#non-binary caretaker vampire whumpee

[syncopein3d]

Part 17: Painmother

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. Tropes/content warnings: vampire whumpee/caretaker, male whumpee/caretaker, non-binary whumpee/caretaker, morbidity or thoughts of death. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics, but mostly biting.

In this episode: impalement, injuries, deaths (enemy), brief mind control, biting (noncon), dismemberment, blood, time dilation trauma.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 16: The First Lession

Masterpost

The day passed without incident, apparently, because Black Tolly knew nothing from crawling into his sleeping bag until sunset woke him. He found Arden asleep still. They were actually under the covers, head mostly under a pillow. He could just see the tip of their nose sticking out. They now exuded a faint hair-raising underscent of tin, a sign of growing arcana.

“Where is this place?”

“We are inside your mind, and mine. This was a coliseum where I fought once. Now, pay attention, young idiot. This is going to hurt.”

Rather than startle Arden, he went to rinse his mouth with water (awful), change his clothes, and pack. The bloodstains had mostly remained in both sets of clothes, but they were dry, and the next real retail center he knew of was Ellensburg over on the dry side, so until then, waste not, want not. He packed his bag and laid Arden’s at the end of their bed.

“Did… Did I die?”

“Of course. Nothing can survive disintegration. I want you to remember what that felt like, boy, because it’s important to remembering how to inflict it on another.”

“Stop calling me boy!”

“Ah. I see we’re a slow learner.”

There were packets of cookies by the lobby coffee machine, a more graceful offering than he would have expected. Tolly went to negotiate checkout with a different desk clerk than before. She was equally as dazzled, fortunately. He made sure there was no scent or sound of anyone else before he persuaded her to a little kiss and pet behind the desk.

It wasn’t so hard to spare someone who wasn’t Arden. He fought down the panicked urge to take it all, every drop, and was torn between shame and pride when he left her dozing with her head on her arms on the counter. She might be tired for a day or so, but she was alive, and he was at his full strength again.

“No. Not again. Let me go!”

“When you can stop me. No sooner.”

Tolly set the coffee and cookies on the night table. The sound wasn’t loud, but Arden jerked violently, clutching at the mattress. He stopped moving at once, hand resting on their shoulder. “Arden?”

”Tolly?” they said. “Is that you?” Their voice quavered in genuine distress, raw as if they had been screaming. They shoved the blankets away violently as they sat up, grabbing at his hand with both of theirs. The tinge of arcana was stronger now.

“Yes, I’m here,” Tolly said. Now was not, he sensed, the time to be arch. Arden practically climbed up his arm to get to him, so he sat down, submitting to a surprisingly violent embrace. He closed his arms around Arden very carefully. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“How long was I gone?” Arden asked, without raising their face from Tolly’s shirt. Their heart fluttered against his chest like the wings of a sparrow.

“You slept through the day while I was resting.”

“God. Not even twenty-four hours? For me it was three weeks. Maybe more. It got harder and harder to tell. Aeolus, he – I hate to call it training.” They shuddered in Tolly’s arms. “I did learn.”

“How is this possible?” Tolly asked.

“He said we don’t perceive time accurately when we sleep. He – he threatened to keep me for years if I didn’t get better,” Arden said.

“Did he hurt you?” Tolly asked.

“Yes. Over and over,” Arden said. Tolly stroked their back, careful of his talons.

“We have to find you another familiar,” Tolly said. He kept his tone quite calm. He didn’t want to upset Arden further. He just wanted Aeolus in another body. Within his reach, ideally.

“I don’t know how,” Arden whispered hoarsely. “I don’t know how to revoke the pact.”

“We’ll find a way. Eat, drink. You’ll feel better,” Tolly said. He squeezed Arden very carefully and then freed one arm to get the coffee. A whiff of it had Arden grabbing at the paper cup with both hands.

“Oh, fuck, yes, coffee. Thank you. Yes.” They took a hasty gulp, slightly sloppy, then tore into the cookie packet with one hand and their teeth as he handed that over, too. Tolly watched until he was sure they were busy. Then he went to cut his hair short again, leaving the bathroom door open. Arden staggered in past him as he went to load his own things into the car.

He lay on the bed reading as he waited after that. Arden eventually emerged from the bathroom with a clean shave and makeup and bustled around packing, a little shaky still, but on the move. Eventually, Tolly became aware of them standing at the end of the bed.

“Yes?” he said politely.

“That’s the Complete Sherlock Holmes,” Arden said.

“You did loan it to me,” Tolly said cautiously. He sat up as he closed the book.

“Did you pack the other books, too?” They sounded curious, not angry, though something in Tolly still cringed and snarled and feared they would make him give it up.

“They wouldn’t all fit,” Tolly said. “Do you want it back?”

“No,” Arden said. “I have it on Kindle.”

“What’s Kindle?”

“It’s an app. You can get it while we drive,” Arden said. “I’m glad to see you’re all better.”

Tolly took up the omnibus and went to open the back of the Kia Soul. As Arden followed him, dragging the spinner, they said cautiously,

“Did you kill someone?”

“No. She wasn’t you,” Tolly said. “The longer I know you, the easier it will become, because you are not Nicholas. In the meantime, the desk clerk will be tired for a couple of days. If we’re around people, I can stay at my peak quite easily.”

“You really wanted to kill him,” Arden said, as they climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Passionately,” Tolly said.

“But you still grieve that he’s gone?” Arden asked, reversing out of the parking space. Tolly turned to look back between the seats.

“Yes. I don’t claim that is sane, but both are true,” Tolly said. “He was the only living creature I saw from when he tricked me until you found me. I loved him. I hated him. I still can’t quite believe he’s gone.”

“Complicated,” Arden said. He watched a camper pull out going back toward Seattle, then turned out onto the highway going East.

“It always is. Did Aeolus teach you anything useful, or was that just for his entertainment?” Tolly asked.

“I think he did,” Arden said slowly. “When we’re stopped again I’ll try to –“

The car shook violently. Tolly grabbed at the dash to keep from having his face smashed into it – stupid, he’d forgotten the seatbelt. Arden swerved onto the shoulder, and then the view out the front window tilted as the Soul started to lift into the air. Tolly grabbed at the  door handle, but it snapped off in his hand without opening, and now they were fifteen feet up. He twisted to look back again. He could see a handful of dim shapes at the treeline, one with arms uplifted. The nearest Exalted is Painmother Nguyen, in Bremerton. How had they known where to set an ambush?

“Arden,” he said urgently. “She’ll drop us. A fall from this height won’t hurt me, but - ”

“Oh,” Arden said, eyes suddenly distant. Tolly could hear his pulse. It disquieted him that the sound of it wasn’t agitated. “I think I know what to do. When the door opens, jump.”

“I will not leave you.”

“I need you to stop the others,” Arden said. “You can buy me a chance. Go.”

The door snapped open. Tolly shot him one last agonized glance and jumped. It was a long fall, but no invisible hand snatched him from the air. Something tugged at his clothes, but then he hit the ground rolling and came up running at his fastest. He could hear them now. They had split, three moving toward three retreating cloud of leaves he had kicked up, two moving toward the car.

The car. Tolly scrambled up the trunk of a narrow fir with his talons until he could get to the lower branches, turning to hang by one arm with his feet braced against the bark. The Kia Soul was lowering slowly toward the ground, shaking and rattling as if in an earthquake. It dropped the last couple of feet as Arden dove from the driver’s side. A sudden cold wind whipped at Tolly’s hair. The three witches were spreading out, silent, no chatter. He shinned rapidly back down the tree to circle around the nearest. It was darker every second.

They must not have been sure of him, or they wouldn’t have attacked after dark. That was hopeful. This was confirmed as he whipped around another trunk and into view of a man in a dark coat. He jerked a hand up toward Tolly, hissing, “Seize.”

Tolly’s heart squeezed in his chest. It stopped him for a second, startled, looking down at himself. He looked up at the warlock. The man’s cold, tight expression said he believed he’d taken a life.

“Oops,” Tolly said softly, and moved. The man was probably still wondering why that hadn’t worked when cold hands snapped his neck. Tolly had chosen wisely not to drink; he barely darted away before white light almost blinded him. There was a stink of ozone as he sprinted around another tree. Lightning? The charge hadn’t traveled through the ground. Either magic could limit the reach of electricity, or the dead man had absorbed most of it.

The other two were back-to-back now, a man and a woman, both black-coated like the first. He glimpsed them through the trees as he kept running. Another bolt of lightning split a tree some feet behind him, not even close.

“Don’t start a fire,” he heard the woman say. “He can’t maintain that spell long. No one can.”

They thought he was using sorcery. That amused him. Neither would have time to realize their mistake. He dropped on them from another tree and flung the woman so hard that she smashed every bone in her body against a boulder. The man he seized by the throat to force eye contact.

“Sleep,” he said. The man put up more of a fight than Daniel had, but it wasn’t enough. Tolly watched as his eyes fluttered and shut.

The air tasted of metal. The wind still howled in Tolly’s ears as he hauled the unconscious man back toward the car. He saw Arden first. They stood leaning back with their arms up as if holding something heavy, and the air around them warped and rippled like water. Gravel struck trees and the grass behind them like a rain of bullets, embedding into trunks, striking sparks where stone hit stone. Where it hit the shield, it seemed to evaporate with little pings and hisses.

Exalted Painmother Nguyen stood yards away, facing them with one hand outflung. Through the distortion of her own powers, she looked to be an Asian lady of about the middle age, her hair in a neat roll and her coat black like the others. Her pulse sounded calmer than Arden’s now did. She knew she could outlast them, Tolly realized.

He did not at all expect her to perceive him as he charged. She didn’t question his speed or what he was. She didn’t even try to stop his heart. He was simply yanked into the air and hurled sideways. The world tumbled, and then pain ripped through his chest as his back slammed into something hard.

Tolly scrabbled for purchase with his boots and talons, unable to turn, expecting to fall. A tremendous pressure in his chest made him look down and see the blood-slicked length of rough fir bark emerging from just below his breastbone. He’d hit so hard in his impalement that smaller branches had snapped off all along its length. Some were still shaking down behind his back.

Blood oozed around the length of wood as he grabbed at it one-handed, sinking the talons of his other hand into the trunk by his hip to achieve a precarious balance with his braced boots. There was no numbness of shock, no disorientation of rushing endorphins as a failing body tried last-ditch efforts to save itself. He was keenly aware that his bottom four ribs were shattered and his heart and left lung were effectively obliterated. He could feel the branch grinding against his spine and his remaining ribs on that side with every slightest movement. Holding still didn’t ease the pain. Movement only made it worse.

Arden, where was Arden? Tolly looked around frantically as he realized he could only hear one pulse. The smell of blood was overwhelming, but it wasn’t blood that he knew, he realized with dawning relief.

Painmother Nguyen was in pieces. He could see one of her arms twitching in the grass nearby, and the back of her head not far off, yards from her torso in its black coat.

He couldn’t call out. Breathing was quite impossible –

“Oh, fuck, Tolly,” said a voice. Tolly rolled his head, but Arden must be somewhere below and to his right, where he couldn’t see. They sounded raspy and exhausted. “Hold still. I’ll get you down.”

It would have been easier if he could’ve blacked out as the invisible grip seized him and dragged him forward off the branch. He felt all of it, every tiniest roughness in the bark, every jagged edge of a broken twig stabbing into his wound on the way past. It seemed like it took forever. Then he was in air, and then, at last, his knees hit the ground. A shaking arm fumbled around his shoulder. Dark blood oozed slowly from the edges of the hole in his body as he looked down at it. It was trying to close, but slowly, burning through what he had saved.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Arden said. “Not both of us. But if you drink, you’ll heal, right?”

Tolly pulled himself around, grabbing at Arden’s shoulders to look them over. They were pale, bleeding vividly red from nose and eyes and ears. This close, he could at last scent it. The familiar torment was almost a comfort.

He laid a finger sharply over Arden’s mouth before they could speak again to give an order. Then he staggered to his feet and ran, doubled over and weaving, to find the warlock he had left alive earlier. He still lay sleeping in the pine needles under a tree where he’d been dropped.

He didn’t get time to wake up. Tolly gathered him up as gently as a lover and then latched onto his artery like a leech. He could hear Arden’s uncertain footsteps behind him as pleasure erased the pain in a gentle wave. When the pressure in the man’s carotid gave out, and the pulse in his ears died down, Black Tolly at last looked up to find Arden leaning on the tree trunk.

“So it does take a life,” Arden said hoarsely. Tolly inhaled. The lung held. He looked down at the smooth and undamaged expanse of his own chest.

“When the wound is dire,” Tolly said.

“I killed them,” Arden said. Their voice was the nervous one that Tolly knew and recognized, their pulse an irregular flutter. He stood up in one swift movement to catch them as they slumped forward.

“I have you, Arden. You’re all right,” he whispered as he gathered them up. They were light and limp in his arms, silent except for their heart.

He saw the fifth body as he carried Arden back to the car. The woman’s body lay twisted almost in half backwards. Arden’s powers must have thrown her into the protruding rear bumper of the black Sprinter van. It was all the way off the road, parked back from the shoulder under the darkness of the trees.

Tolly buckled Arden into the passenger seat, smoothing sweat-soaked hair back from their face. Their eye makeup had run again, black mingling with the bloody tears. They blinked a couple of times as he wiped it with his sleeve, but they couldn’t seem to hold their eyes open.

“Where’s the rest of your shirt?” they mumbled, head lolling into the seatbelt.

“I’ll get another one,” Tolly said. “How do you feel?”

“Everything hurts.”

“Hurts how?” Tolly asked.

“Throbs. It pulses, like… Another heartbeat. But bad.”

Tolly checked in his pocket. His phone had survived with a crack across the plastic outer case on the back. Eleven thirteen.

“Is this fatal?” he asked.

“Aeolus says… Probably not...” Tolly exhaled through his nostrils. He didn’t need to breathe. There was no reason for him to have been holding his breath. Arden’s early quixotry had been the result of confusion and the familiar self-destructive urges, not actual fact.

“Do you know how they found us?” he asked. He shook Arden slightly when there was no response, very careful, but insistent. “I’m sorry, child, but I must know. Ask the old man.”

Arden groaned. “Augury from the. Bodies. You can find the killer if you can scry within a couple of hours, Aeolus says. He – it’s – it’s hard for him to reach me now.”

“I see.” Tolly set his phone timer with great care. Then he bent to gently kiss Arden’s forehead. “Leave it to me, Arden. I’ll take care of it.”

He went around to the back of the car, stripping his ruined clothes as he went.

He had no idea if cars had passed them, but nobody had stopped. The Painmother and her presumed coreligionists had staged the whole thing back from the road. Headlights might catch the Soul in passing, but probably not the bodies. He wadded up the clothes into a plastic grocery bag rather than risk leaving them to law enforcement or witchery, not knowing if they could aid in this supposed augery. He hurriedly wiped himself down as best he could, then came up front to wipe Arden’s face with a clean body wipe, ignoring his groan of protest. In under five minutes he had rendered them presentable enough to pass for tired travelers, maybe ill in Arden’s case, but clean of blood. He coaxed Arden into taking a couple of naproxen sodium from Arden’s own luggage, washed down with a drink of water.

Then he started them to the East again, keeping politely within the speed limit. It was possible no one would find the bodies soon enough to perform divination, but he couldn’t depend on that. So in two hours, when their pursuers could no longer possibly tell from the bodies which way they were going, he would double back West. He was almost certain he could reach one of his surviving boltholes near Northgate before dawn.

Part 18: Weight of Dawn (Coming Soon!)

@fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso, @valravnthefrenchie, @thewhumpcaretaker, @currentlyinthesprial

[pigeonwhumps]

I have a bunch of trans OCs in my series, although the fact that they're trans isn't mentioned much (a few of them I do plan to bring it up, but it hasn't happened yet). I'll list them anyway, though.

Immortal Cannon Fodder features a non-binary main whumpee, Phoenix, and one of the caretakers, Aaron, is a trans man. Brynn, another whumpee and Phoenix's immortal friend who is yet to be introduced, is a trans woman. The series is mostly superhero whump, although the Brynn and Phoenix pieces will be mainly sci-fi whump (since they're both immortal, I can do that with them in canon). I plan to at least mention all three of their transness at some point, and a major reason Phoenix joined the Hero Agency in the first place was because they were kicked out for being non-binary. Indigo, one of the whumpers, is also some flavour of non-binary, but it's not brought up.

In Sanctuary, a BBU series, Anita is a trans woman and Sandy is non-binary. I haven't brought up Anita being trans yet, though I plan to, and Sandy's gender is only in xier pronouns and title. Both of them are caretakers.

Sam and Lucan contains Sam, a non-binary caretaker, who's in the no attention paid to their gender category (a BBU-adjacent series with fantasy elements).

MD-264N contains a genderfluid caretaker as a minor(ish) character, and a non-binary living weapon whumpee (neither of their genders are explicitly stated in the series itself).

Cian and Row features Rowan, a non-binary superpowered whumpee, and Marcia, a trans woman caretaker with wings.

Out of the Water features Robyn, a trans man. The series is pirate and merman whump, and Robyn is a pirate whumpee/caretaker.

Finally, Botanist Whumpee features Silver, a non-binary caretaker.

The series don't all have much written yet, but these are the trans characters I have. I also have a series coming up with a vampire trans man caretaker.

do you know of any good whump series with transgender (including nonbinary and such) characters? whumpees, whumpers, caretakers, it doesnt matter. especially if theres significant attention paid to their being transgender, or it effects their character arc and/or motivations. just about any genre will do.

thanks a million, and no pressure or anything.

yes!! thank you for asking!! the first 2 here pay the most attention to the character being trans, but all of them acknowledge it in some way!

Magnanimous Moonrise & Savage Sunset by @not-a-space-alien - 18+ and heed the warnings! but one of my fave whump series ever

Eden by @zillastar13 - new series with regular updates!!

With Bloody Outstretched Hands by @wolfeyedwitch - nonbinary whumpee, everything else on this list features trans men*

No Longer Asking and Seal the Deal by @emmettnet - as well as all other series involving Dirk! i believe a bunch more of emmett's ocs are trans too.

Linden and Colton Part 1 / Part 2 by @whumpzone - 18+, and this is the only one on this list where the trans character is a caretaker instead of a whumpee

*there are a lot of nonbinary whumpees, but most series with nonbinary whumpees usually just use they/them and don't acknowledge the character's transness otherwise (which ofc is totally valid!), and i don't know of any whump series with trans women, which prob has to do with this since people tend to write about characters most like themselves

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 2: Discovery

Part 1: Abandoned

Tropes/content warnings: vampire whumpee, male whumpee, non-binary caretaker, morbidity or thoughts of death. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. Mostly we're talking about consent to be bitten, but being bitten in this universe varies from "mild discomfort" through "multiple climaxes" and I don't know where the story will end up yet, so I think it's important to be clear.

If you want to be put on or taken off my taglist for this series, feel free to tell me!

The stranger recoiled from the horror in front of them. For a moment the weak beam of light from upstairs transfixed them both, and Tolly jerked back, anticipating the pain. No pain came. It wasn’t sunlight. He cursed himself for a fool. He knew the basement door opened into a windowless hallway. And besides, he would have been brought low by exhaustion if it had been daylight up above.

He backed away until his back hit the far wall, arms reaching out to splay against the stones. Black talons gouged at the wall of his prison as he stared, milk-white eyes unblinking, teeth bared and showing the sharpness of his canines. He knew what he looked like. He could see the stranger breathing harder as they tried to make sense of a world in which this monster could exist.

He took in everything about them with the same fanatical, memorizing glance he had once turned on... who knew? A father, an uncle? Some relation, certainly. There were features in common: the big, dark eyes, the sharp little nose, the exquisite shape of the lips. His discoverer was wearing gray sweat pants and a baggy tee shirt that might have been black at one point. There was something under it that might be a brassiere or an undershirt or both. The checkered pattern on the slip-on shoes was so faded it was barely visible, another fashion rising again that had had time to get worn while Tolly was in this room. In ’04 the pants would have had open ankles. Now they were gathered to an elastic.

Blue flecks of paint dotted every garment and one cheek. The head of thin black hair was tied back in a sloppy tail from which about half had escaped. Sweat plastered their hair to their cheeks and forehead. Their face showed a faint shadow of beard where the makeup was running, and their eyeliner was running, too. Their deodorant was aggressively neutral, but it wasn’t strong enough to cover the smell of recent exertion in a male body even to Tolly’s currently weak nose. Or – at least they had probably been told it was a male body when they were born. That was a delicate matter, and it barely registered on him compared to the much more overt scent of life, life, life -

“You're not wearing the ring,” he rasped. It hurt to speak, dust scraping the inside of his throat and palate where the saliva had dried up long since.

The descendant of Nicholas turned and ran, stumbling back up the basement steps. The sound of the slamming door heralded the dying of the light. Tolly stood there without moving for a while, cursing himself again as he lurked in the dark.

They hadn’t closed the secret door panel. He could see out. He slid around the room, one hand on the wall, until he got back to the opening. He could see all of the basement now, he registered anew. He hadn’t seen anything outside the room for ten years. He knew it was mad to be excited about that, the more so with the acute torment that was the scent of living blood still stinging in his nostrils, but he was excited all the same. He pulled the chair over from the table and turned it around so he could straddle it, arms resting on the back and his withered chin resting on his arms. No need to hurry. The little mortal wouldn’t be back, sealing the upstairs door and forgetting the monster in the basement as quickly as possible, so he would have a lot of time to take in the view. He had never had hope, he told himself. He should not behave as though something had been taken away.

He started all the way to the right and began to look at all of it, bit by bit, taking in every new cobweb, every splinter on the steps. He argued with himself for a while about the definition of the word “splinter” as he looked at the steps, so that he would have it down in his mind before he started counting them. He finally settled on partially separated bits of wood longer than a sixteenth of an inch. In that case, there were three splinters within his view that had not been there the last time Nicholas opened the door to his cell. That made sense. No one had come into the basement during that time, so the stairs hadn’t had much wear. His eyes lingered over every scuffed footprint in the dust that the descendant had left. There were eight steps, and eight prints coming down, right-left, right-left, and they still partly showed where the scuffed scrambling of the return trip hadn’t wiped them out. A thumbprint in blue paint marked the wooden handrail near the top.

It wasn’t a large room, but it felt a little larger.

He spent the rest of that night in his quiet memorization of the basement. The tools on the heavy wood workbenches had not changed at all in position in ten years, but they were dustier now, and the rag pile between them showed signs of having been a mouse nest at some point. That was hopeful. It meant there might be mice again there at some point, who might eventually be lured into his cell. Tolly licked his dry lips with a tongue that felt like a strip of leather in his mouth. Animal blood would not restore his strength, his powers, but it would restore his body a little. That would be something.

If he was patient, and not greedy, he might be able to keep going a lot longer on the occasional mouse. Maybe it would be two hundred years before he fell into the long sleep. He wasn’t sure how long after that a vampire would turn into dust. Accounts varied. He was certain at least one had come back from a handful of burnt ashes, because he had seen it – five mortal lives had been sacrificed to accomplish it - but whether one could be reconstituted from ancient dust was unknown to him. No one would do that for him, of course. No one had come looking for him thus far. It wasn’t that he had a great many enemies. His circle of friendly acquaintances had been large. But the few close enough to wonder where he’d gone were also immortals, and therefore it would be a long time before it occurred to anyone to look for him. He had been alone with Nicholas for a decade before Nicholas went away, and no one had come, then or in the decade after.

His mind was wandering. He reproved himself sternly and returned to concentrating on the important matter at hand. The lighting fixture overhead was relatively recent, placed in the era after the wires had been brought in and the plaster laid down over them – no, more recent than that. Perhaps thirty years. He’d seen Nicholas replace the four bulbs and put back the half-sphere of frosted glass over them, opening the door to tease Tolly with his proximity as he worked. Now he imagined that, even if the bulbs had still worked, there was probably so much dust and so many dead insects inside that it might catch fire if it were turned on.

Chances were better with the flatscreen television mounted to the wall at right-angles to the workbenches, barely visible if he leaned as far forward as he physically could. The casing was sealed enough that it would be harder for creatures to get in. Nicholas had watched movies and television while he was doing projects, sometimes. Whatever the genre, he liked material whose attraction was subtle acting, and lots of attention to faces. He’d watched Nightcrawler a lot of times in the months before he went away. It had been a seeming end to his apparent obsession with Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Tolly had an interesting couple of hours perusing the ceiling to see if there was anything alive up there. A fast-moving wolf spider was so fascinating that he watched the cupboard it had vanished behind for another hour, just in case it came out.

The big oval-shaped industrial rug was gray with accumulated dinge. He had not been here when Nicholas laid down the shiny dark red finish over the concrete floor. It had been much glossier the last time he’d seen it. His patience was again rewarded, however. Just as he was beginning to feel the heaviness in his limbs that mean dawn was breaking, a house centipede crept furtively from under one edge of the rug and ran for the workbenches, its many legs rippling around it with the urgency of its errand. Tolly struggled to stay awake as he followed its progress instead of moving to his rug. His head drooped over his arms. At last, his eyes grew too heavy to resist the pall of sleep, but not before the little beast had found cover.

His dreams were full of blood. He had thought time had freed him of that torment, resigned him to his fate, but Nicholas and his descendant died in his arms a hundred times before night fell. It was not entirely a relief when the giddy intensity of dreaming abruptly gave way to consciousness. Waking was not like waking had been when he was mortal. There was almost no space in between, and there was no confusion at all.

Tolly opened his eyes, looking around quickly. The door was still open. He could still see into the basement. He rose from the chair to go and scratch his day into the stone wall with his right thumb talon. How long until his nails would weaken? That thought sent him back to watch the old mouse nest with narrow-eyed intentness, but there was nothing living there now.

It was not a large room. Still, that night and the next passed more congenially. It would be a long time before the view of the basement lost its charms by comparison to the sealed chamber. Tolly could even read the labels on many of the spray bottles and tools and compare their fonts. He planned to save that for the winter, however, when the creatures would be less active. There was no need to be greedy.

Part 3: Bereft

@fleur-a-whump

[syncopein3d]

Part 16: The First Lesson

M for mature themes overall. Tropes/content warnings: vampire whumpee/caretaker, male whumpee/caretaker, non-binary whumpee/caretaker, morbidity or thoughts of death. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. Mostly we're talking about consent to be bitten, but being bitten in this universe varies from "mild discomfort" through "multiple climaxes" and I don't know where the story will end up yet, so I think it's important to be clear.

In this episode: angst, unrequited thirst.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know! I'm back after a long hiatus due to a death in the family, and I thank you all for your patience. I will link the last episode, but also the index post in case you are brand new and want to start from the first.

Part 15: Glass of Water

Masterpost

When Arden was out of the shower, Tolly wordlessly handed them a nutrition bar, white big hand sliding into view as they opened the bathroom door. Arden lay sitting against the headboard eating for a couple of minutes, silent. Tolly sat on the end of the other bed with a wool thread he had shamefacedly folded into the duffel bag, playing at cat’s cradle with it as he watched Arden sideways.

After a while, Arden said, “Aeolus says I don’t deserve my body.”

“Well, he deserves it far less,” Tolly said. “Can he hear me?”

“Yeah. I can see him sometimes, too.” Arden described the man in the black suit with his pointed beard. “To me it looks like he’s standing by the window, glaring at you. Now me.”

“Behave, spirit. Arden’s health is your own. No one else will have you, or you would not have come so quickly when called.”

“He doesn’t like that,” Arden reported, a little smugly.

“Good. If he wants to stay, he’d better earn his keep.”

“He says he can teach me something simple now, but it won’t be powerful because he used me up so easily. Should I, Tolly?”

“Yes,” Tolly said.

Arden was silent for a while, their eyes moving left and right as if reading. They held the wadded up foil wrapper on the flat of their hand, gradually refocusing on it. “Leyline, right,” they muttered.

Tollt sat up slightly straighter as he felt hairs stand up along his spine. The wrapper lifted gently from Arden’s hand into the air, hovered there for a few seconds, and then plonked back down. They exhaled as if they’d dropped something heavy.

“Great. If we get attacked by litter, we’ll be fine,” they said.

“Was that you, or him?” Tolly asked.

“Me. He says you’re doing the Soldier’s Bed wrong.”

“He would,” Tolly said, unperturbed. His fingers worked, hooking the string and shifting it to make the Candles.

After a long minute or so, Arden said, “Tolly, I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

“No,” Tolly said calmly, unwrapping the round of wool thread to coil it neatly. It smelled like his rug. That should not have been calming, but it was. “I will not allow it. This coven –“

“The Coven of the Black Rose, for all of Washington and part of Oregon within the intersection of the Rocky Mountain and the Columbia River lines,” they recited distantly.

“This Coven of the Black Rose tried to have you killed without knowing a thing about you except that you are related to Nicholas and might have his ring. That offends me. It’s crude, stupid behavior,” Tolly said. “They also had the effrontery to shoot me, which I also do not appreciate.”

Arden’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “And you like me, just a little,” they said.

“We hardly know each other, child. But I recognize a debt. No, I do, don’t laugh,” Tolly protested, leaning over to carefully stow the wool thread. “You have been remarkably kind to me. I expect that will change as you gain greater understanding, but you have a generous soul.”

“I’m not a child, Tolly.”

“I was born when your great-grandfather was not even an idea. You will never not be a child to me,” Tolly said. His tone was light, mildly amused. It wouldn’t help to say things like I have known lusts and corruptions that would whiten your hair and I think of you carnally even though I am immeasurably older.

Best to distract himself from that line of thought, too. The Arden whose ecstatic end he craved, teasing, insinuating creature, wasn’t real. It was the ghost of Nicholas. He had been thirstier than this voluntarily, and for longer, and he could hold his teeth in if he made an effort, Tolly told himself.

“I’m surprised you knew how to use the sink,” Arden said. “Do you need me to explain the lights, or did you just assume ghost magic?” Thank God for sarcasm, Tolly thought. It was a caustic blanket to wrap his sanity in, but it was better than nothing.

“Hilarious,” Tolly said. “I’ve been in a room for twenty years, not 600. Even Aeolus knows what electricity is.”

“He disappeared. I think he’s sulking.”

“Or he can only manifest for short periods,” Tolly said. “He wasn’t constantly distracting Nicholas.”

“That’s a relief, anyway.”

“Try to sleep,” Tolly said. “It’ll help you recover. We’ll keep on East tomorrow night.”

Part 17: Painmother

@fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso, @valravnthefrenchie, @thewhumpcaretaker, @currentlyinthespiral

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 4: Smallest Consolation

Part 3: Bereft

Tropes/content warnings: vampire whumpee, male whumpee, non-binary caretaker, general morbidity. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. Mostly we're talking about consent to be bitten, but being bitten in this universe varies from "mild discomfort" through "multiple climaxes" and I don't know where the story will end up yet, so I think it's important to be clear.

Specific to this episode: grief, discussion of death and loss.

If you would like to be added to or removed from the tag list for this story, please let me know!

“Are – are you crying?” He caught the movement from the corner of his eye as they started forward. Tolly jerked around, stunned. Even as what he was now? Even looking at this, this horrid crackling mummy that he had become? God, he couldn’t. Even if they hadn’t been his only chance at escape, he couldn’t.

“Stop,” he snapped. The next words were a furious hiss. “For your life, do not cross that threshold!”

They froze, jerking their hand back. For a second, he thought he’d really done it now, that they would leave him again, but they stayed there, still looking at him in the light of the dusty plastic lantern. The dark eyes were liquid and huge. For a moment he looked back, shuddering from head to toe. It had been close. God, it had been close.

At last, he turned and paced closer to the door again, treading lightly, wary of himself. He wasn’t afraid of revolting them with the stench of decay. He wasn’t an ordinary corpse, or there would have been nothing left of him after so long. His dry flesh breathed forth the odor of incense, like frankincense mixed with amber.

“I said I would answer,” he said. “What's wrong with me is that I need blood. I have not had a drink in ten years and I am," he held up his hands, every tiniest sinew visible in the backs of them.

"This monstrosity without it. I don't breathe, I don't need food or water, but I must have blood. I could go on turning madder for years before I turn to dust, but in the end, to dust I will return."

He looked them up and down more closely, tongue passing over his teeth again behind his lip. Their eyes were dark and puffy under the thinnest layer of concealer. Oh, but he wanted so very badly to hold them in his arms just one time. There could only be one time, but it would be glorious, it would be a memory to last a thousand years. He craved them as he had always craved Nicholas. And now Nicholas was dead, dead, dead, the taste of him lost forever. There was only…

"What's your name?" he asked, struggling to wring some gentleness out of his horrible voice. He managed to be quieter, not much more.

“Arden,” they managed after a second. They were shaking, too, although unquestionably from very different causes than Black Tolly.

“Arden,” Tolly said, as softly as he could, feeling the long arch of the first syllable and the sharp tap of the second on his palate. He could make no exercise of his will against theirs, not in this state. He could exert no basilisk stare out of these dead eyes. To even try would simply give away too soon that he could. He was trying hard to think clearly, now. He had been momentarily blinded to the fact that he was looking at the ruination of a great hope. They couldn’t sell a house with a corpse in the basement. Their clothes weren’t fine enough or obviously branded enough to be expensive. They probably weren’t well-off, and the funds from this sale would have kept them for a long time. They needed him out as badly as he needed to be out.

Maybe there was hope after all. It was best not to think about that for too long. He didn’t dare.

“You mean you need a transfusion?” Arden was saying. “Or - ?”

“Very much ‘or,’ I’m afraid,” he said.

“I don’t have that around the house,” Arden said. “Unless you’re asking for mine.”

Tolly had to make a real effort to control his tone. The eyes across from him were a little frightened, but they were much more tired. He wasn’t sure they would even refuse if he insisted.

“No. You have no idea what you’re – no. Do not come in here. Isn’t there still a butcher in Great Chinook? They were an established family, the Carringtons. Surely after only ten years they’re still here.”

“Oh, Carrington Meats, yeah,” Arden said. “I’ve never been in there. It’s, uh. It looked expensive.”

“It is. I’ll wire you the money – you’d have to lend me a phone, if you’ve got one,” Tolly said. He realized he had no idea how common smartphones were at this point. He’d watched Nicholas go through several generations of them, but Nicholas had been wealthy.

“What do you mean, wire?” Arden asked cautiously.

“Doesn’t Western Union still exist?”

“I think so,” Arden said. “I don’t really know how that works.”

“My friend, if you are willing to learn it is worth - ” Here Tolly had to pause, rapidly trying to calculate what inflation must have been since the last time he had actually handled money. “What do you say to a hundred thousand dollars?”

Arden swallowed. The apple of their throat bobbed visibly. Tolly tried not to watch it too closely.

“I say that sounds like an insane amount of money for a couple gallons of pig’s blood,” Arden said.

“I’ve been trapped in this room for twenty years and alone for ten of them. I’ve just heard that my worst tormentor, my best friend, is dead. Would you be sane?” Tolly said. “Bring me a phone, I tell you. What do you have to lose by this? The worst that can happen is that they say no. I don’t think Nicholas ever had me declared dead, and there was no one else who had a reason to do so.”

“I can’t really afford to replace my phone,” Arden said. “If it got broken or anything.”

“Then I’ll dictate to you, and you can do it. Please, Arden.” He tried to keep the saw-edged whine out of his voice as he turned to place his hands on the chair back, talons sinking into the wood. He spoke over one shoulder. “Do you want me to beg, is that it?”

“What, no. Don’t do that. Fuck.”

He watched Arden pull out a phone very different in shape and size from the one Nicholas had had in 2014, a huge glowing rectangle. It was a tedious and incredibly surreal few minutes as he coached Arden through making a wire transfer over the phone between their bank accounts via an automated system. The descendant of Nicholas ran back upstairs to say their bank account number where they thought he wouldn’t hear it and then shamefacedly slunk back. Tolly was patient. Financial transactions were something he was certain had not changed quickly. In the end, this proved correct.

Arden flopped down to sit cross-legged in front of the doorway with a huff of expelled breath. They leaned one elbow on their knee as they looked at their phone with the other, thumb jerking around with surprising rapidity.

“It went through,” they said. “Jesus Christ. I’ve never had a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Try not to sound so surprised, child.”

“I’m not a child. I’m twenty-eight.”

“I apologize,” Tolly said. “To an old man, everyone looks very young.”

“I’ve never met anyone with a name like Bartholomaeus Bardulf.” The thumb was still going, but they sneaked a look at him through their strands of loose hair. He had not introduced himself directly, but the financial transaction had required the use of his full name.

“I’ve gone by any number of names over the years. Most often people I knew called me Tolly, or Bard,” he said.

“Uh. Pleased to meet you, Tolly,” Arden mumbled, looking back at their phone again. “I can’t go get blood until they open tomorrow, though. It’s only ten p.m. right now. Maybe - ” They rubbed the spot between their eyes, blinking hard.

“You’re tired, my friend. Go and rest,” Tolly said. He gestured indifferently at the room. “I’ll still be here tomorrow night.”

“How do you know I won’t just wire the rest of your money to myself and leave?” Arden asked.

“I don’t. We’ll find out together,” Tolly said. Arden gave him a look of mingled exasperation, fear, and fatigue and climbed to their feet to go back upstairs. They accelerated with every step, until they practically slammed the upstairs door. They had left the hand-cranked lantern on the floor near the threshold. It had run down some time ago, both of them going by the light of a smartphone, or an LG, or ‘this fucking thing,’ a relatable phrasing that had come down through generations of mortal people working with various mechanisms.

Part 5: Bearing Gifts

@fleur-a-whump

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 14: His Eyes Have All The Seeming

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. Tropes/content warnings: vampire whumpee/caretaker, male whumpee/caretaker, non-binary whumpee/caretaker, morbidity or thoughts of death. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. Mostly we're talking about consent to be bitten, but being bitten in this universe varies from "mild discomfort" through "multiple climaxes" and I don't know where the story will end up yet, so I think it's important to be clear.

In this episode: possession by a spirit, bloody non-fatal injuries, vampire sun damage or sunburn, exhaustion, fainting/loss of consciousness from injuries, choking, threats of death, TW for Latin scholars who can tell how bad the translation is.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 13: Cabin

“Tolly. Tolly, hey.” Someone was shaking his shoulder, familiar heartbeat loud and excited in his ears. Tolly tried to ignore it for a while. His body felt made of lead, which meant it was still daylight. But the irritating voice did not stop, so at last he unzipped the sleeping bag and crept out from inside it and halfway out from under the covers.

“Arden, it is day. I trust this is important,” Tolly said. He leaned on his elbow as he regarded Arden, who now sat on the edge of his bed in the cabin instead of their own. Their hair was wildly disarranged, which he hoped meant they had at least gotten some sleep today. He couldn’t help noticing that even now they hadn’t said wake up, which would have compelled him to obey.

“It’s important. There’s letters carved around the ruby in Latin or something,” Arden said. “I can’t read them. Can you?”

They thrust their hand under his nose. Tolly caught at their wrist – warm, delectable, pulsing beneath his fingers – and looked at the ring, trying to focus on it. A faint burning on his face and shoulder drew his attention to the window. The room’s curtains were shut, but there was still a pale, painful glow around their edges. Even looking at it stung his eyes. He looked quickly back at the ring.

Around the edge of the ten-carat star ruby, words were incised, tiny and finely carved into the gold.

“Yes, it’s Latin,” Tolly said.

“What’s it say?” Arden said.

“Hold still. Hold still, Arden.” His entire upper body was starting to hurt. The sun could easily get through his cotton shirt. He could see the flesh of his own hand turning red as he read aloud. “Pactum faciam in nomine - ” He cut off abruptly, letting go of Arden as he jerked back under the covers and sheets into merciful darkness.

“Are you okay? I closed the curtains,” Arden said.

“It’s an instruction for forming a – hhh – a pact with a spirit,” Black Tolly said from the safety of shadow, trying to keep the pain out of his voice. Everything in contact with his upper body hurt. “But there’s no name to summon them by. Nicholas would have left a name.”

“Damn. Tolly? You looked - ”

“It doesn’t hurt. I’m already healing.” The pain in his skin was rapidly fading. He could feel his blood being spent on it, but he had fed well. It wasn’t a problem. It probably wouldn’t even grow his hair back out. But it still felt like trying to think through mud, like looking at the world through molasses. The blankets felt like iron weighing on his shoulders.

“We’ll talk of it tonight. The sun is too heavy, Arden.” He slumped, face in the crook of his arm, and not even Arden’s worried voice could keep him from black sleep now.

When he woke again, his mind was clear.  Night had fallen. Something warm lay across his right wrist – familiar pulse – Arden’s hand. He lifted the covers and found Arden asleep, their breathing shallow and regular and extremely close because they were lying across his bed. Tolly regarded them as he lay on his side.

This is good. If they care for me, they will treat me better than he did.

I don’t deserve that. Nicholas understood me better than they do.

What choice do I have?

As he moved, they stirred, blinking in the dark. “Tolly? Are you back?”

“I’m back,” he said.

Arden fumbled for the lamp, giving Tolly enough warning to shield his eyes until they adjusted. “Are you all right? You scared me a little.”

“If I’m not ashed and scattered, I am not truly dead.” He slid out, eellike, as Arden sat up. “Worry about your own health, not your monster’s. Did you eat today?”

“I finished the Soylent and had another bar,” Arden said. “And I went and got a burger at the Lodge restaurant.”

Black Tolly warred with himself about whether to scold Arden for leaving without him or be glad they were at least eating. Finally, he settled on, “Good. Drink another Soylent, please, and we will discuss the ring.” He ran his hands over his head as he straightened away from the bed, standing in front of the treacherous curtains. His hair was still too short to be easily disarranged.

“You said it had a summoning ritual on it, but no name,” Arden said. “You don’t know the name of the spirit that Nicholas got power from?”

“No. He never said. So, he can’t have expected you to learn it from me,” Tolly said. “It must be somewhere else on the ring.” He considered. “He wouldn’t imperil your life by forcing you to remove it.”

The two of them stared closely at the ring for a while. Arden tilted it slowly to and fro in the lamplight.

“There’s something inside,” he said. “Something’s carved on the back of the stone inside the setting. Can you see it? It’s only visible if you tilt the ring just right.”

“Give me your hand again.” Tolly tipped the hand and ring very slowly, eye almost touching it, until the light hit just right in the red depths and he saw…

“Letters,” he said, letting go. “There is more than one language, but one is in Carolingian Miniscule. As few people who now exist understand a script used to write the Vulgate in only the earlier part of the thirteenth century, I have to assume it is meant for me. Of the others, one is in runes I can’t read, one is in a later Latin script, and one is in English. These preceding three are each marked with a small cross.”

“So what’s the final name?” Arden asked.

“Aeolus. Perhaps it is intended to summon the spirit.” He couldn’t keep doubt from his tone. Tolly was well aware of his ignorance in these matters, an ignorance cultivated by long centuries of carefully avoiding people he knew could end him, and Nicholas had very deliberately done nothing to dispel that.

“And it’ll teach me to cast spells? To defend myself?” Arden said.

“I don’t know,” Tolly said. “He must have thought so. Perhaps it is a familiar he has used himself.”

“It can’t hurt to try, right?” Arden said. “Worst case is that nothing happens.”

“I think we have little choice,” Tolly said. “The Silencer team were not able to cast violent spells. I’ve never had to face someone who could.”

“All right.” Arden sat up straighter, wiping at their eyes to get the cobwebs out. “Read me the Latin.”

“Pactum faciam in nominee illius qui hunc anulum non praecipere potest,” Black Tolly said. He paused every few words to let Arden repeat after him. Then, when he had come to the end, he said, “Now the name.”

“Aeolus?” Arden said.

The two of them sat looking at each other for a moment, Arden with one foot off the bed braced on the floor, Tolly standing opposite them.

“So what’s supposed to happen?” Arden asked. Before Tolly could answer, he saw them twitch, grabbing at the cheap headboard behind them. “The – the fuck is happening - ? Who are you?” They were staring at something, as if someone stood to Tolly’s right. When he turned his head, he saw nothing. There was no sound or scent of another person in the room.

“There’s no one else here,” Tolly said.

“He’s gone,” Arden said. “I don’t - ” They jerked violently, as if yanked by invisible strings. Tolly would have sworn they lifted completely from the bed for a second. “No, wait. You can’t - ” Their eyes rolled up into their skull, only white showing. Tolly dove in and grabbed at their arms to stop their head bouncing back against the wall. For a moment he thought they might be seizing.

“Arden? Arden, can you hear me?”

The tremors stopped. After a moment the eyes rolled back down, and Arden blinked up at him slowly.

“I’m not Arden.”

Tolly was violently yanked backwards and slammed into the floor. He was stunned to realize he couldn’t move. All of his great strength couldn’t lift one finger from the carpet. It was like being crushed by a giant fist. If he had needed to breathe, it would have been very difficult to do so. His bones creaked and the floorboards creaked under him.

A face hovered into his view. Now it was smiling, and not in the shy small way he had seen Arden smile. The wide, slightly distorted grin didn’t look right. It didn’t move the eyes, and the eyes didn’t blink.

“Well, that was more effortful than it should’ve been,” said the possessing spirit. The voice was forced into a lower pitch, rougher than Arden’s normal tone. A thin trickle of blood ran from one nostril.

“Let them go. The body isn’t yours, Aeolus,” Tolly said.

“Obviously it is,” said Aeolus, through Arden’s mouth. “It’s still weak, but I’ll soon see to that. Thinking he could fight me for it. Ha. Yes, idiot, I can hear you in there screaming THEY. I don’t care. The body’s mine now, and so are you, until I see fit to throw you Outside.”

Tolly, listening to this monologue, had never ceased straining against his bonds. He knew immediately when they started to weaken.

“Stop struggling,” Aeolus said immediately, head snapping around to look down at him there on the cabin floor. Tolly froze out of pure reflex. “That’s better. You’re a prisoner of Nicholas’ little toy, aren’t you?” He held up the ring to look at it, sniffing back more blood from Arden’s nose. “I watched everything he did, you know. That’s part of the pact. But why be a passenger when you can drive?”

He walked Arden’s body over to stand straddling Tolly, looking down.

“His eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,” said Aeolus. “Nicholas quoted that a great many times, looking at you. I see why.”

It was at this point that Tolly came off the floor so fast that his movement could not be tracked with the naked eye. His hand closed around Arden’s throat as he spun, and then he slammed Aeolus back into the wall by the door. Their feet – his feet – their feet barely touched the ground, scrabbling to keep him from being choked to death as Arden’s hands clawed at Tolly’s wrist.

“Let me go,” hissed Aeolus.

Tolly slapped him.

He was careful. He could’ve taken Arden’s head off. But he had been out of his prison for long enough to have rebalanced himself to his own strength, to the habit of lifetimes. Arden’s head rocked to the side, a red mark rising on their cheekbone.

“I take it you don’t truly hear the words of the invocation. You certainly didn’t stop to read the inscription yourself,” Tolly said. “Pactum faciam in nominee illius qui hunc anulum non praecipere potest. And you, Aeolus, cannot command this ring.”

“Let me GO,” Aeolus demanded again. Black Tolly slapped him back the other way.

“Let me go, or I’ll tear you to pieces!”

“Why don’t you, then?” Tolly asked. Aeolus’ eyes rolled upward again, and Tolly felt a sensation like knives cutting at his flesh, but now when he braced himself the bruising force could not pry his fingers from Arden’s throat. It was an exquisite agony, wounds opened all over his body as if slit by many little knives, but he remained. And blood gushed from Arden’s nose. The eyes came back down, furious, old eyes in a young face.

“Arden’s body isn’t accustomed to your power yet, is it?” Black Tolly said. “You’ve already spent what they can channel. And now you can’t stop me from drinking you dry.”

“He – they say you’ve been ordered not to kill them!”

“And so I have. But, as you’ve pointed out, you’re not Arden,” Black Tolly said. He leaned closer, grinning brightly so that Aeolus could see his fangs slide out of their sheaths in his gums, growing to a length unnatural in a living human being. “And I can do whatever I like to YOU, Aeolus. So, mark me well. You can remain where you are, and I will consume you. I’ve been desperately craving this blood from the instant I first scented it. I can barely contain myself. And now you’ve made me bleed.

“Or you can fall back to where you belong, and teach them and give them power in trade for sharing their senses. That is the pact. As long as Arden is in control, I can do no harm to this body I hold. I suggest you make your mind up very quickly. My thirst grows every second.”

Black Tolly leaned in very deliberately, ignoring the weak attempts to pull his fingers away, and ran his rough tongue over the blood that covered Arden’s lips and chin. Aeolus could see his eyes glaze with the intense pleasure it gave him, his grip starting to tighten as the giddy frisson rolled through every one of his senses. For that instant, he didn’t feel the pain of his wounds at all. For that instant, every single thing he had suffered over the last few seconds had been more than worth it.

“All right, all right! Stop!” Tolly came back to himself to find Aeolus suddenly limp in his grip, features slack, eyes half-open. He let go at once, jerking back in terror. Had he killed Arden after all?

 But no, he could hear a pulse thundering in his ears when he had none. The body crumpled in a heap in front of him was alive.

Now he felt the pain.

Tolly swayed, looking down at himself. Blood soaked his clothes in oblong patches where his skin had been slit. He felt the sting where the open air touched the cuts in his face and hands. He bled slowly, and the narrow wounds were already trying to close, but he could feel the loss of strength where blood had been lost, where blood was being spent to heal. His mouth felt dry. He fought down panic at the memory of his shriveled flesh inside the secret room, at every swallow scraping his throat.

He bent to seize Arden and carry them to the bath, before he should bleed on the cabin’s carpet, and there he slumped into the tub with them lying against his chest. He could see blood running down the drain between his bare feet. Some of it soaked into one of Arden’s white socks with their worn-down heels.

The sensation of a living body draped over his dead one was intoxicating. He could feel every small pulse. And that pleasure would become more painful every instant that his thirst was not sated. His canines refused to draw back on their own.

“Wake up. Please, Arden,” he said, and now he could not keep the exhaustion from his voice. “I can’t – I can’t bear this. I need you here.”

Part 15: Glass of Water

@fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso, @valravnthefrenchie, @thewhumpcaretaker

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 1: Abandoned

Author's note: This originally came as a reply to this prompt, but I thought I'd give it its own beginning for easier linking on my masterpost page. I did a poll here to decide who finds Tolly, and it just wrapped up, so here we go!

Tropes/content warnings: vampire whumpee, male whumpee, non-binary caretaker, morbidity or thoughts of death. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. Mostly we're talking about consent to be bitten, but being bitten in this universe varies from "mild discomfort" through "multiple climaxes" and I don't know where the story will end up yet, so I think it's important to be clear going in. If there's more specific gore etc., I'll try to also do content notes as it comes up. “Stay in this room.”

It wasn't a large room. It was the width of the basement, but shallower, so that he could lie full length on the floor in one direction but not the other. He was six feet and a handspan tall. Six feet and a handspan long, if he didn't lift his arms. He would have needed a special coffin, or he must needs lie curled up inside it, not stretched regally in state. He would never have a coffin at all. That would have meant an end.

It wasn't a large room. It wasn't particularly well decorated. There was no silk paper on the walls down here, just bare stone encrusted with mold and damp. There was a rug. It was old when he was shut up inside, the dark green and gray colors faded, pipe dottle burns scorching several spots. He knew each one by heart, and had often speculated as to their respective age and how far apart they had happened back when this rug stood in front of the fireplace in the upstairs study. He had counted every single thread and every single strand of every single dull golden tassel. It only took him a couple of minutes, so he did it often. He had never been thwarted by throwing down a handful of seeds, not Bartholomaeus Bardulf. The debate as to whether he should stop counting the thread he had pulled from one side to play cat's cradle with raged on for some time. Eventually he had painstakingly weaved it back in, a tiny bit at a time, with his long nails, just to end the torment of uncertainty.

It wasn't a large room. There was no window, because that might have ended his suffering. Black Tolly only knew day from night by the dragging of his limbs, the need to lie down and cease for a while. He never fought it. It was time away from this place. Sometimes while he lay dead, he dreamed, and sometimes in his dreams he was outside. Every time he arose from lying on his back on the rug, hands neatly folded across his once-white shirt, he scratched a marking into the wall.

It wasn't a large room. Besides the rug, there was only a table in the corner and a single chair. They were plain furnishings, the sort of straight peg-and-groove stick construction you would want for something that needed to last a long time but didn't need to impress anyone. The chair was not for him. It was for his old friend Nicholas, who had left him down here for the last time three thousand, six hundred and twenty days ago. It was where Nicholas would sit when it was time for the needle and the vials.

Bartholomaeus Bardulf missed the needle and the vials. They had been an interruption of the monotony of his days. Sometimes, with new blood fresh in his mortal veins, the years crawling backward across his face, Nicholas would stay and talk to him. Tolly was polite. He had no power to be otherwise while the charm of Nicholas' voice held him in thrall, while Nicholas wore the old gold ring with the glittering ruby stone. He did not even resent this after the first six hundred days or so.

“Stay in this room,” he always said, when it was time to go. He never said “goodbye, Tolly.” Because they both knew he would be back. At least, Black Tolly had been sure of that. And then, three thousand, six hundred and twenty days ago, Nicholas had departed and never come back. And then Tolly had nothing, no meals of barely warm, half-congealed animal blood brought him in the same glass bottle, no moral debates as he paced the far wall and watched Nicholas grow younger, no pleading for his long eternity to end. Blood of cow and pig was not enough, not what Nicholas had promised him, and he gradually weakened on it, but it was better than nothing. On nothing at all he grew thin and withered and gray, his hair a few white strands clinging to his yellowed scalp, his canines permanently large and prominent with his thirst.

It wasn't a large room. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. Even for a creature like Bartholomaeus Bardulf, Black Tolly, Bardulf the Bastard, an old monster with the patience of the long dead, to keep sane you needed something. You needed anything at all. He made his marks on the wall. He counted his threads. He carved in the opposite wall with his talons, because those did not weaken as he began to dry up. Now there was an elaborate mural of curlicues and arabesques there, leering grotesques peering from the stylized vines and bushes of the forest of his mind. More than one of them had the face of Nicholas, beautiful, beloved, despised, hateful Nicholas.

And then, on the three thousand, six hundred and twenty-first day of his captivity, he heard noises from upstairs. Tolly threw himself at the secret door, screaming, pleading hoarsely, but the stone walls were too thick, and no one heard him. No one heard him scraping at the clean wall, ruining the smooth expanse of the moldering stones where he might have begun another mural in time. No one heard him pounding. His strength had waned with time, but still he paced, intent on every smallest sound.

When he heard the faintest echo of footsteps, detectable only to a creature with such exquisitely tuned hearing as the old monster, he threw himself against the secret door, milk-white eyes unblinking and intent on the smallest crack. He didn't really expect it to open. He was hoping for some scrap of scent, some sound of breath, some tantalizing agony to at least give him something to think about for the next hundred days. It utterly shocked him when it began to open. He darted backward into the far corner beyond the rug, crouched at the foot of his mural, and watched the door swing open.

“Stay in this room,” Nicholas had said. And he could not cross the threshold, could not even reach across it with his long, bony arms. But then the scent of fresh, living blood smote his nostrils, and he hurtled across his cell in a frenzy, desperate for it. And came up short just before the door, hissing in agony as every muscle in his body contorted in absolute refusal to move further.

For a second the stranger – exquisite, delicious creature, like Nicholas, savoring of life and health – was confronted with a gangly cadaver in a dusty once-white shirt and the tattered remains of a gray suit that had once been an expensive bit of tailoring, the narrow lapels immaculate, the trousers to bag at the knee just ever so. He never took the jacket off. The thirstier he was, the more he felt the cold in his dead bones. Part 2: Discovery

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 6: Regeneration

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. vampire whumpee, male whumpee, non-binary caretaker, general morbidity. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. There will be angst. Vampire biting can be painful, platonic, or NSFW and I'm not sure what direction that will take, but Tolly will definitely continue to fantasize about subtextually or literally sex-murdering Arden, as vampires often do.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 5: Bearing Gifts

Black Tolly stood and walked around the rug with gallon in one hand and glass in the other and resettled himself in front of the threshold of his cell, cross-legged across from Arden. For a moment they regarded one another. He watched the mortal once again go through a cycle of fast breathing, forced slow breathing, looking at him and then away as they worked at the idea that a dead man was talking to them. Then they turned to pull a plastic shopping bag out of the crate.

“I got some cleaning wipes and a trash bag you can tie shut,” Arden said. “There’s not a Big and Tall here in town, so I went to the thrift store and just tried to guess at sizes. I washed everything this morning. I hope it’s dry. I couldn’t find the iron. I know it’s not what you’re used to - ”

In spite of the condition of my clothing, young Arden has noticed that it was tailored. This is more observant than one might have credited.

“Arden,” Tolly interrupted, and now his voice at last rewarded his attempt at conveying gentleness of tone. The relief he felt was tremendous. Something of himself had come back. “I am used to the rags I have been wearing for ten years. You didn’t have to do anything at all. Whatever you have brought me, it will be welcome.”

Arden was red to the ears as they used the ruler to nudge the bag over the line. Tolly collected it carefully and looked inside, setting aside the wipes and the trash bag. His fingers touched a polycotton blend as he picked delicately with his talons. It was more or less dry, a little stiff from hanging: a white button-down shirt. There were black dress pants with a plastic belt. There were black socks and tangas, which were new with labels, so the town’s thrift store must be a Goodwill and not a Value Village now. There was a gray blazer that was almost new.

The socks were soft, the first pleasant thing he had felt in years. Before Nicholas had tricked him, he wouldn’t have used them to buff an automobile. Now he rubbed them between his fingers as if they had been the finest silk in the world. All of it had been made for someone wider than Tolly’s normal proportions even before he had shriveled up, but it would cover him, and it would feel wonderful compared to what he had now. “Thank you,” he whispered. In spite of himself, there was a lump in his throat. Get hold of yourself, idiot.

He drank his second glass of blood. It tasted no better than the first. A curious crawling movement on his scalp became hair growing on his head, slowly pushing its way from the follicles, so blond that it was almost white. His flesh began to fill out slowly, wrinkled, hideous in a way that could not be explained by aging, but approaching something human. For a moment he could smell himself again, the hint of old incense gradually becoming less bitter and more appealing.

“I’ll get some dry shampoo tomorrow,” Arden said. Now, as Black Tolly’s senses gradually expanded, their exhalation told him everything they had eaten that day. It wasn’t difficult to parse out, just the morning’s sweetened coffee and long-past sour hints of some kind of bottled protein drink. Their pores breathed out the faint scent of an unfamiliar medication – no, not unfamiliar. It was herbal. Cayenne, salt, St. John’s Wort. Witchbane.

Did Arden know it was witchbane? Tolly had been expecting some sort of antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication, or at least an unhealthy amount of caffeine. The descendant of Nicholas Telep does not know their family’s history, did not know I was here, yet still they suppress what they have inherited. I think perhaps someone has been trying to keep them from the truth.

They must not be entirely succeeding, or Arden was not remembering to take the medication. The scent of them hinted of adrenaline, unsurprising in the present moment, but also of stale fatigue, the sort of thing that could not entirely wash off. Trouble sleeping. The Outside calls to them, but they don’t know what it is.

They were looking away from him again. He hadn’t blinked in too long. He was out of practice.

“I got this. That rug can’t be comfortable.” Arden hauled a sleeping bag out of the box, a tight roll of flannel and plastic outer coating, and pushed it over to Tolly. As he reached for it his hand came within inches of theirs, and across the barrier he felt the warmth of their flesh. He would swear he could hear their heart beating now, faint and far away.

Tolly caught himself running his fingers over the flannel lining of the hood, mesmerized by the physical sensation of touching the soft fabric. He set it aside with the shopping bag.

“I’m sorry,” he said, managing to force a small, strange smile onto his withered lips. “It’s just – ”

“It’s been a long time,” Arden said. “I get it. I hate stiff fab – that’s not important. Look.” They turned quickly to reach into the bottom of the tub and pull out a stack of books. Tolly recognized them immediately as he reached out to carefully collect them. They were from the library upstairs: the collected Sherlock Holmes, a travel volume from the eighties about Germany, Marguerite de Valois, an occult studies book that Nicholas had once called quaint, and what looked very much like the collected Chanur saga by C.J. Cherryh. Arden must have grabbed things at random.

“I didn’t know what you would like. If there’s something specific, I can get it for you,” Arden said.

Tolly turned over a few pages of the travel guide with its color photographs, rapt. A single tear plashed onto the dust jacket. He wiped it away before it could leave a stain. He was water again now, wet eyes, wet throat. He must be careful of that.

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Forgive me, I - ” he shook his head. How could he explain the constant battle of wills between them, how Nicholas had kept taking away his privileges and his things for trying to trick him, trying to find a way to have him, trying to escape? The threat he presented had been real - 

Just like the threat he presented to Arden.

"I will read all of them," he said. "I will treat them with care. This, this is." His hand caressed the flannel again, then the page, eyes looking down at it in something like awe. "Thank you. I cannot possibly express to you how precious this is to me."

“My uncle locked you in the basement and left you to die down here,” Arden said. “I think it’s probably the least I can do.”

Tolly looked at them from where he now sat, travel guide still clutched in his clawed hand like a lifeline. The hair that had come loose around Arden’s face was limned in dim gold light, almost silver, like the halo of a saint. How had he never seen it before?

He did not want them less. Oh no. Now he was more aware of every detail of them than before, and that made it worse. But now guilt wrung his heart along with the rest. How could he have even thought of surrendering them to his thirst when they were capable of this, unasked, unsought for? He rose to move the books and lantern and sack to the desk, away from the blood. Now he moved without pain, joints working properly for the first time in years and years, but he was more careful not to go too fast.

And more importantly, with his back to them they wouldn’t see him trying not to be unmanned again. There would be time for stupid sentimentality later. For now, he sat back down on the floor and took his third glass of blood. Maybe it would ease the pressure of Arden being so close. He didn’t want them to leave yet.

“I never knew he was like this,” Arden said. “He was nice to me. But this, this is unforgivable.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Tolly said. They looked at him directly now, obviously thinking he was insane. Or maybe they were staring because he was changing again. Years were gently rolling away from his face. The third glass had brought back enough flesh to make his features recognizably human, he could tell as he ran his hand along his own cheek. He still looked like a man who had died elderly of some wasting illness, but at least he looked like a man.

“There were reasons for what he did,” Tolly said.

“What reasons?”

“He knew I wanted him,” Tolly said. “He was irresistible to many, was your uncle. I was not immune.”

“I – oh.” Tolly watched them contemplate this subject and then firmly push it to one side. “My parents didn’t like me talking to him. I used to sneak out and come over here when I was in high school sometimes,” Arden said. “Sometimes we’d talk, or garden, or he’d play the piano.” Their face contorted for a second, eyes pressed tightly shut. “Oh, god. You were down here that whole time, weren’t you?”

“Since you were about eight years old, it would’ve been,” Black Tolly said. “He didn’t want me to know about you. When I asked who he was playing for, he said he was having men over.” He was genuinely amused by that, tilting the glass to and fro in his hand as he rested his wrist on his knee. “I believed him, too. A point to you, Nicholas.” He toasted Arden ironically with the fourth glass of blood before he downed it. That made a half-gallon.

Now his skin grew smooth, deceptively soft-looking. His white hair hung heavy and straight to his shoulders. He looked a younger corpse than before. Perhaps he might have been in his fifties, to look at him. He had a nose now, aquiline and slightly crooked. He had eyelashes. He had lips that covered his teeth and had a real shape. But he was white, white as snow, a color living flesh would never have without makeup, and he was still gaunt and hollow. Even an albino would be pink from the blood under the skin. Every drop Tolly had taken in had been spent like base coin, already burnt away by the process of healing. That was all right. He still had a half-gallon to go, he told himself, stifling the beginning of panic. And he could have Arden bring the rest tomorrow, if he needed it.

“I never even really knew him,” Arden said slowly.

“No more did I, it seems. He tricked me into his ritual very easily,” Tolly said. He shrugged one shoulder. “And he bound me here, so that he could bleed me at his leisure. An undead’s blood has certain properties. Did you never wonder why he always looked so young?”

“I thought it was plastic surgery! He always said it was!”

Tolly considered that for a moment. “Reasonable, I suppose. He was well-to-do. One doesn’t naturally assume there is a monster in the basement.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” Arden offered cautiously. “I’d feed you, too, if you want. It seems fair when he took so much from you.”

“Absolutely not,” Tolly said. He was more in control of his tone now, but the edge was there beneath the careful enunciation. “As I am now, I wouldn’t trust myself outside of this room, not for one second. You saw what happened the first time I saw you.”

“You’d kill me?” Arden said, startled.

“Immediately,” Tolly said. “And without hesitation. You wouldn’t suffer, of course.” His voice caressed the syllables. “I have ways of ensuring this. But I have not tasted human blood in twenty years, and in this moment, I am utterly without the ability to control myself. I am not human. I am not alive. I am not safe.” He leaned forward slightly, as close to the edge as he could physically get. Arden did not lean away, but he could see them breathing harder, nostrils dilated.

“What the Hell am I supposed to do?” Arden asked. “With all of that? What do you want?”

“It’s because I am grateful for all you’ve done for me that I tell you this, Arden. It is vitally important that you understand,” Black Tolly said. “I want you safe from me.” He didn’t want that at all. He wanted to drink every last drop of them, to see their last moments of ecstasy and know they were his, consumed by pleasure, never knowing they were dying. But giving in to that would mean being trapped in here forever, and he was more master of himself every minute.

Arden nodded slowly. One hand reached for the tub. They’re leaving. Make them stay, say something!

“You’re not like other people, you know,” Tolly said. “You’ve always known, haven’t you? Do you hear them outside of the world, the lost ones? Do they call you by strange names and beg you to let them in?”

“Stop,” Arden breathed. They scooted backward away from him, hurriedly grabbing at the plastic handles of the tub.

“It’s not a disease. It’s your birthright,” Tolly said. “Nicholas had a ring that could silence them, protect him from them. It would serve you better than the witchbane you’re taking.”

They didn’t answer, shaking their head, either in disagreement or in general negation of the entire subject. Arden climbed to their feet a little too fast and stood swaying for a second, shaking their head. Then they hurried away, hauling the empty tub and the other gallon of blood.

“Eat something,” Tolly called after them. The basement door slammed.

Part 7: Riddles

@fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 5: Bearing Gifts

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. vampire whumpee, male whumpee, non-binary caretaker, general morbidity. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. There's gonna be some angst, too. Vampire biting can be painful, platonic, or NSFW and I'm not sure what direction that will take, but Tolly will definitely continue to struggle with the urge to sex-murder Arden, as vampires often do, and Arden will probably continue being depressed enough to be unhelpful with that.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 4: Smallest Consolation

Tolly sat on the rug to look at the dark lantern for a while, chin on his hand. In his mind, he ran back over everything again and again, every tiniest thing he had seen of Arden, every smallest exchange. In spite of what he’d said, he was quite certain they would be back. Someone who would try to reach out to him in the state he was in, who could pity grief in the thing that he was, would not abandon him to waste away in this hole in the ground.

He hadn’t asked if they were alone here. The answer was obvious. There had been no footsteps overhead, no voice raised. There weren’t a lot of places in a town this size for Arden to find other people who would have any idea what they were about beyond “this is a man who looks wrong.”

Oh, he ached to taste them, he hurt in every dried shred of his body. They would perish so beautifully. But now he had to protect them from both his own appetite and their own folly, because if they died, they could never get the Eye of Rule and get him out of here. And then, and then… Well, he’d have to see what it took to persuade it off their finger.

What would Nicholas have done with the ring? He would have wanted his heir to have it, but if his death had been an accident, it could be anywhere. It could be in the hands of some morgue attendant somewhere, and Black Tolly would be stuck here forever in spite of any intention of Arden’s. He couldn’t consider that possibility, not at all. He had to hope. If Arden had already sold it, at least there was a chance they could buy it back.

He watched the basement around the lantern, trying to clear his mind by counting the scratches on the concrete again. Then he wept for a little while, his dry and unbreathing sobs just twitches of his chest and shoulders. He still was torn on whether he should grieve for Nicholas, but he grieved all the same. It wasn’t only that he hadn’t ever drunk from him. It was that he was the last person Tolly had known, and for a long time the only person he had seen. They had often talked. They had known as much of each other as some people would know of their spouses, shared confidences in the knowledge that they would never leave this room.

Tolly wasn’t sure how much of that had been true on Nicholas’s side, of course, if he’d really had that many lovers come and go. He’d never been stupid enough to bring one downstairs. But Tolly had told him things that were true even when he was not compelled, by the end. He would have told him anything he wanted, anything at all to keep him a little longer. It had been pathetic, but now he couldn’t say he regretted it. If he had not done all he could to stretch out those moments, he would have less of Nicholas with him forever, less of him imprinted in unfading memory.

I hate you. I love you. You left me.

He couldn’t let himself repeat that. He looked around for some distraction, and decided to commit the extravagance of reading all of the labels he could see.

There were a lot of labels, and some of them were harder to make out than others owing to dust and being partly turned away from him. He managed to stretch this exercise out until nearly dawn. It was a relief to creep back to his rug and compose himself to his rest in the orderly and ordinary way. He knew he would dream.

He dreamed of Nicholas. They were talking, Nicholas sitting in the chair at the table as his face slowly grew younger, Tolly standing against the wall in the corner with his hands in his pockets as if he didn’t care that he was a prisoner here.

“Where’s the ring?” he asked eventually. “You hid it, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did, Bard. Did I never tell you who hunts those who see the Outside? Surely you must, in all your travels, have met with them.”

“I’ve kept as clear of witchcraft as I could, Nicholas,” Black Tolly said. “For fear of exactly what has happened, or worse. Where is it?”

“That’s not for you to know, darling. Only for whoever comes after me. No one of sound mind would trust you with the Eye of Rule.”

“Well, I can’t say you’re wrong,” he said dryly. Nicholas’s answering laughter rang after him into wakefulness for just a moment. He lay on his back, silent, and for a few moments he wept again. But he could not indulge this for long. He stood up and paced back and forth for a moment on the stone outside of his rug, listening. Footsteps moved above him, faint and distant. He was grateful that his heart did not beat, or the noise in his ears would have drowned everything else.

He stiffened as he heard the door open. For a second, he simply couldn’t move, terrified that it would close again and Arden would not come down and he would be alone. Then, after an eternity of slices of a second, footsteps started to descend and the spell was broken. Tolly moved a polite distance back from the door, one heel touching his rug, forcing himself not to cling to the walls or the chair like some crawling animal.

Arden was carrying a plastic bin that looked almost as big as Arden to Tolly’s curious eye. Arden wasn’t tiny. He would guess they were five feet and eight or nine inches in actual height, if they ever stood up all the way straight (something he had not yet seen them do). But in a tee shirt their arms looked thinner than they should, veins standing out in their forearms without much muscle or fat under them. Tonight’s shirt was black with some kind of eye-searing white band logo on it that he didn’t recognize, a skull pierced by a pair of scissors.

They plonked the bin down in front of the cell, exhaling hard. A quick glance found Tolly and looked away again.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Arden said. “You look creepy when you sleep. That’s, I’m sorry, that’s rude.” They looked at him and away again, clearing their throat. “I brought your pig’s blood, and, uh.”

Tolly waited, every fiber of his being concentrated on the container beside them.

“Thank you,” Tolly said. Arden cleared their throat again at Tolly’s intent, unblinking stare. “Right. First things first.” Arden unloaded a plastic lantern that gave forth a bright, diffuse light at a touch, lighting up nearly the entire basement with a warm glow. They pulled an old ruler out of the bin and nudged the lantern across the threshold. “I need this to see, but you can also keep it for. I don’t know. If you get tired of it being dark.” They shot him an embarrassed look. Tully extended a talon and carefully hooked the lantern within reach, almost caressingly running his fingers over the shade. He tore his eyes from the container that held his salvation with some difficulty.

Make it worth their while. Not just the money. The money isn’t what brought them back.

“Thank you,” he said. The emotion in his creaking voice was not feigned, but under other circumstances he might have made more effort to hide it. “I’ve been in the dark a long time.”

“I don’t know what’s normal for you, so I just brought one of the glasses from upstairs.” Tolly looked up as they nudged over a water glass that he had seen many times before, an old Cristal D’Arques leaded crystal thing with long ridges in the sides. Then came the plastic gallon jug of pig’s blood. Tolly snatched at it as if it weighed nothing, dragging it and the glass back to the farthest corner. There was nowhere in the room that he was actually hidden, but he crouched with his back to the door as he poured the cup full with a shaking hand and drained it. The taste of it was awful. It was claggy and congealing on the palate. But he felt precious blood, precious life, flowing back into himself. He felt his tongue and mouth grow moist again, the surfaces of his eyes slicker, and now he could see more clearly than before.

His stomach hurt, twisting inside him as the liquid hit. As much as he wanted to bolt all of the blood, in his present state he could not. He turned back with much more caution, ashamed of his reaction, wary of the other’s, and sat down against the wall far opposite Arden with jug and glass. Not one drop of red remained in the cup. He didn’t remember cleaning it all with his tongue, but he must have. Arden was paler, but they had not run away.

“Thank you, Arden,” he said. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.” He must have moved unnaturally fast. He knew that he still looked like the same shriveled corpse apart from his eyes. But the voice that spoke to them was different now, a liquid, expert tenor, able to travel from baritone to falsetto and back in an easy glissade if he wished. Now Black Tolly had an angel's voice in a devil's face.

Arden blinked rapidly at him. He watched them swallow, searching for words.

“Don’t thank me,” they said. “You paid me a hundred thousand dollars for around thirty-five dollars’ worth of pig’s blood. Do you want me to put that in the fridge for you with this other one?”

“I will finish this one, but I must go slowly. It’s been a long time,” Tolly said. “If you could put the other one away for later, I would appreciate it very much. Every drop brings me nearer to life.”

“I will. I, I’ve brought some other things,” Arden said, color rising to their face.

Not used to direct compliments. Doesn’t know how to deal with direct thanks. Other people have been difficult for our Arden over these twenty-eight years, Tolly thought. He poured himself a second glass and set it carefully on the stone floor beside him, away from his rug.

“I could return there, but then you would have to look at me,” Tolly said gently.

“I don’t mind,” Arden said. They were still looking at the floor.

Part 6: Regeneration

@fleur-a-whump

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone Part 15: Glass of Water

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. Tropes/content warnings: vampire whumpee/caretaker, male whumpee/caretaker, non-binary whumpee/caretaker, morbidity or thoughts of death. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. Mostly we're talking about consent to be bitten, but being bitten in this universe varies from "mild discomfort" through "multiple climaxes" and I don't know where the story will end up yet, so I think it's important to be clear.

In this episode: mild bloody aftermath, bruises/soreness, angst, unrequited thirst. We’re switching to Arden’s POV for this one, let me know how you guys feel about that!

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 14: His Eyes Have All the Seeming

Everything hurt, and the cold body pillow didn’t help like it usually did.

That wasn’t right. They didn’t have a body pillow any more. They’d been couch-surfing and living in the Soul, and it was too hard to take with them everywhere and answer awkward questions about. Mostly they just put up with the part of whatever was always wrong with them that caused everything to ache sometimes. This seemed worse than usual. Their nose felt all stuffy and weird and that hurt, too. They could hear themselves breathing through a swollen throat.

Somebody was in here with them, sulking in the back of their brain. It wasn’t like having nagging thoughts. Arden was very familiar with those. It was like having someone sitting across a dark room from you sighing to show they were disgusted. Arden had a vague mental image of him sitting on the end of one of the cabin’s beds, a dark-haired man whose clothes seemed to stutter and fluctuate between different histories: toga and tunic, scale armor, wool long shirt and some things like tights, big ruffled collar and puffy pants, big muttonchops and a very high-necked shirt, stiff blue suit with a fat tie, and finally settling into what looked like a black tailored suit with the top button of the shirt undone. He had the tiniest pointy chin beard. He was panting, red-faced, shoulders heaving like he’d just had to run and had absolutely hated it.

Aeolus was behaving himself now, but he wasn’t gone. Arden felt slightly better, knowing he was hurting worse than Arden was.

The cold body pillow moved slightly, and Arden realized there were arms around them. They weren’t very warm arms, but they were familiar. They relaxed their gradually stiffening body. “Tolly?” Their voice came out as a hoarse ‘gnehgh’ type noise on the first try and they had to say it twice.

The pillow inhaled. Tolly always had to breathe in before he could speak, but he didn’t breathe much the rest of the time, Arden had noticed.

“Thank God,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer I could stand it.” He sounded so tired. Arden squinted crusty eyes open and found themselves in the bathtub, curtain still open. Tolly shifted slightly to slide them off to one side of him, so that now they lay facing one another. Arden was all the way awake now, grabbing at Tolly’s bloody shirt. The vampire was paler than before, his face thinner and hollower. His fangs were out all the way, big enough to push out his upper lip slightly on each side.

“Oh, no. Aeolus – I – I’m so sorry, Tolly. I would never - ” They were stammering nonsense in their whiny whisper of a voice.

“You didn’t,” Tolly said, one big hand catching at both of Arden’s and holding them to the middle of his chest. There was no comforting reassurance of a heart beating there, but they felt immediately calmer anyway. “And I’ve healed. I’ve told you, I don’t feel pain the way you do.” Arden, considering some noises Tolly had been making recently, was skeptical of this, but the follow-up distracted them. “How do you feel?”

Arden squinted. “Can you get a hangover in your entire body?”

“I think this may be what magic overuse feels like. I’ll get you some warm water.”

Arden opened their mouth to say “wait,” but Tolly was already gone, a puff of cold air left behind. They’d seen movies where vampires moved fast. They’d always assumed it would look silly without speed-ramping or slow motion. They’d never assumed it just wouldn’t be visible at all. Sometimes it was like Tolly just teleported.

There was a muttered oath from somewhere over by the sink, and an ongoing cool breeze suggested Tolly had remembered he was barefoot and covered in blood. Water ran. When Tolly came back, he was wearing black boxer briefs and a clean white tank top that stretched slightly across his shoulders because they hadn’t been muscular when he bought it. He wasn’t even a little self-conscious about it, in his current condition or any condition. He always looked like he belonged wherever he was.

He looked like what the guys Arden had hated in high school thought they looked like. Big heavy forehead, big jaw, big fists –scarred knuckles. It was hard to imagine someone who spoke the way Tolly did punching people for a living, but there were little marks around the deep sockets of his eyes, too. It must’ve been before he was a vampire. He didn’t seem to collect scars from what happened to him now. The cushiony pink lips kind of ruined the picture a little. Not for Arden, obviously, who definitely should stop staring right now. The important thing was that enough of him was showing to prove he WAS healed up. Arden’s blood still ran cold, remembering little wounds opening all over his body as Aeolus tried to kill him.

Tolly held a glass of water up to Arden’s lips, ignoring Arden’s attempt to push his hand away. They were shaky enough to be glad he was there while they were drinking it, so they didn’t tell him to stop. He wouldn’t have a choice but to do it, and that was unfair when he’d just saved Arden from being kicked out of his own body.

“You were scary,” they said, when they’d had a drink.

“That’s what I am, darling,” Tolly said. He didn’t talk like a chad meme. Sometimes that was funny, hearing a big buttery DARLING come out of that face. “I’ve been dead much longer than I was alive.”

“You know, I never ordered you not to lie to me,” Arden said. They held out their hand for the glass and then managed to hang onto it with both hands as they drank. It was good on their throat. It felt puffy from where Tolly’d been holding them up by it to scare Aeolus.

“I’ve noticed that, yes,” Tolly said. Of course he had. “Maybe you should.”

“Not unless I have to. Especially when you could’ve just eaten me, and you didn’t.”

“Maybe I was just bluffing Aeolus,” Tolly said. “You know that orders continue until they’re countermanded, or I wouldn’t have been trapped in that room for ten years after Nicholas left.”

“Nah. I ordered you not to hurt OR kill me, and holding me up by my neck hurt like hell,” Arden said smugly. “You could’ve had me, and you didn’t. You think Nicholas planned on that?” Somewhere in their head, Aeolus was leaning in the bathroom doorway now, staring at Tolly’s back.

Tolly considered that seriously, green eyes narrow. When he was thinking he didn’t really move. No fidgets, no tapping finger, nothing. It was when he looked the least alive except for when he was, for lack of a better word, asleep. Temporarily dead? Arden shelved that one.

“If Aeolus was his familiar, and Aeolus says he was, then Nicholas knew he’d try to possess you. He probably went through the same thing. I have to assume he regained control before Aeolus could successfully expel him from his body. He probably didn’t care if you fought him off yourself or if I threatened him into behaving.”

“But that’s still risking that you’d eat me,” Arden said. “I know you want to. You keep saying so.”

“Of course I do,” Tolly said. His eyes flickered to Arden’s throat and away again. “I think you might need to reevaluate how much your Uncle Nick actually cared about your well-being.”

Arden shrugged, their tee shirt rustling along the porcelain tub. “You think I didn’t know he was kind of an asshole? It got more obvious as I got older.” They drank again. “Part of the reason I wasn’t around when he died is that I’d quit talking to him. Sometimes I feel bad about that.”

“Don’t,” Tolly said, without hesitation. “Either you would’ve died with him, or he would have manipulated you into being trained to do exactly as he wished, so that he could make your powers useful to him.”

“I think he was trying to,” Arden said thoughtfully. “Hey, I’m not ordering you, but - ”

The glass vanished from their fingers and returned full of warm water, still sloshing slightly.

“Thank you. He kept offering me things to do weird shit. Fifty dollars to draw a circle on the floor with chalk, a new jacket to recite Poe backwards.” They waved a hand and almost dropped the glass and had to catch hold of it with both hands, trying not to see Tolly’s hand hovering.

“One time he spent a whole month to teach me to keep talking on the inhale so I could read out loud without stopping for like ten minutes. He got more and more pushy about it and wouldn’t explain why, and my parents kept deadnaming me on purpose, so finally I just gave away most of the things in my apartment and packed up and left town.”

They’d been talking for a long time. Arden had a bigger drink to cover that embarrassment and then choked, and had to sit up and sit there coughing for a second and wishing they were dead. Aeolus sneered from the doorway.

You don’t deserve this body, he said. You don’t have the faintest idea what to do with it, you clumsy idiot.

That whole spiral was interrupted by a cold hand on their back.

“Careful,” Tolly said. “Just breathe. It will be harder until your throat heals.” He said a lot of things in the same neutral-to-bored tone, like they were talking about wiring a stupid amount of money again, which apparently wasn’t a big deal to him. When he was talking directly to Arden, about Arden, it was… different. Like he might actually be worried. Like he might actually be able to be. And he would say or imply it was only to benefit himself, but then he’d go and do things like he’d done with Aeolus.

He was hurting now. Arden was starting to figure out that he was hurting when he couldn’t put the fangs away.

“You’re thirsty,” Arden said.

“Compared to what I have been? Not at all. It’s easier when you’re back in your head and I don’t have to try,” Tolly said. “So put it out of your mind.”

“I could order you to just take a little,” Arden said. That image kept reoccurring to their mind, what that might be like. It came up a lot while they were trying to sleep.

“It would still hurt you,” Tolly said impatiently. “The ring makes you immune to anything I could do to make it otherwise.”

“I don’t mind if it hurts - ”

“You can make me do what you wish, but my answer is no,” Tolly said. The words had a cutting edge.

“You don’t have to put it like that,” Arden said, sitting up straighter as they glared at him. “Have I ever treated you that way?”

“No,” Tolly said grudgingly. He looked away. “Forgive me.”

“Forget it. I’m going to take a shower. Would you mind dragging my bag in here?” They had Tolly’s blood on their clothes where they’d been lying on him, irregular splotches down the back of their shirt and jeans that they could feel sticking. It felt weird as hell thinking about him carrying them in here and laying them on top of himself back to front, like a blanket.

“I’ll get it. Drop your things on the rim and I’ll put them in the cold water with mine. Sometimes it comes out if you hurry,” Tolly said. He didn’t leave until Arden had managed to get all the way standing up without falling over. The curtain closed on the image of his retreating back, muscle white and stringy in his neck and shoulders.

Part 16: The First Lesson (Coming Soon!)

@fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso, @valravnthefrenchie, @thewhumpcaretaker

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 12: Drive

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. Vampire whumpee/caretaker, male whumpee/caretaker, non-binary whumpee/caretaker, general morbidity.

In this episode: angst, injuries, dead bodies, discussion of death.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 11: Silencers 3

“Tolly?” Arden’s voice was creaky with suppressed panic. They didn’t appear immediately at the bottom of the stairs. “I heard – noises - ?”

“They had guns, and I’m afraid your kitchen is going to require more renovation than planned,” Tolly said.

“Had?”

“I’ve put the bodies into their van. You won’t see them.”

There was a longer pause. Even from the doorway, Tolly could hear Arden’s rapid heart.

“You sound different,” Arden said.

Tolly blinked. Did he? His voice didn’t sound changed to himself, and while he had regained his glamour, the Eye of Rule absolutely would prevent Arden from being affected by it. He would never appear as other than a reasonably attractive early-middle-aged man to Arden, just as with Nicholas. He would never sound like something other than an adult with a trained tenor.

“I might be a little different,” Tolly said. “Do you want me to come down? We really are short on time.”

Another pause. “No, I’ll come up.”

Tolly backed away from the basement door and a couple of steps down the hall to let Arden out. They turned the hallway light on as they shut the basement door, momentarily blinding Tolly. He heard their sharp intake of breath as he raised a hand to shade his eyes.

“How are you standing up? Oh, god, we have to get help. Hold still.” Hands grabbed urgently at his arm, at his other shoulder. Tolly swore silently as he realized he was frozen in place below the neck. Different wording would have left him unable to move even his lips and eyes.

“Arden, I’m fine,” he said. Even now, their hands feel warm. He could feel Arden’s breath brush his skin where his shirt had bullet holes in it. This close, their heartbeat was so beautiful. He could have listened for hours.

Enough, idiot. He’d been alone too long. Even feeding had not restored his faculties to normalcy, he realized with  renewed anger and shame. The urge to take Arden’s life was less obtrusive, a nagging torment instead of a roaring agony, but now there were other little insanities clamoring for attention.

“I heal very quickly,” he said. “If you would please allow me to move - ?”

“If I would – oh, fuck, I gave an order. Yes, move, I’m sorry.” But they didn’t let go immediately, pulling his shirt away from his body to look at both sides of a scorched hole. “How many times were you shot? Why is your hair long again? Why do you look alive now?”

“In order: I wasn’t counting,” Tolly said, lowering his arm. “Each time I heal, my undead flesh tries to recreate the moment of my change. And because I’ve fed.”

“Did these hurt?” Tolly looked down into big, dark eyes, at Arden’s eyeliner already running, and lied without hesitation.

“No. I don’t feel much pain outside the Thirst. Arden, we have to go. More will come within a couple of hours. I don’t know if I can protect you from what Daniel called an Exalted and I don’t think we should risk it.”

“Daniel?”

“I questioned one of them. Few can refuse to answer me without the ring you wear. Listen, he didn’t suffer. You have to let go and go pack, Arden. Don’t you have a vehicle?”

“Yeah, there’s the Soul,” Arden said, shaking themselves as they dropped their hands. Tolly could see them trying to think, wiping their eyes and consequently smearing their makeup even worse.

“Then go, quickly.”

Arden ran for the stairs. Tolly took the other one so that the blast of his rapid passage wouldn’t knock them over. Most of his things were already in the duffel, bullets had hit his wallet but missed his phone – the cards, damn it. He couldn’t wait around for them to arrive. Well, at least now he had his phone. He could Venmo or Paypal money to Arden and have them buy him Visa gift cards now that he knew both those possibilities existed.

He tossed the wallet in the bathroom trash, then his shirt after it. He hurriedly cut his hair to #2 clippers length again – dull and amateurish, but they were short on time – and packed his toiletries into the plastic smaller case to go into the duffel, too. Down the hall he could hear Arden swearing, violently tossing things around, slamming drawers. The new shirt was dark red. He settled his black and brown flannel and his jacket over it.

In less than twenty minutes, he was back downstairs with the black canvas bag on his shoulder and the rolled mummy bag on top of that. He could still hear frantic rummaging from above, so he went to the kitchen. He collected all of the protein shakes into a reusable shopping bag and swept the cupboards for anything else nutritive for Arden. There were a couple of boxes of compressed bars, one unopened. He put them into a second bag. Aside from a glass jar of instant coffee (bag) and a lidded travel mug (BITCH PRINCESS, it said in pink rhinestone letters on a black backdrop; also, bag), the cupboards were bare.

He resisted the urge to call up to Arden to hurry. It wouldn’t help. And in any case, it was only a long five minutes before Arden came down the stairs hauling a big rolling bag and carrying an old brown knapsack covered in pins and patches. A wad of blankets was held to the top of the rolling bag with what looked like a couple of dollar-store plastic belts, and a dented metallic blue water bottle hung clipped onto the backpack.

“You don’t have a coat?” Tolly asked.

“I’m not cold,” Arden said. They were shivering.

“We’ll get you one later. Give me your keys.”

“You’ve been in a room for twenty years. You are NOT driving my car,” Arden said. They had wiped off their makeup and, to their credit, Tolly thought, not taken time to reapply it. They looked paler and their under-eyes were darker and baggier.

“Then at least let me load it while you lock up,” Tolly said. He stacked their things in the back of the Kia Soul. It was an odd little thing, not quite an SUV and taller than a car, a muted blue-gray color covered in chips and scratches. He never would have considered buying one.

The car skidded around the gravel drive and out onto the dirt road about fifty minutes from the moment the last body fell. Tolly sat in the front passenger seat, knees slightly cramped. It wasn’t a tiny car, but it wasn’t made for a large man, either.

“Where did you put the bodies? Did you say in that van?” Arden asked. Their hands on the wheel still trembled. They wiped at one cheek pointlessly, scratched the bridge of their nose.

“Yes. The windows are blacked out. But you shouldn’t worry about them, ch – Arden. The Witches will find the bodies first, and they’ll be eager to conceal that anything happened there. We all keep our secrets.”

“Right,” Arden muttered. “You just. Fuck!” They scrubbed at their cheek again. “You just snuffed four people in under five minutes.” They glanced over at him and back at the juddering shape of light made by the car’s headlamps, as if only just fully realizing that. “I guess you did get shot.”

“I’ll be less careless, and stronger,” Tolly said. “Now that I’m restored.”

“Yeah. You’re – you look alive,” Arden said. “Not so pale and veiny. Were your teeth longer before?”

“I can retract them,” Tolly said. “You should take Highway 9 to I-405, and from there to 90 East. We know there’s this Exalted in Bremerton, and I know a place near Snoqualmie Pass.”

“You think it’s still there?” Arden said.

“Or I could get on a plane and you could drive east,” Arden said, turning off the dirt road onto a paved one. “Since you’re apparently sticking around for some reason.” They shot him another look.

“Ownership changes, but the lodge was there eighty years. It probably still is.” He spread his hands. "Nicholas found all of my cars and resting places within over 100 miles of Great Chinook and sold them. You might be able to fly, but there are logistical problems for an undead. If we go east, and keep going east, we at least can make ourselves more inconvenient to find.”

“Simple. If I leave you, you will die, and I will then be forced to serve your killer,” Tolly said. “Who will most likely see me more as Nicholas did than as you do.”

“I don’t know how to see you,” Arden said. “Fuck. Four people, like it was nothing…”

“You must learn to use your gifts,” Tolly said, ignoring this. “Nicholas only left you the Eye of Rule, and me. I don’t know how to teach you spellcraft, so the ring must hold some further clue. You can look at it more carefully when we’re far enough away.”

“Fine, I guess.”

They drove in silence for some time. Arden made the turnoff to 9 without difficulty, and the exit onto I-405; but their shaking grew worse as they navigated through the multi-lane mess that was the approach to the 90-E exit. They hit the rumble strip twice and jerked back onto the road each time.

“Pull off at North Bend,” Tolly said, when they were safely clear of the exit. Traffic wasn’t bad at midnight.

“Why?”

“So I can drive.”

“I can drive just fine,” Arden said.

“No, you can’t. You’re unwell.”

“I’m not fucking unwell, Tolly. I’m scared, all right?” Their voice was high and strained. “I don’t want to be a witch or warlock or whatever you call it. I don’t want to think about the fact that I’m in the car with someone who killed four people and doesn’t know if he wants to kill me – “

“Be careful!” Tolly grabbed at the wheel as the car started to wander toward the guard rail, forcing it back into the lane. They were on an overpass. He would have survived, but Arden wouldn’t. Arden gasped, grabbing at the steering wheel.

They drove in tense silence for another hour. Arden held to the wheel with white-knuckled hands, stiff, gnawing their lip until the rich scent of blood wafted to Tolly’s nostrils. He turned away, lowering the window slightly to get fresher air. It helped only a little. It felt like an eternity before he saw the familiar brown and green sign far ahead.

“Turn off at the next exit,” he said. “It’s there.”

Part 13: Cabin

@fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso, @valravnthefrenchie, @thewhumpcaretaker

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 7: Riddles

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. Vampire whumpee/caretaker, male whumpee/caretaker, non-binary whumpee/caretaker, general morbidity. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. There will be angst. Vampire biting can be painful, platonic, or NSFW and I'm not sure what direction that will take, but Tolly will definitely continue to fantasize about subtextually or literally sex-murdering Arden, as vampires often do.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 6: Regeneration

Tolly drank.

The taste of cold pig’s blood only got worse as his senses grew more acute, but more years rolled away. His face began to gently fill out, flesh and muscle building over the bones under his questing fingers. By the time he had consumed the full gallon, eight to sixteen ounces at a time in between washing with body wipes, he looked to be in his mid-thirties. He held up the lantern to look at his reflection in the metallic surface. He had a high-boned, angular face, but it was the face a living man would have, a face he knew. He was still unnaturally pale, but he might pass for someone alive and very ill. His lips, unfortunately, were still fuller than he felt was masculine, but it couldn’t be helped.

Now his irises were pale green, if he tilted the lamp so light could reach into the deep sockets under a heavy brow. Flecks of amber showed, if one were to look very closely. The hand that shoved the empty gallon jug into the bag in front of him was a big man's hand, bony, with old scars across the knuckles. The talons were still not human. They were yellowish now, at least, but it needed a special grooming kit to trim them.

It took almost the entire box of body wipes to remove the accumulated grime, scrubbing himself until his new skin felt raw, but at last he was satisfied that his flesh matched his new hair. He used the last few on his chair and table, naked in the cold air that he could actually feel now, before he put the books and lantern there. Only then did he dress. The clothes were loose and there were no shoes – he imagined Arden furtively hurrying through a thrift and forgetting, as if anyone would care they were buying things too big for them – but the sensation of clean, intact fabric against his body was so overwhelming that he had to pause and just stand for several minutes, unbreathing, as the tears flowed.

He staunched them with his sleeve at last. There was no one to see his weakness, something that Nicholas would have rolled his eyes at. Come now, Bard. Are we not men?

There was a blue tarpaulin folded in the bottom of the shopping bag. Arden had forgotten to mention this, or Tolly had upset them before they got to it. He stood staring at the eye-searingly bright color for a while before he opened the package and smoothed it out over his rug. Now there was a clean place to roll out the mummy bag. That was black, with a dark red flannel lining.

Tolly shamefacedly considered bringing Marguerite de Valois into the bag with him. It was the 1969 Limited Editions Printing, probably worth less than $60 in this decade, but that was a lot of money to Arden. It wasn’t as if he tossed and turned in that sleep of death, but he should treat his savior’s belongings with respect.

Your savior. The one you are planning to deliciously murder the moment you are free from this cell?

Yes, but they brought me books. Soft things.

Perhaps there is a way to let them live. Perhaps there is a way to have just a taste.

But I WILL have a taste. Even if I have to wait. Nicholas will not win, damn his eyes. I need it. I need it!

In the end, gratitude and guilt momentarily won out and he sat at the table with the lantern, carefully smoothing each page as he read. When he began to grow heavy, he lined it up carefully with the others, all arranged on the table. Then he nudged the trash bag as close to the barrier as he could and crept into the sleeping bag. He had debated if he was allowed to keep the shopping bag, but ultimately decided Arden would have said if they needed it back. He left it sitting carefully folded under The Collected Sherlock Holmes.

With the sleeping bag zipped, and the hood up, there was soft flannel around him on every side. Tolly turned on his side and buried his face in it, sternly abjuring himself not to shed further tears that might dampen the fabric.

Perhaps because he had fed so much, he did not dream that day. When he woke, even the taste had perished from his mouth and throat, burnt up. His teeth were clean. He realized, as he looked at them in the distorted curve of the lantern, that with a little effort he could retract his canines again. They withdrew politely to a length that even a mortal would find ordinary. They were still sharp, but most people wouldn’t notice that.

He combed his talons through his hair as beat he could. He wasn’t happy with it, but it would have to do. He wasn’t sure he would even see Arden that night. He still forced down the lingering fear that they would not come back at all. He had mismanaged their last conversation, but –

The basement door opened. Tolly’s head came up, nostrils dilated. To his immense shame, the canines he had just retracted betrayed him immediately as the scent of human blood wafted down ahead of Arden’s footsteps. His sense of smell had fully recovered. He could identify the brands of their deodorant, shampoo, makeup – cheap except for the eyeliner.

As they drew nearer, he could hear their heart beating, too: light, slightly fast. In another day he would be able to tell it apart from the sound of every other heart on earth.

He brought the chair back in front of his rug, turned it around so he could sit with his arms resting on the back, and turned the lamp on, moving slowly and deliberately. It had been so long since he’d heard a heart beating.

Descending footsteps paused at the click and at the light washing out into the basement, but Arden eventually resumed. They stopped in front of the barrier, one hand resting on the outside doorpost. Today they had a gray cotton hoodie on over their baggy shirt and jeans. They looked at him from heavy, puffy eyes, taking in the changes.

“You’re different now,” Arden said. There was a note of uncertainty. They had begun by talking with a dusty, withered corpse. Now they were faced with someone who looked barely older than themselves, bigger, broader, so very male when they so very much did not want to be that, Tolly thought. He had been right to present himself below their eye level. His present form was more threatening than the old one.

Tolly inclined his head, trying not to be distracted by a living thing exhaling into his space. Coffee. Water with electrolytes and a little artificial sweetener. Nothing else recently.

“I am substantially better. I will always be in your debt for that,” he said.

“I told you, you paid me much more than it was worth.” Arden looked at Tolly’s hands, eyes roving over his scarred knuckles, his talons. He watched color rise into their face as their heart accelerated just a little.

“Not to me,” Black Tolly said.

“What ring were you talking about?” Arden asked abruptly. “The first time I saw you, you said something about a ring, too.” They were paler than usual. He was certain it wasn’t just the light.

“The Eye of Rule, Nicholas called it,” Tolly said. “You’ll know it if you see it. The star ruby is ten carats. I’m certain he would have wanted you to have it, if he left you this house.”

“He left me a message,” Arden said. “In the piano. He used to hide messages for me there when I was a kid. If I could guess which key he’d give me a star sticker, and if I got enough stars he’d give me something. It might be candy, or a book or – for a while I thought he was working up to something creepy.” They turned away abruptly, and then swayed, grabbing at the post of the door. Tolly was acutely aware of the vein pulsing in the back of their hand.

“You’re not well,” he said gently. “How long since you’ve slept? Since you’ve eaten?”

“The whole thing is just too weird. I can’t - that’s not what I came down here for,” Arden said. Tolly was still, debating with himself. One stumble and they were both done for. But he didn’t want to scare them away again, either.

“He wouldn’t have hurt you,” Tolly said. “I wouldn’t call him a good man, but he wouldn’t have interfered with a relation or a child. I’m sure he had plans for you, but not like that.”

“I think so, too. But I don’t know what this means. I hoped, since you knew him – “ They made an awkward gesture, reluctantly turning back to face him.

“Of course,” Tolly said. “Read me the message.”

They dug into a pocket for a folded piece of paper and opened it up with shaking hands.

“If you want to earn a star,

The key to a greater gift,

You’ll have to risk a red one

And abandon all your thrift.”

“For someone who considered himself so clever, he never did learn proper meter, but he always loved riddles and tricks.” In spite of everything, he couldn’t keep a reminiscent tone from his voice. “I’m not sure what ‘risk a red one’ would mean, but Nicholas liked coins. Did he ever give you one?”

“More than one. But he probably knew I would still be carrying around the two aegina drachmas,” Arden said. A smile twitched onto their lips and away, there and gone like lightning. Tolly found himself momentarily stunned, not quite hearing part of the next sentence.

“- Not real, they’re replicas, but I loved them as a kid because they have a turtle and you can feel it with your fingers.” They dug in another pocket and came out with two irregular round coins, each with a turtle so thick it was almost three dimensional molded into one side.

“Is there anything in this house you can fit one of those into?” Tolly asked.

“Sure, this place is incredibly cluttered. But the red thing means something dangerous or not allowed. He’d give me red stars for touching the stove or getting into his room, things like that, and if I got five red stars, he said I wouldn’t be allowed to visit for a week. I never did,” they added, eyes blankly focused on the middle distance.

“If I were you, I would start in his closet or bath, then,” Tolly said.

They nodded, the very dark eyes flickering back to his face. “Thanks. I, uh. I ordered you a phone. It’s pay-as-you-go, so it’ll work until you can pick a carrier. It’s supposed to get here tomorrow.” Their eyes darted to his socks. “Shit. I should get you some shoes, too.”

“When I have a phone, I can order my own things to this address, if you don’t mind the annoyance of deliveries,” Tolly said.

“Not a big deal, Tolly. Like I said, it’s the least I can - ”

“Not a safe thing to continue saying to the monster in your basement,” Tolly said.

“But I’m out here. And you’re still stuck in there,” Arden said. “Are you thirsty? How often do you need a drink?”

Tolly caught himself looking at Arden’s throat and politely redirected his gaze to their face again. “Oh, I’ll always be thirsty,” Tolly said dryly. “It is the nature of the beast. But I can maintain in my current health on about sixteen ounces of animal blood or four ounces of human blood per week. The other gallon should last me eight weeks in sedentary conditions, if you wouldn’t mind bringing me a glass in a few days. Go on. Find the ring. Eat and sleep, please.”

“Yeah, yeah.” They waved him off, looking away, but they were blushing again.

Part 8: Faint

@fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 3: Bereft

Part 2: Discovery

Tropes/content warnings: vampire whumpee, male whumpee, non-binary caretaker, morbidity or thoughts of death. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. Mostly we're talking about consent to be bitten, but being bitten in this universe varies from "mild discomfort" through "multiple climaxes" and I don't know where the story will end up yet, so I think it's important to be clear.

Specific to this episode: grief, discussion of death and loss.

If you want to be put on or taken off my taglist for this series, feel free to tell me!

On the third night since the opening of the door, Tolly rose as usual, scratched his mark into the wall, and then went to crouch down by the threshold that he could not cross, watching the floor. Of course, then he had to count all the visible scratches in the polished concrete, but that didn’t take long. He was done with that when he spotted the ant. It was one of the tiny black ones, venomless, stingless, natives of this Northwestern clime. It bustled around in a rambling, seemingly disorganized way, hunting for food, or maybe following up a scent trail with difficulty. It was entirely possible the colony lost an occasional foraging worker to the house centipede.

The door at the top of the stairs was opening. Tolly was back against the wall without even thinking, he was that shocked.

“Are you still down here?” someone asked. The tone was wary, not fearful but considering the possibility of fear. They were hoping he wasn’t, or that he had never been real.

“Yes, I am still here,” Black Tolly said, hating the hideous croaking rasp that was his current voice. He had to try twice to make words form.

“I hoped you’d leave,” said the voice. It was husky, uncertain.

“Believe me, my friend, I very much would if I could.”

The steps creaked as the descendant of Nicholas descended a couple of steps, still invisible from Tolly’s present vantage. Their shadow moved across the slice of light that gleamed dully in the dust.

“Why can’t you? The door’s open.”

“Nicholas Telep cursed me. I cannot cross the threshold.”

“Nicholas Telep – Uncle Nick?” More steps. Now he could hear them breathing, a little fast. There was a click-click. The overhead light failed to turn on. He heard muffled swearing.

“I assume so. It seems unlikely there would be two Nicholas Teleps in the vicinity of Great Chinook.” He could put on and take off accents like garments, but he had been in the Pacific Northwest for more than thirty years before Nicholas trapped him here. Behind the cracked agony of his voice, he sounded almost local. Only a little stiffness, an occasional oddity in choice of words, might strike the ear wrong.

“There’s a camping lantern to your left on the second bench that runs on a hand-crank. It might still work.”

From his position against the back wall, Black Tolly watched the stranger fumble around the workbench, then furiously turn the hand-crank until the light came on and for an awkward full minute or so afterward. At last, they turned and came back to stand in front of the open doorway. They weren’t too close. His estimate of their intelligence rose: they hadn’t taken his word for it. That wouldn’t have saved them if he’d been lying, of course. Even in his current condition, they’d never have outrun him. But they couldn’t know that, could they? Obviously, no one had told them.

This time they were clean, well-washed, not covered in paint. The lovely, painfully familiar face was clean-shaved. The makeup was more subtle and careful, the liner even and smooth. They were wearing black cargo pants – wider legs than had been in fashion twenty years ago, or since the late nineties, Tolly thought. Their eggshell-colored tee shirt was faded so that the image of a cheerful cartoon sun and the words “Nothing Matters!” was barely legible. Their hair was pulled back more neatly, only a few strands escaping. They brushed it back from their face as they raised the lantern. There was no part of the little room that couldn’t be seen from a broad doorway near one corner. It was designed that way.

Tolly raised a hand against the glare for a moment, squinting as his eyes adjusted. For a moment, he couldn't think. He was so dry and they were so alive, irresistible, just out of his reach. It was a worse torment than the ten years of his imprisonment marked out along the stones behind his ankles. Even so, he didn't want them ever to go. They were something new. They brought light, safe and harmless and artificial light. Tolly ran his tongue over his cracked lips. It rasped like sandpaper.

“Jesus Christ,” said the descendant of Nicholas. “This can’t be real.” The words brought Tolly sharply to himself, to the desperate NOW. Say something. Not the wrong thing. Make them stay.

“I often wish that it wasn’t,” Tolly said. He turned to pace slowly, toward one wall and then the other, but the dead eyes never left their face. To look away from their throat was one of the hardest acts of will he had ever performed. His senses were dulled, sparing him their pulse at this distance, but he would swear he could see a vein pulsing in their temple. They were dehydrated, perhaps. Underfed, certainly.

“How are you alive? What’s wrong with you?” they asked, turning the lantern slightly to follow his movement.

What’s wrong with you. Tolly surprised himself with a bout of horrid, wheezing laughter. He almost couldn't stop, finally turning to lean his head against the wall facing away from them. His shoulders twitched for seconds after the sound stopped. And then he was unnervingly still for long seconds more. He knew it must be obvious when he drew breath to speak. He had gotten out of the habit of pretending to breathe otherwise.

After a moment he said,

"I will answer your question if you answer mine. Where is dear Nicholas? Where's he been the last three thousand, six hundred and twenty-two days, hm?" A cracked leather shoe kicked against the wall where the scratch-marks were.

“He’s dead,” they said. Tolly looked sharply over his shoulder, but they were looking down and away. He turned slowly, one hand grasping at the carved wall for the small comfort it brought.

Dead.

“How?” he breathed.

“It was a car accident. It took a while to settle the estate, and then I found out he’d left me this place. Jesus, I was hoping I could sell it. It’s too big to live here.”

Dead, dead, dead. 

Tolly could not keep the play of naked emotion from his shriveled face. Shock. Disbelief. Horror. The dead eyes flickered as he studied their face, trying to find some sign that they were lying, but he found nothing of the kind.

"Nicholas," he whispered. He turned his face to the wall again for a moment, his hands bunching into fists. He did not cry real tears. There was not enough fluid left in his body. But a sound like a dry, awful sob escaped him in the moment before he regained his composure. This was an inexcusable weakness. He had hated Nicholas as much as he had loved him. 

Part 4: Smallest Consolation

@fleur-a-whump

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone Part 9: Silencers 1

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. vampire whumpee/caretaker, male whumpee/caretaker, non-binary whumpee/caretaker, general morbidity; this is a bit of a breather chapter before we get to the bitey shooty part in 2 and 3, so not a lot of relevant triggers. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. There will be angst. Vampire biting can be painful, platonic, or NSFW and I'm not sure what direction that will take, but Tolly will definitely continue to fantasize about subtextually or literally sex-murdering Arden, as vampires often do.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 8: Faint

The kitchen had a back door facing out into the overgrown herb garden, an expanse of knee-high lawn, and the woods. He considered running the property barefoot, but he knew it was surrounded by forest. Only living wood was very dangerous to him. There was always the chance of stepping on a snag or a cut blackberry vine old enough to be woody, which would go through his foot like a hot knife through butter. Any real injury would use up too much of his pig’s blood to heal. He would wait for shoes.

He breathed in the night for as long as he dared, looking up at the stars – nothing important had changed in twenty years. It was one of the only things an immortal could depend on. The stars changed so slowly that they were always there. He could hear spring peepers in the distance from the creek beyond the lawns. A dizzying bouquet of scents burst over him, plant and human and animal and inanimate.

It was almost fearful, this sensation of his world expanding again. He hated the little room, had hated watching himself slowly shrivel and starve, but things inside it were very simple.

His time was limited. There was work to do. Tolly locked up again and went to collect the trash from downstairs and put it just inside the back door, so he could take it to the bin when his shoes arrived. He put the volume on Poe carefully back in its place on the library shelf.

With these preliminary matters accomplished, Tolly went to sit, ankles crossed, on the big stairway so that he could teach himself to use the phone. Moonlight glittered in the stained-glass skylight above the vestibule. It depicted the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, very traditional for someone of Nicholas’ religion.

A current smartphone was a fascinating thing, so unlike the phones he remembered. The internet was mind-bogglingly fast, too. It amazed him. He couldn’t get the wifi password from the phone itself. He’d have to ask Arden later.

Tolly's ebay account still existed, and his bank had a web site now. He was able to register after some finagling with taking pictures of his face and talking on the phone to what turned out to be a machine with recorded human voice segments. At the end of a couple of hours he had linked his account with a few payment services, ordered new cards, and signed up for Amazon. The phone Arden had ordered him was a prepaid – he could see Arden’s Amazon, too – so he let that be for now. It was functionally disposable that way, and he could charge it with minutes and not invest in a plan he might not need. There was no point in spending so much on something that might so easily break, and the parasitic integration of Google accounts did have the advantage of convenience. Every phone could, from now on, be the same phone, as long as it was the same operating system to recover data from the cloud.

His stockbroker had a web site now. He signed up for that, too. His stocks had performed extremely well in his absence, as it turned out. He sent a message to the accounting service he had used for two generations of American identities, claiming he had been ill and undergoing treatment and asking if they would do business via email now. They were supposed to have kept up with his capital gains taxes, but it would be as well to assess the situation and pay any fines or back taxes he might owe.

His current identity was forty years old now. He should start establishing a younger one to “inherit” soon, so that when he got to seventy or eighty it would be ready. Obtaining a social security number fraudulently was probably harder now. Maybe this “dark web” thing would be of use. He should probably figure out what a “VPN” was first.

But that was a less urgent matter. He needed shoes. Hair and nail care kits went into the cart immediately, of course. But he had to mull over the issue of wardrobe. He couldn’t go back to tailored business clothing when Arden’s apparent preference was  casual, and besides, if he looked too  wealthy it would create friction. He wouldn’t be entirely convincing in young people’s clothes, either. At some point he would have human blood again, be strong again – the roots of his canines ached – but even glamour could only do so much.

Very well. Pacific Northwest casual. If they needed to do something more formal, he would need to clothe Arden anyway, so he could shop for himself if it came up then. He’d no idea what their incarnation of gender portended for dress clothing, and for now, it didn’t matter. He ordered straight-leg jeans and corduroys, tee shirts, flannels, a couple of tank tops, and a wool-lined leather overcoat. These were what he would consider inexpensive but durable brands. He would have spent more on footwear, but Arden’s shoes were of the $30-on-sale variety, so he settled for Florsheim’s sneakers and the cheapest available leather wallet for the payment cards he expected to receive by mail shortly. If things weren’t dramatic in appearance, and the brand name wasn’t obtrusive, most people wouldn’t know by sight how much they had cost.

Toiletries. Shaving wasn’t exactly necessary, because Basilia had made him shave himself before she initiated him, but it was important to keep up appearances. No wristwatch, people used phones for that now so it was an accessory of fashion he didn’t immediately need. He ordered a canvas duffel bag, too.

A lot of packages were going to appear in the next day or so. He’d rushed everything that could be rushed. It couldn’t be helped. He didn’t want Arden spending any more of their monetary cache on him. He debated wiring more money. Best not to overwhelm them. Their exhaustion and collapse indicated what Tolly instinctively thought of as a nervous disposition before he remembered that different phrasing was appropriate in a more modern era.

He wondered what version the DSM was on now. He checked. He also checked if Maulian Basal Retinoid Syndrome was still considered a valid disorder. It still was. He smiled for a second to see a Dr. Lauren Phibes, Junior, listed as the predominant expert on the disease. Lauren had gotten “old” enough to need to pass on his practice, finally. When the present crisis was over, Tolly resolved to get in touch again. Lauren was always good for an interesting evening.

He needed more time investigating the popular culture to update his mental vocabulary to his apparent age instead of twenty years “older” (he politely refrained from looking at the bookmark folder labeled “homework” – some habits apparently survived from Arden’s high school or college years) but the phone said it was already 4 a.m. and he had best deal with the matter of dawn approaching.

Tolly hurriedly logged out of everything and logged Arden back into Amazon and Gmail with his password from an app that only asked for the locking code again. He wrote a brief note in the study – the ghost of Nicholas remained in scent even after so long - and soft-footed it back upstairs to leave both note and phone on the nightstand.

Dear Arden:

I took the liberty of borrowing your phone to transact some business. I have attempted to leave it as I found it, but I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused. I also apologize for all of the package deliveries. If you would do me the favor of bringing them inside, I will deal with them tomorrow night. I ask only because your weather app indicates rain is likely.

Your written orders will be obeyed, if you don’t want to wait up tomorrow evening.

I have also ordered another case of non-dairy protein shakes in the chocolate flavor, as it appears you are out. Please drink at least two.

Bartholomaeus

Then he shut the basement door behind him and smugly walked back downstairs, feet protected from even the dead wood of splinters by his thick if increasingly dirty socks. He read Dumas until his eyes began to grow dim and his limbs unwieldy. Then he crawled back into the sleeping bag. He left the socks laid out on the rug, to keep the inside of the bag clean.

“Tolly. Hey, Tolly. Wake up!”

A voice snapped him back to consciousness. Tolly unzipped the bag far enough to emerge, crawling backward on his hands and feet until he was out far enough to kneel. His hair was in worse case now. He could tell as he ran his talons through it. Arden stood outside the small room, pounding on the wall next to it with one fist. They stopped as they saw him emerge.

“Something weird happened today,” they said.

“What is it?” Tolly asked.

“I got a cash offer of five million dollars to buy the house and everything in it,” Arden said. “From some company. TriVenture LLC. Their lawyer called the lawyer who settled Uncle Nick’s estate.”

“What did you say?” Tolly asked, pulling on his socks before he turned to shake the sleeping bag and tightly roll it up.

“I said I needed to think about it. It’s weird, right? The whole property probably isn’t worth a million dollars, not out here in the County. Five is insane.”

“When Nicholas was killed, was a body found?”

“That might be hard to hear,” Arden said. “It was pretty awful.” It might be hard to say, said their tone.

“It may be important,” Tolly said.

“They found tiny bits of blood and hair where he was impaled on the steering column, because the airbag didn’t deploy when he hit a tree, but the car basically exploded. There was nothing left but metal and burning upholstery when somebody found it. And some animal teeth scattered around. That was weird. They investigated for mechanical faults, but there wasn’t enough left to tell.”

“Was the accident in daylight?” Tolly asked, stopping with the bag under his arm.

“Yeah, it was afternoon when they found it and it was still burning,” Arden said. “Why?”

Black Tolly was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “He died twice.”

“What?”

“He injected himself with my blood for years. One who has consumed undead blood does not remain dead. He died in the accident, and then when he changed, he died again in the fire and in the sun.”

“That’s fucking awful,” Arden said.

“I doubt it was an accident,” Tolly said. “Not when someone wants to buy his house and effects at a price so high. He said he was leading them away from the ring, didn’t he?”

Arden squinted unhappily. “So, who killed him, then?”

“I don’t know,” Tolly said. “He didn’t tell me who his enemies were. He vaguely hinted that he had some within his religion, but I was never sure if he meant it.” Arden was starting to look pale and sound thready again. It was time to introduce another topic. “Did my things arrive?”

“I stacked it all in the other guest room. Do you want to keep sleeping down here instead?” Arden asked uncertainly.

“If you are willing that I rest aboveground, the sleeping bag is adequate to protect me from the sun. I would just as soon never see this room again,” Tolly said.

“I don’t blame you,” Arden said. They looked at the ceiling. “Which is why I wonder how come you’re still here and not already in Seattle at the Fairmont Olympic or somewhere?” Tolly wondered if they had phrased it that way on purpose, so that he was not required to answer. It was hard to say.

“May we discuss this later? I would like to shower and cut my hair, with your permission.”

“Sure.”

“And perhaps you might consider going to bed.”

“If I say ‘fuck off’ will you interpret that as an order?”

“Not any more,” Tolly said cheerfully.

“Fuck riiiiight off, Tolly.”

“Adorable.” He ran his fingers through Arden’s hair on the way past. They saw it coming, but they didn’t try to avoid it. With a feeling of self-congratulation, he listened to their heart skip. They were turning red again, and they almost certainly would forget the question.

Black Tolly emerged from the guest bathroom in an hour with short hair and short, smooth nails. Someone looking closely could see they were growing from his fingers in an odd, embedded way, but that couldn’t be helped yet. He wore his new jeans, pre-faded blue tee shirt, jacket, socks, and the brown leather sneakers. His new wallet was in his pocket and the phone was in his hand. Everything else went into the duffel bag or the washer in the laundry downstairs. He absently poured detergent one-handed as he started logging into accounts with the other.

He took the pile of cardboard and trash from the packages outside to find the bins. He stood by them for a moment, listening to the night. It was cloudy, and it had rained, leaving the smell of petrichor still lingering in the air. There was a feeling of heavy possibility that he now knew probably meant a change in air pressure, so it was likely going to storm. Wet grass brushed his new jeans.

He had shoes now, Tolly thought. And he had not been outside in twenty years.

So Tolly ran.

He circled the grounds, peered through the thickets into the wood, listened to the sounds of small creatures. Once he caught a common poorwill hawking. It was a big-headed little-beaked bird with feathers patterned like gray leaf litter, fluttering from its perch to snap at moths and darting back. In the darkness its eyes reflected moonlight like twin mirrors, common in all creatures with real night vision. It ignored him, though it could see his own eyes reflect in turn. He wasn’t close enough to be dangerous. He watched it for several minutes before he resumed his run.

Sights and scents and sounds flowed over him, around him, but now he was sufficiently master of himself to absorb it without being overwhelmed by it. At least, for a while. It was still long before dawn and his lower pant legs were wet with dew when he slipped back in through the back door, weary in mind and attention though not yet in body. The leather sneakers had kept his feet dry. He was not in particular need of a shower otherwise. Sweating was one of several functions that had perished with the original life of his body.

Arden was standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the ceiling. Tolly followed their gaze and found absolutely nothing except the industrial light fixture with the bare bulbs. They were shaking. “Arden?” Black Tolly said. His flickering glance found the Eye of Rule still on their finger.

“Something terrible is about to happen,” they said. @fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso, @valravnthefrenchie, @thewhumpcaretaker

Part 10: Silencers 2 (Mature content)

[syncopein3d]

Syncope's Writing Masterpost

Hi, I'm Sync, and I write!

My non-writing account for memes and queer and autistic content is @spiderace.

I like angst, loss of consciousness and hurt/comfort, emphasis on comfort. I don't care about the gender of participants, so different ones will occur. I'll tag.

Always feel free to ask me about my characters or stories, anonymously or not. :)

If you like consensual BDSM with male subs there's a fair amount of porn with plot on my AO3.

Broken World

(Cometverse. Villain rescues minor villain, hero whumpers, superhero OCs, agender caretaker and male whumpee; complete)

1. Rescue

2. Bathtub

3. I Trust You

4. Bad Night

5. The Unlikely Truth

MT and The Rat

(Cometverse. Villain caretaker rescues pathetic minor hero, superhero OCs)

The Rat Finds A Prize

Left Alone

(Trifold Balance universe. male vampire whumpee, non-binary caretaker, trapped in a small room, morbid vampire stuff; in progress)

1. Abandoned

2. Discovery

3. Bereft

4. Smallest Consolation

5. Bearing Gifts

6. Regeneration

7. Riddles

8. Faint

9. Silencers 1

10. Silencers 2

11. Silencers 3

12. Drive

13. Cabin

14. His Eyes Have All The Seeming

15. Glass of Water

16. The First Lesson

17. Painmother

Trifold Balance, Other

Necessary Intervention (Jack Ford, Hunter, hospitalization and involuntary sedation, convalescence)

The Warm One

(Synchronium universe. Magic living weapon, female whumpee, male whumper and caretaker; complete)

Part 1: Velvet

Part 2: Stay

Part 3: Discipline

Part 4: Silk

Part 5: Would You Say No

Part 6: Spring Campaign

Part 7: Wrath

Part 8: All Things End

Friendly Reviews

I review completed hurt/comfort stories that I enjoyed and do some light analysis of why I enjoyed them so readers can get an idea if they might also want to read one.

Smoke, Salt and Asbestos

Cheap Shot

Shun the Light

Trope posts

Decompensation

Fainting/loss of consciousness

Cold hands on a fever

Nonlethal Takedowns

Belated Explanations

Helpers who have been through it themselves

Very Tired

Moments of Relief

Comfort

Heated Blanket

Drabbles

Female caretaker and vampire whumpee

Lone survivor (magic, noncon sleep spell, male whumpee, female caretaker)

The Regulator (AO3 link, OC, superheroes, male whumpee and male caretaker)

Oh, It's You (hero x villain reblog)

Vitrified (vampire lady with 'trophies' preserved in glass)

Warhammer 40,000 Misc

Astartes Husbandry 1

Astartes Husbandry 2

Astartes Husbandry 3

Astartes Husbandry 4

Deathwatch Aftercare

Astartes Hypno-Con And Medical Care

A Young Rationalist And An Old Chaotician

Some Measure Of Peace

Impostor Iron Warrior

Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team Audax

(Astartes space marine whump, Deathwatch kill team, military whump, harsh training, recovery)

1. Kill Team Audax: Run

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 8: Faint

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. Vampire whumpee/caretaker, male whumpee/caretaker, non-binary whumpee/caretaker, general morbidity. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. There will be angst. Vampire biting can be painful, platonic, or NSFW and I'm not sure what direction that will take, but Tolly will definitely continue to fantasize about subtextually or literally sex-murdering Arden, as vampires often do.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 7: Riddles

The next night, Arden was back with an envelope, looking no more rested but at least breathing hints of chicken and rice along with coffee and Soylent. That night’s tee shirt was plain pale blue. Tolly idly watched a vein pulse in their temple as they spoke. This time he sat more normally in his chair, one ankle resting on the other knee.

“The coin went in a slot in the bed post and a door popped open under it and there was another riddle,” Arden said. “But I knew that one, so I went and looked in the garden inside the hollow tree and I found this letter.”

“What did he say?” Tolly asked. They edged forward and held out the envelope so that one corner crossed the invisible barrier. Tolly leaned forward to delicately accept it with two talons. He could feel the pulse in Arden’s hand and wrist from so close now, feel the warmth of their skin. That titillating awareness faded rapidly as he unfolded the letter on its heavy cream-colored paper. Something in his dead breast twisted at the familiar handwriting.

Arden,

Perhaps this situation will seem unfair to you. Perhaps you are wishing now that you had been born into a far different family. But I have no time left for fairness, I’m afraid. I have no time left for anything. They are coming for the ring, and I must lead them as far from it as I can.

I leave it in your care, and with it something equally precious. May they both serve you well. You will find one easily enough, I imagine. The other can be found within a favorite tale.

Stay safe, dear child, and never let them tell you who to be. I will not see you again.

With all my love,

Nicholas Piotr Telep

Black Tolly had to stand up and turn away, to hide his face.

“He always used my real name,” Arden whispered behind him. “Before I got to legally change it. He called me Arden when everybody else was still calling me Brayden.”

“So, he did love something,” Tolly said, his voice lower and rougher than he intended. “Oh, Nicholas. Well, at least I was as precious to him as the artifact he made.”

“I’m sorry,” Arden said.

“Don’t apologize.” Tolly discreetly wiped his eyes on his sleeve before he turned back. “It really isn’t fair that you were left with this. Did you find the book?”

“No,” Arden said. “We read a lot of books together. I never knew he had a favorite.”

"I don't even know the title," Tolly said. "He didn't tell me. He knew it so well that he recited it to me. So many times, he told that story. I know it by heart myself.” He couldn’t keep the small, sad smile from his lips as he quoted the words.

"True!—Nervous—Very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them." He had forgotten to sit down, he realized, standing with one hand on the back of the chair. He sat again, careful not to move too quickly. "It begins like that. Can you search for it on your phone?"

“I don’t have to,” Arden said. “It’s a Poe story!” They turned and bolted back up the basement steps, not even closing the door behind them. Tolly paced as he waited, moving the chair irritably back to the table and out of his way. If Arden fell down the stairs and broke their neck, it was all for naught. It was strange that Nicholas hadn’t brought Tolly along as a bullet sponge and attack dog, if he knew his hazard was so great. He had been away years before he died. The estate surely had not taken a decade to settle.

Or he still thought there was a chance he could defend himself, and he left me here for Arden, knowing they cannot.

Impossible man. Tolly turned back to the doorway as he heard Arden returning. They were moving more slowly this time, flushed, carrying a heavy book with a brass clasp. The binding, readable around their arm, said Selected Works of Edgar Allen Poe.

“It’s this one, but I can’t get it open,” Arden said. “It’s stuck.”

Tolly approached the threshold for a better look. The smell of musty paper and old leather smote his nostrils, but there was also a faint, infuriating hint of dried blood. He would never, never forget that scent. Nicholas.

“It’s a blood lock,” Tully said. “There should be an indentation on the binding that you can only find by pressing down. If anyone but the designees tries to open it, or tries to cut it open, it will set off a trap.”

“Blood lock,” Arden repeated. “All right.” They ran their thumb over the back of the book. There was a sharp click, and they jerked their hand away, swearing. The book rattled on the concrete floor as it popped open.

Tolly stood glassy-eyed, lips slightly parted around his canines, frozen by the intoxicating perfume of shed blood. Arden’s shed blood. Only the very distinctive sound of rolling metal distracted him enough to compose himself. A heavy gold ring had rolled out of a compartment cut into the pages. A red cabochon gleamed slickly in the dim light of the camp lantern, the white star winking in its depths as it rocked to and fro. Tiny diamonds formed the initial T on each side of the wide band. The gold was formed into baroque curlicues around the stone and the letters.

It had rolled well away from Tolly’s cell, sadly, but he barely registered that.

“You’ve found it,” he said. “Try it on. He meant it for you.”

“It’s huge. It’ll never fit,” Arden said, around the thumb they were licking blood from blood blood blood blood –

“It will,” Tolly said, trying not to force the words between gritted teeth. Arden shrugged and knelt to pick up the ring, sliding it onto their middle finger. The adjustment was invisible even to Tolly, but suddenly it fit perfectly.

Arden blinked, looking up and around as they knelt there.

“It’s quiet,” they said.

“It keeps those Outside from reaching you unless you choose,” Tolly said. “You are gifted, as he was, and you have matured to the point that the witchbane no longer holds sway. Do you believe me now?”

“Yes,” Arden said. “Is this what he meant?”

Tolly was silent for a moment.

“I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you about that,” he said.

“How?” Arden asked. They were looking him in the eyes now, more curious and tired than wary. This was beginning to seem usual. It still twanged every predatory chord in the ugly symphony of what Black Tolly would, for lack of a more accurate term, have to call his soul.

“The Eye of Rule binds me to obey the wearer,” Tolly said. “That’s why I can’t leave this room. It was his last order.” He sank down to rest on his heels, facing Arden across the threshold.

“So you were being technically correct,” Arden said. The expressive lips flexed downward slightly. “He did curse you to never leave this room, but he did it with this ring. Why would you not tell me that sooner?”

“I didn’t think you would help me if you knew,” Tolly said. “Not with how I looked and how I behaved the first time you saw me.”

“That just proves you didn’t know me at all,” Arden said.

“I understand that now,” Tolly said.

“So I can let you out any time I want?” Arden asked.

“Please be very careful of your wording,” Tolly said. “I want you so badly that I will try to find a way to have you. I’ve said this before, but it is important that you understand.”

“And yet, you’re still warning me,” Arden said. “I don’t understand you.”

“It isn’t personal. It is Thirst. My control is growing, but it is not enough.” He made a frustrated gesture, even now carefully modulating his movements to avoid being too sudden. “Originally, I planned to try to trick you into letting me out, devour you, and take the ring for myself. You are not your uncle, but you truly are as exquisite as he was. But now I feel it is a fate you don’t deserve. You brought me books.”

“You think I’m ex - ”

“That isn’t the point!”

“This seems like an easy problem to solve,” Arden said. “I order you not to hurt or kill me.”

“Or to take actions that would lead to harm to you,” Tolly said impatiently. “This prevents me from trying to steal the ring.”

“Fine, don’t take actions that lead to harm to me, then,” Arden said. “And don’t take the ring from me. But you’re not my servant, Tolly. I don’t want that. You don’t have to stay in that room, or in this house, or anywhere.”

Tolly stared at them. Then he moved so very quickly that a human eye could not possibly have followed him as he ran past Arden. The barrier was gone. He ran through the house like a whirlwind, finding every familiar object, playing a couple of bars of Für Elise on the baby grand, thumbing through the old field guide to French birds. He looked into almost every room, giddy with delight. Professional cleaners were obviously responsible for some of the initial noise that had told him the house wasn’t empty. The dust of ten years was gone. Arden had painted two of the six bedrooms upstairs and was living in the red one, by the scent and the neatly placed furnishings – Tolly turned away discreetly from the doorway. The kitchen had new lighting fixtures, barer and more industrial. He could smell the night air coming in the open windows.

He was back downstairs before more than a few seconds had passed, grinning down at Arden with the full force of his joy.

“Arden, my darling, you may be a fool,” he said. “But I’m glad you found me.”

Arden actually smiled back, and Tolly felt something twist in his chest again, as if his dead heart were trying to beat.

“Thanks. Your flattery is as terrifying as everything else,” Arden said. They stood up quickly. Too quickly. Tolly caught at their upper arms as they wobbled. He shook them very lightly, looking down into their slackening face. This close, their eyes were level with his chin, lashes fluttering as they stared straight ahead.

“Arden. Arden!”

“It’s fine,” they said, the words slightly slurred. “It’s quiet now…” Their voice trailed away into a soft exhalation, eyes rolling upward as they sagged. Tolly felt the moment when every muscle relaxed. He caught them against his body, acutely aware of the concrete floor. He had demanded those orders none too soon. Now he could feel Arden’s thready pulse, the warmth of their flesh, but his own body simply would not move his mouth any nearer their throat as he thought about sinking his teeth in. It was torment, every instinct screamed at him that he was a fool, that he had ruined everything for himself, but Arden was safe.

He gathered them into his arms to carry them up the stairs. They felt light. He was not at his true strength, but he had no trouble carrying one human being. They stirred weakly, heart jumping up, as he was carrying them up one side of the big double stairway to the second floor.

“Cold,” they murmured into his shoulder.

“I’m afraid so. When did you last sleep the night through?”

“Dunno. Months?”

“Oh, my dear child.”

“Still twenty-eight, asshole,” they groaned as he ducked into the bedroom at the end of the upper hall.

“There’s no need to be rude,” Tolly said. He set Arden on the edge of the bed. They immediately flopped over. He crouched down to slide off their worn checkered shoes. The heels of their white polyester socks were worn almost through. He thought of his own brand-new socks and the fact that Arden could, in this moment, definitely afford new socks, but that they had not bought themselves any.

“Pants stay on,” Arden said, without opening their eyes, as he picked up their legs to swing them onto the bed.

“Shh, now.” Tolly leaned over to take hold of the sheet and blanket on the other side of Arden and pull, so that he folded them backwards over the mortal’s body. The slight rocking motion this imparted dislodged the phone from Arden’s pocket. He caught it deftly before it hit the carpet. Arden had not told him not to borrow it, and Arden was now, judging by their slowing heart, rapidly sinking into a very deep sleep. He leaned over to run his talons ever so gently through their hair.

“I need you to tell me your phone passcode, dear,” he whispered sweetly.

“5454,” Arden mumbled. They sighed under his fingers, a long and heavy breath that ended with a little stretch, so long that their toes poked out from under the blanket for a second. He felt the little shiver. After that they were gone, so far down that his whispered “Sweet dreams” provoked no response whatsoever.

It has been a long time since anyone has touched our Arden. Poor thing. The thought was not without genuine pity, but it was also a tone in which he had addressed people he was about to usher gently but firmly into the next world. Tolly unlocked the phone as he padded out into the hallway, shutting the door behind him. His new phone would arrive tomorrow, but that was no reason not to familiarize himself with how things had changed tonight.

@fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso

Part 9: Silencers 1