draculabutbackwards

[Trevor's first night on the Barge is...rough. He's in his actual bedroom. In a bed he hasn't seen or slept in for about ten years. He's alone, which didn't used to bother him before he and Sypha started to share the same bed, and he keeps waking up expecting to feel her next to him.

Now he's plagued by nightmares that all faintly smell like ash.

Cranky and overtired after the fifth time of waking up from a dead sleep, he rolls out of bed. Grabs a pillow and his cloak. And heads upstairs to knock on Adrian's door]

[Lucky for Trevor, Adrian doesn't sleep very much. It's only a short silence before the door opens. He looks no more or less disheveled than usual.]

The medics already sprung you?

I don't need their permission.

[That would be a resounding no: Trevor's arm got stitched up and then he vanished. But that's not what he's here to talk about. He glares, sleepy-eyed, at Adrian's perfectly quaffed looks. Bleeding vampires...]

Listen. I'm still not convinced you're the real Alucard, or just some enchanter's trick meant to mesmerize. At this point...I don't care.

[He's so lonely now. This, frankly, sucks. Trevor will blame both Adrian and Sypha together for getting him used to company again]

I'm sleeping here tonight. Do me a favor and stay away from my neck.

[He says, going to push past Adrian and start setting up his bedroll near but not next to the coffin]

[Of course.]

Try not to leak on anything.

[For all the usual Alucard aloofness, he tracks Belmont carefully with his eyes and keeps his distance, drifting back toward the coffin in a way that only peripherally involves his feet. He sits on the edge in a way that definitely wouldn't be comfortable to someone subject to gravity.]

What about your neck do you imagine is so appealing?

[Trevor finds that he’s treating this shade like the real Alucard already, turning his back to him to set up his bed in a way that he’d never do for anything else with fangs. God, he’s really losing it.

But that’s a tomorrow problem. Tonight’s problem is figuring how to get a solid night’s rest. He drops onto the stone floor and settles on his back. Staring at a setting both familiar and alien]

Hey, this is premium Belmont blood in these veins. Plenty of bloodsuckers would give their left testicle for a taste.

You realize it wouldn't taste any different to me than it does to you? If you don't need it, blood is fairly vile stuff.

[Never much of a sleeper, he keeps his perch and his gargoyle's stance, a gangly, sarcastic guardian against the strangeness all around.]

So what, those fangs are just for show?

[Trevor gives a snort when he realizes that this Adrian, like the one back home, is going to be a comforting, awake presence. What does that say when he thinks about how much he missed it?

He waits a beat, and then asks, quieter;]

This is all real?

A vestigial legacy from a recent ancestor with need for them. Sort of like your brain.

[He could be better. But he won't.]

I'm sure you've had the gist of it, and not just from me? Ship wanders the infinite corridor, collecting the useful and the dead, categories that are not mutually exclusive, and milling whatever it is the admiral has use for, exactly.

Or your balls.

[The return insult is volleyed back without much care or thought. It's comfortable preamble, relaxing in its own strange way, as Trevor settles down for his first night of likely many on this ship.

He gives a short nod. It's hardly unheard of: he's lived in a world where the dead come back to life and castles teleport around the countryside. It still sends a shiver through him]

So that was really your dad I saw, then.

Shit.

[They're going to have to kill him all over again.

Shit]

There's a reasonable chance he can hear you, actually. His room's right there.

[Adrian waves a hand at their shared wall. Though thinking about the logistics of space aboard is a good way to get a headache, even if you're used to magic.]

He's probably got better things to do. But.

[Trevor's eyes flick over to where Adrian's hand gestures, then back to Adrian himself. So much for getting a peaceful night's sleep with that information.

He doesn't ask why Adrian's here, or further questions about this place. One of the blessed and cursed things about magic is that sometimes it defies explanation. Trevor sits up, all hunched muscles and bone-dead tiredness and generations' worth of anger.

Despite all appearances to the contrary, Trevor's not stupid. He's a tactician first and foremost and he figures out things fairly quickly. He's come to three conclusions:

1. Dracula is living on this ship. Probably picked up after they murdered him. And likely wants to return to the world of the living through graduation.

2. Adrian is treating this like a holiday. He looks...not weirdly happy, but not about to break apart from depression in the days leading up to and the days following his father's demise. He wants him to live.

3. Generations of Belmonts - tens of thousands of people they once protected - are dead at the claws of the creature living next door to him right now.

So he has to ask, quiet, with sadness instead of accusation:]

Are we enemies now?

[He perhaps replies with less serious moment than he should. Of course not. That's stupid.]

It's more like you're both my responsibility. I'm not a random act of helpful kidnapping by the boat or whatever intelligence drives it. I took the place on purpose. Which means dragging the recalcitrant dead through to the other side is my job.

[He doesn't answer about himself. Trevor's long since given up on any ideas about redemption. The word itself is sour in his mouth since he lost his family. But on Dracula, he still has one or two choice words:]

He can't be allowed to come back to life.

Nobody thought to consult you.

[A little acid. That's his daddy.]

Sypha and I spent the better part of a year making sure no one would.

[And, unsaid; If he comes back to life, that's our child's legacy.]

He has to stay dead.

And I came on fully intending to include making that impossible with my reward for herding all these cats. But no one's dragging him out of hell to make Death's hobbies easier to pursue. That's him, not some necromantic horror of destruction.

[This is some small comfort to Trevor, whose gaze only darkens]

Yeah. So he's only bent on slaughtering humans who bother him instead of the entire human race. Some cold comfort for those already dead in their graves.

I don't think being about as good as he ever was would be enough to make it out.

Good.

[That takes care of the most immediate problem in Trevor's head: so long as Dracula stays dead, he doesn't have to find ways of repeatedly killing him.

Which only leaves how to live with his family's most hated enemy lurking literally next door]

...Shit way to spend an afterlife, but I think we're all hated by God, like Sypha says.

If God has nothing better to do, I don't think I have to worry about him. But if it'll calm you down enough to actually relax.

Don’t you worry your golden head about me. I can relax. I’m relaxing right now.

[Eh. Relaxing, collapsing to an end of an extremely complicated day? Either or. Trevor makes a show of kicking off his boots and pulling his cape around him for a blanket]

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