Work Text:
"Well," said Arikado as he held the door open. "Here we are."
"Great," Soma said flatly, and stepped inside. "Uh, nice place. Fancy."
"Thanks."
It was late in the evening. The glare of the streetlights shone through his windows; even through the curtains, it was too bright. Arikado closed the door behind him and stared at the boy standing in his living room. Soma's jeans were scuffed from the tussle with the cultists, his coat marked with soot, and Arikado gripped the door handle tight. How long had it been since he'd had a guest in his apartment? A guest other than Julius or Yoko, who by then were familiar enough with him not to bother with formalities? Decades, surely. Perhaps Yoko was right about his social life.
"Make yourself at home." That seemed like the sort of thing to say to a guest.
"Sure," Soma said, and proceeded to do no such thing. He stood in the middle of the room, his hands jammed into his coat pockets and glaring at a portrait of Maria Renard, who'd done nothing to deserve it.
"Do you need me to take your coat?" Arikado tried, but Soma just shrugged and shook his head.
"Do you think Mina's safe?"
"I sent Julius and Yoko to look after her. She'll be fine."
"I wish I was with her."
Arikado carefully refrained from sighing. "It's you that the cult is targeting right now, Soma. She's safer without you, and you're safer with me."
Soma nodded. The worry didn't leave his face, but he seemed to relax a little. At least enough to pull his hands from his pockets and lean over to examine Arikado's umbrella stand.
"Cool sword," he said.
"Don't touch that."
Soma pulled his hand back from the hilt like he'd been burned. "I didn't know you had a sword."
"I hunt monsters, Soma. It's my job."
"Yeah, but I've only ever seen you use magic."
"It's good to cultivate a wide variety of skills."
"Okay," Soma said, and went right back to glaring, this time at a slightly wilted potted palm lily that had somehow managed to survive Arikado's nurturing skills for longer than a month. The hands were back in his pockets.
Right.
Arikado grit his teeth. "I'll... go see about dinner then," he said, and retreated into the kitchen.
"Fine," Soma called out after him. "Where's the bathroom?"
"Down the hallway, first door on the right."
"Great. Thanks."
Arikado opened his fridge and listened to the door in the hallway slam closed, then almost immediately click open again.
"Um, Arikado?" shouted Soma from the hallway. "Where's your bathroom mirror?"
Arikado sighed. He closed the fridge. Gripped the handle tight. "It broke a while back, and I haven't gotten around to having a new one installed."
"Huh. How did you break it?"
He'd smashed it sometime in 2018, in a fit of pique at his empty reflection. "It wasn't secured to the wall properly. It fell. Please just go."
"Fine, fine," grumbled Soma, and the door slammed again.
Arikado turned back to the dismal sight that was the inside of his fridge. When was the last time he'd gone to buy groceries? He'd been too busy with this damn cult business. That was the problem with humans. Always getting seduced by the darker aspects of their natures into seeking chaos and destruction, leaving him no time to run errands. On a night like this he'd normally stare at his fridge for a few minutes then give up and head to the ramen stand down the street for the third time in a row, but of course that wasn't an option now. He needed to to keep Soma safe inside the wards of his apartment.
Steaks. He had steaks. He could do steaks.
The matter settled, he went to search his drawers for a suitable pan. This was going to be fine. It was just one night. He'd cook dinner, set Soma up in the guest bedroom, and in the morning he'd meet up with Yoko and Julius to deal with this cult nonsense and finally have an apartment free of restless teenagers asking questions and filling the air with the smell of blood. Everything would be fine.
The sound of a door opening echoed down the hallway.
"Hey, Arikado," shouted Soma. "Why is your bathroom cabinet full of bottles of sunscreen?"
It was going to be a long night.
"I have a skin condition. Please settle down. I need to cook."
Soma did not settle down. As Arikado placed the frozen steaks on the pan, he set out inspecting Arikado's living room with the air of an archeologist exploring an ancient tomb. Which, considering the age of most of its contents, was probably not unwarranted. Arikado stood at the kitchen counter watching the meat sizzle and fielding endless questions about what language those old books were in (Romanian and Latin), what was in all those little bottles (holy water, don't touch it), who that guy with that scar was (Trevor Belmont, but it was a seventeenth century painting so the likeness wasn't accurate), whether that skin condition was why he was so pale (yes), why that pocket watch didn't work (it was from the nineteenth century and used to belong to Richter Belmont, put that down now, Soma).
Perhaps there was a reason he rarely had guests.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Soma reach for something on his bookshelf. "Put that back," he called out.
"I don't think your crappy vampire romance novel is a priceless heirloom, dude."
Arikado looked over. Soma held a cheap paperback in his hands; on the cover a quivering damsel swooned in the arms of a dark-haired man with comically oversized fangs and a black cape.
Ah.
"That... was a gift from Yoko."
"Yeah, I figured. I can't believe you have an entire shelf of this stuff."
"She gets me one every Christmas. She thinks it's funny." Arikado was glad, sometimes, that he didn't remember the date of his birth. His shelf space was limited enough as it was.
"It kind of is. You haven't thrown them out?"
He'd thought about it. But someday she'd be dead, and someday he'd have something to remember her by.
"It seems rude," he said.
Soma opened his mouth, presumably to make an observation about Arikado's average level of politeness. Arikado decided to head off that line of conversation.
"Put that down and come here," he said. "Dinner's ready."
Apparently Soma's hunger was enough to win over his curiosity, because he abandoned his quest to get on every single one of Arikado's nerves, strolled into the kitchen, and plopped down at the table without argument. He gave Arikado a curious look when he set a knife and fork in front of him instead of chopsticks, but he didn't object.
"Do you want wine?" Arikado said, looking over the contents of his liquor cabinet. "Steak pairs well with red."
Soma narrowed his eyes at him. "You do know I'm nineteen, right?"
For a moment Arikado stared at him, blinking. Ah. Right. No matter how many times he got carded, this was an aspect of modern life he'd never get used to. What was the minimum age in Japan, anyway? Twenty? Twenty-five? Definitely somewhere between nineteen and six hundred.
"I doubt you care that much about alcohol laws, Soma."
"Not really. I kinda figured you would, though."
"I assure you that I do not."
Soma's eyes remained narrowed. "This isn't some sort of test, is it? Like, I say yes and you lecture me about responsibility for the next three hours?"
Do I seem like the sort of person who'd do that? Arikado almost asked, then quickly decided he didn't want to know the answer.
"No," he said simply.
Soma stared at him for a few more seconds. "Fine," he said at last. "I'll have a glass."
Impasse successfully resolved, Arikado poured two glasses of red wine and set them on the table along with the plates. He sat down and watched Soma cut into his steak.
"That's pretty good," Soma declared, thankfully after swallowing. Arikado decided to ignore the note of surprise in his voice. He had picked up a skill or two over the centuries.
"Thank you."
"I still like Mina's cooking better, though."
Arikado cut his own steak and refrained from pointing out that Soma was not, perhaps, the most unbiased of sources.
"I don't think your steak's finished cooking," Soma said.
"I like it rare."
It was satisfying, on a visceral level, to eat raw meat. Not as much as blood, of course, but it was something. He'd tried to go vegetarian a few times in his life, in an attempt to distance himself from his predator's nature as much as he could, but that had just made him miserable. Better to indulge the least harmful of his instincts. It made accidents easier to avoid.
"It's, uh—it's bleeding."
"It's not blood." He'd know. "It's a mixture of water and myoglobin."
"Huh. Okay."
That seemed to be the end of the discussion. Silence fell.
And that was almost worse, in a way. Because without the boy's incessant chatter, there was nothing to distract him from the way he picked up his glass, swirling the wine in contemplation.
He looked away.
"How'd you learn to cook, anyway?"
Trevor and Grant had taught him to cook meat over a campfire, gently teasing him all the while for being a spoiled prince, then three hundred years later he'd had to teach himself the rest because the alternative would have been to endure Richter or Maria's culinary skills, and—and Arikado couldn't do this.
He closed his eyes. Took a deep, slow breath. "Soma," he said, and his voice was very carefully level. "Please just eat."
"Yeah. Fine. Okay," Soma muttered, and picked up his glass once more.
Arikado took another deep breath.
He was being ridiculous. It was just dinner. It was just one night. There was no need to be on edge. He could deal with this; he knew how to deal with this.
Because he'd been here hundreds of times, hadn't he, sitting at the table in the flickering candlelight watching his father swirl his glass full of dark red blood. Worry not, my son, he'd say, his red, pitiless eyes piercing through him without seeing him, for the day of humanity's reckoning grows near, and Alucard needed to say something, to tell him to stop, to tell him Mother's last words, but he couldn't find his voice, he couldn't—if he were a good enough son—
"Um. Arikado?" Dracula said.
But of course it wasn't Dracula. Dracula was dead. The flickering light came from that lightbulb Arikado had been putting off replacing for the past month, the red liquid swirling in the wine glass was Kikyogahara Merlot, and at the head of the table sat a grumpy, tired teenager in worn jeans and a ridiculous coat who'd just fought off a murderous cult only to be forced into an awkward dinner with a strange government agent whose main involvement in his life was to show up in the middle of a crisis and yell at him to stop doing whatever he was doing.
"I apologize for staring," Arikado said, and he turned back to his plate. He focused on the steak. Focused on cutting the meat, on the tingle of the silver knife on his skin, on keeping his breaths even as he ate. Until the clatter of cutlery hitting the table echoed across the kitchen.
"Look. I'm sorry, all right?"
Arikado looked up. Soma sat with his hands clenched into fists, staring down at his plate.
"I know you don't want me here and I know you probably hate me. I try not to be a burden but these people just keep coming after me and I don't know how to fend them all off by myself and you keep telling me I shouldn't, and—and—"
He went quiet.
Arikado gripped the silver fork tight in his hand. His skin prickled.
"Soma," he said. "What makes you think I hate you?"
Soma looked up at him, confused. "Uh," he said. "Your whole"—he waved his hand towards him—"everything? You keep looking at me like... like you wish I didn't exist."
Arikado had never hated his father. Even when he stood in the middle of his throne room with nothing but hatred in his eyes, throwing away everything Mother had wanted. Even when he stood in the middle of a garden about to repeat the exact same mistake he'd once made, over someone who wasn't even dead. Even when he invaded his apartment and insisted on touching all his things.
Would this all be easier, if he did?
"I see," he said.
Dinner was quiet, after that. They both occupied themselves with their steaks. Soma didn't pick up the wine glass again, and his eyes remained grey.
When they were done, Arikado stood. Soma sat slouched in his chair, staring intently at the floor.
"I don't," said Arikado, quietly. "Hate you, I mean."
Soma glanced up then. He peered at him with piercing eyes, searching his face for something. Arikado didn't know what. He didn't know if there was anything for him to see. He needed to show more emotion, Yoko kept telling him. And Maria, and Sypha, and Trevor, and Grant.
But whatever Soma was looking for, he seemed to find it. His eyes softened, for a moment. And maybe his father had looked at him the same way once, centuries ago, and maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.
"Okay," Soma said, and looked down. "Okay."
Arikado stood there, for a moment, watching.
I'm glad, he wanted to say, that there was a part of him left that was worth saving.
But he didn't, of course. He simply collected the dirty plates, placed them in the dishwasher, and busied himself tidying up the kitchen counter. After a minute he heard Soma get up and slink back out into the living room, and for a while it was quiet, and Arikado's hands weren't shaking, and it was good to have something to remember his father by.
Difficult, but good.
"Arikado?" Soma's voice echoed down the hallway. "Why is there a coffin in your closet?"
It was going to be a very long night.