#like renfield just suddenly is taller than dracula. i love that

[renfieldmyfriend]

[nosferatvpussy]

distorted lullabies [chapter XVI]

Word count: 5,351

Warnings: vulgar language

Pairing: Dracula x female reader

AO3 link

_________________________________________________________________

“I think I see the pub. The White Lion was the name Diana gave you, right?” I said as we rounded a corner. Mallory’s grimace was substituted by a relieved smile when her eyes landed on the next block. I snorted. “Do us both a favour and throw those shoes away.”

“Will not!” She retorted, straightening up and putting some force on her stride. The grimace appeared on her face when she took a second stride and then she leaned on me again, as she had been doing for most of our walk from Strand to Covent Garden. “You saw me with them in Gloucester, we were meant to be. They just need to be softened, is all. We should’ve taken the bus or the tube,” she said, pointing at the Underground station across the street. 

“It was a ten minute walk. I wasn’t facing Covent Garden station–”

“So you chose walking through Covent Garden?” Mallory waved around us. “There are people everywhere.”

People scurried about, going from store to store with heaps of bags in their hands. A  group of tourists took photos in front of a Victorian pub. A man talking loudly on the phone passed us, gesticulating his hands in the air and got his fingers caught in a teenage girl’s hair, who shouted curses at him. They stopped going their own ways to argue. Covent Garden was always crowded. No matter the time of year, there were tourists snapping shots and Londoners busy at work hurrying from one side of the city to another. Christmas, which wasn’t far now that little lights hung in front of buildings, was especially chaotic. I tried to avoid the place altogether at all times of the year.

But today, I didn’t mind it. Diana was leaving for Glasgow and had invited Mal and I for lunch and because she worked near Covent Garden, we all agreed it would make matters more convenient for her if we chose a restaurant close to her. Meeting Diana was another touch of normality I needed. Things were returning to the way they used to be. Or at least, I could pretend.

“It’s a lovely day,” I said. “I didn’t want to waste it.”

“It’s an average day. Terrible weather, as usual. You’re the one who’s awfully chipper.” She elbowed me. “Did you have your talk with Dracula yesterday?”

“Tonight,” I slanted a look at her, waiting for her to start chastising me about him, but Mallory was busy throwing flirty looks at a short guy coming out of a store rather than paying attention to me. Ahead of us, Diana rose her head from whomever she had been texting and waved, her face lighting up when she saw me. She put her phone inside her purse and settled it on top of her suitcase. “There’s Diana waiting for us.” I tugged Mallory with me before she caught another man in her web. “You’ve got court this afternoon.”

“I can squeeze him in between lunch and court,” she said, turning her head to look at the guy. I turned too, and rolled my eyes at the stupid grin in his face.

“What about Sean?”

“Oh, he’s seeing Sarah to make me jealous now. Besides, Sean isn’t half as cute as that one.” She threw another grin over her shoulder.

“Go give him your number and I’ll go wait with Diana.”

Mallory unlaced her arm from mine, smiling brightly. 

“Be back in a sec.”

I watched Mallory leave, swaying her hips towards the guy as if she hadn’t been complaining about her feet hurting for the last ten minutes. The man licked his lips and smiled at her. If he wanted to appear wolfish he was failing miserably. Out of them both, Mallory would be the one to chew him up and spit out his bones after she was done. Only one person had managed to master a lascivious smile that actually managed to be charming, and he was a foot taller than that guy and infinitely dead-er. 

“She’s still playing that game, huh?” Diana said from behind me. I pivoted just in time for her to catch me in a hug. 

“She’s good at it. Unbeatable so far,” I said, and chuckled into the hug. “I missed you, Di.”

“Me too! Don’t disappear like that again.” She gave me a quick squeeze before letting me go. “You didn’t answer my texts and when you finally answered my call you barely spoke. I was worried! How was I supposed to nurse you back from heartbreak if you didn’t tell me anything?” 

I had a faint memory of talking to Diana on the phone during my stay at Mallory’s. She’d spoken at me while I had given her nothing but monosyllabic replies. I wasn’t sure if I’d told her what had happened and suddenly I felt guilty for leaving Diana in the dark. We shared a property and saw each other nearly every day for coffee, dinners, watching bad films on the telly, until I disappeared without so much a call to let her know I was okay. 

“I’m sorry, Di. I really should’ve–”

“No, no, don’t you apologise. Mallory told me what she could when I called you the other day. It seems not even she knows what exactly is going on but I’m glad that you and her recovered your friendship. The three of us can go back into our card games over wine, what do you say? I miss those nights.” She smiled at me as she cupped my cheeks in her hands like a mother would. I nodded, smiling back. One of those nights, we had gotten especially hammered and went dancing and singing in our yard until we passed out on the grass. We woke up covered in morning dew with headaches strong enough to make our eyes hurt. “How are you feeling now?”

“Better,” I said. Diana narrowed her eyes at me and I nodded, raising my eyebrows. “Seriously, I’m much better than before. I slept well last night for the first time since the wedding. Renfield is home,” I told her, and smiled big. 

Last night, I’d slept on my own bed in my own room and didn’t worry about Dracula slipping in through a window. Renfield being out of the hospital probably did contribute to my good night of sleep but I knew it had more to do with Dracula’s unforeseen kindness twice in the same day; first, Renfield being released and second, the truce he had granted me. Two days past my deadline and he was giving me gifts instead of tearing half of London town to shreds looking for me. Little apologies, if I could call it that. 

“Oh, that’s good! That’s really good. What about you and Count Dracula?”

“I’ll talk to him tonight but I’m not as worried as before.” 

Those small acts of kindness from him had given me more confidence than I could have hoped for our conversation. I would make him understand my reasons and apologise. Perhaps some of the kindness that had permeated his heart had remained there and he would listen.

“Here she is!” Diana exclaimed, opening her arms wide. Mallory strode over, a grin almost splitting her cheeks as they hugged. “Did you get his name, address and his family’s so you’ll know where to send your condolences after you’re done with him?” Mallory guffawed. “You know, you didn’t have to abandon both of us–”

“You really didn’t,” I added, though I was smiling. A lot of smiling for me in a day after a long time of not feeling the urge to. 

“I know! I was a twit!” Mallory held Diana in a half hug to grasp my arm. She fixed her eyes on mine. “I never said I was sorry! God! I’m terrible, aren’t I?”

Diana and I made a chorus of playful rebukes until Mallory laughed.

“Do you leave for Glasgow after lunch?” Mallory asked, pointing at the suitcase near our feet. 

“Yes, I’ll go straight from here to the airport. I’ll spend the next week there for a work conference but I just had to see you before I go,” Diana said, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear. “You do seem well.”

“Now she does. You’ve got no idea about the sulking –” Mallory chuckled when I made a face at her. “I’ll leave you alone but I’ll get on your nerves in a couple of weeks about it.” Turning to Diana, she took one of her long silvery strands of hair and raised it to examine it. “And this hair! You should’ve gone all silverfox ages ago.”

“I supposed it was the time to start assuming my age– oh, heh,” Diana giggled like a teenage girl as Mallory went around her, bunching Di’s hair behind her back to have a proper look at it. My smile faltered.  No.  “It’s fashionable now, did you hear it? Looking your age, being au naturel. The hair I’ll accept–”

It must have been the lighting. Of course. Had to be. 

But as Diana craned her neck slightly to try and have a look at Mallory behind her, it remained there. A patch of toneless, rended skin, jagged and raised, shaped like a semicircle. Her body had done its best to heal it, although it had left her with a lifelong scar. It didn’t look like my scar or Mallory’s; ours seemed precise, a mere mark of the piercing of teeth that had taken place. 

“I’ve got to go,” I said. Mallory and Diana stopped their chattering. I glanced between Diana’s face and the scar on her neck. She pushed a swath of her hair over her shoulder to cover it from my gaze. When I met her eyes again, they were glazed, like Mallory’s were every time I changed her bandages. “I’ve got to go,” I repeated.

“Where?” Mallory questioned. 

Mallory and Diana called my name as I turned around and started leaving. I ignored them. There was nothing they could say to assuage me.

People were spilling out of the Covent Garden Underground station. I bumped shoulders with people until I reached a corner where I could see the road. I instinctively raised a hand to signal a black car, only to drop it when I realised it wasn’t a cab. Three more black cars rolled by, none of them taxis. My heart sputtered in relief when I finally saw the plaque atop a car, identifying it as a London taxi, but sank when I noticed the light was off. I jabbed daggers with my eyes at the car’s backseat, spilling unjustified hate towards a passenger, but there was no one there. The cabbie was just driving around lazily, probably on his way somewhere to grab lunch, as was everyone else. 

“Fuck this,” I muttered, circling back to follow the people heading towards Covent Garden station.

I knew better than to join the herd waiting for one of the lifts. The station was always notoriously busy because of tourists and the usual bustle of people that lived and worked at Covent Garden and not many people dared to descend the equivalent of a 15 storey building to reach the platforms. To the spiral staircase I went, ignoring the warnings that the 193 steps were meant for emergencies, and started trotting down as fast as my high heels would allow. A woman speaking loudly through a device fixed on her ear dashed past me when I reached the first landing. She carried a pair of shoes on one hand and a purse in another. Her bare feet made almost no sound as she bounded nimbly to the next landing. My shoes hindered me from doing the same, so I stopped, and took them off as I supported myself on the handrails and went down the stairs in black nylons. The sound of an incoming train made me hurry and I felt threads pulling on the soles of my feet. I’d have to remind myself to sew those holes later. Not that it mattered much. Nothing seemed to matter but the rage churning in my chest. 

I allowed myself to take one quick, sharp intake of breath to relieve my lungs as I reached the end of the stairs before making three turns and descending a few more steps towards the platform. The train made a sequence of warning sounds that the doors were about to close. I sprinted the short distance to enter the wagon, almost barreling into an elderly couple in my haste. 

Flopping down on a seat, I fit my shoes back on my feet, noting that the holes near my toes had evolved into rips that extended all the way up to my calves. The left leg of my tights had a rip to the thigh, too. I didn’t remember snagging it anywhere. My purse rested on my lap as I pushed the hair sticking to the sweat in the back of my neck. My fingers brushed the serrated skin on the side of my neck and I flinched for a second but forced myself to feel the soft line, as if to be sure that it really diferred from the one on Diana’s skin. I dropped my hand not a second later. It was foolish of me to search for a resemblance between a simple line and a splodge of ugly, discoloured ridges. The bite on Diana’s neck resembled Zoe’s. If I was to trust Zoe’s word on at least that, he had tried to kill her. I had to assume he had tried to kill Diana, too. Was this another one of Dracula’s attempts to torment me? Did he have a mind to taste all of those who were dearest to me? 

Five stops and less than ten minutes later, I exited at Knightsbridge Station. I’d hoped the short trip would have helped me to put my thoughts in order but no such luck. It was all just a flurry of baffling questions and a rage that made my whole body tremble with its force.

Once I was above ground, drizzle fell like a balm over my skin to cool down the warm sweat on my forehead. Tiny particles of water stuck to my eyelashes making it harder to see through the fog that had settled about the outskirts of Hyde Park. Cars passing me had their headlights on when it was only noon and people walked slowly, eyes squinting and breaths fogging as they talked. My nose pricked up from the cold and my joints hurt as if they could break as easily as ice. I shouldn’t be surprised at London’s astounding change in weather within 10 minutes yet nothing had hinted at this dreadful weather earlier that morning. It certainly defied rules and for a moment I was only walking through a dream. When I woke up, I’d still be at the wedding, dancing with Dracula. A yes would still leave my lips but instead of dragging Mallory to the restroom, I’d take his hand and we would leave. My purse containing that dreadful needle with Zoe Van Helsing’s blood would lay in the bottom of the castle’s pond, never to be found. And then we would return to London where he would bite me and make me like him. A silly dream, a stupid girl’s dream with a happy ever after. 

I stopped before the building I’d entered almost three months ago. Renfield’s gift to me. I had thought nothing of it. Just a small errand for one of Renfield’s fancy clients in Knightsbridge. A small thing that had tipped my life over the edge. I pushed the door to enter the building and made my way to the lifts at the far left corner. A doorman hollered for me to check-in at the desk first. As I pushed the button to call the lift, I shouted my name over my shoulder and told him that I’d registered once before. He asked me where I was headed. I didn’t spare him an answer and went into the lift when it opened.

I held my breath the entire trip up to the penthouse. As I stepped out into the long hallway, my heels clicked on the lavish black marble flooring. It felt odd on my ears. The hallway was only present in my memory along with a tune. I’d been listening to music when I came here for the first time, but I couldn’t remember which one. The soft clicks on stone shouldn’t make me hesitate, yet I found myself slowing my pace as I approached the single door on the wall at my right. I’d known what to expect when I first came here; have some documents signed, dribble a Count’s advances and leave. I was worlds apart from that day. 

The door opened.

Dracula stood beyond it, barely visible inside the flat’s darkness. He squinted at me as if the glare from the soft lights from the hallway were too much for his eyes. 

“Come in.”

“I didn’t ring the doorbell.”

“James called from the lobby to tell me that he couldn’t hold you off. Even if he hadn’t, I would have smelled you.” He stepped further into the flat, half his body hidden behind the door. “Do come in. I can’t bear the lights.”

As I passed him, I cast a quick glance in his direction. His forehead rested on the door and he made no other sign to acknowledge me. I followed the gentle beam of light from the hallway, illuminating the long black table in the center of the flat. At the back of the room, I could see the dull light of day obscured almost completely by thick curtains that extended all the way from the high ceiling to the floor. Just as I placed my purse on the table, the door was shut and I was completely submerged in the dark. I pivoted to face Count Dracula but there was nothing before me. My heartbeat suddenly spiked at my blindness and the disorientation that accompanied it. 

“Why is it so dark in here?” I asked, pinning my arms to my sides so I wouldn’t extend them before me in an attempt to situate myself. I could feel sensation returning to the tips of my fingers and I was very aware of the tip of my nose all of a sudden, weighty and warm. 

“It’s daytime, I was asleep,” his voice sounded much closer than I expected and instinct drove me back until my backside hit the table. A breeze tickled my face as something moved in front of me. I remained still. “Did you know your stockings are ripped?”

“I’m aware. Dracula–” I stopped talking when the darkness dissipated, muted violet lights coming to life around us. Blue lighting followed, concealed behind skirting boards and creating patterns on the walls. It was still dim to make out details from the flat but at least I could see in front of me. The spot where Dracula had been was empty and now he stood to my left, one hand lowering from where he had touched a light switch. His hair was tousled and his clothes – a grey shirt and black sweatpants – were crimped. He was barefoot. The alertness on his face made me doubt that he had been truly asleep before I arrived. Tossing and turning in his bed was a far more likely possibility by the look of him.

“When I texted you yesterday, I assumed no clarification was necessary. I hoped we would talk at a more opportune moment but–”

“Diana,” I said.

He closed his mouth and blinked. If I hadn’t spent so much time around him, studying every movement of his face, every twitch of an eyebrow and every way his mouth contorted in a smile, I wouldn’t have noticed the surprise that had crossed his face. The trepidation.

“What of her?”

“Don’t even try pretending,” I vociferated, stepping forward. “Her throat was mangled. You tried to kill her–”

“Y/N–”

“When?”

“Things were different–”

“I don’t fucking care. When?”

Dracula shut his eyes and shook his head lightly to the sides.

“After that night at the museum.”

“Oh… Really? After–” the words got stuck in my throat. After he had given me an incomparable gift, he chased and laughed with me. I’d gone home and slept, peacefully yet confused about all that had happened. He seemed to have enjoyed himself, and yet... “Why?”

“It was a mistake.”

“Renfield I can understand, he’s nothing without you. Nothing but a servant, I see that now, and it was before we’d met. Mallory… god, I wish you hadn’t done that but I get it.” My voice was strangled but no tears escaped. I suspected there weren’t any left. Or that maybe they had become frozen in the cold inside of me. “I do. I can’t fight you and she was proof. But Diana, why? I gave you a deal, I was attacked by my mentor because of this–” I jabbed a finger at my throat where he had bitten me  “–and I still went on a date with you. Wasn’t I being compliant? A toy for you to play with, to dance to your own tune when you wanted to, destined to be yours until I succumbed? Isn’t that all I am?”

“No,” he said, stepping forward. I retreated until my behind hit the table again. He didn’t follow. “At first… that’s what you were to me. You are obstinate, I knew it from the start, but I have managed to make even the most tenacious people bow. I was sure I’d have you at the museum. I was delighted that you seemed so responsive to my advances there, and equally displeased that you were capitulating so easily. But you refused me and ran. It seemed to me that we were both at work at making the other bend a knee.” The corners of his mouth tugged up, a slight gleam in his eyes. I kept my stare at his nose so I wouldn’t have to acknowledge how much I had missed that look on him. “You must understand that not much confuses me anymore, or frightens me. You do.”

“I frighten you?” I asked, shocked.

“Perhaps not in the same way I frighten you, but yes. I thought it impossible. Though I strive to be a modern man, I found myself wondering if you had not bewitched me. Medieval of me, isn’t it?” He chuckled. The sound was sour and it blossomed inside of me until I felt heavy. “Renfield told me you had a way of getting into people’s heads, that you had a way with words, but it wasn’t enough for me. A spell, for sure.”

“That is medieval,” I retorted. “I'm a lawyer, not a witch.”

“Precisely. If I wanted it to be easy I would’ve chosen someone else. But Delilah, ah, that you were,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “You were always Delilah and you knew it. Seducing me with those eyes and your woven words, a meticulous trap to mellow me and cut my hair.”

“It wasn’t like that!” I exclaimed, furrowing my brow. He raised his in response. “For a while, okay, I was Delilah, but not at the museum. I’d done nothing up to that point! Nothing at all to sic you on Diana.”

“You asked Renfield about me. About vampire legends,” Dracula said, tilting his head. “He was persuaded that you meant to kill me.”

My jaw slacked and I buried my face in my hands. 

I shouldn’t have opened my mouth to Renfield. I knew he would relay it to Dracula and asked anyway. Every single thing that had happened could have been avoided if my arrogance hadn’t blinded me to the possibilities; the deal, that visit to Renfield, my plan with Zoe. Diana, Mallory, those students in Surrey. Me and my godlike hubris. What else could I have done? Rolled over and showed Count Dracula my throat?  Here, have it, it’s yours. In the end, that’s what I would’ve done – and had done – but not without irreparable damage. 

“So you bit Diana, because what, retaliation?” My voice was muffled by my own hands. “To hurt me? One of your lessons?”

“Impulse,” he replied. “After the museum, I visited Renfield and, convinced that you had bewitched me, went to your house that same night.”

I peeked at him from between my fingers, my hiding spot. Strands of my hair fell like curtains, concealing him from me. Sweeping my hair back, I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders. I had my parcel of blame and he had his. To make peace with my wrongdoings I would have to listen to him first. 

“I wouldn’t let myself be hexed by you,” he continued. “That night, I was going to break our deal and make you mine. Bend you at my will. I stood in your garden facing your window,” –he tipped his head back as if he was there again, eyes transfixed in memory– “watching and waiting for you to close the curtains, to come about me, a prince in waiting for his bride,” he scoffed, shaking his head to the sides and started to pace in front of me. 

“But Diana came upon you,” I presumed. 

“She did. I said hello to her. She asked me how I knew her na–” I waved a hand for him to spare me this part. “No details? Fine, it would be distasteful.” I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he making puns? He didn’t seem to notice his choice of words, for he carried on. “She startled me. I was angry at your dominion over me and I thought to lash out back at you, thus I bit her. Bit her beneath your window so you could see me for what I was, so you would understand that you couldn’t control me and that I could kill without a care for you. However, you were fast asleep. There was no point in killing Diana if you could not see. I let her go.”

I stared at him, gritting my teeth until my temples hurt, and waited for him to say more. He stared back, chin raised and that dark gaze unmoving. 

Beneath my window, where I’d found Diana the next day, pale and empty-eyed, watering a spot of grass. The very same spot, I imagined, where she had bled. Blood amongst the earth as if it had seeped out of it. A source of a river, running thick with blood.

“Was that it?” I managed to ask, trembling. Any moment now I would choke on my anger. At him or me? “Do you realise how horrible that sounds?”

Dracula closed some of the distance between us. I tried stepping back but all I managed to do was press my butt against the table. And why try escaping now? I’d come here. Had I not accepted what would inevitably happen? I tipped my head back to look at him, noting the crinkles around his eyes and next to his mouth, the shape of his lips. Seeing him up close after what happened was both a relief and a pain. 

“I do. I have never softened my words for you and I won’t start lying now. Diana was a mistake, I will admit to that.” He cleared his throat. “Mallory was extreme, perhaps, but I don’t know if I would’ve done that differently. I’m not merciful and if that’s what you expect of me… well,” he smiled. “I can’t give you that. I’ve shown you what I am. But despite my efforts, you have changed me.”

“How?”

Keeping his hands well in my sight, as if to give me an opportunity to retreat, he raised them and cupped each of my cheeks. They didn’t feel cold on my skin. Maybe I’d grown accustomed to that. 

“I have lived for almost six hundred years and I have not been kind, except for you.” He drew a hand back and I looked at it, frowning in bewilderment as he rubbed his thumb on the side of his finger, a dampness between them. My tears hadn’t frozen. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. From now on, I won’t move a finger to hurt anyone you care about and if I ever hurt you again it won’t be intentionally.”

“I know I’ll forgive you, eventually,” I said, shaking my head at the absurdity of it all. I bumped my fist on his chest and one of his hands held it there, wrapping around my wrist like a manacle. “I keep telling myself it’s the bond, and it must be. It can’t be real. But do you know the worst part?” I stared up at him and he simply shook his head. “After all you've done, after how much you've hurt me, I’m still in love with you and I can't stop.” The admission, filled with guilt and shame, evoked a horrible sob out of my chest and I sank to the floor, as if I was pleading for absolution after denying it for so long. Dracula had let me go and I stared at my wrists, bare without his touch. He wasn’t merciful. Neither was the love I felt for him, like a knife to the heart, a noose that tightens around a neck until it breaks. “I can't stop, Dracula. I still want you as much as I did from the moment we kissed. Does that make me a horrible person? Does it? Please, tell me it does.”

I stared up at him, my knees bent under me, ready for the taking, as if there had ever been another possibility. He was looking straight forward. Pretty, hollow words, that’s all he’d said to me. I could falter, bend and break. He wouldn’t. Then, as I watched his regal posture, he knelt before me and took my hands in his. 

“There is no bond,” he said. My mouth parted, trying to form words, letters, a sound, anything. My whole body relaxed, astonishment carrying all the stiffness it had built. I started shaking my head and Dracula grabbed my jaw lightly to stop me. “There was, once. You broke it. I felt it fading overtime but I thought it was only your blood being drowned by others.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, straightening so I stood half-up, supported by my calves. My breath ricocheted on his face from this new proximity and I had to lean back to gaze at him.

“I am.”

“Since when?”

“Well, since 10 seconds ago,” he said, and I shook my head. “When did it break? I suppose it started fading when you first visited Renfield in the hospital. You asked questions our tie was meant to prevent you to ask. You told me yourself at your house that you couldn’t move all afternoon as you waited for me. A silent obeisance. I’m willing to believe it broke completely when Doctor Helsing and yourself–”

I grabbed the collar of his shirt, winding it around my fingers in an attempt to ground myself. Dracula took my waist in his hands and I tensed at the familiar touch, a coil tightening around my belly button and pulling downwards between my thighs. A shiver down my spine emerged not a second later. It was an odd combination of fear and desire but at this point I was having trouble dividing the two, if they had ever been divided before I met him.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not,” he muttered, raising an eyebrow and then smiling. “You’re the liar here.”

A foreign sound echoed inside the room. A laugh. One that I could only recognise as my own because I touched my chest to feel it shaking. 

This is it.  I’m really going into hysterics now.

It couldn’t be. If it were true, it was never the bond. All of it was me.

 .

.

.

Taglist: @festering-queen @crossoverqueen89 @rheabalaur @guiltyfiend @libra-lovecraft @feralstare @a-dorky-book-keeper @thorin-smokin-shield @deborahlazaroff @illbegoinhome @saint-hardy @girlonfireice @dreamer2381 @princessayveke @mr-kisskiss-bangbang @vampirescurse @blue-serendipity @sunscreenfeverdream @iwasjustablur @25ocurer @daydreaming136​ @hello-itsbarbie​ @bittenlove​ @newyorkrican922​ @soph3228​