Fic: Vampires Have Hearts Too
Written for this prompt at the DA Kink Meme.
August 1918
“Daisy!” Mrs Patmore’s bellow rang through the kitchen. “Hurry up and finish the luncheon, and then go and tell Mr. Branson to clear that newspaper off the kitchen table. We don’t want to read about revolutionaries at this hour; we’ll all get indigestion.”
“Oh, I can’t go in the garage,” Daisy said hastily.
Mrs. Patmore glared at her. “And why not, may I ask?”
Daisy ducked her head and muttered something about “Mr. Branson” and “smell”.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! It’s all a matter of self-control, Daisy. I’m astonished you’ve lasted for two hundred years if you go to pieces whenever there’s a red-blooded male in the room.”
“It’s the petrol in there!” Daisy said, blushing.
“Really, after the Thomas incident I’d have thought you’d have had enough of playing about with boys. Look what happened there! As if anyone wanted Thomas moodier and paler than he already was.”
“I told you, that was an accident. And he smelt so good-“
“Well if you have any more accidents you’ll soon have turned all of Yorkshire into a crowd of the undead. As if you weren’t satisfied with making me into a vampire, now we have to suffer Thomas griping on for all eternity as well, and Miss O’Brien too, after Thomas got hold of her.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Daisy pointed out.
“Just concentrate on taking responsibility for your own actions. You’ve got William wrapped around your little finger, and I must say it’s a mercy you’re not needed upstairs too often, otherwise who knows what could happen with all those officers wandering about. Be thankful that you aren’t a ladies’ maid either. I don’t know how Miss O’Brien manages-Daisy, are you listening to a word I’m saying?”
Daisy, who had been looking hungrily at one of the maids, jumped and blushed.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Patmore! I’m just starving.”
Mrs. Patmore rolled her eyes.
“It comes from having all that fresh blood upstairs, likely as not. There’s going to be an accident one of these days, you mark my words. Go and get the steak I set aside for us in the pantry; there’s not much, but we all have to make do in wartime.”
Daisy, speeding over to the pantry before Mrs. Patmore had even finished her sentence, stopped abruptly with one foot in the air and a blank expression on her face.
“For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter with you now?” Mrs. Patmore asked unsympathetically. “Surely you aren’t about to tell me that now you’re barred from the pantry as well as the garage.”
Daisy blinked slowly. “Someone just walked over my grave.”
“You don’t have a grave,” Mrs. Patmore reminded her matter-of-factly, “you have a coffin in the attic, and if someone’s walking over that then we’re all in trouble. Now hurry up and get that steak out. You’ve still got to finish peeling those vegetables for luncheon.”
“I think something’s wrong,” Daisy persisted. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“There’s likely nothing you can do about it on an empty stomach. Now tell your bones to sort themselves out and carry you over to the pantry before we both crumble into dust!”
xxxxx
“That poor lad,” Mrs. Hughes sighed. All the servants, who had spent the last few days since William and Mr. Crawley’s arrival at Downton looking very sombre, sighed along with her. Daisy, meanwhile, stared at her plate of mutton and tried to ignore Mrs. Patmore, who was giving her a meaningful look from the other side of the kitchen. She knew which topic of conversation was going to be restarted the moment all the others had left.
Sure enough, as soon as the last of the maids had finished their dinner and filed out of the door, Mrs. Patmore whizzed over to her.
“I don’t understand why you think this is such a terrible idea! More to the point, I don’t know how you’re prepared to sit back and see that poor lad die, and then his father likely grieve himself into an early grave.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to turn William into a vampire,” Daisy protested. “It seems…odd, you know. It’s William!”
“You managed with Thomas.”
“That was different,” Daisy said primly. “He wasn’t in love with me.”
Mrs. Patmore snorted. “I should think not. But I don’t see how that makes any difference. If anything, it makes it all the easier. William loves you, and now he can be with you forever. It’s simple enough even for you to understand.”
“I’m not sure if it’s a good idea, though.”
“Not a good idea?” Mrs. Patmore echoed, her eyebrows raised. “You liked him well enough before. You’re supposed to be marrying him; have you gone off him now he’s got himself blown up?”
“That’s a terrible thing to say!” Daisy’s eyes had misted up. “Of course I like William! But that doesn’t mean I want him to be a vampire.”
“He’ll just need to acclimatise,” Mrs. Patmore said wisely. “It might not be a proper life, but it’s better than no life at all.”
“I think he should be the one to decide that,” Daisy told her gravely.
“Don’t be daft, girl! Are you planning to just go up to him and say, ‘Oh, hello William, nice weather we’re having, now do you want me to turn you into one of the undead now, or would you rather wait until after breakfast?’”
Daisy brightened. “That’s a good idea actually, I could just ask him-“
“No you certainly could not! Lord, how you’ve survived this long I’ll never know. I should have thought this plan would appeal to you anyway, seeing as you’re always so desperate to sink your teeth into every nearby male under thirty.”
“But I don’t just want to make him a vampire if he doesn’t think it’s a good idea! He’s nice, William is. He mightn’t be happy with it. What about when we have to drink the horses’ blood on the nights we can’t get anything else to eat? He’s so soft-hearted that he’d starve in no time.”
“Stop dreaming up excuses!” Mrs. Patmore sounded quite angry by now. “He’s besotted with you; I’m sure he won’t be complaining about being with you for all eternity, horse blood or no horse blood.”
“But I’m not sure I want to be with him for all eternity.” Daisy’s voice was barely a squeak.
“So you’re just going to let him die, is that it? That poor boy who gave everything he had to his country is going to gasp his last up there and you’re just going to stand by and watch! Don’t be silly, Daisy.”
“It wouldn’t be fair,” Daisy said doggedly.
“Mrs Hughes is looking out that blouse and skirt for you,” Mrs. Patmore continued, apparently not hearing a word Daisy said. “You’re getting married tomorrow, and after that you can sort out the other thing.”
With a determined look she departed from the kitchen, leaving Daisy absently rubbing her left canine with the pad of her thumb and looking very concerned.
xxxxx
“Hello, William,” Daisy squeaked, almost suffocating as she entered the room at the scent of all the flowers draped over the bed. William was too busy breathing raspily to do much else, but he managed to smile at her.
Deciding to seize the subject by the horns, Daisy asked him abruptly:
“William, do you want to die?”
William looked rather alarmed at the depressing start to the conversation.
“Of course I don’t want to die! But I don’t see there’s much I can do about it. It’s going to happen, I’ve accepted it and now I just need to know that you’re going to be looked after.” He gave Daisy a smile and tried to reach for her hand. Daisy hopped back.
“But what if there was, you know, something you could do about it? Something to make you stay alive?”
William sighed.
“I know that you’re only saying this because you care about me, Daisy, but it’s honestly all right. I know I’m going to die, the doctors have told me. And anyway, who wants to live forever?”
Daisy gulped.
“I’m just happy that I saved Captain Crawley, and that I have time to marry you,” continued William, oblivious. “That’s enough for me in this life, at least.”
Daisy was torn between hitting him in frustration and sprinting from the room sobbing.
“I’d better go and get ready, then,” she mumbled instead. “The vicar’s going to be here any minute, and Anna’s going to do my hair.”
She hurried out of the room and crashed straight into Mrs. Patmore.
“What are you playing at?” the cook whispered.
“I can’t do it, I just can’t,” Daisy hissed back. “He’s happy, he’s ready to go. Don’t make me do it, please; it’s not fair on either of us.”
Mrs. Patmore gripped Daisy by the shoulders and looked at her fiercely.
“I’m not going to sit around and watch you let William die. He’s too young, and he loves you, and the only thing that’s not fair around here is that poor boy breathing his last when he’s barely had a chance at life. You’re going to do it and that’s final.” She let go of Daisy and entered William’s room, leaving Daisy alone in the corridor, looking stricken.
xxxxx
“You don’t need to sit up with him, lass, you’ve done all you can for him now. Go and have a sleep.”
“No thank you, Mr. Mason,” Daisy whispered back. “I’m not tired. And I don’t think I ought to; it doesn’t seem right.” She paused. “You can go and have a nap if you’d like; the bed’s been made up in the next room, and I can wake you if-if anything happens.”
Mr. Mason looked about to protest, but he was almost asleep where he sat and was apparently too tired to argue. He got slowly to his feet.
“You’re such a good girl to do this, Daisy, to give him peace. Thank you.”
He didn’t wait for a response, but shuffled from the room and closed the door softly behind him. Daisy barely heard him, even with her sharpened hearing. She was far too preoccupied. She wasn’t tired, of course (at least, not physically), but she was very thirsty. Not that that seemed to be much on an incentive to sink her teeth into William’s neck. She could smell death on him, and, although she ought to be used to that after having been able to sense its presence for several hundred years, it was still disconcerting.
“You look so peaceful, William,” she whispered, and she bent forward and kissed him on the cheek.
xxxxx
“It wasn’t right,” Daisy said softly, the moment she heard Mrs. Patmore enter the kitchen the next morning. All the other servants had long since eaten breakfast and left to start their day, but Daisy had wanted time to think. “It wasn’t my place to meddle, and he wouldn’t have wanted it, I know he wouldn’t have. I didn’t get to choose to be like this, and I wouldn’t force it on him. I’m sorry if you’re angry-“
She had expected Mrs. Patmore to leap straight into an hour-long scolding, but instead the cook sat down heavily in the nearest chair and sighed.
“No, I’m sorry, Daisy.”
Daisy blinked. Mrs. Patmore continued.
“After my nephew died I thought that I would have done anything to bring him back, anything at all. And then when William came back here I couldn’t help thinking about Archie and how badly I’d wished that he could have had another chance. But sometimes the only thing you can do is let things go and move on. You married William, you made him happy. That was all he wanted.” She sniffed. “It was all he needed in this life, and you gave it to him.”
Pulling out an enormous handkerchief, Mrs. Patmore blew her nose violently. Daisy patted her clumsily on the arm.
“There now, that’s enough silliness for one day,” Mrs. Patmore said, giving a last sniff. “You need some breakfast, unless you want to keel over by eleven o’clock. There was some raw beef left over from dinner yesterday; I put it in the pantry for you. You go and get it-just try not to get any more ‘feelings in your bones’, because that’s all we need right now.”
“No, Mrs. Patmore.”