors to reveal shelf after shelf, row after row of books. She knew how much he loved them, and how, especially now that he’d been robbed of experiencing the world to its fullest, books would take him on adventures across the universe, he couldn’t do so himself.

But what had brought him down on his knees was a large painting placed right above the entrance, and in the commission were the two of them, grinning at one another, Astarion’s lips pulled up in the widest smile, his vampire fangs on full display while Y/N had her arm wrapped around his waist, beautiful smile lines adorning her eyes and mouth.

For the first time in two centuries, Astarion had been able to see himself, and to have been depicted with such love and happiness gleaming on his face as he gazed at his lover was the only way he wished to be remembered in life as well.

With their painted twins watching over the little sanctuary, Astarion flipped a page, his scarlet eyes looking at the golden painting of the flowery embroidery pattern on a long white dress, and his chest constricted. It was something he so desperately wanted to see Y/N in one day if only he could step over his fears and propose when his sensitive ears picked up the sounds of creaking wood, small grunts and huffs, and then a loud thump from somewhere deep in the library.

“I’m okay!” Y/N’s voice echoed through the room, and Astarion sighed, closing the book.

“My darling, I would like for our lives together to be as long as possible.” He ventured deeper between the rows of shelves, finally coming up on Y/N who was scrambling from the floor. “But you and your incessant need to maim yourself seems to be quite the hindrance to my plans.”

How his clumsy human had been the one to become the leader of their rag-tag group while searching for a way to rid themselves of the mind-flayer tadpoles, was beyond Astarion, seeing as Y/N tripped and fell over every single pebble in her way. Even on thin air sometimes.

He extended a pale palm, and she took it with a soft smile. Just as she was ready to let it go and dust herself off, Astarion pulled her into his chest, pressing a gentle, but passion-filled kiss to her lips. “Please do refrain from doing things that might end up with you getting hurt. I rather like having you around.”

Y/N rolled her Y/E/C eyes at his dramatics, but nevertheless gave him a sweet peck. “I didn’t maim myself, I just took a little tumble.”

Instantly worry and guilt roiled through his stomach, no doubt showing on his face by the looks of her softening gaze. “Did I drink too much from you this morning?”

“No.” She cupped his cheeks, brushing a thumb over some unruly hairs of his brow. “My Star, you know you could never hurt me. You took what you needed, and you know I’d stop you if I felt it was too much.”

“I just…” he sighed, eyes cast to the ground.

“Star,” Y/N whispered, taking his chin between her fingers, and making him glance up at her. “I fell because my foot slipped. Not because I fell unwell after you fed from me. I am truly alright.”

Astarion took in a deep breath, eyes trailing along her neck where he could still see the faint marks of his fangs. Nothing like the brutal marks on his own left by Cazador who just wanted to inflict as much damage, to mark him as his spawn, but gentle pinpricks, not even her skin was raised.

“Okay.” He nodded. “I trust you.” And he sealed the promise with a kiss, Y/N humming in content against his cold lips. “But do tell me, what was so important you had to crawl all the way up there?” He surveyed the large bookshelf where on the very top row, he could see an empty spot.

“This.” Y/N untangled herself from Astarion’s hold, leaning down to pick up the book she’d fallen to the ground with, dusting off the cover with her hand. “I was looking for this one romance novel I remember getting ages ago, but when I was passing by these shelves, it almost seemed to be… I dunno… calling out? Whispering to me? There was this pull, and I just had to get it?”

Astarion sighed, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Have we learned nothing about strange things calling our names and not responding?”

“It’s why I have you.” Y/N’s smile was saccharine, eyes full of mischief. “You’re my impulse control.”

“Well, clearly I’m doing a shitty job of that.”

“Oh relax,” she waved him off. “What’s the worst a magical book could do?”

“Famous last words,” Astarion muttered under his breath, but clearly there wasn’t anything he could do to dissuade Y/N from seeing whatever it was through. “You could have at least asked for help, you know. You remind me of it all the time.”

She gave him the most ferocious glare she could muster, scowling over her shoulder and Astarion had to suppress a laugh behind tightly pinched lips. “Just because I am shorter than you, does not mean I am incapable of getting one damned book.”

“I never said you couldn’t. Just that you might be… vertically challenged… with some balance issues.”

Y/N pointedly ignored the comment and opened the book.

Astarion poked her cheek with his nose, but she didn’t budge, eyes spitefully trained on the pages she was flipping through. “A silence treatment, really, my dear?”

She just tilted her head and hummed.

“Fine,” the vampire condeced. “If that is how you wish to play this, I have no qualms about getting down and dirty.” And his fingers were instantly pressing against Y/N’s ribs.

A sharp intake of breath invaded his ears before she began twisting and turning away from him, uncontained laughter ripping through the silence of the house.

“Alright, alright, I give,” Y/N managed to get out through a fit of laughter. “You win!”

A self-satisfied smile bloomed on Astarion’s face as he twisted her to face him. “And what exactly is my prize?”

“No vinegar added to your wine.” She lightly jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.

“You wound me, my darling,” Astarion put a hand against his chest, before resuming the position he was in before, pulling Y/N’s back to him in a tight embrace.

She just hummed, reopening the book he’d taken her attention away from. “That’s what you get for doling out backhanded insults.”

“My darling, I would never dare insult the love of my life, let alone backhandedly. If anything, I do it face to –,”

Y/N’s gasp of wonder interrupted Astarion mid-sentence. “Where did you get this?”

His white brows furrowed, as he glanced over her shoulder at the large tome in her hands where the picture she was gazing at seemed to be glowing. “I didn’t get this.”

“Oh, come on.” He could practically feel the eye roll. “You don’t have to lie to me. You and I both know our house has been paid. And not by our own money.”

“My darling, I would never deceive you about my looting ways.” Astarion chuckled. “Believe me, you would be the first person to know of my new… gains, but this – this isn’t something I found. And I do think I would remember if I did.”

The library might have been a gift from Y/N, but Astarion knew of every single book in it, he knew the row and the place where to find it. Not once in the three years since they had lived at their home, had he seen such a tome.

Y/N’s brows furrowed as she inspected it, on instinct, Astarion from where he’d perched his chin on her shoulder, pressed a gentle thumb between the worry lines, trying to smooth them out. He didn’t like it when she worried. She was supposed to be happy, content, smiling and laughing like in the painting of the two, though as inferior as it was in showcasing her true beauty. The time for worries was over.

“Maybe we should contact Gale?” Y/N mussed, closing the book and glancing over the cover before flipping it open again. “He could probably figure out what this is. If you didn’t put this here, and I for one, most definitely didn’t, it might be up his alley.”

Astarion groaned at the mention of the wizard. “My darling, you know better than anyone magical items and Gale,” he gagged on the name, “do not mix. He’d probably eat it before telling us anything useful about what’s in it or where it’s come from.”

“Get over it, will you?” She slapped his arm lightly, soft laughter escaping her lips. “It’s been years by now, and I’ve gotten you so many other pairs of boots.”

“The boots are the smallest of slights, darling.” Astarion pressed a kiss to the top of Y/N’s head and hid his nose in her hair. “I still remember how he tried to romance you, so I will be petty for as long as I wish to about anything I want to when it comes to that git. He tried to make you his.” His words were almost a whine of a petulant child. “When your heart was already mine. And I don’t share.

“Yes, my Star, I am very well aware of that.” Y/N chuckled, as he slowly swayed them to a song only he could hear, but both of them stopped as if frozen by a spell when her fingers turned the page.

There on the left side of the opening, a gorgeous image covered the paper by a peculiar image. On the top half of it was depicted the night sky, stars twinkling all around while the sun, not the moon, had been painted in gold so bright it almost seemed to glow and just underneath the sun a flower bloomed in full. On the bottom half was a flipped mirror image of the scene – the same flower only closed while the sky above it was that of a bright blue day and where the sun should have been, glowed a pale moon.

As his eyes scanned the drawings, they flitted to the right page as well. It wasn’t intricate, there weren’t any weaving designs around the edges, completely nothing else apart from twelve lines split apart in fours, written in a language Astarion couldn’t read, but there was something about the picture that made his chest squeeze and mind reel.

Hope. That was the feeling tightening around his heart. Hope of what the picture could mean – a flower of darkness blooming in the day and resting at night. A creature of night like him living a life in the sun.

“You know, you are always right, my love,” he mumbled as Y/N dragged a careful almost reverent finger along the paper, no doubt her mind coming to the same conclusion. “Maybe we should contact the wizard.”

When she turned around to face Astarion, his breath caught in his throat for such undeniable hope glimmered in her eyes. “I’ll write to him right now.”

Tags:

Everything tags: @palaiasaurus64 @supernaturalbaesduh @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @sea040561 @staryeyedgirl @deathbyarabbit @m-a-t-91 @maladaptive-ninja-returns @averyrogers83 @gallifreyansass @dewy-biitch @avxgers @unlikelygalaxygiver @magicwithaknife @ollyoxenfrees @bnhvrdy @tvwhoresblog @thatkindofgurl @sj-thefan @lestersglitterglue @im-squished @strangersstranger

A/N: So Tumblr is imposing text lenght now.... wtf... or is that just me? I was going to put this in a one-shot, but now I have to split it apart, so this is Part 1 or who knows. This man made of pixels on a screen is ruining my life. I want him now ! (with his consent, of course)

[bettyfrommars]

A wee game I thought would be fun: choose an excerpt from one of your posted fics, 600 words or less, that will make people curious for more. Share it with the title of your fic and little to no context.

I thought this would be a way to let people have a "taste" of one of your longer fics or series, and hopefully they will want to investigate further. Tagging some people, but it's open to anyone. I'd love to see snippets of your stuff.

This is a bit from my vampire Eddie fic Death Becomes Us. Eddie isn't even in this excerpt, I just really miss Hopper and wanted to think about him.

18+MDNI, Jim Hopper, mention of vampire!Joyce, mention of addiction

Tangerine hues seeped through the slats in the blinds at the crack of dawn while Jim Hopper sat at the end of his bed, shirtless, in a pair of unbuttoned jeans, and rolled his neck from side to side. There were empty beer cans on the dresser, and a small glass vile of crimson liquid in the ashtray next to a smashed-out butt with lipstick on it. He groaned as he stood, feeling his age as he fastened his jeans, snatching the pack of cigarettes off the bedside table as he went.

“Age is just a number,” is something Joyce would say, and to that he would reply: “Yeah, well why do I feel so fucking old, then?”

Joyce Byers hadn’t aged in a decade; that’s the one gift vampirism bestowed upon its victims. Being immortal? Living forever? Jim couldn’t imagine a worse fate. If someone turned him against his will, he’d give himself over to the sun and turn to ash immediately.

Joyce had chosen the vampire life, though, and for that—a part of him would never be able to forgive her. Sure, their fling was long over, and she’d been with Bob for a while now, but he used to be able to daydream about growing old with her later in life, and now he couldn’t even do that.

Something fell out of his pocket while he was searching for his lighter and he cursed. It was another small glass vial, but this one was almost empty, and he held his cigarette between his teeth as he bent to catch it before it rolled under the bed. Picking up the vial, he regarded it between thumb and forefinger so he could get a good look at how many drops were left.

God, he hated this about himself. He hated the way he measured the days of his week around how much he had left in the vials. Every morning, he promised himself that he’d quit, as soon as work wasn’t so stressful and he had some time to himself to stomach the withdrawals.

The kitchen was cold, and it sent a pang through his heart, making him wish there was someone there to make a pot of coffee and sit with him for a few minutes before he left for work. He’d give anything to hear bacon sizzling in the pan and smell fresh squeezed orange juice again while cartoons played on the television, but those days were long gone.

Emotions rose in his throat and choked there, making him dig for the vial in his pocket. He knew there was another full one in the ashtray in his bedroom, but he had to make them both last until next week, and it already wasn’t looking good. He tore a tiny corner off of a paper towel, and then bent to unscrew the cap and tap two drops onto the paper, watching the dark red liquid bleed into the fibers. He then placed the square of paper on his tongue and let it dissolve with a hard swallow and some sink water to wash it down.

Tagging: @somnambulic-thing @deadboyfriendd @kookygranger @trashmouth-richie @atinylittlepain @joejoequinnquinn @powderblueblood@destroya2005 @eddies-house @eddiesxangel @thornsnvultures

[cherry4ecstasy]

The real meaning of vampirism.

(A reading from the point of view of a mortal nestled in the arms of a vampire lord)

🦇¶Whether or not a vampire retains any memory from its former life, its emotional attachments wither as once pure feelings become twisted by undeath.¶🦇

Angst.

Losing myself in his stiff, marble-like embrace, I wish only to quiet the ceaseless torrent of paranoid thoughts that swarm his mind.

His arms, cold as stone, might offer a brief reprieve from the agony of knowing what he truly is, what he has become. My heart aches with a grief I can never express, a sorrow born not just from what I feel for him but for the cruel fate that shaped him into this hollow, haunted figure.

Cazador Szarr was not born a monster. He was cursed to become one.

The weight of that curse is evident in every calculated movement, every smile that never quite touches his eyes. His emotions, once perhaps rich and complex, have withered under the relentless strain of immortality. I know that somewhere, deep beneath that cold exterior, there was once a spark of humanity; now twisted into something unrecognizable.

Being undead doesn’t just strip away life, it distorts your very soul. What once was friendship becomes jealousy, love becomes obsession, desire turns to possession and beauty shifts into lust.

I have to remind myself that his cruelty is not the result of some sadistic game he enjoys playing.

No, it’s simply who he is now.

His emotions, like everything else, have decayed, leaving behind nothing but twisted shadows of what once was. To expect warmth or tenderness from him would be to ask the sun to shine in the dead of night. He is a product of centuries of loss, of a life that can never be reclaimed, and in that realization lies the tragedy of my feelings for him.

Despite knowing all this, I still long for him. I long for that cold embrace, for a fleeting moment of stillness where I could pretend that beneath the monster, there is something, anything, of the man he once was.

And right now, in his crushing embrace, there is no heartbeat to match my own, no warmth to cling to; only the cold void that fills the space where life once thrived.

The silence between us is deafening, an emptiness in perfect, chilling harmony with the fragility of my weak, mortal body. His nails brush through my hair, each movement precise and deliberate, but the tenderness is overshadowed by the sharp, lingering sting beneath my scalp. Pain flows through me, but I stay still, letting it root deeper, because this is the closest I will ever be to him.

As I look into his eyes, gleaming red like embers that never truly die out, my tears fall without restraint. They are warm, alive, in stark contrast to the frozen depths of his gaze.

If only those salty drops, filled with the essence of my vitality, could somehow wash away his eternal damnation. My sorrow wells up not only for what he has lost, but for the terrible truth that nothing in this world, not even my love, can lift the curse that binds him.

I will never be his sun, for my light would reduce him to ashes. But still, I ache to be something, anything, in his world of perpetual night; a small place of warmth, where my fleeting mortality might offer him a taste of what it is to live again. Perhaps in the brief brush of my fragile life against his immortality, there could be some small solace for him, even if it is fleeting, even if it is hopeless.

His beauty is unlike anything else, so unnatural yet deadly charming. He is my favourite painting come to life, a work of dark art perfected beyond mortal comprehension. His black hair, sleek and lustrous, falls like liquid night over his broad shoulders, a cascade of shadows that only heightens his mystery. It frames his face perfectly, parting just enough to reveal the tips of his elven ears and the gleam of silver piercings that catch the dim light, adding a touch of cold elegance.

His pale skin is flawless, like marble brought to life, each feature chiselled with such precision it feels unreal, as if sculpted by the hand of a master artist who knew no limits. The sharp angles of his jawline, the high, aristocratic cheekbones, the curve of his lips; they all speak of an otherworldly perfection that haunts my every thought. He is a living statue, a vision of untouchable grace, and I can’t help but yearn to be as perfect as him.

Yet, I know that beneath that perfection lies the curse, the darkness that twists beauty into something cold and unreachable. But still, I am drawn to him, captivated by his deadly allure, willing to lose myself in that darkness if it means being near him.

Entangled in the heavy silence of the night, the occasional howl of the wind and the distant hoot of an owl are the only witnesses to this moment. His cold, undead lips brush against my forehead in a gesture that feels both reassuring and possessive. It's a quiet reminder, unspoken but understood, that I belong to him and him alone. No words pass between us, because none are needed. In this stillness, we share something deeper than speech; a connection forged through the burden of survival that weighs on both of us.

For him, it's the endless existence that strips away the warmth of life, leaving only the icy necessity of control. For me, it’s the fragile, fleeting mortality I cling to, even as I feel myself drawn deeper into his world. Together, we are bound by the quiet, eternal struggle against the loneliness that haunts us both. In this moment, we are neither predator nor prey, just two souls navigating the shadows of an existence that no one else can understand.

Under the nocturnal sun, I search for a word to describe this complex relationship. A bond that defies the simplicity of love, or even obsession. It is more like a rare flower, one that only blooms in the dark hours, hidden from the world and nourished by shadows. It thrives in the quiet, unseen spaces between us, delicate yet resilient, beautiful yet dangerous. A love tainted by survival, where tenderness and terror intertwine, feeding off each other in a way that is as intoxicating as it is destructive.

Perhaps there is no word for something so paradoxical.

It is simply us.

((Paintings, Schiele - The embrace; Munch - Love and Pain))

[explosivehrt]

i trapped you, a vampire, a wretched, vile creature. i kept you chained outside all night, sitting and watching, stake in hand, but i wanted you to suffer. because you are a monster, dangerous, deadly, hellspawn and this is what i live for, for it is what i have been told must be done ever since i was a child, its religon at this point, purpose, what i was made for. i sat for hours and listened to you snarl and then- as the sky started to lighten- beg. for a moment, i really believed you were scared.

fear, a terrifyingly human thing. but you, a thing with fangs and crusted blood on your chin, you are no person, you are not capable of such a thing. fear. let alone hope. and yet. and yet you spoke of the years you had seen in an attempt to sway me. you told me your life story, of your hopes and dreams and travels and all that you've witnessed and learned of the universe. you said you were worthy of life, as if you're not a still, undead thing with a silent heart. inevitably, your words and blood-tears got to me, and i doubted suddenly everything i had ever been told, of monsters and devils and irredeemable beasts, of creatures and killers. but all you do is feed and here i am, a hero, i've told myself, and yet i'm about to immolate you to what? to prove a point? to teach you a lesson? to you or.. no, to myself? i was taught that this was right, that it was required, but why? have i just stumbled into an inescapable destiny dumped onto me, down generations? what if all ive been told came from a twisted game of telephone, or was it just lies, so much of my life, of the knowledge ive learned has suddenly been proved wrong.

your story has touched my heart and i see the raw fear in your eyes and i see the truth. we are the same. just unlucky monsters doomed by the order of the world and the primal urge to survive. i see you, for not a monster, but a fearful, desperate soul the same as i, and one that i ache to know. i want to relearn the world, find out the truths, i want you to teach me, i want you to forgive me for this night and for humanity's cruelty and i want to travel by your side as you show me the far off lands you spoke of. i want to be your friend, maybe i want to offer my blood to you, just to know how it feels. maybe i want to taste my blood on your lips, see how human you can be, or maybe how animal i can. maybe i even ache for you to sink your teeth into my neck and take me, so that i may discover a whole new world and forsake those that led me down this road of bigotry and horror as i throw down the wooden stake in my grip.

but i'm too late, you're screaming, skin turning to ash. i've realized that i love you but the sun is rising and you are burning alive.

[stabbyfoxandrew]

Tell me more about ur vampires Aerieee <3

like for example, do they have any defining traits (besides them teeth hah)? I noticed the two picrews have them with pointy ears, but I wasn't sure if that was a vampire thing or just them lol. or for example in a lot of media, vampires end up pale or losing their warmth/color to their skin and end up looking greyish--product of being dead I suppose.

Do they have to drink (human) blood or can they, like many others survive on animals? What happens if they don't? do they die or do they just like, dessicate and/or take a long nap lmao Do they have to eat human food too? or does it taste gross to them now?

also any other fun facts that I haven't asked lmao <3 --QD

Once again, was saving these for my birthday. :') So here I go!

Common traits: My vampires have fangs, claws, pale skin, slightly-pointed ears (the picrew exaggerates a bit). All the 'usual' vampire traits. Their fangs and claws can retract. And after they feed, they have a more lively 'glow' to their complexion. (This isn't true for Old vampires. They look pale and dead no matter what. And their fangs stop retracting eventually. This doesn't happen until they're truly ancient though and most vampires don't live that long.)

What they drink: They can drink from humans or animals! Either will sustain them but they might have to feed more often if living on animals alone. Human blood tastes better, but is (understandably) hard for some to obtain. Animal blood isn't the tastiest but it gets the job done without ending a human life. Rayne feeds on animals, drinking rats when he's in the city and drinking deer or foxes if he's near a forest. (He usually tries to leave the woodland creatures alive, but the goddamn rats... Well, he thinks he's doing the city a favor.)

If they stop feeding: A vampire can decide to essentially just go take a really long nap until someone (who they've instructed) wakes them up. Otherwise, if a vampire just stops drinking blood they'll slowly lose their mind and eventually die. Like, if you're 'resting' you don't need to eat. But a vampire who is moving must. (I hope that makes sense?)

Eating human food: Some do, some don't. It depends on the individual (and also age). Rayne loves food, so he eats. Laurent would sometimes, but it usually didn't taste that good anymore. Perhaps because he's accustomed to his liquid diet or because he's older and doesn't feel that sort of hunger anymore.

Fun facts: ♦ Vampires are strongest under a new moon, the opposite of werewolves. ♦ If they're an adult when changed, they stop aging. (Though their hair and nails still grow.) If they're bitten as a child, they grow into their fangs later on. ♦ A vampire's bond with their maker is hard to break, but not impossible. ♦ Vampires drinking each other's blood strengthens the bond between them and allows them to speak telepathically to one another. (This power fades if they stop drinking from each other.) ♦ Vampires can stand in the sun. It is unpleasant, but doesn't burn them to ash instantly. (Older vampires might be an exception...) ♦ Vampires have laws, set by the vamp monarchy. They're more like guidelines. Most people do not follow them. ♦ If a vampire betrays their maker or their coven, one of their fangs is snapped out as a warning. They do not grow back. And there's (basically a) slur for one-fanged vamps. It's very hard for them to make new friends. ♦ Vampires typically get the powers of the one who sired them. (And of any vampires they kill.) ♦ There aren't that many vampires, until the king fucks off and shit starts going crazy. Then their numbers triple within a decade.

I'll stop here before I lose my mind. But I love you Allie, thank you for indulging me! <3333

[thepenultimateword]

Would you by any chance ever consider writing a second part to prompt 60? 👉👈

I would actually love to. This is one of my favorite prompts I've made.

1,465, 1,466, 1,467, 1,468–

A mittened hand suddenly caught the vampire’s cold one yanking them free from the trap they had unwittingly stepped into.

“[Hunter]?” the vampire croaked, spilling half their handful of poppy seeds back into the snow.

“Shhhh.” [Hunter] blew on their iced finger tips, even though they both knew that the warmth could only go so far. “I’ve got you now.”

The vampire’s lip trembled, fang points catching against their own chapped skin. For a moment, they could only stare at their peculiar, unexpected savior, then they shoved their face into their living, breathing chest and broke down into violent sobs.

[Hunter] rubbed their back, slow and gentle, like they had all the time in the world and not, in fact, a measly hour before the vampire met a smoky, moldering demise. “It’s alright. I’m going to take you away now.” They worked the rest of the seeds from the vampire’s hand and clasped it tight. “Let’s get you inside.”

***

Vampire huddled under the pile of furs and tried to pretend they belonged to regular animals. Not, in fact, the other worldly creatures that Hunter made a living off disposing of. Creatures like them.

A light rap sounded on the open door, and Hunter stepped across the threshold. Such an easy task for them. Almost enviable. If the human hadn't asked Vampire inside when they did, they would be nothing but ash on the snow.

"I brought you some hot chocolate," Hunter said, holding out a large metal mug. They hesitated just short of Vampire's fingers. "Can you drink hot chocolate?"

"Liquids are easier," Vampire replied, cupping the warm metal between their hands. They omitted that while liquids were easier, outside of one obvious and particular exception, they still were not wholly digestible. Vampire was about to get a behemoth of a stomach ache. But they hadn't tasted chocolate since their living days. And the thought of its warmth in the chilled, panicked hollow of their stomach soothed them.

Vampire tilted the steaming sweetness toward their lips but then froze, raising their eyes to Hunter's watching face. "Isn't this stuff expensive?"

The hunter shrugged. "It's a regular part of the hunter's ration. I get them every time I visit a hunting center in a new city. And I figured...after today... Well. it always makes me feel better."

Vampire nodded and let the rich, creamy warmth trickle down their throat. Their entire body warmed, and the tension they held in their muscles ebbed. For an instant, it was like being human again.

It occurred to them as they took their second swallow that this could be a trap. Hunter may have spiked the hot chocolate with any number of deadly or incapacitating things. They knew Vampire's weaknesses after all. Though, none of that would have made much sense. Hunter already had them in their lodgings. And with the sun in the sky, they were essentially trapped already. And if Hunter had wanted them dead, they could have simply left them in their counting loop, killing them without lifting a finger themself. Vampire had been so relieved at being saved that they hadn't considered how utterly confusing and out of character this all was.

Vampire lowered the mug into their lap.

"Why are you doing this?"

Hunter pressed their lips into a thin line and sat in the chair across from Vampire. "Creatures like you are not my expertise."

Vampire blinked. "Creatures...like me?"

"Lucid. Controlled. Harmless." Hunter listed each adjective on their fingers, hesitating on harmless. They both knew that Vampire was not. It was only something as flimsy as a choice that kept Vampire from pinning Hunter against the hearth and draining them into a pale, dry husk.

As if sensing this new train of thought, Hunter shuddered. A prickle of fear still lived deep inside the hunter's primal instincts. A built-in warning not to turn their back, to stay away, to kill or be killed.

"I kill threats to human life," Hunter said. "Since I entered town, there have been no deaths outside of livestock. Nor have there been for the last 20 years. You are a nuisance, not a danger."

Vampire eyed the hunter carefully, unsure whether it was distrust or the hot chocolate making knots in their gut. "Do you often question your assignments before killing them?

Hunter grimaced slightly. "No."

"I'm an exception."

"You are a quandary." Hunter avoided meeting Vampire's gaze now, though they were definitely still watching out of their peripheral. "It didn't add up. The lack of killings, the stalking without attacks, and... That day in the woods. I knew you as soon as I saw you, and you knew me. You can usually feel the malice on a creature when you confront it. One of those things that a hunter gets attuned to. But...I felt no ill intent on you. I've never met a vampire that wasn't motivated by bloodlust."

"Well," Vampire said, setting the empty mug on a side table. "Here I am. What are you going to do with me?"

Hunter tilted their head birdishly, like a thrush listening for predators.

"I get the impression you're not going to just let me go."

"No," Hunter affirmed quietly. Their throat bobbed as they swallowed. "In fact, I have something to confess."

It was Vampire’s turn to cock their head, though they felt more like a fox listening for the heartbeats of prey.

"The poppy seed trap. It was mine."

Vampire shouldn't have been shocked. There were no other hunters in town at the moment. And though many villagers scattered rice on their thresholds, few dared to set such a snare in the middle of the woods. Still, they'd been so relieved at Hunter's arrival. So ready to throw themselves on any sort of savior. A wave of nausea washed over them, mixing with the already uncomfortable ache of indigestion.

They dropped their head into their hands and moaned.

"I needed to catch you,” Hunter explained. “If they find out you're still hanging around, they'll hire someone else, someone who won't ask questions.”

Why were they trying so hard for forgiveness? And why did they even tell them in the first place? They could have never mentioned it, and Vampire would have been none the wiser.

“I need you to trust me,” Hunter said.

Vampire jolted at the almost answer to their internal questions and peered up from between their fingers. “Why? What do you expect me to do? I live here! Have lived here, for decades!”

Hunter flinched back in their seat at the sudden venom. But to their credit, they quickly recovered, rising to their feet and striding within arms length of Vampire.

"Come with me.”

Vampire stared. “What?”

“We'll find you a colony. Or a mountain. Or anywhere else you can live without a kill order overhead."

“You mean away from people.”

Hunter’s wince was answer enough.

Rage boiled in Vampire’s blood, and they burst to their feet sharp enough to make the furs tucked around them scatter and Hunter take a step back. “I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m not the one going around killing people for just existing!”

Hunter recovered their lost step and, with some effort, held Vampire’s smoldering gaze. “Still.”

Vampire wanted to rage further. To break the furniture, shred the furs, pulverize the stone hearth to rubble.

Instead they wiped the bitter tears gathering in their eyes on the back of their hand and nodded.

“Ok.”

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

Day 9: Slumber Party, with all additional prompts (Watching someone sleep, Possessiveness, and Murder fantasy)

Vampire AU. Dream watches his precious bloodbag sleep after his first feeding, and fights the urge to tear out his throat and drink his delicious ichor all at once. Warnings for stalking, past abuse and torture (not of Tommy, for once), intrusive thoughts, violent thoughts, trauma, body dysmorphia, extreme dehumanisation, possessive behaviour, obsession, codependency, and grief.

ao3 link

——

Tommy talked in his sleep.

It wasn’t a surprise, Dream supposed. If anyone wasn’t able to shut up even in their sleep, it’d be Tommy. Loud, outgoing, human Tommy.

He had to admit, he was a little jealous. Humanity was a gift cruelly ripped from him, his curse imparted without consent. The sun forever torn from his grasp, the feeling of fresh air breathed through his lungs, the taste of fresh fruit, the changing of his face in the mirror, all taken by selfish whim.

He still had nightmares of being cattle, passed around from cruel hand to cruel hand, the venom coursing through his skin, laughter as he whimpered in pain. He’d wiped them all out long ago, of course. He’d made sure he was the last bearing his curse left alive, a monster turned protector. But seeing Tommy there, the scabs over his wrist red and raised, he felt more like those people who’d forced him to humiliate himself to spare his siblings than he ever had before.

Not in their torturous cruelty, of course. He was nothing like them, the way they took joy in his humiliation, treating him like worthless cattle at best and a toy to abuse in every way possible at worst. No- he saw Tommy much like the siblings he worked tirelessly to keep from meeting the same fate, forcing a smile across a battered face and asking for more if it would spare them. He would never understand that, never in his life.

What he understood was the hunger.

Until he’d gotten a taste of Tommy’s blood, feeding had always felt like a chore, like forcing ash down his mouth. He got through on as little as possible, the memory of the agony of teeth and venom in his skin burning at the thought. It was necessary to keep his strength up, heal from the sun’s stubborn rays, protect the mortals he’d taken on as his own, but it was an unpleasant and humiliating process for both him and the poor soul who’d generously volunteered.

But he and Tommy had been fighting over something insignificant, something he couldn’t even remember, and in the heat of combat, blood had spilt, staining his sword. The smell alone was distracting enough it was difficult to keep a fighting stance- when, after they’d resolved whatever it was with a laugh, he’d dared to have a taste, he was intoxicated.

The ambrosial taste of Tommy’s ichor, inexplicably utterly addictive, had haunted him ever since. He wanted to tear Tommy to shreds, open up his throat and drain him dry. Bash his head on the floor and sink his fangs into his flesh while he couldn’t fight it, and tear out his flesh to get to the delicious liquid inside. He wanted to eradicate Tommy to gorge on his blood, and he couldn’t stop thinking of killing him and digging into his heart to get to the prize inside.

The difference between him and the others was that he hated it.

Dream didn’t want to hurt Tommy- of course he didn’t, that was ridiculous. He was fun to mess with, but that was different to fucking killing him. He wasn’t some animal, cattle to use and throw aside. He was his friend, and very much an equal to him in every way.

Well, not exactly, but that wasn’t because he was human, was it?

He wasn’t- he wasn’t going to be like them, not now, not ever. He wasn’t going to let anyone treat his Tommy like that, forcing him to debase himself and act like an animal and call himself worthless. Tommy didn’t deserve that. No one deserved that, not even the bastards who took joy in making him smile and laugh while they sunk their fangs into him. But if anyone deserved that the least, it was his bloodbag.

He’d made sure the deal he’d made was fair and just. L’Manberg for Tommy’s blood, anytime he wished. He hadn’t pressured Tommy, hadn’t threatened to kill everyone he loved unlike some people, simply provided a fair trade- his freedom for L’Manberg’s. And, of course, he chose to become Dream’s bloodbag.

Of course, because he knew Tommy. He might have presented himself as a big, manly, rude and inconsiderate lout, but the boy was kinder than anyone he ever met. The way he hid it belied that fact- even the kindest of people who are open expect praise, the fawning servitude of a dog that Dream was sick of being forced into, yet Tommy did good while obscuring it, so none would know. No one who didn’t spend hours in his wall, unblinking as he quietly observed.

To keep him safe. Of course. No other reasons.

Absently, Dream ran gentle hands across Tommy’s curls. They were tangled and matted, stuck out in awkward directions, perfectly imperfect. Dream wished he could be like that- he missed the way his hair stuck in too many directions, the acne that pockmarked his face, the scars that were proof he could survive anything. He felt like a porcelain doll, forced into eerie perfection. He almost wished it was true that a vampire could not see themselves in the mirror- it’d be far kinder than the constant reminder he was a prisoner in a body so wrong.

“Wilbur?” Tommy’s voice was slurred, his words hard to make out even though he was talking his little head off, but that word was clear, and Dream felt a mix of angry possessiveness and pure, innocent joy bubble up in his chest in a confusing array.

Of course, wanting to tear Wilbur limb from limb was an expected feeling. Tommy was his, after all. They’d made a deal on it and everything. Tommy was his bloodbag, not to torment and treat as property, but to care for and cherish dearly as someone valuable. The idea of Tommy having any other family felt like a betrayal of that, and some dark part of him screamed that he needed to hurt Tommy for that, too. That it was a betrayal on Tommy’s part, that he needed to be taught his place, that maybe Dream deserved what happened to him, and it’d be a kind thing to do it to Tommy too.

No, no, no. He wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t going to- to force Tommy to walk on all fours, or carve rituals into his back, or make him eat from the dirt, or any other of the fucked up shit he was so kindly treated to before having his humanity stolen from him, a violation of his personhood he’d never inflict upon another. As awful as the abuse was, there was no greater pain than feeling every cell in your body die and slowly twisting into a horrifically wrong form, too perfect and uncanny.

There was a reason Dream was the last. He wouldn’t change that ever. He was firm, at times, but not cruel, and it’d be a cruelty above cruelties to subject another to his very special hell.

He focused on the warmth in his heart, like the sunlight he dearly missed. The tone Tommy said that word in, even if it wasn’t yet the correct name, was so familiar. It was the way his siblings said his name, sweet and soft and loving. He missed them so- they’d grown from being so little and in need of his care into bigger than he’d ever be so quickly, and then they were gone. Sometimes, on the worst days, he regretted sacrificing everything for people who were so fleeting. But now, he could see them in Tommy, his silly jokes, his childish insistence that he wasn’t childish.

It was almost as addictive as his blood.

He ran a finger over Tommy’s wrist, guiltily. He knew how much that hurt, from painful personal experience. The way media portrayed vampire bites was a cruel lie- it was agony, like being eaten alive. Fangs dig into your skin, tearing at any flesh to let the blood flow. Venom entering your bloodstream, like fire in your blood, keeping you still and compliant but not at all dulling the pain. The sickening nausea and exhaustion afterwards.

Predictably, Tommy had woozily made his way home and passed out halfway down the Prime Path after Dream had drank from him, and Dream had had to carry him home and tuck him into bed as he mumbled nonsense, a look of terror on his face. He’d done the same the first few times- except he usually woke up to mocking laughter and bruises. Sometimes, newer ones would take pity. They never lasted long.

Kindness was something punished by a world of cruelty. Even Dream, as good a man he tried to be, was not immune. Was it so bad if he was a little selfish? It’s not like he was cruel to Tommy- the opposite, really, he treated him as kindly as he could. He shouldn’t have felt guilty over that.

After all, why should the cat apologise for having to eat the rat to survive?

Prime, he already was starving, imagining how Tommy’s ichor tasted. It almost reminded Dream of how being alive felt.

It would be fine to take another bite, he reasoned. Tommy was asleep. Tommy wouldn’t feel a thing. He’d be able to watch over him, make sure he was okay. It was fine. It was.

Stroking Tommy’s hair like a parent would a child with one hand, he grabbed Tommy’s wrist with the other and sunk his fangs into the raised circles, red and tempting, and as he feasted, he tried to ignore how Tommy’s eyes opened just a tad, how Tommy whimpered in the quietest voice.

He would think it merely a dream later, Dream told himself. It was kinder. And they made a deal. It was fine. Tommy was fine.

After all, Tommy was his.

[vincentmatthews]

WIP Whenever

I was tagged by @katsigian and @timaeusterrored thank you loves💕

Hiding it under the cut because this is embarrassing.

~♡~♡~♡~♡~

My Perfect Little Pet

Hunger. That's the only thing that coursed through his fractured mind. His fangs ached at the thought of the only thing that would sate his hunger. Warm, red, copper tasting, sanguine. His wrists bore faded scars of where he'd been forced to feed on himself in the past. It's been two days since he's been free, free from being under his Master's clawed thumb. Free to feed on anything he desired without having to suffer the consequences.

He'd stalked the woods at night, in search of anything that would satisfy his ever growing hunger. He'd found a rabbit, it was small, white as snow, it wasn't much, but it would have to be enough. For now at least. Until he was capable of finding bigger prey.

He held his hand out for the rabbit, beckoning his the small minded prey closer.

"Shh~♡ Don't worry my dear~♡ I won't hurt you~♡.." He hummed softly, the rabbit's ears went back as it sniffed the air, cautious of his next move. His round crimson eyes narrowed as the creature reluctantly stepped forward. The last steps it would ever take.

Before the rabbit had a chance to realize what the pale elf was, it was too late. It was scooped up but his two clawed, thin, icey hands. A set of sharp, cold fangs bit down on the warm, tender flesh of it's neck. He let out a soft noise, as the hot blood reached his chapped lips. The rabbit trashed in his hands, letting out a sharp agonizing squeak before falling limp in his grip.

He growled, his eyes glossed over and fluttered as he drank what little sustenance he'd had in weeks. He doesn't remember the last time he'd fed, yet it made him exhale through his nostrals with a form of ecstasy. His mind was clearer and he didn't feel so weak. He considered it a massive accomplishment, since this is the first time he'd fed without his Master's approval. He felt powerful, liberated, destructive, yet a small sliver of his consciousness bled through. He unclenched his jaws, which seemed more of a struggle than usual. He brushed it off as a reaction to not eating.

He lowered the animal once he was unable to extract any more blood from it. His stomach knawed at the rare feeling of something in it rather than vial blood of rats. It was almost enough to make him tear up. He shivered at the thought that now he was able to eat whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He could even endulge himself on the one prey his master forbid him of feeding on.

He dropped the twisted, mangled corpse in the grass below. He felt his chest tighten and his stomach churn. If Cazador knew of what he was doing right now, he'd be punished for sure. He took a deep breath, trying his best to brush away those feelings that seemed to bubble up inside of him, threatening to erupt. He was safe now. He was free. He was able to stand in running water without it burning, able to stand in the sun without being reduced to a pile of ash, and he was able to walk into homes completely uninvited. It all felt so new, made him feel powerful, unstoppable even. Hells, he was probably the most powerful vampire right now. A thought cascaded acrossed his fractured mind; perhaps he was even stronger than Cazador. He might even be able to stake his chance for revenge, so to speak.

~♡~♡~♡~♡~

Don't know if I'll ever have the guts to post this when I'm done with it. So I guess we'll see xD

[walkedfire-a]

ENDLESS EDITS FT VAMPIRE VERSE . DONT REBLOG UNLESS MUTUALS

[victorluvsalice]

The "Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur's Gate III" Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection

(Don't worry too much about spoilers -- most of this is early-game stuff, with just a couple of things relating to stuff in Act II)

--

Alice: [having just met Lae'zel on the Nautiloid and been informed of the situation with the parasites] And who are you, exactly?

Lae'zel: Who am I? Your only chance of survival.

[later, after the imps have been fought, and everyone's met back up and freed Shadowheart:]

Victor: [introducing himself as they get back on the move] I'm Victor.

Alice: I'm Alice. [pointing to Lae'zel] And this is Only.

Lae'zel: ?

Alice: Well, you've given me nothing else to call you.

--

Shadowheart: [after being informed the trio live in a world without a sun and that's why they're being so weird about the sky being blue] I -- are you Shar's Chosen? Is this some sort of test? Am I not supposed to believe you when you say you like sunlight? I can totally not believe you if that's the case!

Alice: ...I feel like we've missed something.

Smiler: [lying down and sunbathing] Yeah, it's in the sky above us.

--

Withers: What is the worth of a single mortal's life?

Victor: I -- I would say priceless. You can't put a value on life itself.

Alice: I say it's worth whatever you're willing to pay to defend it. Only the owner of said life can set the value.

Smiler: I'm pretty sure the standard rate of assassins in Duskwall is four Coin minimum -- not sure how that translates to your money.

Victor & Alice: [look at Smiler]

Smiler: What? It's a legitimate answer!

--

Withers: I shall be here, in thy camp, for whenever thou has need of my services.

Alice: Oh? What kind of services do you offer?

Withers: A mending of the threads between life and death. Should thou or any of thy compatriots perish, I will cleave soul to body once more.

Victor: Cleave soul to -- wait a minute, isn't that how you get vampires?

Astarion: [rearranging his tent, pauses and gives them a really weird look]

--

Alice: [during one of the meetings with Raphael] You do seem like a very powerful devil.

Raphael: [preening] I consider myself no slouch, yes.

Smiler: [cheerfully] I bet your blood could power an entire city block for a month!

Raphael: [blink blink] ...thank...you?

--

Strange Ox: Ah, you're addressing me. A humble ox. How...quaint.

Smiler: [tilting their head] What are you?

Strange Ox: As I said, a humble ox. I don't know why you're --

Smiler: No, I mean, what's an ox?

Strange Ox: ...

--

Smiler: [standing behind a table lined with eight samples of the same Potion Of Glorious Vaulting, with Victor, Alice, and the companions all gathered around the front of it] Thank you all for coming to this blind taste test, where we will be disproving the idiotic notion that you only need one specific ingredient per potion to create something that does what you want it to. In front of you are eight individual Potions of Glorious Vaulting, each made with a different type of Ashes -- I would like you each to drink one, test the effects, then rate it based on how strong the effects were, how long they lasted, and how tasty it was.

Wyll: You care about the taste?

Smiler: Of course! If we're going to be making potions, the least we could do is make them pleasant to consume! We're working toward maximum happiness here! Now everybody pick one and let's get jumping!

--

Gale: [realizing the trio isn't with them as they move through the mind flayer colony under Moonrise] Hold -- where's Victor, Alice, and Smiler?

Karlach: I think I saw them looking at a cage in the last room.

Lae'zel: Chk -- they should know by now that we cannot pause and look at every little thing that --

Smiler: [rejoining the group carrying a certain intellect devourer, beaming, as Victor and Alice come up behind them] Hey everyone!

Lae'zel: [stares at the brain] ...

Astarion: Why are you carrying an intellect --

Lae'zel: THAT. THING. SURVIVED?!

Us: Hello Angry Friend!

Lae'zel: I'M NOT YOUR FRIEND

--

Aylin: [after everyone's agreed to meet up with her and Isobel again later at the camp] Now -- you will leave us. We must take succour in one another's bodies and words.

Isobel: Aylin. We'll see you later.

Victor: [hiding a smile] Of course.

Alice: [biting back a chuckle] Later.

Smiler: [big beaming grin and a double thumbs up] Enjoy the hot lesbian sex!

Victor: Smiler!

Aylin: I intend to.

Isobel: AYLIN.

[walkedfire-a]

gen's blush makes his own smile grow wide , he doesn't realise it at first until he feels a fang pinch at his lower lip . ducking his head , smile not fading , he tries to do something with hands to get rid of the nervous energy . it doesn't happen open , not now anyways . now he has an outlet to get rid of the energy ; running from place to place faster than any man , feeling the wind under his wings . but with gen he doesn't want to run , he doesn't want to leave .

" i think some things are fate , but we're also in control of our own destiny . if that makes sense ?" he risks a glance up , giving half a shrug . it takes a moment for him to answer , not wanting to interrupt .

everything gen tells him he files away . he wants to know everything about them but doesn't want to push . " sometimes i wonder if it was fate . the day on the beach ." he doesn't talk about his turning much , the memories blur with the pain . in the span of things its been decades but to buck it feels so new . " maybe if i had gone an hour later , maybe a different section of the beach . its gotta be fate ya know , me finding the vampire . trying to help . part of me thinks it has to be fate because if it wasn't then what ? wrong place ? wrong time ? its a cruel fate , a doomed destiny . i think about everything leading up to that moment . all the years before ."

buck shakes his head pushing away the memories before he looks at gen again . " but if it leads me here , to this moment . i dont think i would change it ."

[wheretheharekissesthefox]

Baby, the stars shine bright: Chapter 4 - Being Cazador's

(Trigger warnings (18+): angst, canon-typical violence, graphic description of assault, gore & violence, grooming, non-con/rape, psychological horror/terror, torture)

His master had lied. Astarion hadn't won his favour, not really. He was forced to stay inside again for months. Astarion couldn't tell how long it truly was. In the dungeon, chained to the wall, he had no way to track the time. Godey, the living skeleton, was his torturer. Astarion knew Godey didn't do all these atrocious things to him for fun but with professional steady hands because he was following orders. Somehow, knowing that Godey found no joy or satisfaction in torturing him and his siblings, made it more bearable. The thing that did rile Astarion up, was when Cazador came by for a visit to gloat at his spawn's pain.

"Ah, you know, Astarion, you're my favourite after all," his master spoke one day while wiping away some blood from Astarion's chest. "Your screams always are the sweetest."

I refuse to die in this fucking place, Astarion swore to himself. I'll survive, just to spite Cazador, and kill him with my own hands one day when he least expects it.

The first thing Astarion did, as soon as he was out of the dungeon and given a second chance to lure prey to his master, was to buy as much food and alcohol as he could. He carried it all down to the Chionthar, hiding under the bridge of Wyrm's Crossing, and tried to enjoy real food again. But Dalyria had been right; everything tasted like ash, and even the most expensive alcohol reminded him of vinegar and couldn't get him drunk anymore. Still, Astarion eat the food, desperate to taste different flavours, but it was futile. Additionally, his new vampire body wasn't happy with the unwanted nutrition. Astarion had to squat behind the bushes until his bowels were empty. That didn't stop him though and he kept eating until his body started rejecting the food immediately. After vomiting uncontrollably until his stomach was empty again, Astarion washed his face in the river even though the running water stung like acid. Afterwards, he sat at the riverbank with the last peach in his hand and cried.

All this time, he hadn't really realised how different his body was since being turned into a spawn. Now, after multiple failed attempts to keep real food down, reality hit him like a troll. Astarion cried as he held his favourite fruit in his hand that smelled so good, but could never be eaten again. He thought about Solaria who'd always bought peaches at the market for him if they were available. About how even little things that had made him happy, couldn't be enjoyed anymore. That night, Astarion dwelled at the riverbank, mourning his old life and old self, secretly wishing to combust in the morning sun. Unfortunately, Dalyria found him before dawn. Silently, she took in the scene. Then, she nodded understandingly and hauled Astarion back to Cazador's palace. This time, Astarion wasn't punished for disobeying his master's orders. His self-ascribable pain seemed to be punishment enough. Or so he'd thought...

A few nights later, Cazador took Astarion, Dalyria, and Petras for a stroll. Together, they walked through the streets, passing a couple of rowdy tavern goers, some beggars, and a few strongly-perfumed prostitutes. Astarion frowned as his master guided them along a well-known neighbourhood.

"Uhm, Master, what are we doing here?" Astarion asked tentatively.

"Where do you think we're going, pet?"

Astarion didn't answer. He should only speak if he had something nice or flattering to say, but all the words that lingered on the tip of his tongue were neither. But the dreading feeling grew the closer they walked to Astarion's house. Every fibre of his body screamed at him to distract Cazador, to lure him away from the place he called home. The place where Solaria was. It felt like a nightmare when his master stopped before his house and pushed the door open.

"After you, pet," he purred and Astarion felt sick.

With trembling limbs, he entered his own house. It still looked like he remembered it. Cazador put a hand onto his shoulder and pushed his spawn into the living room.

"Astarion!" Solaria exclaimed, jumping off the sofa she'd been sitting on. Milos, who stood next to it, tried to hold her back, but she escaped his grasp. She hurled herself around Astarion's neck with a sob.

"Where in the sweet hells were you? You were gone for two years!"

Astarion's eyes widened in shock.

"What? I - I didn't know, I - Gods, Solaria..."

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. She smelled delicious. Like rosemary, lavender, and bergamot, and her blood like the finest brandy. Astarion loved her so much and he was so happy to see her again, but something was wrong. Very wrong. His dread got worse when his master chuckled darkly.

"What a heartwarming reunion."

Astarion got distracted by Solaria's hands on his cheeks.

"What happened to you, little star? You're skin's all cold and your eyes are burning red."

He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could do so, Cazador stepped in, pulling Solaria away from him.

"So, that's the little menace that keeps you attached to your old life? Hm..." Cazador mused. "We can change that."

Cold fear poured over Astarion.

"No... no! Cazador, no! I'll do anything, anything, you want, but please leave her alone!"

"Don't beg, Astarion!" Solaria snapped sharply. "You're a free elf, a proud member of the Ancunin family! You shine as bright as the stars you're named after!"

At that, Cazador laughed, an ugly, humourless thing.

"Ah, I see where my pet's fighting spirit's coming from. Even more reasons to get rid of you."

Solaria glared at him, spiting nails.

"How dare you walk into my house and act like a prick! You'll pay for hurting my love, you monster! Who do you think you are? A god?"

Smirking, Cazador answered: "I soon will be."

And with that, he bore his fangs into Solaria's throat.

"No!" Astarion yelled, trying to free himself from his siblings' grip. "Anything! I'll do anything you want, Master, but please let her go!"

His pleas fell on deaf ears as Cazador drained Solaria's body dry in seconds. Astarion had do watch helplessly how the love of his life died in his master's arms. A monster, Solaria had called him, and yes, that's what Cazador was. The man in question carelessly dropped the lifeless body onto the wooden floor and elegantly wiped the corner of his mouth. Astarion was blinded by tears. He'd never felt this much hate towards anyone before.

"That'll hopefully solve your deviance, pet," Cazador scolded, almost sounding bored. He turned towards Milos and stroke his cheek.

"Well done, pet. You deserve a reward."

"Thank you, Master," the vampire spawn smiled and kissed Cazador's hand.

Heat exploded in Astarion's body when realisation hit him.

"You!" he growled. "You were the one sniffing around in my past and finding my love? And for what? To please your master?"

Milos shrugged uncaringly.

"You know how it is. We all want to make Master happy, but you... you were distracted because your past was holding you back. Now, that this troubling part's gone, you can focus on the present."

Astarion saw red. Literally. With a ear-piercing scream, he freed himself from his siblings' grip, pounced on Milos, wrestled him to the floor, and ripped his throat out with his teeth. Screaming and panting, Astarion kept hacking his fingernails into his brother's flesh, lost in rage. Dalyria and Petras had frozen in fear and stood stock still.

"Astarion! Enough!"

Cazador's loud voice pulled him out of his bloodlust. Panting and with his exposed fangs on full display, Astarion turned around. His eyes were still feral and he was covered in Milos' blood.

"How dare you kill one of your siblings!" Cazador boomed. "I can't allow it!"

Astarion growled at him and snapped his teeth. Dalyria and Petras scrambled to the back of the room, utterly terrified. But Cazador just stared daggers at him, more annoyed about Milos' death than saddened.

"Look what you've done! You killed one of my perfectly-functioning spawns. You owe me a new one, pet. You'll find a suitable candidate for a replacement, understand?"

Astarion worked his jaw silently, but nodded after a while.

"Now, get up," Cazador demanded impatiently. "We must leave before we arouse suspicion."

Immediately, Dalyria and Petras followed his orders. Astarion, on the other hand, crawled to Solaria's corpse. His master sighed long-sufferingly.

"She's long dead. No need to cry over spoil milk."

The addressed hissed and growled, holding his dead lover close to his chest.

"If Milos' report was right, she has a family," Cazador added nonchalantly. "I'm sure they'd want to see their daughter's corpse and they'll take care of the funeral."

At that, Astarion stopped hissing, instead, he looked at Solaria. After a long pause, he bent down and kissed her already-cold lips. Then, he lay her onto the ground carefully before getting up slowly.

"Are you done with your temper tantrum, boy?" his master asked annoyed.

Astarion didn't answer but made his way towards the door. The vampires left the house quickly, leaving behind two dead bodies and a hell of a lot of blood.

Cazador punished him for his action.

Astarion was tied to his bed, spread eagle, with his face down, as Cazador spent hours carving a 'poem' into his back with a knife. His master hummed a happy melody while Astarion screamed himself hoarse.

"You're living, breathing art, pet," Cazador told him. "My poem makes you even more beautiful."

Astarion wanted to retch.

Afterwards, he spent an entire year chained to the dungeon's wall, being regularly wiped by Godey. After a while, it got easier to ignore the hunger. Apparently, sometimes, vampire spawns lost their minds due to starvation. Astarion didn't. He was denied blood, but he fed off his hatred towards Cazador instead. He remembered Solaria's last words to him: "You're a free elf, a proud member of the Ancunin family. You shine as bright as the stars you're named after."

He could survive this, all of it. Astarion lived on pure spite during his years under Cazador's thumb.

Finally, Astarion was allowed to leave the dungeon. He got fed and bathed.

"Astarion, your hair..." Dalyria breathed. "Your hair turned grey."

The addressed started laughing hysterically.

Cazador sent him into the streets. Before doing anything else, Astarion walked to the graveyard, looking for Solaria's grave. She was buried in the family's crypt. Astarion lay down a bundle of freshly-plucked daisies and a peach.

"I love you, sunshine," he whispered as tears rolled down his cheeks. "Please, forgive me."

Now, he had to find a suitable person to become Cazador's new spawn. Astarion picked his victim carefully. He was looking for someone who's conventionally pretty and seemed mentally strong enough to endure Cazador's torture. He saw just that in Yousen. The blonde gnome was fairly attractive, with a warm smile and clever hands. It was almost too easy to seduce him. Astarion led Yousen upstairs to a rented room and kissed him hungrily. The blood thrumming through the gnome's veins almost drove Astarion crazy, but he controlled his vampiric instinct to bite him. Instead, he sucked Yousen's dick and kissed him breathless. Afterwards, when the gnome had fallen asleep, Astarion carried him to the Szarr Palace. He wasn't a fan of hurting or scaring people, thus, he preferred this method. Cazador was pleased with him, cooing over Yousen's pointy ear (his master seemed to have some kind of fetish regarding pointed ears). As a reward for his good behaviour, Astarion was allowed to feed on three sewer rats.

Yousen was furious when he woke up as a vampire spawn and Astarion petted himself on the back for picking a strong-willed person instead of a scaredy-cat. After a couple of months, Yousen stopped shooting daggers at Astarion, and after a year, they sloppily made out in the attic while exchanging hand jobs. Good. Astarion was still happy about his choice. The gnome was a quick learner, luring a poor soul to Cazador every night, without becoming a brainless slave to their master. And Cazador was pleased with Milos' replacement. Astarion was in his good grace again, but was still kept on a short leash.

He hated hunting for prey. Astarion always tried to find ways to avoid it – even if that meant being tortured instead.

It was a wonderful winter evening, the snowflakes danced through the air and glittered in the light of the street lamps. Astarion sat in a warm tavern, carefully choosing his victim. There was a cute young man across the room who drank with his friends. When their eyes met, Astarion winked at him, and the boy blushed. The vampire spawn smirked and pretended to drink his wine. After a while, the young man made his way over to him, followed by the whistles of his friends.

"Uhm, hi," he said shyly. "I uhm... well, I saw you sitting here all alone and you're incredibly handsome and uhm..."

Astarion had mercy on the poor babbling man and spoke: "Well, you weren't the only one staring, darling. I, too, am guilty. I can't take my eyes of you."

The addressed blushed again and Astarion thought it's cute. He got up from his chair, flirtatiously playing with the hem of the man's shirt.

"We could go somewhere more quiet, darling. Somewhere, where we can bask in each other's beauty undisturbed."

"Alright," the young man breathed.

Astarion took his hand and led him onto the first upper floor's gallery. There, hidden behind the wooden beams, slightly illuminated by the soft light falling through the window, Astarion trapped the man between his lithe body and the wall.

"I uhm... I've never done this with another man before."

"That's alright, I teach you," purred Astarion and brushed their noses together.

The young man, almost still a boy, giggled and Astarion's heart ached. He kissed him tenderly and the boy sighed happily.

"You're so beautiful. I've never seen anyone with such eyes before - not even an elf."

"Well, I'm special, darling."

The boy giggled again.

"Yes, you are. What's your name? I'm -"

"I don't need to know your name, darling. We can still spend a night of passion together without lifting all the mysteries, can't we?"

Before the boy could answer, Astarion kissed him again and slightly pushed his groin into him. The boy moaned sweetly, panting into Astarion's mouth. The vampire spawn squeezed his eyes shut and fought against the wave of nausea. He couldn't bear the thought of bringing this darling boy to Cazador to be killed mercilessly.

"Oooh..." whimpered the boy as Astarion stuck his hand into his trousers and started to stroke him.

"Please, let me - ah!"

"Sh, sh, just enjoy it, darling," Astarion whispered. "I won't let anything happen to you."

He held the boy who shook apart in his arms. Astarion kissed him one more time before he fled the scene. He couldn't do it. Couldn't bring Cazador people to consume and kill. He stopped and gagged. He was panting even though there was no need for him to breathe. The snow fell gently around him, covering the world in a white blanket. He couldn't feel the cold. Astarion collapsed onto the ground, spreading out in the snow-covered field outside Baldur's Gate, and gazed at the pitch-black sky.

If I keep laying here, would I die eventually, he asked himself. He knew the answer.

"Hells!" cursed Astarion and closed his eyes.

He lay in the snow motionlessly until Cazador appeared behind him like a fury. Astarion let himself be handled like a ragdoll and dragged back to his master's palace. There, Cazador scolded him, re-drew the poem on Astarion's back, raped him again, and then, sealed him into a tomb in the city's many graveyards. Astarion cursed, screamed, and cried. He was left inside his claustrophobic prison. Again, he was starving. It was a year of silence, months of scratching his hands bloody, trying to carve his way out, more months of not moving at all. Months wishing only for death.

And Astarion's hatred towards Cazador only grew.

[mortemoppetere]

TIMING: late june / early july 2021 LOCATION: oaxaca, mexico PARTIES: @ironcladrhett & @mortemoppetere SUMMARY: in the immediate aftermath of the cortez family massacre, rhett searches for survivors. he finds emilio, but 'survivor' may not be the best term. CONTENT WARNINGS: suicide ideation, sibling death, parental death, child death

It was hard to say how long it had been. He hadn’t stopped running after he’d left Etla, hadn’t even stopped to wash the blood off his hands. It had dried there now, caked and crumbling beneath his fingernails, making his skin feel tacky and uncomfortable. Emilio barely noticed it. He barely noticed the pain in his leg, either, the way the entire limb felt like it was on fire or the sickly sweet smell coming from the festering wounds he’d been left with. There was a sheen layer of sweat on his forehead and his heart was pounding more than it should have been and his mouth tasted like copper and none of it mattered. None of it would ever matter again. Nothing would.

Everyone was dead. Flora was dead. And that was the only thing that mattered now.

Eventually, his leg wouldn’t take any more weight. It was hard to say if he was being followed or not — most of the vampires had been otherwise occupied by the time he’d finished with Lucio to head out — but it was probably safe to assume that there was someone on his trail. There was some relief in the thought. The idea that there would be someone coming to finish the job didn’t carry any of the dread that it should have. He already felt dead, sitting by the small fire he’d made in the woods where his leg had stopped working. It might be nice, in a way, to have someone stop his heart from making the feeling untrue.

And yet, when he heard the crunching of feet in the dirt, his muscles tensed. The body wanted to live, even when the mind saw no reason to. Emilio scrambled without really knowing why, gripping a stake in his hand despite being unable to stand to make himself anything resembling an actual threat. “If you’re going to kill me, kill me,” he spat in Spanish, voice hoarse from lack of use. “But don’t do it from the shadows. Don’t kill me like a coward. Look me in the eye when you do it. Give me that much, at least.” 

—

The hunt had gone well, and Rhett was in high spirits as he drove the van back into town. Until he saw the first body, at least. Confusion was the first emotion he felt as he threw the vehicle into park and ripped the keys from the ignition, shoving them in his jacket pocket as he hurried over to the corpse. Beside them there was a small, scattered pile of ash, and a stake. His heart sank. 

Getting to his feet, he ran deeper into the town, throwing himself down by each body that he came upon, panic rising in his throat. They were dead, they were all dead. The people he’d called family—fuck. Fuck. Thoughts honed in on little Flora and her parents as he searched, terrified of seeing them laying in the street. He felt sick. 

The fear would be realized after another twenty minutes. The warden was beside himself as he knelt by Flora and Juliana, gathering the little girl’s body into his arms and weeping into her blood-soaked shirt. The memories ached, the sound of her voice shouting Tio Rhett! when she saw him returning from a hunt, arms outstretched for a hug. 

They were the only two he gave himself time to bury before he resumed the hunt for Flora’s father. And when he couldn’t be found in Etla, the warden found himself clinging to the sliver of hope that he’d escaped, somehow. He’d track Emilio like a quarry if he had to, but he’d find him. 

It took him hours to find a trail leading out of town that didn’t end at a body or a pile of ash, but finally he did, and he followed it with dread in his heart. It was clear to him that whoever this was, they were in bad shape—the amount of blood left behind was certainly evidence of that. At least it made them easy to follow. The sun sank beyond the horizon and the warden used the light of his cellphone to keep after them, realizing he was a few days behind. Fuck. Still he pressed on without stopping, ignoring the way his body ached for sleep and water at the end of the second day. Some signs of life gave him a little hope that he was catching up—fresh blood on a bush here, the trampled grass of a spot where someone had fallen for a few minutes before resuming their trek. 

Snaking around backyards of homes, Rhett picked up the pace as much as he could, growling in frustration as the sky grew darker and darker. His battery was at five percent, and he wasn’t going to get far without it, which just gave them more time to slip away. “Please,” he begged any god that would listen, turning on the phone’s flashlight when he could no longer see.

It had only been another thirty minutes before—there. A light in the distance.

Hurrying toward the apparent fire, he could have cried hearing that familiar voice threatening him in Spanish. He wasn’t mentally present enough to think to call out, instead just bursting through the underbrush and into the small clearing like a whirlwind, stumbling down to his knees where Emilio sat, incapacitated. The hug was immediate, desperate, and tighter than any they’d ever shared before. On Rhett’s part, anyway. He clung to his surrogate brother like he might slip away again any moment, gasping as he fought to catch his breath, or… tried not to break down. 

“Milio,” he groaned, finally pulling back enough to look the man over, like he couldn’t believe he was still alive. “Thought you were dead, thought I lost you, I—” Fuck. His rambling quieted as he remembered what they’d left behind, tears glistening in his wide eyes. “They… buried. I buried them. Milio, I’m so sorry—” Flora hadn’t been his own blood, but she’d felt like she was. All of them had, but especially that little bundle of joy. He couldn’t hold back the hurt, hanging his head and pressing a palm over his face, other hand clutching numbly at Emilio’s jacket. 

—

Whatever was in the woods came out fast, a shape rushing towards him all at once. Emilio braced himself for it, for the inevitable slice of the knife or sting of the teeth or ache of the hit. However they chose to kill him, it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t hurt worse than the ache in his chest, because nothing could. It wouldn’t be worse than the emptiness. Whatever they did to him now, it would be a relief. He was ready for it.

At least… he’d thought he was. But the shape took on a familiar form, pieced together by his addled mind a heartbeat later than it might have in peak condition but there all the same. Rhett’s arms were around him in an embrace so tight that he thought it might strangle him, the familiar smell of his surrogate brother’s clothes replacing the scent of blood burned into his nostrils. 

The monster in the woods wasn’t a monster after all. And Emilio was filled with a bitter sense of disappointment at the realization. 

For nearly two decades now, Rhett’s presence had always represented safety. Victor had died, but Rhett had slipped into the role of big brother so easily that, sometimes, Emilio could convince himself that he hadn’t. Edgar was reckless and Rosa was cold, but Rhett was invincible. Rhett would keep Emilio safe, even when Elena reminded him how little he deserved it. Rhett loved Flora the same way he did, laughed at her stupid, toddler jokes and engaged her in conversation even when her babbling was absolute nonsense. When Rhett was around, nothing could happen to Emilio.

And he thought he might hate him a little for that now.

What did he care for safety, in this moment? He didn’t want it. He didn’t want to be saved, didn’t want to be protected. Rhett was here and Emilio was safe, but he shouldn’t be. He should have been dead already, should have been in that living room floor with his wife and his daughter, should have bled out by their side. He was supposed to. He was supposed to, and he hadn’t. 

Still, it was hard not to lean against Rhett as the older man embraced him. The hug was tight. A little too tight for the slayer’s broken bones and festering cuts, maybe. He ached with it, getting blood all over Rhett’s already stained jacket. And it struck him, then, where that blood must have come from. Where Rhett had been, what he’d seen, how he’d found Emilio here. If he was here, it was because he’d tracked him. If he’d tracked him, it was because he’d seen what he’d left behind. The bodies, the blood, the carnage. Rosa and Edgar and Jaime and his mother and Juliana and Flora. 

For a moment, Emilio’s heart sped up. Rhett must know, then, what had happened. He must have known what Emilio failed to prevent, what he’d run away from. Had he seen Lucio with the knife in his gut? Did he understand who had put it there? Would Emilio be punished for his sins after all, the way he wanted to be? He thought he might like it, if it was Rhett. Dying might be okay if it was someone you loved doing it. 

But then Rhett spoke, that old nickname falling off his tongue like nothing else had sat there in days now, and any hope of Emilio getting what he so desperately deserved was lost to it. Rhett loved Flora, but he’d loved Emilio first. That wouldn’t change, even if that love was no longer a thing he deserved.

“Should’ve been,” he muttered, back to English now but just as hoarse, just as broken. He let his forehead fall against his brother’s shoulder, let it rest there despite how little he deserved the reprieve. There was a lump in his throat as Rhett went on, and Emilio marveled over his ability to breathe around it. Why wouldn’t it strangle him? Why was everything that should have killed him so insistent on keeping him alive? “I should’ve been, Rhett. I don’t — Why’d you come back? Why’d you look for me?” He wanted to beg the warden to leave him there, to let him finish dying in the woods, but he knew he wouldn’t. Rhett would never. He’d buried Emilio’s wife, buried his daughter. He wouldn’t bury him, too, even if it meant dragging a half-rotted corpse along beside him. 

—

It was agonizing to see so much of himself in Emilio in that moment. He was deeply familiar with the pain that the other was feeling. Horribly aware of the desire to simply stop existing, to have died alongside the ones he loved, and being robbed of that. He remembered that anguish from twenty years ago as if it had happened yesterday, now that he was seeing it again in his little brother. How stupid he’d been to let himself forget, he thought. To let himself fall into a comfortable pattern. He didn’t deserve that. And Emilio probably felt that he didn’t deserve that, either; a return to normalcy, or whatever normalcy could be clung to with such a large part of himself missing. 

But if Rhett had been allowed that tiny act of grace, then so would Emilio. 

“Stupid fucking question,” he croaked, trying to sound angry but failing. Emilio knew why, but his misery didn’t want to let him feel it. Rhett knew that. Rhett knew it would be… hard to get him to leave, to put it lightly. But it was a burden he was ready to bear. 

There was no way he was making the slayer hoof it all the way back to Etla to get in the van, but Rhett could go retrieve another vehicle in a fraction of the time it had taken him to find Emilio. It was simply a matter of convincing the man to stay here and stay alive until he could return. “I’m sorry,” he breathed again, framing Emilio’s face in his hands, forcing him to look the warden in the eyes. “Wasn’t there to—” What could he even say? There was no verbal balm for such a grievous wound. Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, he gave a resolute nod and released Emilio from his grip, giving his shoulder a gentle pat. “Right. Gonna go get a car. We’re leaving. When I get back, you’re here. Alive. Got it?” It wasn’t a request but a command, delivered as firmly as he could muster while despair tried to cinch off his airway and silence him for good.

This was the life of a hunter. Rhett knew that, Emilio knew that… it was the dangers of having children. Of having people you loved. The old man had accepted the latter, but sworn off the former. There was one child, he knew, running amok in the world if it hadn’t died already. But they’d never met and never would, if they were lucky. That wasn’t family, anyway. Emilio was family. Emilio, or whatever was left of him, was the price of a lack of loneliness. And Rhett wasn’t cashing out on that just yet. 

It was hard to turn his back on Emilio but he did, making for those homes he’d passed by at a full sprint. The fear that his brother would be gone by the time he returned was the only thing that gave him the stamina to keep going, lungs burning by the time he made it to a residential street and to the first vehicle he saw. It was also a van, though a far cry from his own magnificent beast, it’d do in a pinch. And this was certainly more than a pinch. Smashing in the driver side window, Rhett had to be quick hot-wiring the van to get it started, collapsing into the driver’s seat once the engine roared to life and peeling off down the street just as someone came running out of the house, screaming at him. Sorry.

Parking on a dirt road as near to the place he’d left Emilio as he could, he made the rest of the trip on foot. To his relief, he could still see the golden burn of the fire his brother had made flickering in the distance after about ten minutes or so. Rhett released the breath he’d been holding as his gaze fell upon the man still sitting there, likely only because his injuries prevented him from fleeing any further. It would have to do. “Come on,” he growled, kicking dirt on the fire and hooking his arms under Emilio’s, hauling him to his feet no matter how much he protested and acting as a support as he steered them toward the van. 

—

He wished Rhett sounded angrier than he did, wished there was vitriol in his words or acid on his tongue. He thought it might have been easier if someone hated him the way he hated himself right now, if someone would just confirm the thoughts swirling in his head. That it was his fault, that he deserved every ounce of the pain coursing through him now. That things would be different if he were better, that he could have prevented this if he’d tried harder. That he was every bit the piece of shit he felt like he was. Juliana would have, if she’d been more than a corpse in the ground now. His mother, his brother, his sister, any one of them would have been happy to confirm that Emilio was at least partially to blame for what had happened here. 

But not Rhett. Never Rhett.

And maybe there was some awful part of Emilio that hated his brother for that. If he’d had more strength, he might have screamed, might have demanded that Rhett take off the kid gloves and tell it like it was. There was a ghost town a few miles back where they’d lived once. There were bodies in the streets, and Emilio hadn’t put them there but he hadn’t stopped it, either. He was just as much a dead thing as those corpses, as the vampires who had made them that way. And all he needed was for someone to bury him, to turn him into dust. And Rhett wouldn’t. 

There was nothing worse than love, Emilio thought. Nothing could strangle you faster.

He shook his head as Rhett apologized, that lump in his throat growing wider, growing larger. “Wasn’t your fight.” Rhett was a warden, not a slayer. He might have come in handy during the fight, but it wouldn’t have been enough to turn the tides. The only thing that would have changed would have been Rhett’s body joining the rest of them in the streets and, selfish as it was, Emilio would have never wanted that. Let Rhett carry the weight of missing the fight. Let it sit as heavy on his shoulders as the weight of being there sat on Emilio’s. It meant he was alive, still. It meant there was still one person Emilio hadn’t lost. 

The laugh that tore its way out of his throat was hoarse and humorless, bitter and angry and desolate. “Wouldn’t make it far.” He’d been moving nonstop for days now and still hadn’t made it far enough away from town for Rhett to lose his trail. Any movement he made would be painful and slow and he knew it. “Don’t have much say on the alive part.” And if he had… 

It was an awful thing, the hope that Rhett would come back to find another corpse. Emilio knew that. Rhett didn’t deserve to lose any more than he had already, but Emilio didn’t deserve to continue drawing breath after this monumental failure, either. What was a father who couldn’t save his own child? What was he worth? He couldn’t keep his family alive, couldn’t protect him. Those vows he’d made to Juliana in the eyes of God, the ones he’d made to Flora in the privacy of his own mind, they had all proven empty now. And what was he left with? This ache that he knew would never leave him, this intense hatred for everything that was left.

He almost hadn’t realized Rhett had left until he was back, and he knew that probably wasn’t a good thing. Growing up as a hunter had awarded him more than his fair share of serious injuries over the years, and losing time like this was the sort of thing that tended to happen just before his mother called in a priest ‘just in case.’ (Never a doctor. The only doctor who knew them well enough to be trusted lived out in the city, and making him go out of his way for Emilio, who only ever got hurt when he was too reckless or stupid or slow to prevent it, wasn’t something his mother could justify.) 

Emilio grunted as Rhett pulled him to his feet, biting his tongue to prevent the sound from evolving into a scream. He tasted blood in his mouth, but he wasn’t sure if it was because he’d bit his tongue too hard or because his ribs were slicing through his lungs and filing his chest with blood. He wasn’t sure if he hoped it was the former or the latter. 

“Stop,” he wheezed out, smacking a hand weakly against Rhett’s shoulder. “Christ, Rhett, just —” What was he asking for? For Rhett to slow down, to give him a moment for the pain to become something manageable? Or for him to leave, to let Emilio finish dying alone in the dirt? He wasn’t sure either request would be met. Slowing down wasn’t an option when there were likely still people out looking for him, and Rhett had made it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t leave Emilio to die. 

He blinked again, and they were in the van. He wasn’t sure how much help he’d been in getting them there, but he was willing to bet it wasn’t much. Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back against the seat cushion, gritting his teeth. “Should’ve left me there. Déjame morir. I want to.” He wasn’t sure he would have said it if not for the injuries and the infection clouding his mind, but that didn’t make it any less true. 

—

“You stop,” Rhett challenged, ignoring the hit. Emilio’s weight was heavy on his side, and his legs weren’t doing any help keeping him upright. The warden gave a grunt and squatted low, letting Emilio slump forward as unconsciousness overtook him to then gather him up in his arms and carry him bridal style all the way back to the van. 

He’d hate this if he was awake, the warden thought with bittersweet amusement. 

At less than half the pace he’d managed before, it was a long walk back to the stolen van. Through the dark, no less, as he now had no free hands with which to light their path. The phone was probably fully dead at this point, anyway. But they made it, finally, and once Rhett got the man settled in the passenger seat, he was quick to get them the hell out of there. His body wanted nothing more than to sleep, but he was determined to get them as far away from that place as he could.

His brother’s voice stirred Rhett from his trance, the dotted white lines mesmerizing in the way they skipped past his eyes as he drove. Shaking his head to clear it, the warden spared a quick glance over at him. “Fuck off with that shit,” he warned, his voice hoarse. “You don’t get to clock out on my watch, mate.” Running a hand over his face, he realized with mild surprise that he’d apparently been crying while he mentally checked out during the drive on the long, straight road through the desert. “We’re gettin’ gone. North. Heads down, til you heal up.”

—

It took him a moment to register that the van was moving, at a speed fast enough to imply that it had been doing so for a while. It wasn’t Rhett’s usual van — didn’t quite smell bad enough — but Emilio was familiar enough with that to know that a vehicle this big took a while to get up to speed, and this one was cruising down the road at a steady pace. He must have lost more time than he’d realized, then. Long enough for Rhett to decide where they were going and start the trek towards getting them there.

He wondered if he ought to be offended by that, angry that he hadn’t been given a vote in where to go or how to get there. Maybe the rage would come later, but he couldn’t muster it now. Right now, the only thing he felt was that empty ache, that quiet feeling of failure. What did he care where they went? It didn’t matter. Anywhere they ended up would be the same. 

“Fuck you,” he said, but his words sounded just as hollow as the glare he attempted to shoot in Rhett’s direction. “Not checking out. Just — It’s what I was fucking supposed to do.” Hunters weren’t supposed to outlive people. Their stories were the ones that ended, the ones that cut off in the middle of a sentence, the ones that only took up half the page. Why was Emilio the one who’d made it out? Why was he the one who had to carry this weight? 

He caught sight of the wetness on Rhett’s cheeks, and it was a jarring thing. He didn’t think he’d ever seen his brother cry before. Whose loss was he mourning, he wondered? Flora’s, with her tiny hands and her small voice chanting his name? Juliana’s, with her quiet humor and good-natured teasing? Was he grieving for Rosa, or for Edgar, or for Elena? For Lucio, whose gut Emilio had put a blade in himself?

Or maybe it was Emilio Rhett was mourning. Maybe he recognized that you could pull someone out of Hell, but you couldn’t save them from it. The slayer leaned over, letting his forehead rest against the cool glass of the stolen van’s window. “No. We’re not. Not looking to heal up. Not looking to keep my head down. I’m going to kill them all.”

—

Something about him had been changing over the years. It was subtle, but Rhett recognized it now as it faced him down like a starved, rabid animal. The anger he’d always clung to, that rage spawned by unfinished business, unsatisfied revenge… it had been dissipating. His outward persona had remained largely the same—he still hunted nymphs with a voracious appetite, still grew quiet at any mention or question about his past, but… Emilio’s stalwart determination to return to the place his family had been slaughtered to kill whatever vampires might remain made him realize that he didn’t want to do that. 

But he should have. They’d been his family too, hadn’t they? Just like Dez had been family. Why wasn’t he so hungry for justice? 

Maybe it was the man in the passenger seat, broken and frail, that made him hesitate. He’d lost almost everything, but not everything. Was that worth the risk? Was Flora worth the risk? Fuck. Fuck. 

Rhett let out a strangled sound and pulled over to the side of the two-lane highway, crossing his arms over the top of the steering wheel and burying his face there. He was quiet for a minute or so, wrestling with the need to protect the only thing he had left that sat festering beside him, and the need to see this thing done. For all of them. His niece deserved better. God, she deserved better. 

“We.” The correction came suddenly, and Rhett lifted his head. He didn’t look at Emilio, instead checking the side mirror to make sure no one else was coming down the road. “We are going to kill them all.” Throwing the vehicle back into drive, the warden pulled a u-turn and started back the way they’d come. 

This was going to be a long, bloody road, but he had to see it through. If not for himself, then at least for the ones that were cold in the ground now. He’d failed at that task for Desmond, and he couldn’t fail again. But some small part of him also knew that it wouldn’t be that easy while Emilio still lived and breathed. He’d never stop trying to save his baby brother. Never. Vampires or self-sabotage, it didn’t matter—he was Rhett’s responsibility. He’d make it out of this, even if he didn’t want to. He had to. Had to. Rhett couldn’t take another loss, not one more.

—

Rhett pulled the van over and, for a moment, Emilio thought he might ask him to get out. The thought was a ridiculous one, of course, because Rhett wouldn’t have carried his sorry ass to the van and strapped him into the passenger’s seat just to leave him to die on some roadside a few miles away from where he’d already been dying before, but it clawed its way into the hunter’s head all the same. Why wouldn’t Rhett be angry with him, after all? Rhett had loved Flora just as he had, had loved Juliana and Rosa and Edgar and Jaime. Why wouldn’t he be angry at Emilio’s failure to save any of them? Why wouldn’t he hate him for it?

(The answer, of course, was a simple one: because Rhett loved him. Because he had always loved him, from the first time Emilio met him as a dirty, angry teenager and started following him around like a lost dog. Rhett loved Flora and Juliana and all the rest, but he’d loved Emilio first. And it felt like the worst thing in the fucking world right now, because Emilio no longer deserved it. Maybe he never had.)

There was a quiet moment, a heartbeat that passed in silence before Rhett spoke again. We. Was it better or worse? Emilio couldn’t decide. Rhett helping him on his crusade was certainly better than the warden dragging him somewhere else and forcing him to forgo vengeance, but joining him in this quest for vengeance? Emilio wasn’t sure that was what he wanted. He’d already decided, even now, how this story would end for him. There was only one way it could end. He’d seen the way that massacre went down, how organized it had been, how bloody. There were so many of them, both present and behind the scenes. He’d never take them all out, and he’d never stop until his heart no longer beat. And Rhett would join him in it, because Rhett loved him. And it would probably get him killed, too, because no one who loved Emilio ever seemed to outlive him. Being alone was daunting, but losing someone else was worse. 

And yet, there was nothing he could do. Emilio had known Rhett for more than half his life now, and he’d never once been able to convince him to do something he didn’t want to do, or to stop something he did want to do. If he said Rhett couldn’t come with him, Rhett was likely to turn the car around again, to take Emilio to some shitty motel half a country over and sit on him until the trail went cold. And God, what did it say about him that his thirst for vengeance was greater than his concern for his brother? What kind of man was he that he’d rather die for his revenge than make sure Rhett stayed alive? 

“Okay,” he agreed quietly, letting his head fall against the window. There was a smudge of blood on the glass; he didn’t know if it was his or someone else’s. He didn’t know if he wanted to know. “We.” The word tasted like ash on his tongue, but so did everything. What difference did it make? 

Letting his eyes slip shut as they lapsed back into silence, all Emilio could think to hope was that the world, for once, would be kind. He didn’t need to live, didn’t want it. All he wanted was for the man beside him to live longer than he did. All he needed was to be the one who got to go first, just once.