Chapter Text
He catalogues their touches, those first few days.
He loves the casual ones, the ones that let him pretend, for an instant, that they’re Belnades and Belmont and Tepes. A hand on his shoulder, on his arm. Wrestling over a bottle with Belmont. Splashing Sypha over the dishes.
They touch him without pretension. Without ulterior motives. Sypha steals the last of dessert off his face, and licks her fingers clean, and Belmont argues with her about it. They bump elbows while they work. Sypha, in particular, puts him to work the instant she sees his mind wander. She hits him, open-handed, lightly, on the back of the head when he displeases her. Belmont jostles him nearly every time they pass each other in the hall, and those brief crashes of their bodies feel like a hug.
They do hug him, as well, and it makes tears well up in his eyes every time. They’re polite, even. Belmont likes to rest his hands between Alucard’s shoulder-blades, and Alucard leans into it every time. Sypha drags him places by the hand, whenever she gets excited about something. At least once a day, she finds something in the castle or the hold that she needs to show him.
He appreciates it, even when he knows she’s putting on a show for him.
He drinks himself stupid every night, after the first. Belmont carries him to bed, and Alucard thinks about asking him to stay. Thinks about clinging to him so tight that Belmont gives up and sleeps next to him.
Then, he thinks about a warm body, next to him in a too-big bed, thinks about Belmont undressing to sleep, and he curls up in his coffin until he no longer wants to vomit.
He fiddles with the vents, when he slips out of their view for an hour or two, until air and noise flow from their room into his. Their scents, their heartbeats, soothe him.
He daydreams, nightdreams, fantasizes about sneaking into their room, sleeping between them and the hearth. Warm, his senses consumed by them.
He fantasizes about sleeping with his head in one of their laps, the way that Sypha fell asleep on Belmont once. About them running their fingers through his hair, gentle, always gentle. He stops it before he thinks about them pulling his hair, unzipping pants and forcing him to –
It’s odd, how nausea and arousal curl around each other now. One of the benefits of being drunk, more often than not, is that he doesn’t get hard easily.
He thinks, instead, about Sypha’s infamously cold feet, up against his legs. About Belmont’s chin on top of his head, Alucard’s ear against his throat, hearing every beat of his carotid. He thinks about them being still, utterly still, for him, moving only when he asks them to. Thinks about sleeping with Sypha or Belmont in the middle – bodies surrounding him taste like bile – but he likes the idea of tangling his fingers with one of them, joined hands on the other’s waist.
He wants to curl on his side and hold one of them close, his breath on their neck, his hands on their body, faced away so they can’t see him cry.
It’s when he sees them in the baths that his fantasies change.
They never stop bickering, even when words catch in his throat. They’re appreciative of the water heater he fixed the previous day, they splash each other. Sypha teases Belmont for being filthy. He flirts with her, shamelessly.
Without their voices, he thinks that seeing them, all bare skin, would get to him. But he closes his eyes, whenever he can’t seem to move, and listens to them laugh. He can hear how Sypha’s breathing gets deeper, as she gets the chance to soak sore muscles. How Belmont’s heartbeat picks up when Sypha insists on “helping” him wash. He should be embarrassed, to bear witness to their blatant foreplay, but he’s too busy feeling like a child let in on a secret.
He watches them kiss, watches them get carried away into an old rhythm nearly as steamy as the baths, watches as Sypha remembers with a start that they’re not alone. She glances at him, studying his face for a reaction.
He has no idea what’s on his face.
“We should talk about this,” she says.
Belmont doesn’t look thrilled about that, but he rarely disagrees with Sypha, not really.
“Talk about what?” Alucard asks. None of them, not even Belmont, are stupid enough to believe that, but he wouldn’t mind avoiding this conversation a little longer.
Sypha glares at him, hard enough that the bath chills two degrees.
“Once we’re done,” Belmont says, and Sypha accepts that easily enough. They all half-doze in the warmth. Alucard’s mind, wandering, thinks about kissing them in the baths, thinks about diving under the water and holding his breath to pleasure them as they kiss above him. Thinks about watching them touch each other, jealousy and arousal combining without a hint of bile in his throat.
By the time they get out, both of the humans are moving a little more easily, old wounds soothed. Alucard waits longer than he means to, for his erection to subside.
Once they’re dressed, they gather around the kitchen table. It’s clean, in here – Alucard keeps it that way, the least he can do to thank Sypha. Her eyes hold approval, and it warms him from the inside.
“So,” Belmont says.
“So,” Sypha parrots.
Belmont sighs. “I like you. I like Sypha. I don’t feel the need to make this complicated if you don’t.”
“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Sypha says. “But Trevor is right.”
And Alucard’s breath stops. He’s not sure what to think, for a few moments.
“Ah, shit,” Belmont says. “Alucard?”
“Yes. I’m here. You’re both-”
“In love with you? Yes,” Sypha says.
Belmont grumbles, “No need to get sappy,” and gets an elbow to the ribs for his troubles.
“Same,” is the first word that comes to Alucard’s lips, and then, “I don’t want to- disappoint you.”
“You won’t,” Sypha says.
“Look, worst case, right, we try some shit out, we find out it doesn’t work out, and we go back to this. To being friends.”
Alucard nods before he even realizes he’s moving, eager in spite of himself. “I’d like that.”
“I agree.” Sypha smiles, lighting up the room like a lamp. Both he and Belmont stare at that now-rare smile. “Alucard – I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Are there things we shouldn’t do?”
It’s a polite way to put that Alucard is a disaster that sleeps in a box.
“Don’t get shy on us. I promise you, Sypha’s told me something weirder than you can come up with,” Belmont says.
Sypha’s friendly glare proves the truth of that.
“I don’t think I’d enjoy being- grabbed. I don’t like being on my back.” He hesitates, studies their faces. They’re earnest, oddly enough. Caring, to a degree that brings tears to his eyes. “I like watching you.”
Belmont blushes at that, of all things. Like such a juvenile, vanilla fantasy is the filthiest thing he’s ever heard.
Perhaps Alucard’s standards for typical were skewed by the novels he’d read.
“I’d like to kiss you,” Belmont says, voice gravelly.
“I’d like that,” Alucard says, and leans forward across the table. Kisses him, forcefully, as if everything in him requires him to win this kiss.
Maybe it does.
Belmont – is he Trevor now? Kisses back, yielding and pliant under him. It’s addictive.
He breaks the kiss, straightens up.
Sypha’s eyes are glittering with excitement. “We can make this work.”
Sypha stops him, before bed. “Come sleep with us?”
Alucard freezes.
“She just means sleep,” Trevor says, breezing past them. He sheds his clothes like he’s never known modesty, and Alucard looks away to avoid distraction.
“I haven’t slept in a bed in a long time,” Alucard says.
“We don’t have to share,” Sypha says. “But I’d like to have you in the room.”
It sounds too good to be true. But he wants to hear them, wants to watch them sleep when he can’t, wants to kiss them good morning while they still taste like sleep.
Trevor sticks his head out of the room, stripped down to his pants. “Are we moving the coffin or not, pretty boy?”
“Yes.”
He watches them, greedily, watches Sypha strip down to her shift and curl up under three or four blankets, hoarding them before Trevor could even make it into bed.
After Sypha blows out the light, he listens to the way their heartbeats sync up. They breathe together, in the dark, and Alucard finds himself breathing with them. He hopes, as he falls asleep, that in the morning, his heart will beat in sync with theirs.
He sleeps through the night. The nightmares don’t get bad enough to wake him. Instead, they roam through his mind, people bleeding into one another, images melting together in an odd mix of delight and horror. In the morning, he wakes up confused, half-hard, and jumpy.
Trevor meets his eyes, awake but not yet ready to move.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Good morning,” Alucard says, and sits up. He didn’t expect the coffin to be as comfortable as it was – he doesn’t remember much of the last one – but the velvet-lined inside is soft beneath his fingers.
Sypha is already gone – he’s surprised that he didn’t wake from it. He unfolds from the coffin, stands barefoot on the stone floor. Makes a mental note to bring in a rug.
“Get over here,” Alucard says.
Trevor sits up, muttering, “You’re not the boss of me.” Still, he sits on the edge of the bed, looking up.
Alucard leans down and kisses him. Cups the back of Trevor’s head with one hand. He tastes wonderful, blood thrumming just under his skin.
“Don’t leave me out,” Sypha says from the doorway, startles them apart.
“I didn’t mean to,” Alucard protests, but he walks over to her. Kisses her, and immediately delights in her responsiveness. She squeaks at the contact, gasps at an incidental brush of his fangs.
He feels powerful, kissing them. In control of their reactions, in control of what they might do.
And then Trevor comes up behind him, and he nearly jumps out of his skin at the first brush of contract.
“Are you trying to sneak up on me?” Alucard bluffs. “You’re not stealthy, Trevor.”
“So I’m Trevor now?” he teases.
And, well, there’s nothing he can say to that, is there? Nothing but silencing Trevor with another kiss.
By the time they pay enough attention for Sypha to point out there’s breakfast, they’re all giddy, with kiss-swollen lips.
They go to the kitchen hand-in-hand, and Alucard revels in the warmth on either side of him.