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Once the winter storm had settled, the castle von Krolock was cloaked in silence.
Surrounded by rumor and superstition, a never-lifting veil of shadows and secrecy hid the building from prying eyes. As dusk descended upon it, no sound but the wind’s soft rattle on its hinges would dare disturb the eerie calm of surrounding woods. Deafening silence was built as carefully as the building's ornate towers, as fragile as their windows’ glass.
It was impossible to gauge whether the castle itself was a mirror of its inhabitants’ eternal, lifeless presence, or if it was them, ultimately, who had become frozen in time, become one with the ornaments of years long gone piling up around them. Become as still as tall candles on goldened stands, brittle and flickering like their flames, melted away until all that remained was the sound of the forest’s shadow creeping in the castle walls. The ticking of the clock, the echo of hurried steps stumbling down a flight of lavish stairs, a heavy oak door slamming and–
Ba-thump. Ba-thump.
–A heartbeat. Racing, rushed, pumping fast and yet faster. Eyes, impossibly wide. The candles flickered, once unwavering flames perturbed.
Alfred couldn't keep down a yelp as his back hit the dark wooden frame, a pair of graceful arms both shoving at and catching him immediately, encircling his waist. The world spun, his breath was coming out ragged from a hectic cat-and-mouse game, his brain belatedly catching up to the looming figure directly in front of him. Once again impossibly close and pressing closer, towering, a familiar face greeted him, eyes clear as the daylight they could not witness.
A mouth curved into a sly grin, lips glistening and soft, Alfred knew, had almost felt them, had recoiled, had wanted to feel, had hated himself for it. Long, silky light hair was slipping out of the grasp of a long forgotten bow ruined by the night's action, inviting to be touched. Coming to rest right next to Alfred's face, further shielding his vision, further luring him in. Alfred released a shaky breath as he felt its phantom touch, a shudder running down his back at the knowing glint in the gaze piercing him. The way those eyes narrowed ever so slightly, ever so predatory, making his body run hot. His mind screamed at him to flee, to fight back, to get help, yet his body couldn’t help but answer the call. He was surrounded, outnumbered even at their equal, a lamb petrified as it meets the glow of lupine eyes.
And Herbert knew. He had to know, grin widening, grip tightening, feeling the human’s hands involuntarily grab at him, entangling their limbs as their torsos came into contact.
“What’s this, my dear? Searching for someplace private for us to resume?”
The candles burned brighter, their flames illuminating the room, illuminating Herbert’s frame, making his stature glow. Radiate. A stark contrast to the sensation of where their bodies met, the vampire’s appearance seemed unreal, angelic like a twisted joke from God, light catching on a glimpse of sharp fangs bared as he spoke. Alfred’s gaze trailed involuntarily, locking on the expanse of bare neck, inhumanely pale, so smooth and flawless he was overcome by a primal urge to soil it, latch onto it and watch marks blossom before his very eyes. Sinful, tantalizing in that conscious way, his mouth ran dry. It took him a moment to realize he forgot to answer in his haze.
“Th-this is– We cannot… I-”
He tried, already struggling to stay on track as he felt hands, numbingly cold, start to move. Fingers smoothing over his waist before gripping, nails tracing patterns over his spine, moving up and down. Down. Lower, resting heavy on the young man's hips as he stumbled over his words, too focused on the warmth coiling up in his stomach at the sensation. Dreading, anticipating the vampire going even further. Herbert was studying his face carefully, moving closer, tempting, harrowing, his half-lidded eyes a crystal web Alfred had let himself walk into.
“Why not? Are you saying you do not want me, chéri?”
Sweetly, charmingly, his voice enunciated by their lower bodies pressing together insistently. Unmistakably, horrifyingly, Alfred felt his pants tighten around him, the air becoming more suffocating by the second. The urge to give in was getting harder to ignore, replacing the fear, honeying the danger, burning him from inside. His body seemed to move on its own as he ignored the warning, inching forward, closer and closer to the smooth face in front of him. His traitorous eyes focusing on the movement of soft lips, glistening alluringly, merely a breath away–
“Let me have you.”
Candlelight flickered wildly as their lips met, a desperation Alfred hadn’t noticed overcome him driving him forward, tasting the cold skin, moving with fervor. Hands tangling instinctively in the pale hair before him, hungrily devouring the devil’s mouth, eyes shut, never satisfied. Herbert tasted unlike anything he'd had before, the smooth glide of his lips practiced and addictive, lulling him deeper and deeper as he stole his breath with ease. His slender digits trailed upwards, coming to hold Alfred’s face gently, as though he were about to break, before firmly forcing his jaw down, tilting his head to dive his tongue deeper. Alfred’s mind emptied as want throbbed in his veins, fingers tightening in his strands, thoughtlessly asking for more. No saint could have withstood this temptation, and by all means, Alfred was far from one.
As their tongues moved against one other, Herbert sucking on his lower lip, eliciting breathy whimpers, his lower body desperately rocked down, seeking relief. The increasing lack of oxygen caused his head to spin wildly, drunk on the feeling as though on the richest of wines he could never afford. Alfred’s mouth parted once more as the vampire’s hips met his with a similar haste, moving to a crescending tune only he knew. Stringing him along expertly, applying dizzying pressure as their bodies met, holding him in place, hot, solid.
At last, Alfred broke apart their frenzied, hungry lips, gasping, panting, filling his lungs with air as pleasure threatened to tear him apart from the inside, hands vying to pull the vampire right back in.
Almost instinctively, his half-lidded eyes found Herbert's, drinking in the dark veil of unabashed hunger, desire over them, for him, all for him, a voice chanted in his mind. Wrong. Sinful. Captivating. Irresistible. A thumb ran across his lips, icy to the touch in contrast to the swollen, heated surface of Alfred’s mouth that had blossomed a deep red hue from the abuse, making him flinch, breath hitching once again. The world seemed to spin as a maddened carousel, illuminating candlelight leaving trails of sparks behind Alfred’s heavy eyelids. The world seemed to spin, the only anchor the wretched, intoxicating press of their bodies against one another.
Before he could force his parched throat to produce any kind of coherent sound that might have broken this spell, Alfred let his head fall backwards slowly until it rested on the solid dark wall, the movement unwittingly exposing the skin of his neck previously hidden by his collar. Immediately, hungry eyes followed the motion, gaze heavy, assured yet constrained, as though staking his claim. Slowly, enticingly, Herbert’s face moved closer once more. Like the thorns of a rose held gently, sharp fangs grazed at the skin of his throat without breaking it, at his jugular, resting right above the artery as the frantic pumping of his own blood reverberated in Alfred’s ears, deafened him. Herbert was being careful, too careful, dulling the feeling by running his tongue over the same path he had traced with his teeth, denying, holding onto a thin thread of control.
Alfred wanted him to lose it. To give in, just as he had, knew, in some primal way, what it would do to him. Wanted him to bury his teeth in him, desperately, wanted him to taste his blood, wanted him to crave it. To let the crimson fluid fill his pretty mouth, watch it bring him to bliss, to share this bone deep depravity he was being denied, ruin him as he himself had been, ruin him for anyone to come. Wanted so badly, had to have him.
Letting out a low whine at the sheer thought of it, feeling himself tremble as his forgotten grip on the silver silk of Herbert’s hair tightened, Alfred pushed the vampire’s face further into the crane of his neck, desperate, aching, hips resuming their frenzied movement mindlessly. The deafening rush of his pulse shielded him from the humiliating reality of the sounds tumbling out of his mouth, out of control, breathy whimpers adorning pleas for him to do it, to take him now. He felt Herbert’s mouth widening into a grin where their skin met, serpentlike as though he could see his Adam’s apple rise and fall quickly. Irrational, unholy want weighed his limbs heavy as the guilt of what he was begging for seemed to burn away with the candles’ wick, fuel the fire in his bloodstream until the sting of it blurred with the pleasure.
Glimpses of the professor’s disapproving face, an echo of Sarah’s song, God, how wrong it was, how inexplicably ecstatic that fact made him, the certain death Herbert’s impossibly beautiful mouth would bring, how alive he felt. That mouth, falling open slowly right next to where Alfred’s jaw met his neck, at last, ready to give in, give him what he wanted, the scrape of deadly teeth against salty skin, so close, almost–
“Not yet.”
And with those words whispered softly right by the shell of his ear, this cruel denial twisting with the mind-numbing pleasure of where their lower bodies collided, Alfred felt himself tumble over the edge with a wrecked cry. His vision gave out as the burning tension in his stomach finally released, paralyzing him momentarily with sweet, bone-deep satisfaction, hips slowing down in bliss. The world slowed and swam with warm hues of candlelight while he attempted to catch his labored, ragged breath, clinging onto the solid body in front of him, which now held him upright, weakly. It slowed warm and hazy and heavenly, while his frustration at being denied dissipated and he was left to lament distantly how long he had gone without this. How he would ever go on without this.
A sudden movement in his periphery broke through the serene trance; Dazed, Alfred blinked until his eyes regained focus, watching Herbert right himself swiftly, fangs hidden behind gracefully curved lips as though they had never been bared. Only the simmering hunger beneath his pretty, crystalline lashes hinted at his part in making Alfred come wholly undone. At the fact it had all truly happened. His hands abandoned their stabilizing grip at Alfred’s sides in favor of adjusting his skewed shirt, tracing a palm teasingly over his chest one last time, leaving it stuttering out his next breath. His hair fell softly on his face, in an impossibly beautiful state of disarray, a loose silken strand slipping from where it was haphazardly tucked behind his ear to land on the high of his cheekbone.
Alfred forced his mellow limbs to comply as he instinctively followed a wholly irrational urge to reach out and brush it out of his face, gently, as though intimately, racing against the return of reality and the endless stream of worried thought that followed it. In the quiet of the afterglow, his heart beat a steady rhythm–
Ba-thump. Ba-thump.
– once more.