Work Text:
Evan is anxious. He knows he should be excited, but he is anxious. He is one of the youngest recruits to the Rosier Clan, ever, and he got his first chance to prove himself worthy of being a member of one of the oldest vampire clans.
Even when he was just a spawn, Evan listened to the stories of the gifts of the elders: gifts of flight, of creating and controlling fire, of mind reading, of communing with the dead and of seeing beyond the veil. He doesn’t know what to do with most of these powers if he’s being honest, but it’s the idea that provokes him into action: the idea of greater strength, and knowing that he passed the test and became a true Rosier.
The Rosier Clan is old and powerful, and Evan is young and ambitious. If Evan plays his cards correctly, he can have a taste of the ancient Rosier blood, and who knows what that will bring to him, that his cunning already has not.
So, he has his task. He has to bring home a ghoul. Home being the keyword here… Younger or solitary vampires never have homes, truly. The bane of an unaging existence, they have to move from one place to another, whenever the local mortal populace starts to grow suspicious of that one house, whose eternally youthful inhabitants have a world-weary air about them, and around which sudden disappearances start to pile up. Does moving bother Evan? Of course not. Why would you live an eternal life, stuck to one place? But he would have preferred if moving to a new place was a choice, instead of an obligation.
A home is one of the benefits the Rosier Clan will provide Evan. Next time Evan opts to change the scenery, it will be on his terms, not because of some looming threat to his existence. And when he tires of wandering, he will have a home to come back to.
The clan elders even picked a target for him: Bartemius Crouch Jr, the son of a renowned bureaucrat. Evan receives a short but thorough briefing about him. Bartemius Crouch is young, probably four or five years younger than Evan. Considering Evan has been twenty for about ten years, Bartemius looks a tad older. Even though Bartemius is the apple of his father’s eye, he doesn’t get along well with his family and doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends, or a job to speak of. Evan thinks Bartemius Crouch Jr. went into puberty and never came out of it. It’ll be child’s play for Evan to sink his fangs into this man. Evan likes to think that this easy but important target shows the clan’s willingness to complete his initiation.
Evan has a simple game plan. Bartemius is a cliche, the type of person Evan had come across quite a few times already. Evan just needs to introduce himself, build some semblance of trust, isolate the man, and instead of draining him, like he usually does with his victims, he’ll feed the man some of his blood, et voila! His very first ghoul, his ticket to power, clout and a home.
Of course, Evan can just overpower Bartemius, pull him into one of the dark alleys he always idles around and make him drink from him, but where’s the fun in that? See, Evan likes to play with his food.
After observing Bartemius for a few nights, Evan learns that he spends most of his nights at pubs or clubs and loiters around after he leaves a place. Bartemius looks around, tries to make small talk with the smokers outside, tries to pick a fight more often than not, gets frustrated when he fails, surprisingly prevails when he succeeds, and only heads home when he has no other option. He doesn’t dress for the weather, and always sports cuts and bruises on whatever body part is visible.
Bartemius looks buzzed, on the night that Evan finally decides to approach him, to the advantage of Evan.
To Evan’s luck, Bartemius tries to strike up a conversation with a few regulars and doesn’t find whatever he is looking for. People are likely getting used to his shenanigans. He’ll have to find a new bar, Evan thinks. The thought tickles something in the back of his mind, but he doesn’t have a chance to dwell on it, Bartemius is heading home. Bartemius takes three unsteady steps to the curb and misses a step when he gets to the edge of the curb to hail a cab.
Evan doesn’t miss this chance and appears next to the man, just as he falters.
“Careful there.” Evan catches Bartemius by the elbow. He expects Bartemius to flinch at the foreign touch, but to his surprise, Bartemius balances himself by holding on to Evan’s waist, as if he wanted someone to catch him.
“Oof, thanks mate.” Bartemius takes his hand back from around Evan’s waist with the same swiftness that he put it there, gets in the first car that stops in front of them and leaves before Evan can get out another word.
Evan is disappointed, to say the least, Bartemius is his clan-picked target and now Evan lost his chance. He can’t follow Bartemius home, he can’t risk scaring him away from drinking from him. He doesn’t let this small delay dishearten him though, he’ll have another chance tomorrow, what’s one more night in an endless life?
Evan is ready, the next night, he follows Bartemius into a pub and runs into him accidentally. He doesn’t want to wait for Bartemius to remember him, so he doesn’t miss a beat.
“Hey! Didn’t I see you last night? Misstep outside the Hogshead?”
“Huh? Yeah, thanks for the save.” Bartemius doesn’t look impressed, or like he particularly remembers Evan. It annoys Evan quite a bit, he wasn’t hard on the eyes before becoming a vampire, and becoming one only enhanced his looks (if you ask him).
“I’m Evan, how’re you feeling today?”
“I’m good.” Bartemius doesn’t offer his name, or continue the conversation. It seems from his posture that he wants to create an air of danger, he makes himself big and doesn’t say much, but his posh accent betrays him.
“Funny running into each other, two nights in a row…”
Bartemius stares at Evan unblinkingly, eyebrows raised with mild annoyance.
“Big city and all…”
“Is there anything you want, Evan?” Bartemius forces the ‘Evan’ out like he wants to stress that Evan’s being too familiar, and Bartemius doesn’t want any of that.
It’s a striking difference from the man who kills at least twenty minutes in front of clubs or who practically hugged Evan at the slightest touch last night.
“Nothing, I was just making small talk. I didn’t want to bother you, I’ll just leave…” It’s a bluff and Bartemius doesn’t see it.
Evan sees the tiniest pang of panic on Bartemius’s face though. He takes two steps away from Bartemius, threatening to disappear back into the crowd.
“Wait, don’t leave. I guess you just blindsided me. Barty.”
There’s my boy, Evan thinks to himself. He never thought of Bartemius as a Barty, not that it matters. Barty would be a nobody come this dawn.
For a man who’s too shy to start talking, Barty doesn’t shut up. He has opinions on everything. He speaks softly and slowly when he explains something but gets heated and loud when he disagrees with Evan. He throws himself completely behind even the smallest arguments; he defends his choice of beer with the same fervour as he does Arsenal’s latest tactics or the detriments of the elite boarding school culture. It seems to Evan that their conversation is always teetering at the edge, one wrong word or statement or tic from Evan, and Barty is ready to erupt. Thankfully their conversation falls into a rhythm and they seem to be agreeing on most accounts.
At some point, Evan tries to bring up the creatures of the night, to test the waters a little, and of course, Barty read the Vampire Chronicles, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Salem’s Lot, Twilight and The Little Vampire series. He doesn’t think crosses or garlic work against them, it would be too simple (correct) but he thinks he can instantly recognize a vampire (obviously incorrect). When Evan pries, Barty tells him that it’s unlikely that either of them will ever see a real vampire: “A cabal, hundreds of years old Evan, they are probably the richest of the rich! They won’t come to us, they probably have fresh blood delivered to them!”
“GoreDash,”
“What?”
“They should call it GoreDash.”
Barty blinks a few times before he starts laughing. It's not a booming, screaming sort of laugh, but it manages to drown out every other sound in Evan's ears.
Hours later, Evan almost forgets the dawn and becomes a nobody. Before he hurries back to his latest dwelling, Evan tells Barty that “he wouldn’t be impartial to seeing him again” and is presented with Barty’s full smile.
Evan congratulates himself that night, lying in his reinforced IKEA cabinet (it’s not practical to get coffins transported all over the UK). He has made great progress with his target, a few more nights like this, and Barty will probably volunteer himself to the Rosier Clan as a ghoul. He resolves to throw himself a feast the next night.
Evan does not see Barty for the next few days, he finds the most disgusting people roaming the London nights and he hunts. He is not in a hurry, now that he sees no possibility of failure, and well, he’s decided to have a bit of fun with it.
They meet a few more times after their first (real) encounter.
On their second meeting, Evan learns that they almost went to the same school (“I knew you were a boarder!” Barty screams to his face.)
Barty greets Evan with an “Oi, Cinderella!” on their third meeting, “Because you always have to leave early.” Evan laughs at him for finding the break of dawn early. “It’s early next day.” Barty retorts.
Barty tells him about his family during their fourth meeting, he’s an only child, and he believes his parents love him, but their love manifests very differently from what Barty needs, he finds it stifling, and he’s tired of trying to find a middle ground.
Barty calls their fifth meeting “a date or whatever”, and Evan doesn’t protest. They share their first kiss at the end of the night. Evan likes to think he’s more inclined to call it “whatever” than “date”, but the kiss feels comparable to the first time he tasted vampiric blood and nothing like the numerous other kisses he experienced. It’s short, a peck on the lips really, but it feels mighty, like it has the strength to hold a barrage of something behind it. Barty initiates and ends it, but he looks like he is caught by surprise himself.
Being this close to Barty’s face under the harsh streetlights and the first lights of the day marking the end of their ‘date or whatever’, Evan realises that Barty doesn’t have any new bruises on his face. Whatever marks he had are fading, more yellow-green than the purples that he had seen almost a week ago.
They smile sheepishly at each other, and exchange ‘same time tomorrow’s and call it a night.
Evan stops counting afterwards. Each count-up feels like a countdown to a fast-approaching deadline.
—
Evan wakes up to the sound of someone knocking at his cabinet door two weeks to the day since he got his assignment. Only another vampire would know to find him there and to knock on a cabinet door in a random squatter's basement, so he knows what to expect when he unlocks it from the inside and opens the doors. An advantage to being a vampire: no bed head or hangovers.
A man is standing above him, a clansman, by the anachronistic looks of him. It’s the 21st century and this man is wearing frilly robes, at nighttime, in a squatter’s basement. A disadvantage to being a vampire: sometimes you have to act the stereotypical part.
“Good night Sir, will you please follow me to the house?”
It’s not a question, really. Evan does not have to provide an answer, and he does not have to ask what house. He dusts himself off, follows the man to the alley next to his dwelling, and submits himself to the man, who grabs Evan by his waist and flies them both onto the roof of a fancy Georgian house.
They walk down the stairs, unkempt and empty at the top, and filled with (soon to be fellow) Rosier vampires, clad in their robes, in the lower storeys.
Evan minds his posture and his gait more with each step and hopes he’s at his best when they arrive at a crowded ballroom.
Nights at the clan house always confuse Evan, he feels both at home amongst other vampires, and like a stranger. He imagined he’d feel at ease, drop the mortal act and have the chance to be himself, and in some ways he does. But more often than not, he is on guard. He didn’t think he’d be exchanging hunting stories near a fireplace, at least not immediately, but what he gets is even less. He has to make himself small, even smaller than when he is amid the mortals. He has to school his voice, he has to mind his manners. He pictured Blade, he got Underworld. He doesn’t love it, but he’s willing to suffer until he’s part of the clan, when he expects he will be the one around whom other fledglings have to be careful.
The first vampire who acknowledges him (besides his collector), is a woman, who looks like she’s in her forties, but Evan knows better. She is almost three hundred years old, and the head of this clan house. It is amazing really, to be the one pulling the strings, managing to protect and hide a population of vampires at least two hundred strong, in the middle of London. Evan can make a pretty strong guess as to why he’s being summoned by now. He is subconsciously reminded of Barty’s remarks when they first met.
“Ah, dear Evan, we are glad you could make it.” She greets Evan, with the ever-present illusion of choice.
“Of course, my Prince.” One of the first things Evan learnt. Whoever is the leader of whichever clan is called a Prince.
“It’s been two weeks since we gave you your assignment, and we haven’t heard from you since. We’re sure you made progress, Evan. Please, do tell.”
Oh, and didn’t Evan make progress? He’s not even slightly troubled when he starts speaking.
“Thank you, my Prince. I met the mark. I have gotten… familiar with him. I believe it’s only a matter of time until he follows me to this very house as our thrall. Forgive me my audacity for prolonging the matter.” Evan tries to keep up with the antediluvian air permeating the room, without saying too much. He was confident when he started speaking, but he sees now that he’s the only one who sees his progress as an achievement, without Barty standing behind him.
“We’re glad you haven’t forgotten your objective, Evan. It’s just…” A forced pause, more for the effects of it than for deliberation. “We expected you to finish it by now. Mortals don’t work in our time frame, you see, there’s only so much time Bartemius Crouch will be valuable to us.”
She words it like an expiration date for Bartemius Crouch, but it’s an ultimatum for Evan, really. Either he brings Barty home, soon, or he loses his chance, and there will surely be someone else to do the job.
“I see Prince, I will swiftly fulfil your expectations.”
“As I’m sure, Evan. Thank you and good night.”
“Thank you and good night Prince.”
Evan doesn’t see Barty that night. He has to feel that he has control over some things and remember why he’s trying to join the clan in the first place. He hunts, he preys, and he returns to his cabinet that was his home enough for so many months until the clan approached him.
He turns the events of the night in his mind once he locks himself in. He is almost there, isn’t he? He actually made friends (friends?) with Barty, he can ask him to exchange blood with him, jokingly, and Barty would be none the wiser. Evan’s sure Barty would even be into it.
The only problem, that turns the glorious taste of blood on Evan’s tongue metallic and sour, the remaining drops on his lips from syrupy to sickly, is what comes after it.
See, creating a ghoul is a process, tightly controlled by the maker of the ghoul.
One drink from a vampire and the mortal is spellbound, but it’s temporary, and the result is… nothing to write home to. You have a mortal, who’s marginally more inclined to do as you ask, say, than your best friend.
Two drinks and the mortal is enchanted by their maker. They will serve and protect you, to the best of their very limited mortal abilities, think a particularly schmoozy assistant.
Three drinks though, and you have a blood-bound ghoul, made almost superhuman by the vampiric blood. They live longer, heal faster, and the best part? Only an exceptionally strong-willed mortal will be able to resist the orders of their maker. Most of them love and obey their maker unconditionally.
Evan has seen blood-bound ghouls in the clan house, tirelessly shuffling to some place or other, running daily tasks, luring in new prey, maintaining the facade, with soulless stares and empty smiles. Barty, with his explosive personality, and his so, so many opinions does not fit that image.
Evan thinks of feeding Barty his blood, only once, but he knows once Barty enters the clan house, there’s no coming out of there, not as himself.
And, Evan knows he won’t be the vampire to feed Barty their blood three times. It’s something he knew deep down, from the beginning, but tonight it has slowly crept to the surface. Evan is, for all intents and purposes, GoreDash.
And Evan decides that he will not deliver.
The realisation hits him with the power of the midday sun. He does not want to turn Barty, the Rosier clan be damned. More. Damneder.
He cannot sleep until the next night, when he will tell Barty his grand plan: to skip town, basically. He doesn’t know how to broach the subject or how to convince Barty. He even thinks of slipping him some of his blood, just this once, so Barty is more amenable to the idea, but that’s a thought he quickly chases away.
He can’t just tell Barty to leave town and let him go, Evan decides: for one, the Prince will surely be furious with Evan, most likely not enough to go after him, but it makes sense to make himself scarce for a while. For another, Evan doesn’t know how much the Prince wants Barty, and in the case that the Prince really wants Barty, Evan can’t leave him alone. It’s just counterproductive. Evan has to protect him.
—
When Evan sees Barty the next night, his heart does that skip that it has been doing around Barty for some time. It’s just harder to ignore now that there’s a lot that hinges on tonight.
Evan greets Barty with a kiss, soft and slow, he deepens it when he feels Barty’s teeth grazing his lips. He lets out a chuckle at the irony of it. Off to a good start, at least he thinks to himself.
“Eager, have you missed me in just two days, E?” Barty asks as they fall into step towards a pub entrance.
Evan would normally clap back at Barty, but tonight he doesn’t have time to lose to banter: “Maybe I did? There’s something I need to tell you, I wanted…”
“Oh, fucking finally,” Barty stops in his tracks and pulls Evan to the closest, emptiest, darkest alley. “So, how do we do this?”
Evan’s brain short circuits at the implications, recollecting his thoughts would be a lot harder if he were a weaker man or he was not on a mission tonight. When he gathers his courage to look at Barty, so close to him that their chests almost touch, Barty’s yanking the collar of his shirt down, neck bared, looking at Evan expectedly from the corners of his eyes.
“What… what are you doing?” Evan tries to take a step back but hits a wall, he would melt into it if he could.
“You were going to drink my blood, and I’m allowing it.”
“What, how do you… Let go of your shirt for fucks sake! Why would I drink your blood?!”
“Because you’re a vampire.” Barty says it so freely, Evan would feel ashamed, if he weren’t completely dumbfounded. He still thinks around the word sometimes.
“No, I’m not! Nobody is!” Great going Evan, the Prince is going to put you into sleep, only to wake you up every hundred years to make fun of you.
“Evan. Evan. Baby. You’re here, I’m here, and the sun will be here in about six hours; will you sit with me in the Gardens and watch the sunrise?”
“I will!”
“Will you really?”
“I won’t.” Evan deflates.
“And that’s because…”
“I’m a vampire,” Evan whispers bashfully. He thinks maybe it’s better this way, he wanted to broach the subject, well, subject broached. It’s not like he had a solid strategy on how to break the news to Barty. “How did you know?”
“You never want to meet in daylight. You smell my neck and wrists. Who smells wrists? You, on the other hand, don’t have a smell. You’re always cold. Not one hair on your head changed since we met. You almost popped my arm out of its socket when you caught me that first night. You started talking about vampires, literally the first time we met. You ate half a loaf of garlic bread until I told you vampires probably weren’t bothered by garlic, I never saw you eat anything since then. When we first kissed, you stopped breathing, for ten minutes…”
“Okay, okay, I remember why it’s a mistake to mingle with mortals.” Evan laughs it off, but he’s impressed, Barty’s list seemed like it would go on a lot longer, had Evan not cut him off.
“You don’t think that.”
“I do think that, just not when it comes to you.”
“So, you were about to say something before your painful attempt at refusal?”
“Can we not discuss this here?”
Barty nods, and they walk back into the street. Evan notices that Barty favours the more crowded streets now, but he can’t work out for whose benefit, his or Barty’s.
“I was going to propose that you… that we leave town for a while.”
“Oh Evan,” Barty starts to laugh. “How did you figure that would work without telling me what you are?”
“I was going to tell you! I just didn’t know how to bring it up organically, but it was coming!”
“Organically, he says…” Barty’s shaking with laughter. When he finally catches his breath though, his face has gotten serious, “Why do you want to bail, no, why do you want me to bail specifically?”
“I… may have promised to bring you to a clan leader. Not promised! I’ve been tasked with it. I was tasked with it!”
“The fuck Evan?!” Barty freezes in the middle of the street. Now it’s back to a dark alley with them.
“I’m obviously not following it through, am I? I came here today, just to warn you.”
“Thank you, E.” Barty sounds only slightly sarcastic and surprisingly and uncharacteristically calm.
“What… why?”
“You should have let me finish my list. You’re not the first one they sent after me, you know that right? I assume anyone who I ran into three nights in a row is a vampire by now.” Barty regards Evan for a second, “Oh, you didn’t know.”
“I guessed they would probably assign the job to someone else after me, that’s why I was going to propose that I come with you. Wait, what happened to the others?”
“Well, let’s just say they failed to be as courteous with me as you are. Why do you think the clan’s persistently after me?”
“Because your father is Bartemius Crouch Senior, an...”
“A fifth-generation vampire hunter.” Barty completes Evan’s sentence.
Of all the twenty-something nth generation aristocrats in all of fucking London.
“And that makes you?” Evan asks, he hopes his voice doesn’t betray him. He’d start sweating if he could.
“The end of the line,” Barty replies.
Evan cannot believe this turn of events. He sneaks looks at Barty’s hands, open windows, and behind the fucking garbage bins for someone to jump out from behind them.
Barty must have realised the double meaning of what he said (and the sizes and trajectory of Evan’s eyes).
“Not yours, dummy. The end of the vampire hunter Crouch line. I’ve wanted to be a vampire since I was ten. Why do you think I’ve fallen out with the family?”
“I don’t know, you told me you couldn’t get along!” Evan would start breathing if he was holding his breath.
“Yes, and now you know why.”
“Why’d you get rid of all of the others then? Obviously, you could’ve joined the clan a long time ago.”
“Nah, fuck that shit. Can you imagine me, in those stuffy houses, all full of myself? I don’t want to be the last rung on a practically infinite ladder. And the rest of them? Pro-tip Evan, don’t sneak up on a would-be sixth-generation vampire hunter.”
“You didn’t come after me.”
“You didn’t come after me. That first fucking night, I expected you to follow me. Hell, I thought you’d be waiting for me at my house when I arrived. I slept on the couch with a fucking crossbow. But no, you showed up a day later, with shots. And told me stories about how interesting it would be if vampires actually glittered in the sun.”
“We don’t.” Evan knows he doesn’t need to explain. He just wants to gain some time to find his footing and feel like a part of the conversation.
“I know.”
“So, what do you suggest we do now?”
“What was your plan?”
“To leave town…” Evan replies, meekly.
“For the love of all that’s unholy! Let me get my notepad… Ok, here’s what’s going to happen, we’re going to go get your Argos cabinet…”
“IKEA.” Evan corrects Barty before he can stop himself. Maybe he can go into the cabinet and never come out.
“Holy shit, I was joking. We’re going to go get your IKEA cabinet, we’re going to chuck you to the back of my truck, I’ll drive us to a safe house, and we’ll lay low for a bit. I’ll call my connections, make some preparations, we’re going to come back to London, and I’ll raze that fucking clan house to the ground because frankly, I’m sick of this shit. Sometime during all of this, we discuss my inevitable making. Sound good?”
“Splendid.” Evan does not have the zest to object, or make complete sentences. He’s also more than a bit turned on by Barty’s self-assurance and doesn’t want the other man to notice it in his voice. Barty expertly demonstrated his skills at reading Evan like a book tonight.
“I’m glad. Lead the way then.”
Evan is anxious, he thought there was a chance the clan would come after them, now he knows for sure. There might actually be several clans coming after them. But he is excited too. He knew, deep in his unbeating heart, that the Rosier clan wouldn’t be home for him, truly. Barty catches him by his elbow, just as he turns around to get a cab for both of them.
“Thank you E,” he says, this time sincerely, followed by a kiss, restarting a countdown on Evan’s mind, to an exhilarating inevitability.