Chapter Text
“Barbaric bliss
Teeth gnash when we kiss
No wound to lick
‘cause the hurt is hidden
Don’t you miss when
I used to smile
Blood on my lips?”
Discovery Channel, Hayley Williams
1981
In Regulus’s defense, he doesn’t mean to turn James Potter into a vampire.
His plans are much simpler than that. He only intends to abduct the boy who has led his brother astray, have some fun torturing him for a week or two, kill him, then dump the body on Sirius’s doorstep. Maybe carve ‘from RAB, with love’ on his chest for dramatic effect.
See? A nice, straightforward plan.
It is easy to enact. Regulus weasels his way into the house party by tricking a stranger into inviting him in; he spots Potter among the throngs of university students, messy hair standing taller than most; he slips a little something into Potter’s cup without being noticed.
Potter is nice enough to facilitate his own kidnapping by escaping to the backyard, claiming the need for some fresh air. Under the cover of darkness, Regulus follows Potter’s staggering, uncoordinated steps.
The pill is working.
In less than five minutes, Potter collapses near a large rubbish bin beside the lateral fence, his body crumpling into an undignified heap on the grass.
Regulus scoops Potter into his arms and disappears into the night.
⋆★⋆
Potter remains unconscious until dawn.
Regulus feels a bit silly waiting for the man to rouse, so he busies himself by ascertaining that the sun-proofing measures are in order. He checks all the boarded windows in the little shack he procured specifically for this endeavor, then shoves rags into the crack beneath the door just to be safe.
It takes less than ten minutes.
Perhaps he should have brought a book.
Alas, Potter is his only source of entertainment.
Regulus stares at the unconscious man. The feeble overhead light provides little illumination, but his vampiric eyes snag on every detail. Potter is hung by the wrists at the center of the room, limp legs awkwardly bent at the knees. He seems infuriatingly peaceful, mouth slack and pillowy lips parted as he drools onto his own shoulder, glasses crooked and halfway down his nose. Before he can stop himself, Regulus takes that serene face in hand. He isn’t gentle about it — his fingers dig into Potter’s stubbled cheeks as he tilts his head for closer inspection.
Potter’s scent, already so prevalent in the sealed space, floods his nostrils. It is rich — woodsy with hints of citric sweetness — and calls to Regulus like a siren song despite the underlying tang of alcohol and sedatives slithering through his veins. Regulus’s mouth floods with water, fangs prickling his gums, begging to be let out.
Every instinct demands him to bite, bite, bite.
“I’m going to make you regret the day you decided to encroach on my family,” Regulus whispers, then shoves Potter away. He can’t drink from him yet.
The chains clink and clank as Potter sways but doesn’t stir.
Regulus sits in the corner, nurses all the hatred in his unbeating heart, and waits.
⋆★⋆
It starts with a slight change in Potter’s breathing. Regulus would have missed it if he weren’t paying such close attention. He is on his feet in an instant, fist closing around the hair on Potter’s nape. Regulus tugs harshly until his captive raises his chin, blinking blearily.
“Regulus?” Potter mumbles.
The name lands like a blow. They haven’t spoken in over five years. Potter hasn’t seen Regulus since he was an awkward teenager — since he was still alive. He did not expect Potter to so promptly recognize him in this groggy state.
“Potter,” Regulus replies, baring his teeth.
“Oh,” Potter sighs, blinking faster until his eyes focus on the fangs perilously near his face. “You’re…”
“Yes,” Regulus hisses. “I’m a vampire.”
Potter groans, wrists tugging at the chains. Regulus expects the panic to pierce through the drugged fog like lightning, but Potter must be dumber than he appears, because he only huffs. “You’re better.”
That catches Regulus even more off guard. “What?”
“Heard you were sick,” Potter explains, words still slurred. “You’re better now.”
This reignites the fury inside Regulus. If Potter knew he was sick, it means that Sirius knew. His brother knew Regulus was dying and did not care to visit his deathbed.
Regulus yanks on Potter’s hair, which earns him a delicious cry.
“Ow,” Potter complains, more alert now that pain has started flowing through his nerves. “What was that for?”
Regulus drops his hold. Without the distracting touch, Potter notices the details of his predicament. He scrambles to properly stand and alleviate some of the pressure on his wrists. The chains rattle when Potter shakes his hands to force the blood flow back into his extremities.
Potter frowns and scans the room for the first time. Regulus resists the urge to do the same; he already knows every crevice of the shack, from the broken wooden furniture scattered around the main room to the bedframe covered in a suspiciously stained mattress and the narrow door that leads to a tiny water closet.
Much to Regulus’s chagrin, Potter seems more puzzled than frightened by his surroundings.
“Well,” Potter drawls, looking back at Regulus. “When pretty boys tie me up, I usually prefer it to be on the bed, but I’m not really fussy about it.”
“What?” Regulus sputters, then forces himself to regain some composure. “I’m going to kill you, James Potter, and I won’t make it quick.”
Potter relaxes his arms again, allowing the chains to hold most of their weight. Regulus purposefully does not stare at how his biceps bulge against the short sleeves of his shirt.
“Gonna take your time with me, love?” Potter asks with an insufferable grin. “Gonna use those pretty fangs of yours?”
Regulus bristles, hissing at Potter like a feral cat, but something about the way his captive stares at the exposed fangs makes him retract them.
“You can’t flirt your way out of this, Potter,” Regulus spits out, full of venom. “I’m not one of your brainless conquests.”
Potter shrugs. “Worth a try.”
Anger rises like a tidal wave in his chest. He wants to bite Potter, to tear away at his skin until he’s nothing but bloody ribbons. However, Regulus knows that — only three months into his vampiric existence — he lacks the self-control for that.
He can’t risk killing Potter too soon.
Regulus bends at the waist to reach the sheath strapped to his leg, just above his heel. His mouth curves into a smirk as soon as he wraps his hand around the cold handle of his favorite dagger.
“Fuck,” Potter mutters above him. “That’s… fuck.”
“I thought we’d start with this,” Regulus all but purrs, twisting the dagger between his fingers. “Ease into the fun.”
Potter doesn’t say anything else, his gaze stuck on the dagger, lips parted in shock. Regulus doesn’t mind this silence. He only wants to hear Potter when he screams.
Regulus props the tip of the dagger beneath Potter’s chin, who obediently tilts his head. He rejoices in the panting breaths ricocheting on his cheeks and the heartbeat crescendoing in the sweetest of symphonies.
Yes, Regulus thinks, be afraid.
“As much as I would like to start with your face, I don’t want any blood getting in those ridiculous glasses of yours yet. I want you to see everything I do to you.”
Potter swallows dryly, the apple of his throat bobbing so prettily, Regulus can’t resist poking it with his dagger.
“You will be good and watch, won’t you?” Regulus asks almost sweetly. “No closing your eyes while I make you bleed.”
Potter starts to nod, only to be thwarted by the blade digging into his throat.
Regulus laughs. “Good, now let’s begin.”
He drags the dagger down Potter’s neck, careful not to draw blood yet. The first cut only comes when the tip reaches the collar of his shirt, fabric tearing smoothly under the sharp blade. Regulus doesn’t stop until the garment is cleaved in half, hanging like rags at Potter’s sides and exposing his torso.
Regulus takes a moment to appreciate how the tanned chest rises and falls with every short, stuttering breath Potter takes. His defined muscles tighten with unspent strength that is entirely irrelevant while he is at Regulus’s mercy.
He hums thoughtfully, running the dagger below Potter’s right peck. It would be fun to cut off his nipple, but that would probably bleed too much, too soon, and distract him. “Where shall I start?”
“Regulus,” Potter chokes out.
“Shush, I’m thinking.”
Potter falls silent again, watching Regulus survey his chest in search of the perfect site for his first incision.
Regulus settles on the left collarbone, where Potter has a couple of freckles. He sinks the knife into one until the skin breaks, then drags the tip toward the other in a perverse game of connect the dots.
Potter’s whimpers are music to his ears, even if he would have preferred screaming. Regulus inhales the delicious, decadent smell of blood and can’t stop himself from bringing the dagger to his mouth.
Regulus drags his tongue along the blade, allowing the divine taste to flood his senses. He is so enthralled that he almost misses the word tucked amidst the whimpering.
“Please.”
A cruel smile stretches across his bloodied lips. “Already begging?” Regulus mocks.
“Please, Regulus, please.”
“Oh, you can beg however much you want, Potter, I’m not—”
Regulus clamps his mouth shut mid-sentence when his heightened sense of smell picks up on something besides fear. Something lush and heady and preposterous.
It can’t be, he thinks.
His gaze drops from Potter’s flushed face to his groin to confirm that he isn’t— can’t be—
“Are you hard right now?” Regulus demands, voice higher than he’d like. “Are you insane?”
Potter’s only answers are more whimpers and an odd swish of his hips.
Searching for friction.
“You are insane,” Regulus realizes, horrified. “Stop that or I’ll skip a few steps and cut off your cock right now.”
At least Potter has some self-preservation and self-control to cease his useless squirming, though Regulus can tell it’s a struggle.
Insane.
Regulus shakes his head. He concentrates on all the reasons he hates James Potter and allows his fury to wash away his consternation. He won’t be deterred by Potter’s perverted reactions.
Dagger poised, he continues his work. Regulus is halfway through the fourth cut when finally, finally, Potter screams.
His agony tastes even better than his blood.
⋆★⋆
Regulus began his preparation for vampirism before he could even walk.
Whilst most toddlers learned about colors and shapes and baby animals, Regulus was taught about his duties as a son of the noble and most ancient coven of Black. Every branch in their tree had only the purpose of bearing fruit before it was immortalized.
Amidst his endless lessons, Regulus learned that vampires experience time in peculiar manners — past, present, and future mere shades of gray marbled into this strange thing they called eternity. It took, however, half a century or so for the consciousness to free itself from the constraints of human perception.
Well, Regulus must be a prodigy.
There is nothing human in how time blurs inside the shack.
Regulus doesn’t feel the sun setting and rising outside. The spin of the world is only James Potter — the slow descent of blood and sweat and tears on golden skin, the incoherent cries spilling from his lips, the ragged breaths catching in his lungs, the heartbeat thrashing so loudly it drowns out the quietude of the countryside.
The taste of blood is intoxicating. Regulus loses his inhibitions as he drags his tongue along the line he just carved with his dagger. The flavor is a fever — iron and salt and heat and heat and heat — burning down his throat like hard liquor.
Potter squirms beneath the attention but doesn’t shy away. “Please,” he whines.
Regulus silences him with a hand over his mouth. He revels in the vibration of muffled pleas against his palm and licks the wound again, smearing Potter’s chest red. His fangs ache so badly his jaw trembles. It takes every ounce of his resolve not to sink them into supple skin to drink until his hunger is sated and Potter’s heart stutters still.
He refuses to ruin the fun yet.
Which, annoyingly, means that Potter must stay alive.
The decrepit faucet in the shack provides fresh, if slightly metallic water. Regulus raises a cup to Potter’s parched lips, whose throat convulses with each greedy gulp. The movement is obscene, a live vein sliding beneath fragile skin. Regulus licks his lips in chase of remnants of blood.
“More, please,” Potter rasps. He begs so prettily that Regulus can’t deny him. He refills the glass and is rewarded with a gasping but genuine, “Thank you.”
Something strange presses against his dead heart. He ignores it. He ignores everything but the dagger.
⋆★⋆
Regulus loses himself again. He is a master of the arts stricken by a paroxysm of inspiration, and Potter’s body is his canvas, his marble, his verses. He adds and changes and takes. His hands slot around a quivering neck while he mouths at the very first cut that he’d made on Potter’s collarbone, coaxing fresh blood to the surface. No wound is allowed to close.
“Fuck,” Potter chokes out, tugging at his chains. “Fuck, Regulus.”
“Stay still,” Regulus hisses, delicately biting at his shoulder, exposed fangs hovering just shy of breaking skin. His teeth ache with restraint.
His captive is strangely prone to compliance, but not this time. He tweaks and jerks impatiently. Regulus is about to punish him with his dagger when Potter blurts, “Bathroom.”
The single word manages to pierce through his frenzy.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Regulus huffs, pondering his options, though he knows there is only one solution. He doesn’t want that particular mess.
It takes him a couple of minutes to unshackle Potter, who almost collapses onto the dust-smattered floor. Regulus hoists him up until Potter’s head lolls onto the curve of his shoulder, breath hot and damp against his throat.
“Reg,” he complains in a broken whine.
Regulus’s arms twitch traitorously around Potter. It is stupid because the weight of him is nothing to vampiric strength. “Come on,” he mutters, adjusting his grip.
Potter mumbles something and allows himself to be carried. Regulus deposits him inside the small bathroom and closes the door. He doesn’t need to watch. Potter is in no state to attempt an escape.
It feels extremely awkward to stand by as Potter pees. Regulus shifts his weight from one foot to another and waits through the pitiful sounds of the frail human body, enslaved by its physiology.
“Reg,” comes a muffled call. “Help.”
The word rings deep into his skull, much deeper than Regulus would like, and sends a shiver through his spine.
He opens the door so fast that it almost falls from its rusty hinges.
Potter managed to go about his business well enough, though his bloodied body shakes, covered in a sheen of cold sweat. He looks at Regulus through the smudged lenses of his glasses, hazel eyes wet and unfocused. He smells of salt and weakness and blood — so much blood. Regulus swallows hard and takes the man into his arms, cradling him against his chest.
It is difficult to muster much contempt for someone so pathetic. And yet—
“Cold,” Potter mumbles, voice frayed and soft. He burrows closer to Regulus, though he can’t provide any warmth.
Regulus stands there, in the middle of the room, wondering if the leftover drugs in Potter’s blood can cause hallucinations because he can’t believe Potter is trying to cuddle him after being tortured.
Potter smiles cheekily, thrilled to have stumped him. “Aren’t you going to keep going, love? We were having so much fun.”
“Shut up.”
Regulus decides against tying him to the ceiling again — it would take too long, and he’s unsure if he’d possess the necessary dexterity when consumed by thirst.
The bed creaks as he tosses Potter onto the mattress.
It jostles his constellation of wounds, which resume their bleeding, crimson droplets welling anew. Potter whines — Regulus echoes the pathetic sound when the tantalizing scent washes over him.
Irresistible.
His mouth finds the mangled skin before his mind can stop it.
Regulus forgets the dagger. He straddles Potter’s hips and devours — licking and sucking his way across the expanse of his chest, chasing every glimmering bead. Potter moans a heady string of pleas, punctuated by Regulus’s name. Fear sweetens the blood, and Regulus is too far gone to mind the piquant note of lust bubbling on his tongue.
“Please.”
Potter tangles his fingers weakly in Regulus’s hair, pulling him closer instead of away. Regulus snarls, seizing Potter’s wrists and pinning them above his head. He refuses to give up control. His instincts are unraveling his thoughts. He feels feral, drunk, drunk, drunk on the flood of red on his tongue.
Time passes. Regulus doesn’t know — nor does he care — how much.
There is nothing but tongue and teeth and a heartbeat that seeps into his bones.
Slow down, some human crumb whispers in the back of his head. Slow down.
Regulus hesitates. He stares at Potter, lying pale and pliant beneath him, sweat-matted hair sticking to his forehead. His breath catches in his throat. He should slow down, maybe give Potter some more water. Regulus attempts to disentangle their limbs and put some distance between them to clear his thoughts.
Potter goes almost as feral as he is.
“No,” he breathes, fingernails trying and failing to dig into Regulus’s back. “Stay.”
“You need water.”
“I need you,” Potter counters, voice hoarse and so full of want. “Stay.”
The desperate demand tugs at his restraint.
“I’ll stay,” Regulus concedes, burrowing in the curve of Potter’s neck, quick pulse thrumming against his lips. He needs to feel it on his tongue. Shallow wounds can no longer sate his thirst. He needs to taste the core of Potter’s veins, the marrow of his bones. “I’ll stay. Need to bite you.”
His fuzzy brain pulses with the word.
Bite.
Bite.
Bite.
“Regul—”
The name dies on Potter’s tongue, melting into a gasp when Regulus buries his fangs in his neck. Blood gushes — sultry and sizzling — Regulus wants to drown in it. The taste transcends his tongue. It ignites every nerve, a firestorm raging through the corpse of him.
He grips Potter’s wrists harder, forcing him into submission while Regulus ravages his neck. He drinks faster, rougher, his mouth working greedily at the double punctures, widening the wound with every drag of his tongue, every frantic pull of his throat.
Potter moans. Tears sprout in his eyes and cling to his lashes and temples. Regulus wants to lick them, but he can’t tear himself away from the endless source of blood he’s uncovered.
All he can hear is the rush of his pulse, pulse, pulse.
Until,
Nothing.
The body beneath him slackens. The delicious writhing, the desperate whimpers, the breathing — it all stops.
Regulus rips himself away with a snarl, blood dripping down his chin. He stares.
Potter lies limp against the mattress, neck mangled, skin ashen, eyes rolled back until only the whites show. His lips are blue, parted, and still.
So, so still.
No.
“No.” The word is a rasp. Panic seizes his unbeating heart in an iron grip. Regulus shakes his head violently, blood dripping from his mouth onto Potter’s bare chest. “No, no, no—”
He presses his hand to the wound, trying to stanch the torrent, but his palm slips on the slick scarlet soaking through the sheets.
“Potter?” Regulus calls to no avail. “James?”
He leans closer, desperate, straining his hearing until his eardrums nearly burst from focus.
Then,
A flutter so faint, it could almost be his imagination.
Potter’s heart is beating. Barely.
Minutes, maybe seconds, before it’s gone.
Terror claws through Regulus’s ribs. Potter cannot die. Not yet. Not like this. This isn’t the plan. Potter was supposed to suffer, to bleed, to beg. He wasn’t supposed to just… flicker out. Useless. Empty.
Frantic thoughts scatter like dandelions in his mind. Blood. Potter needs blood. Regulus could scoop him up and run to the nearest hospital, but — too far, too late. No medicine or blood bag on earth could pour life back into him fast enough.
Blood.
Blood.
Blood will save him.
Your blood will save him.
Save him.
Save him.
Save him.
Regulus shivers. The thoughts feel bone-deep but other — the ancient language of his instincts. It shakes him to his core.
He doesn’t hesitate. His fangs pierce his own wrist in a beastly bite, tearing flesh until blood springs. Dark red, nearly black vampire blood.
Regulus shoves the wound against Potter’s lips. The blue mouth is cold and unyielding at first, but Regulus forces it open with his thumb until his blood stains Potter’s tongue. It drips down his throat, thick and heavy. Regulus tilts his head back, coaxing, begging.
“Take it. Take it, damn you.” His voice cracks. “You are not allowed to die yet.”
The smell is acrid — ice and salt and rot — entirely incongruent with the freshness of Potter’s blood surrounding them. Regulus keeps his wrist in the slack mouth until his unnatural healing closes the wound against his will. He bites again, but it seals even faster, leaving only smears of his blood across Potter’s mouth.
Regulus pulls back, panting, dizzy. His chest aches like something long dead trying to live again.
For a horrible moment, nothing changes. Potter lies still, bloodied lips parted, chest unmoving. Regulus feels his throat tighten — he’s suffocating, though he hasn’t needed air in months. He grabs Potter’s shoulder and shakes him once, twice, as if brute force can spark life.
Regulus is about to tear open his other wrist when the wounds he carved into Potter’s chest start moving right before his wide eyes. One by one, the careful gashes knit together until nothing remains of his artistry but sourceless blood and smooth skin.
It worked.
The thought brings no triumph or relief, only dread.
“No,” Regulus whispers as realization sinks its talons into the pit of his gut.
He’s made James Potter a vampire.