The Gratuitous Vampire AU - Part 5
Finally done! (Sorry for the wait - my beta reader's had to deal with a seriously uncooperative couple of weeks) Total word count now comes to 16,000 words, which I am embarrassed to admit makes this truly gratuitous AU the single longest fic I've yet finished in this fandom (even Chain of Command barely made 12,000). clearly this only means I need to get going with the next long to epic length fic on my WIP list ASAP
Also, now it's done - I've no idea whether people actually have been spotting most of the random (and often somewhat oblique) references to assorted other bits of vampire pop fiction scattered through the earlier chapters, but I'll, oh, offer a drabble request or something to anyone who can list the most of them. ^_~
Title: Sign of the Cross (a.k.a. the Completely Gratuitous Guilty Gear Vampire AU)
Summary: Gears or vampires, it's all just another day's work for the Holy Order. But they never do quite manage to screen some of their more unusual recruits as carefully as they ought to either.
Characters/Pairing: Sol/Ky
Chapter: 5 of 5
Rating: NC-17 overall, PG for this part
Word Count: 2260
Previous Parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Ky wakes mid-morning to find himself in his own bed, alone. It takes him a beat to figure out why that's wrong - to convince himself the events of the previous night had been real - and two more for it to dawn on him that perhaps this was no more than what he should have expected all along. Out of everything he might have imagined Sol had implied the night before, he'd made no promises, and in the sobering light of day everything that took place can't help but look very different.
It soon proves that Sol is not in his quarters, or the mess hall, and not his favourite corner of the courtyard either. No-one Ky asks can recall seeing Sol anywhere in the headquarters since daybreak, nor have the gate-wardens seen him leave. He may as well have disappeared, and Ky would have to be a fool not to wonder whether that hadn’t been exactly what he’d intended. Sol’s secret is out, and if he has any doubt that Ky will keep it, by the time Ky woke this morning, Sol would have had long enough to be miles away.
Sol had to know what Ky would assume if he woke and found him gone. He had to know what Ky would do. If he had any sense he'd be raising the alarm already - everyone in the Order could be woken and warned about the monster that had been hiding itself in their midst by the lunch bell.
Instead, he finds himself returning to his room before he’s treated the option to more than a passing thought.
If he had any sense, he would never have frozen at the sight of his own sword sticking out of Sol’s side last night.
When Ky had first rushed out after waking he'd done little more than throw on his clothes at speed. Now, peeling back his collar in front of his bedroom mirror gives him his first look at the mark he’d had to resist the urge to finger all morning. The bite-mark stands out stark red against his skin, but Ky has to conclude that inasmuch as he has any experience with the subject, it looks no worse than an ordinary love bite or suction mark. The puncture wounds he knows should be there are gone completely. The spot is still sensitive when he explores it with his fingers, but compared to what he felt last night when Sol had…
What he’d felt last night in the heat of the moment - it doesn’t mean anything he could count on.
Sol has until sundown, he decides, forcing himself to make eye contact with his reflection. He’ll decide what action ought to be taken then, and not a moment sooner.
Sol can’t expect Ky to wait for answers any longer than that.
***
Sol shows up at the gate an hour later, and immediately causes such a ruckus that Ky hears it all the way from the courtyard and takes off at a run, relief expanding into writhing knots in his chest that make it hard to breath. He catches Sol staggering through the archway, two worried looking wardens at his heels. Sol has his right hand clutched over his left side, blood oozing through his fingers and staining the white of his uniform to match its trim. Fear of a very different flavour rises in Ky's throat and has to be forced down with effort; Sol is a vampire - Ky lets himself frame the thought for the first time since last night - and he's still on his feet, this couldn't possibly be enough to do him in.
Sol catches sight of Ky and hunches away again, more irritated than ashamed to have been caught like this. At the sight of their captain the wardens hesitate.
“What is going on here?” Ky demands.
“Sir, he's refusing to go to the medics!” a warden supplies.
“It's a fucking scratch,” Sol snaps. The man flinches back a pace, but for a moment Ky could have sworn he caught something in Sol's eye that begs him to understand.
“I'll be the judge of that,” he says. “Have someone send a first aid kit to my quarters.” The last he directs to the warden, who looks surprised but relieved to have a matter like an injured Sol taken off his hands. Ky turns his attention back to Sol. “And while I'm deciding, you can explain to me exactly what you were doing to get yourself a 'scratch' like that at this time of day.”
Ky turns on his heel and stalks back toward his room, not looking back even when he hears the uneven sound of Sol's footsteps following behind him. By the time he arrives the hammering of his heart against his chest has almost calmed to normal. Even he's not entirely sure how much of that performance was an act, or for who's benefit.
The first-aid kit arrives moments after they do (angry captains are nearly as effective as wounded men at inspiring quick action). Sol takes a seat on Ky's bed and removes his shirt without a word. Underneath are three puncture wounds a few inches apart, slowly oozing blood down his side. Ky could not have begun to guess how deep they might be; if Sol had been anyone else he would have sent him straight to the duty medic. As it is, Ky merely wipes him down with a damp cloth and covers the wound with a layer of gauze and bandages, hands moving on automatic through the too-familiar task. Everything he wants to say is going to wait until Sol's no longer bleeding.
“You smell so damn good right now,” Sol breathes, as Ky is fastening the end of the bandage in place. Ky manages not to drop the clasp, and makes himself finish before replying.
“Do you mean me or my blood?” He tries to make the question sound more objective than he feels.
“Either,” says Sol, as if the difference isn't important.
Not sure what to make of that, Ky presses a hand lightly over the bandages covering Sol's side. “Last night,” he ventures, “you healed much faster than this.”
“Last night I'd just fed.”
“Do you need to... feed again?” Ky asks.
“Nah,” says Sol, leaning back. “I'm good for a while. Give me a few hours and I'll be good as new.”
Ky looks up into Sol's face. “Sol, what on earth did this to you?”
Sol hesitates only for a moment. “Met him last night. Remember?”
For a moment Ky wonders whether Sol is talking about himself, then his memory turns up the face of the other vampire, one glimpse of whom had sent Sol into such a rage he'd forgotten Ky was watching at all. “Him... he came back?”
“Went after him,” Sol admits. “Bastard stabbed me and ran off.”
“Who was he? You seemed to know each other.” Despite everything that came later, he'd left the sort of impression on Ky that he wouldn't soon forget.
“Calls himself 'Testament'.” Sol spits out the name. “I've been hunting him over a century.”
“You found him this morning? In the daylight?”
“Doesn't slow his kind down much,” says Sol, voice lowering to a growl. “He's one of hers.”
Ky stares. “'Hers', you don't mean...”
“What else would I mean?”
Ky takes a deep breath. “You're talking about the stories about the Vampire Queen? The first of the vampires, who commands the will of every one made after her... those stories are true?” It's not the most far-fetched tale of the creation of the vampire race he knows, but on reflection, hardly more impossible than everything else he's seen in the last twenty-four hours.
Sol snorts. “They left out a lot, but she's real.”
“Sol...” Ky has so many questions he hardly knows where to begin.
Something in Sol's face closes down, but he leans forward until he's almost whispering in Ky's ear. “I'm the only one she didn't make. And I've been hunting her since before your Holy Order existed.”
Ky shivers. He should be asking more questions, he should want to know every detail Sol can give him, but all of this - Sol being a vampire, vampires who walk out of stories no-one had ever known the truth of and into broad daylight, not to mention Sol himself - is already as much as he can take in at once. Whatever might be said for Sol, the fact remains that Ky doesn't want to believe him capable of betraying them any more today than he did last night. The sordid details of Sol's past aren't nearly as important as knowing he's here to stay. Those can wait until they're both ready for them.
Ky shakes his head; this is going to take some getting used to. “So all those times you went hunting alone, without permission...”
“A guy's gotta feed.” Sol shrugs.
Ky looks up at him in horror. Of all the difficult questions he's been pushing to the back of his mind, this is one that's far too important to ignore, and he can't think of any possible answer that he's going to like.
“I don't eat humans,” says Sol, looking him right in the eye. Ky shakes his head in disbelief.
“Sol, I've seen what happens to vampires who are forced to live on animal blood, and we'd know if you'd been-”
“Who said anything about animals?” Sol snorts. “I live just fine on other vampires.”
“Oh.” Relief mixes with embarrassment that he hadn't thought of that himself. No wonder Sol's always been so vague about the results of solo hunting excursions. “I didn't realise that was possible.”
“Just as good as human blood. Better - don't need it as often.”
Relief, Ky reflects, is an unbelievably draining emotion. He's had more bursts of it than could be at all healthy in the last few hours.
“Any more dark secrets I should be asking you about?” he asks, tiredly.
Sol's face darkens.
“I see.” Ky has to admit he hadn't expected much less. He holds up a hand before Sol can try to elaborate. “I don't really want to know. Not today, at least. Just - promise me one thing,” one of Sol's hands is resting in his lap, and Ky places one his own on top of it, “you aren't leaving?”
Sol's eyebrows rise. “Leaving? The hell did you get that from?”
“Sol, since yesterday I've had to revise everything I thought I knew about you.”
“Hardly. Before tonight you had no idea there was anything to know.”
“I had no idea how little I knew,” Ky corrects him. “At the least, I thought I understood what you were doing in the Order. Now - it would seem foolish to assume anything.”
“Ch,” Sol grunts, but rather than answer a hand lands on Ky's neck, and Sol pulls him into a kiss, more gentle than deep this time. After a moment he leans back again.
“Got a reason or two worth staying,” he tells Ky. “That good enough?”
Ky nods mutely. Sol grins at him, and Ky's stomach twists - he'd realised last night Sol's smirk was never going to look the same to him again. He hadn't been wrong.
“Good.” That settled, Sol lets go of Ky and starts taking off his shoes. “Overdue for a good day's sleep. Testament can wait.” Depositing his belt on Ky's bedside table, Sol climbs into the bed. Ky watches with faint bemusement; vampiric sleeping habits do shed a lot of light (so to speak) on some of Sol's lazier tendencies when expected to do anything in his off-duty daylight hours.
“You do have your own quarters,” he says fondly.
Sol cracks open an eye. “And how much sleep did you get last night?”
Probably not more than two or three hours - he's been running mostly on nerves all morning. Sol does have a point.
Sol shifts over to make room for him, then rolls straight back into Ky's space as soon as he settles down. It's... nice, actually. Easier to relax in Sol's presence than it ever was when Ky still thought he was human.
“Wake me before you leave this time?” he murmurs, already sleepy.
“Not getting me out of here before sundown with a crowbar,” Sol grumbles back.
Ky's pretty sure he can deal with that.
The rest is going to take some more getting used to. He'd be naive to assume his job hasn't just been made a lot more complicated, but he never chose this path in life expecting it to be easy. Life with Sol is never going to deserve that descriptor either, but at least that much came as no surprise.
It's fair to say the full absurdity of the situation hasn't sunk in yet, but if he ever meets Testament again he might almost be inclined to thank him for showing up at so inconvenient a moment. Probably best not to mention that to Sol, Ky thinks, more soberly. He hasn't given the impression he'd see it as a laughing matter.
After a second, he corrects the 'if' to 'when'. He can only imagine how long Sol's been hunting this Testament and his ilk, but he has no intention of letting him continue it alone.
But that's an argument they can save until after they've both had some rest. Right now, curled up snug and warm and just awake enough to enjoy every subtle reminder that Sol is sleeping only inches away, having a vampire in the Order seems a very welcome idea indeed.
Also, now it's done - I've no idea whether people actually have been spotting most of the random (and often somewhat oblique) references to assorted other bits of vampire pop fiction scattered through the earlier chapters, but I'll, oh, offer a drabble request or something to anyone who can list the most of them. ^_~
Title: Sign of the Cross (a.k.a. the Completely Gratuitous Guilty Gear Vampire AU)
Summary: Gears or vampires, it's all just another day's work for the Holy Order. But they never do quite manage to screen some of their more unusual recruits as carefully as they ought to either.
Characters/Pairing: Sol/Ky
Chapter: 5 of 5
Rating: NC-17 overall, PG for this part
Word Count: 2260
Previous Parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Ky wakes mid-morning to find himself in his own bed, alone. It takes him a beat to figure out why that's wrong - to convince himself the events of the previous night had been real - and two more for it to dawn on him that perhaps this was no more than what he should have expected all along. Out of everything he might have imagined Sol had implied the night before, he'd made no promises, and in the sobering light of day everything that took place can't help but look very different.
It soon proves that Sol is not in his quarters, or the mess hall, and not his favourite corner of the courtyard either. No-one Ky asks can recall seeing Sol anywhere in the headquarters since daybreak, nor have the gate-wardens seen him leave. He may as well have disappeared, and Ky would have to be a fool not to wonder whether that hadn’t been exactly what he’d intended. Sol’s secret is out, and if he has any doubt that Ky will keep it, by the time Ky woke this morning, Sol would have had long enough to be miles away.
Sol had to know what Ky would assume if he woke and found him gone. He had to know what Ky would do. If he had any sense he'd be raising the alarm already - everyone in the Order could be woken and warned about the monster that had been hiding itself in their midst by the lunch bell.
Instead, he finds himself returning to his room before he’s treated the option to more than a passing thought.
If he had any sense, he would never have frozen at the sight of his own sword sticking out of Sol’s side last night.
When Ky had first rushed out after waking he'd done little more than throw on his clothes at speed. Now, peeling back his collar in front of his bedroom mirror gives him his first look at the mark he’d had to resist the urge to finger all morning. The bite-mark stands out stark red against his skin, but Ky has to conclude that inasmuch as he has any experience with the subject, it looks no worse than an ordinary love bite or suction mark. The puncture wounds he knows should be there are gone completely. The spot is still sensitive when he explores it with his fingers, but compared to what he felt last night when Sol had…
What he’d felt last night in the heat of the moment - it doesn’t mean anything he could count on.
Sol has until sundown, he decides, forcing himself to make eye contact with his reflection. He’ll decide what action ought to be taken then, and not a moment sooner.
Sol can’t expect Ky to wait for answers any longer than that.
***
Sol shows up at the gate an hour later, and immediately causes such a ruckus that Ky hears it all the way from the courtyard and takes off at a run, relief expanding into writhing knots in his chest that make it hard to breath. He catches Sol staggering through the archway, two worried looking wardens at his heels. Sol has his right hand clutched over his left side, blood oozing through his fingers and staining the white of his uniform to match its trim. Fear of a very different flavour rises in Ky's throat and has to be forced down with effort; Sol is a vampire - Ky lets himself frame the thought for the first time since last night - and he's still on his feet, this couldn't possibly be enough to do him in.
Sol catches sight of Ky and hunches away again, more irritated than ashamed to have been caught like this. At the sight of their captain the wardens hesitate.
“What is going on here?” Ky demands.
“Sir, he's refusing to go to the medics!” a warden supplies.
“It's a fucking scratch,” Sol snaps. The man flinches back a pace, but for a moment Ky could have sworn he caught something in Sol's eye that begs him to understand.
“I'll be the judge of that,” he says. “Have someone send a first aid kit to my quarters.” The last he directs to the warden, who looks surprised but relieved to have a matter like an injured Sol taken off his hands. Ky turns his attention back to Sol. “And while I'm deciding, you can explain to me exactly what you were doing to get yourself a 'scratch' like that at this time of day.”
Ky turns on his heel and stalks back toward his room, not looking back even when he hears the uneven sound of Sol's footsteps following behind him. By the time he arrives the hammering of his heart against his chest has almost calmed to normal. Even he's not entirely sure how much of that performance was an act, or for who's benefit.
The first-aid kit arrives moments after they do (angry captains are nearly as effective as wounded men at inspiring quick action). Sol takes a seat on Ky's bed and removes his shirt without a word. Underneath are three puncture wounds a few inches apart, slowly oozing blood down his side. Ky could not have begun to guess how deep they might be; if Sol had been anyone else he would have sent him straight to the duty medic. As it is, Ky merely wipes him down with a damp cloth and covers the wound with a layer of gauze and bandages, hands moving on automatic through the too-familiar task. Everything he wants to say is going to wait until Sol's no longer bleeding.
“You smell so damn good right now,” Sol breathes, as Ky is fastening the end of the bandage in place. Ky manages not to drop the clasp, and makes himself finish before replying.
“Do you mean me or my blood?” He tries to make the question sound more objective than he feels.
“Either,” says Sol, as if the difference isn't important.
Not sure what to make of that, Ky presses a hand lightly over the bandages covering Sol's side. “Last night,” he ventures, “you healed much faster than this.”
“Last night I'd just fed.”
“Do you need to... feed again?” Ky asks.
“Nah,” says Sol, leaning back. “I'm good for a while. Give me a few hours and I'll be good as new.”
Ky looks up into Sol's face. “Sol, what on earth did this to you?”
Sol hesitates only for a moment. “Met him last night. Remember?”
For a moment Ky wonders whether Sol is talking about himself, then his memory turns up the face of the other vampire, one glimpse of whom had sent Sol into such a rage he'd forgotten Ky was watching at all. “Him... he came back?”
“Went after him,” Sol admits. “Bastard stabbed me and ran off.”
“Who was he? You seemed to know each other.” Despite everything that came later, he'd left the sort of impression on Ky that he wouldn't soon forget.
“Calls himself 'Testament'.” Sol spits out the name. “I've been hunting him over a century.”
“You found him this morning? In the daylight?”
“Doesn't slow his kind down much,” says Sol, voice lowering to a growl. “He's one of hers.”
Ky stares. “'Hers', you don't mean...”
“What else would I mean?”
Ky takes a deep breath. “You're talking about the stories about the Vampire Queen? The first of the vampires, who commands the will of every one made after her... those stories are true?” It's not the most far-fetched tale of the creation of the vampire race he knows, but on reflection, hardly more impossible than everything else he's seen in the last twenty-four hours.
Sol snorts. “They left out a lot, but she's real.”
“Sol...” Ky has so many questions he hardly knows where to begin.
Something in Sol's face closes down, but he leans forward until he's almost whispering in Ky's ear. “I'm the only one she didn't make. And I've been hunting her since before your Holy Order existed.”
Ky shivers. He should be asking more questions, he should want to know every detail Sol can give him, but all of this - Sol being a vampire, vampires who walk out of stories no-one had ever known the truth of and into broad daylight, not to mention Sol himself - is already as much as he can take in at once. Whatever might be said for Sol, the fact remains that Ky doesn't want to believe him capable of betraying them any more today than he did last night. The sordid details of Sol's past aren't nearly as important as knowing he's here to stay. Those can wait until they're both ready for them.
Ky shakes his head; this is going to take some getting used to. “So all those times you went hunting alone, without permission...”
“A guy's gotta feed.” Sol shrugs.
Ky looks up at him in horror. Of all the difficult questions he's been pushing to the back of his mind, this is one that's far too important to ignore, and he can't think of any possible answer that he's going to like.
“I don't eat humans,” says Sol, looking him right in the eye. Ky shakes his head in disbelief.
“Sol, I've seen what happens to vampires who are forced to live on animal blood, and we'd know if you'd been-”
“Who said anything about animals?” Sol snorts. “I live just fine on other vampires.”
“Oh.” Relief mixes with embarrassment that he hadn't thought of that himself. No wonder Sol's always been so vague about the results of solo hunting excursions. “I didn't realise that was possible.”
“Just as good as human blood. Better - don't need it as often.”
Relief, Ky reflects, is an unbelievably draining emotion. He's had more bursts of it than could be at all healthy in the last few hours.
“Any more dark secrets I should be asking you about?” he asks, tiredly.
Sol's face darkens.
“I see.” Ky has to admit he hadn't expected much less. He holds up a hand before Sol can try to elaborate. “I don't really want to know. Not today, at least. Just - promise me one thing,” one of Sol's hands is resting in his lap, and Ky places one his own on top of it, “you aren't leaving?”
Sol's eyebrows rise. “Leaving? The hell did you get that from?”
“Sol, since yesterday I've had to revise everything I thought I knew about you.”
“Hardly. Before tonight you had no idea there was anything to know.”
“I had no idea how little I knew,” Ky corrects him. “At the least, I thought I understood what you were doing in the Order. Now - it would seem foolish to assume anything.”
“Ch,” Sol grunts, but rather than answer a hand lands on Ky's neck, and Sol pulls him into a kiss, more gentle than deep this time. After a moment he leans back again.
“Got a reason or two worth staying,” he tells Ky. “That good enough?”
Ky nods mutely. Sol grins at him, and Ky's stomach twists - he'd realised last night Sol's smirk was never going to look the same to him again. He hadn't been wrong.
“Good.” That settled, Sol lets go of Ky and starts taking off his shoes. “Overdue for a good day's sleep. Testament can wait.” Depositing his belt on Ky's bedside table, Sol climbs into the bed. Ky watches with faint bemusement; vampiric sleeping habits do shed a lot of light (so to speak) on some of Sol's lazier tendencies when expected to do anything in his off-duty daylight hours.
“You do have your own quarters,” he says fondly.
Sol cracks open an eye. “And how much sleep did you get last night?”
Probably not more than two or three hours - he's been running mostly on nerves all morning. Sol does have a point.
Sol shifts over to make room for him, then rolls straight back into Ky's space as soon as he settles down. It's... nice, actually. Easier to relax in Sol's presence than it ever was when Ky still thought he was human.
“Wake me before you leave this time?” he murmurs, already sleepy.
“Not getting me out of here before sundown with a crowbar,” Sol grumbles back.
Ky's pretty sure he can deal with that.
The rest is going to take some more getting used to. He'd be naive to assume his job hasn't just been made a lot more complicated, but he never chose this path in life expecting it to be easy. Life with Sol is never going to deserve that descriptor either, but at least that much came as no surprise.
It's fair to say the full absurdity of the situation hasn't sunk in yet, but if he ever meets Testament again he might almost be inclined to thank him for showing up at so inconvenient a moment. Probably best not to mention that to Sol, Ky thinks, more soberly. He hasn't given the impression he'd see it as a laughing matter.
After a second, he corrects the 'if' to 'when'. He can only imagine how long Sol's been hunting this Testament and his ilk, but he has no intention of letting him continue it alone.
But that's an argument they can save until after they've both had some rest. Right now, curled up snug and warm and just awake enough to enjoy every subtle reminder that Sol is sleeping only inches away, having a vampire in the Order seems a very welcome idea indeed.