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phyrestartr · 15 days ago

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Sacrosanct | Adrian Tepes x M!Reader | (PT.1)

W/C: 3.8k C/W: mentions of emotional abuse, blood and gore, canon-typical violence, religion, religious abuse, religious themes, death, mentions of death, depression, alcohol abuse Tags: PLOT!, SFW, eventual NSFW/sexual themes, drama, repressed romantic feelings, slow-ish burn, childhood friends, starts s4 (eventually moving into nocturne), mutual pining, angst and drama, hurt/comfort, reader is kind of an ass lol

Note: soz if there are any spelling/grammar errors---I have been tweaking this so much and I'm so tired of it so I'm just posting the first part to get over it lol o(--( hope it's fun to read!!

1. A Man Amongst the Ghosts

Isolation was an unkind thing. Whispered secrets, foul howls and the like plagued the afflicted's everyday, wrenching away all hope of peace. The dolls, ones made in fits of lonely mania, kept Alucard some sort of company until those humans wandered through, filling in the emptiness that Trevor and Sypha once filled themselves; Taka and Sumi never could replace a Speaker and a Belmont, but the attempt was appreciated.

Until their humanity showed. Their hatred of vampires, their distrust of anyone beyond themselves, their desperation—all reflected in dark, stone eyes as they loomed above him like the grim reaper, ready to take their pound of flesh from the bloodline that'd evaded Hell for so long. Yet what the two did not know, and what Death had always known, was that Alucard decided to live.

But what's the point? That disease of a question never was to be answered. His mother would no doubt remind him of how precious and sacred life was, how he simply needed to seek out a spark of inspiration to once again find meaning, but how was one supposed to see meaning in the meaningless? Alucard didn't have an answer. Adrian didn't, either.

Maybe I just need to wait for a surprise, he lamented. Another world-ending threat, or something. Maybe I could start one myself. I've nothing better to do, anyway.

The dhampir sighed as he walked up the steps. Then, in the mouth of the great building, he paused; before him stood a figure, cloaked and still, facing the castle stairs.

“Oh, God,” he breathed, rubbing his eyes, “not another one.” Surely, there was a way to cleanse the castle. Surely, there was a way to remove the spirits of his past, the ones who came and went as they pleased while Alucard watched on and suffocated. Surely, everyday life didn't need to be so—

His trance snapped at a sound. The castle made noises, but it didn’t scuff leather soles against stone, nor did it kick rubble out of its way to make room for hollow, echoing footsteps. Any noise the place made was slow and languid, like it was straining with each and every attempt to haunt its inhabitant; however, those footfalls were brisk and quick and so much like his mother's when she was in a rush.

But that wasn't Lisa Tepes. It was an intruder—a real one. A man amongst ghosts.

A distant door closed, and Alucard exploded into movement.

Magic fuelled his steps, hurtling him forth in smears of vibrant crimson as he pursued the whisper of a heart beating. Whoever had tried their luck sounded calm, unbothered. Alucard was eager to change that.

The dhampir burst into the lab. A sharp yelp harmonized with the slamming of the door. Another shout was cut short the moment Alucard grabbed the stranger by the throat and pinned them to the wall with a resounding thud.

“Do you have a death wish?” He growled over whatever the stranger tried to say.

A pause. Then, the threat was answered with a laugh, something sardonic and bitter.

“A death wish?” They—he—scoffed, clawing at the gloved hand keeping him pinned. “Is that meant to intimidate me, you stupid, blood-sucking beast?”

Alucard squeezed harder, earning a sharp whimper from the intruder. “It should scare you very much, yes.”

“Wait,” he squawked.

“Why should I?” Alucard snapped. “If I don't, you'll take from this place, won't you?”

The stranger’s pawing turned into thrashing.

Alucard continued, “If I don't, you’ll return and attempt to kill me. Worse, you could kill me the second I—”

“Adrian.”

His grip weakened.

The stranger gasped in lungfuls of air before hastily pulling back his hood. His face—your face—illuminated in the gentle morning light.

Your gazes held for a long, long moment, one that might have gone on forever, one that might have only been a delusional second, but it was…familiar. Secretive and special, like when you lifted sweets from town and shared them underneath a table in the library.

“Don’t tell Miss Lisa,” you whispered, eyes glimmering with mirth despite your serious disposition.

Adrian huffed and took a sweet roll from the basket. “I wouldn’t dream of it. She’ll be completely cross if she finds out.”

You nodded, and the pact was formed. “We must make sure we wash our hands afterwards,” you added as you ripped a roll in half and nibbled on the frayed edge. “I, too, will be cross if we get sugar on the books.”

“Ugh, you’re so annoying.”

You turned your nose away like a pompous brat, and Adrian laughed.

His grip loosened more, and your pulse started to slow against his gloved fingertips.

“You,” Alucard said slowly, sluggishly. “Why?”

“I’ve come to do the work your worthless self has refused to do, you brute,” you sneered.

Alucard released you and watched you collapse. You rubbed your throat, hand shaking.

“I forgot how much of an asshole you were, alchemist.”

You glared up at him through tear-coated lashes.

“I've never forgotten how much of a spoiled brat you were, Adrian.”

“Alucard,” the dhampir corrected.

“What?”

The blonde turned away and wandered to where he'd seen you puttering. “They call me ‘Alucard,’ now.”

You scoffed. “The opposite of Dracula, yes, of course, how very dramatic of you.” He heard you drag yourself back up to your feet. “It's a stupid name.”

“So is ‘(Name)’.”

“Oh, fuck off. If you're going to insult me, at least make it worthwhile.”

You stepped up beside him, straightening out your clothes and fixing your disheveled hair. Alucard glimpsed flashes of light-coloured markings against your skin before they vanished beneath your clothes. He had no mind to wonder what they meant, but he did find them pretty.

“What are you doing here?” He sighed, suddenly so, so defeated. “This isn't your home.”

You sucked your teeth. “It was, once.”

“Not anymore.”

“Your mother said I'd always be welcome.” You picked books off the floor and set them on the cracked desk. “‘Always’ hasn't ended just because she's passed.”

Alucard's face twisted. “Don't speak of her. You have no right.”

“She was my mentor,” you said offhandedly. You threw a few more books onto the table. “I mourn her, too.”

“Yet you weren’t there when—”

“Neither were you.”

The cold left Alucard's veins, exposing his raw nerves to the needling truths he had shunned in favour of shutting down, disappearing into the numbness of winter. What right did you have to remind him? What right did you have to reappear and give him grief?

Thorns punctured the backs of his eyes. Alucard held his head and staggered back. He needed wine, and badly.

“Just—don't touch anything,” he grumbled as he turned away, ignoring whatever it was you hissed back at him. The man didn't have the energy to start a losing war with you.

—

Time passed. Alucard ignored you. He even forgot you resided under the same roof as him unless he stumbled upon you in the kitchen or engine room. You kept to yourself for the most part, and he kept to himself. It wasn't horrible.

You were horrible, however. You were nothing short of an entitled menace to society and, more personally, to Alucard himself. Still, somehow, Lisa had liked you enough to give you a room, and Dracula had found you promising enough to let you stay in that room, much to their only child's chagrin.

“‘He has nowhere else to go,’” Alucard muttered aloud, echoing the words his mother spoke back then. “‘He's alone.’” He stared up at the cellar's ceiling before taking a long drink of wine. “‘I'm sure he'll be your friend.’”

He thought of Sumi and Taka. He thought of Trevor and Sypha. He thought of empty shadows. And when he couldn't stand the thoughts any longer, he drank, and decided the castle was too small for all those ghosts and two living men, that it wasn’t allowed to be anything but cold and painful and lonely. Bonds, people, just made life agony.

Alucard rubbed his eyes. His shoulders trembled from a heavy inhale.

He needs to leave.

Resolve sobered him. Alucard stormed out of the cellar like he was about to face his father again, like his life was on the line along with humanity’s fate. In a way, it was; if he didn't deal with the nightmarish imp sullying his home, he'd be no use to humanity, he'd be in no position to be sober enough to ever do anything besides mourn and cry, and that couldn't last forever.

The lab doors came into view with the quiet shuffling of odds and ends before he threw the doors open, and stepped inside with purpose.

“You,” Alucard commanded. “You're to get out of my castle immediately lest I—”

He slowed to a halt and took the space in; the lab was warmly lit, and it no longer reeked of blood, sweat and magic, but instead of herbs and wood; a majority of the room was cleaned, or at least straightened out, and many of the books and equipment had been returned to their rightful places; what was left of the floors, walls and furniture were free of most filth, too. It almost seemed to masquerade as a home again.

You were even on the second floor, staring out the largest window with a cup of tea in your hand—a calming sight Alucard had taken in plenty of times in the past.

“You're cleaning,” Alucard said as he approached you.

“Astute observation, vampire.” You sipped your tea as you stared out at the vast sea of green cedar. “I'm surprised you live.”

“Tch. Not even Dracula could kill me,” Alucard huffed. “Wine doesn't stand a chance.”

“I'm not so sure. That horrible stench coming off of you suggests you're already a walking corpse.”

“So you came back to play the part of maid?” Alucard asked instead of biting back.

Your nose twitched with the threat of a snarl. “Someone has to clean up this fucking mess and it's surely not going to be you.”

“Well, I—”

“No, shut up.” You collapsed into a nearby armchair with a sigh. “You don't get to defend yourself.”

Alucard scoffed and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. “I was going to sort things out.”

“Before or after you drank yourself to near-death?”

“You're still as miserable as I remember.”

“Oh, on the contrary, I think I'm much more miserable now.” Your gaze dropped. “This house is a mess.”

Alucard scoffed, hackles rising. “Of course, it's the house you worry about.”

You frowned. “Someone has to.”

“Are you ever going to learn how to be pleasant?”

“I wasn't made to be pleasant; I was made to be exceptional.”

The dhampir laughed, earning a hot glare. “You mean by those mad heretics that attempted to open the gates of Hell over and over? Is that meant to be ‘exceptional’?”

The muscles of your jaw tensed, and Alucard thought he heard the grind of teeth. Your family, whoever they were, were a weak spot for you. He knew that well.

“Fuck you,” you uttered like a pagan curse. “You've no idea what I've endured, what my makers were like.”

“My father is Dracula,” Alucard said, “he tried to kill me, killed thousands of humans, tried to end the world—”

“Yet you still live, and the world is still in-fucking-tact, isn't it? Maybe not your world, but the one that matters most.” You glowered out the window as you stood. “As far as I see it, you're rather lucky.”

“Lucky?” He repeated, an edge of hysteria lifting his voice. “Really, you'd call this lucky?”

“It could have been a lot fucking worse.”

“Fuck you.”

“You wish.”

You turned sharply and abandoned him. Alucard listened to your brisk footfalls disappear behind a collage of distant bookcases, some broken, some intact. The rifling and shuffling of wood and paper took over not too long after he lost sight of you. You'd so easily gone back to work.

He's always been that way, Alucard remembered. Would rather putter about instead of dealing with people. His mother had never been anti-social. His father was, however. Maybe your shared distaste and skepticism about humans was what bonded you. Maybe humans made you so jaded, too. Maybe, in another world, they'd have made Alucard the same.

He wandered after you, following phantom footsteps until the dull clapping of book covers became clear. You were mumbling under your breath, exasperated and annoyed as always with the one-sided argument you engaged in. It was another common sight; Alucard recalled finding you bickering with the air far too often in your shared younger days. Lisa never had an explanation for her son, but she had words of comfort to explain your quirk.

I thought you didn’t remember your parents, Alucard wanted to say, but that look on your face, the one that stirred something in his chest and ate everything in his veins, snuffed out whatever flame of confidence he thought to face you with.

–

Alucard let you be for a long while. He didn't know how long, per se, but at least…a while. Some time. Maybe a week or two. A month? Hard to tell.

When did I kill those two? He wondered dryly as he wandered back from yet another trip to the river. Feels like centuries ago…maybe longer. Is this what Father felt in that long, miserable life of his, until he met Mother? He didn't want to dwell on it long.

Instead, he dwelled on the man standing before the skewered warnings at the castle's front door.

He could see your foot tapping and shifting to and fro—toe, heel, toe, heel—the same way you had as a younger teen. Alucard hated it, especially when your hard leather soles clacked against the hardwood like a woodpecker knocking on a tree.

Alucard snorted. Woodpecker. That summed you up nicely.

“What are you smiling about, vampire?” You snapped. Alucard thought venom might shoot from your eyes or flame might spew from your mouth.

“Why are you staring at…those?” He asked instead.

Your expression weakened into something a bit more innoxious. “I'm wondering why you needed them,” you said, turning to the gruesome display. “And if I should summon them again to kill them myself for whatever they've done.”

Alucard couldn't look away from you. “‘For what they’ve done,’” he echoed, voice weak. “What makes you think they’ve done anything at all?”

“Adrian Tepes would not skewer someone if they weren't as damnable as the fucking night beasts staked in their company,” you decided, pointed words acrid with something intense.

A weak warmth spread across Alucard’s skin. The feeling tried to go deeper, back to somewhere long forgotten, but he didn’t allow it. How could he, after so many had taken that sacred place for granted?

“Oh.” The dhampir cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “I see.”

Your eyes flicked to him and pinned him in place. Yet, a moment later, your brows lost their creased tension while your stare abandoned its edge in favour of something kinder—or perhaps less lethal—as you gave him a quick once-over before your stare ultimately landed on the bare skin peeking out from beneath his jacket.

Your eyebrows raised a little, smoothing out your chronic resting bitch face, and your eyes lidded so slightly. Alucard fought the urge to pull his jacket closed while at the same time resisting the impulse to throw his jacket off. You still did strange things to him.

“Where is your shirt?” You asked.

Alucard cleared his throat. “I, ah. It's…complicated.”

One of your brows quirked as you turned to face him, arms crossed. “I highly doubt that.”

Alucard could not find it in himself to admit his melancholy stopped him from doing anything—merely speaking such a thing into the world would be too much to bear.

“Fine,” you scoffed. “Then what's that scar?”

“My father,” he said. “He—well. We had a disagreement, you could say.”

You winced. “Dracula must have been far gone to hurt you.”

Alucard flickered a smile. “He was.”

Your lips parted, then sealed again, but you didn't look away. Alucard saw sparks of the you he used to find comfort in with the way you beheld him; you wore that thoughtful, gentle look whenever Adrian found himself in trouble or in pain. It warmed him to know you might not have changed much in that way.

Before your old friend could admire you much more, you turned and straightened out your cuffs with a neat, crisp flourish. “Well, that’s a shame. I quite liked your father.”

“I know.”

Alucard couldn't find anything more to say. Yet you still stayed put as though you held out hope for him to say something more. But he couldn’t. He simply couldn’t, and you were not known for having the patience of a saint.

Helpless, Alucard watched you disappear into the gaping mouth of the castle doorway. It was strange, he thought, how your silhouette seemed to meld with the shadows as soon as you stepped out of the sun. Then again, he was slightly out of his mind.

Instead of following after you, he braved a glance at the rotting faces of Taka and Sumi. “He’s been here much longer than you two,” he murmured, eyes casting back to the ground. “And he hasn’t tried to trick me, kill me, or fuck me. Maybe this is how bonds are meant to forge.” A long, heavy sigh left him. “I don’t know.”

Eventually, he found himself wandering the halls, his sad, half-filled pail sloshing beside him and occasionally spilling onto the hardwood. You'd yell at him for it, probably spew something about ruining the already battle-ruined floors, but the punishment didn’t seem too harrowing; at least he'd have company.

Then, he heard a noise, and followed it like a fool following a premonition. However, his quest actually had a prize at the end: you, messing about with pipes in the boiler room set beside the engine room. Your hands were speckled and smeared with grease and other shiny residue, yet your clothes were as clean as they could be with your shirt tucked properly and sleeves rolled up to reveal a stretch of skin marked with faint, blue sigils.

He stepped forward when you tried to twist a piece of pipe free with just your fingertips. Gently, he brushed your hand aside before gripping the measure of pipe and yanking it free with a single, easy motion.

“You could have asked,” Alucard said, holding the pipe out for you. “Instead of ominously vanishing into the castle, I mean.”

Your nose scrunched as you took the piece with a dirtied rag and set it aside. “You seemed too busy wandering around, looking like a dejected donkey holding a bucket, and, last I checked, mules don't make for great conversation.”

Alucard set the bucket to the side. “Well, I'd rather champion the removal of pipes so you may keep your delicate, frail hands clean. Seems better than being a sad donkey, at the very least.”

“Hm. You already need a dozen baths, I suppose, so this can't be too uncouth for you,” you said, leaning away from him and looking over some schematics.

“Oh, well perhaps I should go bathe rather than help you, then.”

“Ah-ah,” you scolded. “Your fate is sealed. Remove the next two pieces, vampire.”

Alucard rolled his eyes but did as he was told, much to his chagrin; he'd rather have running, hot water again than constantly wandering to the river day by day, of course, but he'd have to survive a short stint of servitude under your cruel, critical rule for that to happen. It wouldn't have been worth it if he hadn’t been hoping for petty banter and a chance to ask questions.

“Those markings,” he said, “I've been wondering about them.”

“Hm.”

“Care to explain?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Will you?”

You turned away, and Alucard stifled a sigh. Wonderful first attempt at an actual conversation. Almost as tactful as Belmont. He grimaced. God, please make me into anything but Belmont.

“Alchemical sigils,” you said, striking through Alucard’s thoughts.

The dhampir's mind whirled for a snap. “Really,” he said. “I suppose I should have recognized them.”

You hummed in maybe annoyance or agreement before turning back to the machine. “They're lesser-known. Most present-day alchemists are forgemasters, besides. They've little need for incantations when they've their chosen tools.”

Alucard leaned down to peer over your shoulder at whatever you were scrutinizing in the boiler. “Hm. Then your markings are a tool of sorts?” He wondered.

You frowned. “A curse may be more accurate.”

Alucard glanced at you again, then to the back of your neck when another symbol—a familiar thing, one that looked like a star of sorts—caught his attention, and sparked a machination of curiosity and alarms in his mind. “A curse.”

Your hand clapped over the mark, and you turned to him, sharp and quick like you were expecting to parry.

Alucard raised a hand to surrender. “I didn't mean to—”

“Quiet,” you snapped. The word twisted strangely, like a distortion rippling in water before calming again. “Do not expect more from me than that which I give you. Do you understand?” Alucard nodded, and you seemed to calm. “Good. Now, just shut up and do as I say, yes? No more questions.”

No more questions. Your demand only piqued his curiosity.

After helping you with what would become a lengthy, gruelling project, Alucard found his way to the rickety Belmont vault and wandered through aisles upon aisles of books. A worried sickness curled in his stomach and chest; last time he'd been down there, he'd brought two others with him.

He shook his head. Focus. You need a book about alchemy. Old alchemy, no less.

There were plenty of books to choose from, but Alucard was quick to realize alchemy was not the core of your mystery, but the root; it was something related to it, something that used alchemical symbols and other sigils born from similar knowledge.

And finding a hexagram etched into the crumbling spine of an old, leather book gave him a solid start.

“Hm. Ars Goetia,” Alucard said aloud, tongue thoughtful with every syllable.

As though something answered him, the air hummed. It buzzed with life, reverberating with something kinetic and physical, like the bone-rattling depth of a choir. Books shuddered, earth shifted, debris fluttered from the roof—then, it all receded, drifting away like a midnight yawn and leaving nothing but a dissonant, distant ring in its wake.

“Well,” Alucard exhaled, “that was interesting.” He sat himself in a mostly-intact chair, and opened the book. “I wonder if that was meant to ward me away. I suppose time will tell.”

---

Thank you for reading! Feel free to comment your thoughts or if you'd like to be tagged for the next part :'D

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