Work Text:
Louis’ quarters are in the west end of the castle, and overlook a steep cliff that drops down into a wilderness below. The east end of the castle faces the city, standing tall and imposing so that it’s visible from almost anywhere in the city centre, but from Louis’ quarters, the world can often seem quiet, dark, and lonely.
While Louis loves to be among others, whether that’s his horde of siblings or the hustle and bustle of the markets, he’s particularly partial to his little corner of the world that contains only himself and one other.
It hasn’t been a difficult morning. There are likely still centuries until Louis will have to think about taking the crown, as the rule of a vampire tends to be stable and lasting, and his mum is quite young all things considered. So Louis, while he’s the heir to the throne, rarely finds himself with any sort of serious undertaking outside of festival season. He’s spent today with his sisters, helping them in lessons and then helping them escape lessons, much to the exasperation of their tutors. But what is the point of life without a bit of mania now and again?
But he’s been gone too long, and his soul is singing out for his other half. As Louis enters his personal chambers, with his favourite tapestries adorning the walls and his four poster bed taking up the majority of the room, he’s hit with the strong scent his betrothed.
Harry grins up at him from where he’s lounging in the sheets, naked from the waist up with sleep mussed hair and looking positively mischievous, like he must have done something he’s hoping to get away with in Louis’ absence.
“Darling,” Louis says, collapsing onto the bed next to him. “You look like the cat who’s caught the canary and you smell like a fresh pastry. Offer up some of your life and tell me what you’ve done.”
Harry giggles and worms his way over until he’s close enough for Louis to lay his hand on warm flesh, a beating heart.
“I might have had Oli pick some things up from the shops,” Harry says, tilting his head up and stretching his neck as he does so. “Just some things I- oh- some things I saw the last time we were out together.”
Louis has tilted Harry’s head to one side with firm fingers and licked a stripe across the base of his neck. “Is that so?” he asks. “Another piece of artwork I’m going to have to hide away so that we don’t face my mother’s wrath?”
Harry lets out another giggle, but that giggle turns to a gasp as Louis’ teeth pierce his skin. “No, I— nothing like that. Just something from… from that little boutique we found your sister that dress from.”
Louis hums, teeth still attached, and he feels Harry melt under him. He doesn’t take a lot, because he feeds from Harry regularly and wants his boy healthy, so he breaks it off after only a couple minutes. Licking the area again to help facilitate the healing, he nuzzles the soft skin just below Harry’s jawline. “From that dress shop?” he asks, thinking back to that day. It had been particularly cloudy, drizzling and grey, and people had been out in droves because of it.
“Not just dresses,” Harry is quick to point out. “Also… stockings. And skirts.”
Louis hums. “Has Oli dropped these ‘things’ off already?”
“He has,” Harry hedges. “But they’re not ready yet. I mean- They might look terrible on me. I don’t want to show you if they don’t work out.”
Louis cannot imagine a single thing not looking amazing on Harry, but he’s seen the sorts of desires Harry has, and knows they’re not easy to share. “Tonight?” he asks. Will you show them to me tonight?”
“Possibly,” Harry says, pursing his lips. “But only if we get to walk in the garden together. I do not get the wind in my hair nearly enough.”
“That’s because it turns into a huge birds nest when you do,” Louis says, although of course that isn’t the real reason. As Harry’s still human, he’s still vulnerable. Louis rarely lets him out unless he’s under heavy guard ready to die for him at a moment’s notice. A regular human can walk without fear among vampires, but the betrothed of the prince? No, Louis is wiser than that. Even in times of peace, he knows to be on his guard.
“I think it can be arranged, though,” Louis says, letting his hand come to rest on Harry’s bare hip. “After dinner, with the morning glories out.”
—
Vampiric traditions are in some ways very different from human traditions.
One of the ways that this most obvious is that no vampire would ever agree to an arranged marriage. While they do believe in marrying young and marrying for life, vampires believe that they must each pick for themselves, or else the love can never be true.
Some say a vampire simply knows when they have found the one, although others state that their own marriages were done out of finding someone they only knew they could coexist with, with the assumption that love would come in time.
For Louis, he knew when he was only ten years old exactly who he wished to marry, and to the horror of the vampire aristocracy, he chose a human.
It’s not that vampires never choose humans, but since turned vampires are often considered of a lower class compared to born vampires, the fact that Louis would literally be placing one on the throne was a scandal. Louis, being who he was, did not give a single care as to what the aristocracy thought. He was a child and he knew that no one else would ever compare to the child of his sisters’ nursemaid, Anne.
Harry had been an especially clumsy child, but also exceptionally curious. This was a bad combination around the castle, as he was constantly and very loudly finding himself caught places he was not supposed to be. This included, to Louis’ amusement, his own chambers.
They were a troublemaking couple of children that grew into a troublemaking couple of young lovers, and they made hell for everyone visiting the castle who did not know what to make of them.
When Louis turned twenty four, he drank from Harry’s blood. The first time a born vampire drinks is when they stop aging, and Louis had planned carefully the night it would first happen, ensuring that it was a romantic one. He knew he would have to drink from others, especially once Harry was turned, but he wanted the first time to be with the man he planned to spend his life with.
Now, as Harry is approaching his twenty third birthday, the plan is to wait until they are both the same age for him to be turned. Until then, however, Louis’ protective instincts, the ones he’s honed so well as an older brother to so many sisters, have kicked into overdrive. Hopefully over the next year Harry doesn’t go completely stir crazy during the waiting.
—
“Okay, close your eyes,” Harry calls from behind the closed door of the bathing chambers.
“They’re closed,” Louis says, staring intently at the door.
“They are not, I can feel your gaze,” Harry yells.
Louis rolls his eyes. “You can’t,” he says. “But fine. Eyes closed.” He lays back on the chaise lounge at the foot of his bed and rests his hand over his eyes as he hears the door open. The smell of perfume hits him, indicating that Harry is feeling particularly sexy. Louis never has had the heart to tell him that, with his senses so strong, however much Harry puts on to make himself feel good tends to be a bit overwhelming to Louis. It’s okay. It’s a year of headaches at most.
“Alright, you can look,” Harry says, and Louis immediately drops his hand.
Harry stands in front of him, curls falling around his shoulders as his blouse - usually partially hidden below his vest - sits on proud display, halfway unbuttoned and falling around his shoulders. It’s tucked into a pink skirt that reaches down to mid-calf, exposing at least two underlayers of lace below it.
Pigeontoed in his loafers with what Louis suspects is also a new purchase from Oli - white sheer stockings that are tall enough they disappear under the skirt - Harry looks bashful, wringing his hands together.
“I can go take it off,” Harry says, a quiver in his voice. “It was just an idea, you know… Because I liked the colour and the material, but—”
“Don’t you dare,” Louis says. Harry’s hinted at his appreciation of skirts before, and Louis certainly isn’t one to complain about a better view of his legs, and that exposed collarbone of his. “Turn around, let me see the back.”
Harry complies, a small smile forming on his otherwise bright red face. The underlayers of lace must add a lot, because Louis knows for a fact that Harry’s ass is not usually that full.
“You’re beautiful,” Louis says, standing and walking over to him, feeling the material of the skirt and how it sways between his fingers. “Which you already knew. But you’re going to snap your ankle in those loafers, we both know how clumsy you are.”
“Am not,” Harry whines.
“Do you want to walk in the garden like this?” Louis asks, feeling his suspicions confirmed by the way Harry’s face lights up. “Darling, is this outfit for all the time or just sometimes?”
“Just for us, I think,” Harry says, confident like he’s thought about it a lot. “I just want to be able to dress like this to feel pretty sometimes. Is that okay?”
“Of course it is,” Louis says, going up on his toes just slightly to kiss him on the lips. “You’re going to be half of the reigning royal couple to the vampiric people someday, who would I be to deny you anything?” He steps back. “You should spin, see how it looks in action.”
Harry giggles, turning in a circle twice before promptly tripping over his own feet and falling into Louis. The skirt does billow nicely before it’s caught between the two of them.
“You’re a right nightmare,” Louis says. “Okay, let’s take that garden walk you wanted, but don’t blame me when you sprain something falling into a rosebush.”
—
It’s not that vampires are actually burned by the sun. If they were they definitely wouldn’t have lived so long. What vampires do have is excellent night vision, which is wonderful at night and absolutely terrible when it comes to the bright light of day, where it can cause anywhere from minor headaches to migraines.
This is why most vampire gardens contain a high number of morning glory flowers, long considered the flower of the vampiric nation. The royal gardens are full of it, and with the moon full enough that even Harry can see to make his way through the hedges, it’s an absolutely beautiful night.
Beautiful nights also often end up being dangerous nights.
The gardens are vast and well tended, a pride of the royal family. As Louis and Harry stroll through the waist-high rose bushes hand-in-hand, Louis breathes deep and smells all of the wonderful subtle greenery smells (also harry’s perfume). It’s the kind of night he can imagine they repeat hundreds of times over the next few centuries. Just the two of them together, the rest of the world forgotten.
“We should get a cat.”
Louis snorts. “I was having a romantic moment here, and you’re thinking about adopting an animal?”
Harry squeezes his hand. “I’m home all the time,” he says. “I want something else confined to the wing with me. Plus, cats are warm, and no offense, but you are not.”
“I’m warm after I drink your blood,” Louis argues.
“Yeah,” Harry says. “And that’s my warmth you’re stealing, which is pretty unfair. A cat could warm both of us.”
“I think you may be disappointed,” Louis says. “But we can look into it.”
Harry pauses, his steps slow. “Are your guards around the garden?”
Louis frowns. “Of course,” he says. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Harry says. He looks concerned, but shakes it off. “I just felt weird, all of a sudden. Like I was being watched.”
“You’re always being watched,” Louis tries to comfort. “That’s how I know you’re safe.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Harry says. Louis wants to agree. After all, he’s the vampire. If something were wrong, he should know well before Harry would.
But then, something is wrong. Something is very wrong and Louis only figures it out moments too late, as his knees begin to buckle and Harry’s hand slips out of his grip. There’s yelling in his ears and oh - that’s Harry’s voice, isn’t it? But Louis is on the ground now, and his vision is fading, and Louis cannot possibly figure out what… is happening…
Except that something is very wrong, and Harry’s hand isn’t in his anymore.
—
When Louis wakes up, he is on the cobblestone path of the garden, just where he fell, and he is terribly, horribly alone.
It takes a minute, his mind returning before his body, so he’s struggling to stand as his thoughts race to make sense of everything. It’s still night… it can’t be that much later. What happened? Where did Harry go? Was this something internal? A sickness? External? An attack? If it was internal Harry would be here, wouldn’t he? Where is Harry?
Where is Harry?
His heartbeat is already racing a mile a minute as Louis scrambles unsteadily to his feet. Harry couldn’t be taken, surely, because why wouldn’t they simply take Louis? They were clearly able to incapacitate him, yet they left him. Why?
Louis feels as though he’s about to vomit.
Harry. His Harry. Gone.
—
Louis runs to the castle, still dizzy and shaken, and screams for someone, anyone. Every second feels like a second wasted as Louis makes his way through the halls, headed to the throne room where he’s most likely to find his mum. She’ll know what to do, he thinks. She must! Because Louis has no clue, really, and if his mum doesn’t know then no one will.
He finds her there, and as soon as she sees him she is up from her throne where she was conversing with a servant, and running to him, demanding to know what’s wrong. Louis sobs into her arms that Harry- Harry— Harry is—
He’s not quite sure what she does after she clutches Louis to herself and tells him to stop talking and to breathe, good lord boy, just breathe. He might even black out for a bit, too overwhelmed to process what’s happened.
Then his mum is leading him through to another room, a smaller conference room with historic tapestries running across all the walls. She sits him in a chair and disappears, leaving him alone. It feels like an eternity when she reappears, with someone else behind her.
Niall, royal seer, sits himself at the table across from him.
“Horan will be able to tell us, Dear,” Louis’ mum says, taking the seat furthest from the door.
“I might,” Niall says. “If he’s still within the bounds of the kingdom I will.” He runs a hand through his dark hair. “It’ll take me a bit, and if you break the connection I will have to start over, I warn you now, so once I take your hand you absolutely cannot let go.”
Louis is used to Niall being lighthearted and funny, a jester of the court at meals and always up for a good prank. He’s never had to deal with him in a professional sense before, and the switch is impressive. He nods, putting his hands forward on the table.
Niall takes each hand in one of his, and then goes rigid. His eyes open wide, and Louis watches with fascination bordering on terror as his pupils and irises disappear, swirling into a cloudy white.
It feels a bit like his memories are being rifled through, like Niall’s gone into an attic and has begun going through boxes of dates and times, pushing them aside when they’re not what he wants. Then, when he’s apparently found what he’s looking for, there’s a stretching and moulding like putty, and a twitch so sudden his fingers jerk, and he has to make a conscious effort not to pull them away.
“He’s close,” Niall says, voice low and methodic, like it’s a struggle to put the words in the right order. “Very close. Outside the castle, but… Below.”
“Below where?” Louis asks, although he’s unsure if Niall can even hear him, his eyes still white, body rigid.
“West,” Niall says. “Outside your window and down. Further. A cave with a door.”
Louis’ window is above a drop so steep it’s practically a cliff’s edge. No horse or motor vehicle could possibly get him down there. “Do you know who? Or why?”
Niall lets out a breath, his shoulders starting to sink and colour returning to his eyes. “No,” he says. “There is someone, I can see there’s just one, but I don’t know who. I’ve never met them.”
Just one. Whoever it is, Louis will kill them. Of this, he’s certain.
“Can you see if he’s okay?”
Niall’s eyes are completely back to normal, like the fog has lifted. He lets go of Louis’ hands. “He was,” he says. “I don’t know for how much longer.”
—
The knowledge that they had the audacity to stay so close, to practically be right under Louis’ nose this whole time, is absolutely infuriating. Louis concentrates on that emotion, on the anger building inside of him, rather than succumbing to the fear that he has no idea what state Harry is in. Trekking down the steep slope of the mountain, he growls in frustration at the number of times he has to slow his walking, for fear of slipping right off the edge. Harry is so close but even vampiric abilities won’t help him survive from a thousand foot fall.
The sunlight above him disappears quickly, hidden behind the castle and then behind the mountains surrounding it. It’s cooler the further down he goes, and his footsteps echo back at him as it seems that he’s about the only living thing moving about down here.
That’s good, probably. Wild things that live just at the edge of society are rarely friendly.
Louis continues down for what seems like hours, although surely IT must not be nearly that long. This far down it’s almost impossible to see when the sun truly sets, all he’s aware of is the darkness that Harry, if he was brought down here awake, was surely blind in.
He doesn’t know if he’d prefer Harry to have been conscious for that or not.
Eventually, an infinity apart from the world Louis left above him, at the very base of the cliff face, Louis’ feet reach the lowest point of the path. The wind whips violently around him, as if it’s been brought down here with him and then found itself much too large and powerful for such a small face.
Directly in front of him is a door.
It’s hewn into the rocky wall, crudely made and ill-fitting as if the workman didn’t care to spend too long down here fixing it in place.
Louis immediately shoulders against it, pushing with such force that the bang as it hits the wall behind it is near deafening.
Niall said Harry’s in here, and Louis’ wasted too much time already.
Inside, even with his vampiric eyesight Louis has trouble seeing. It seems to be a cave, probably naturally formed, that twists around the corner and disappears. Louis reaches out and puts his fingers up to the wall to guide him and, carefully, follows where it leads.
Louis counts four right turns and two lefts, with the muted sound of his own footsteps and the dripping of water somewhere nearby being the only noise. He’s likely walking straight into a trap of some kind, but he’s comforted to know that in this level of darkness any vampire would be blind as a bat.
So, when he takes one final turn and finds himself in a room lit by candles in sconces, he has to shield his eyes from the sudden brightness.
“You’ve come too late,” says a voice, and Louis blinks furiously, eyes still shielded as he tries desperately to get his eyes to adjust faster. It’s a voice he recognizes, he knows that, but it takes until he’s able to actually lower his hand to recognize who it is.
“Danny?” Louis asks, shocked. Danny, who had once been advisor to the king, Louis’ father, and who had disappeared at the time of his death. A short, balding man, he was the only human on the vampiric court, there to help relations with the many human nations around them.
The years have clearly not been kind to him.
“Louis,” Danny spits. “Heir to the precious throne of the bloodsuckers.”
Louis was only a child when his father died, a train accident on a trip to Paris that rocked the nation. Vampires are supposed to rule for centuries, yet he’d been king for less than a decade. His youngest weren’t even born.
Danny’s disappearance had been suspicious, but not suspicious enough for anything other than a quiet government investigation that yielded no results.
“Have you been down here this whole time?” Louis asks, almost absently, looking around the cave. There are sconces on the walls to either side, and a tunnel that continues onward in the wall opposite. It’s echoing and empty, save for a colourful rug almost like a makeshift welcome mat.
Then it hits him. The cave smells of dampness and dirt and sweat, but beneath all of those things there is a faint smell of lilacs.
Of perfume.
Louis takes off toward the tunnel that continues in front of him, the first real traces of Harry spurring him forward like a man possessed. Danny laughs, a grating, ugly noise, and yells that he’s certainly too late.
Louis slips down the tunnel - it’s short, but it descends rapidly and he has to brace both hands against the walls as he goes. It opens up after only a few hundred feet into a cavern much wider than the one he just left, with a quietly moving river flowing through the back of it.
Right in the middle, hung from a stalactite like meat in the window of a butcher’s, is Harry.
His eyes are closed, head bent forward to rest on his chest and wrists tied above him. His blouse is torn, bloodied, and his skirt, the one he was so excited to show Louis, is in tatters.
Louis surges forward, an unearthly noise coming from his throat. Harry doesn’t stir.
“I told you,” comes Danny’s voice from behind, as he makes his way through the tunnel after him. “He’s beyond your wicked ways now. You can’t hurt him.”
Louis puts his hands on Harry’s chest, his neck, searching desperately for a heartbeat. There’s blood pooling at his feet. If Louis wasn’t so well fed his senses would be going haywire right now, but with a human love to worry about he’d never let himself get to that point.
He can’t find a pulse, hands shaking as he scrabbles at Harry’s bonds, reaching up and scratching at the rope that holds his wrists until it’s shredded under his fingers and Harry falls to the earth below.
“You’ve killed him,” Louis screeches, sinking to his knees and hugging Harry’s lifeless form to himself. “You tell me I can’t hurt him— you- you’ve killed him!”
“I couldn’t let him become one of you,” Danny says. “I watched that boy grow up. It would be too cruel to deny him the right to a human life just because he’s been entranced by your wicked world.”
Louis screams again, is about to go after Danny right where he stands, but suddenly he feels, against his chest, for just the hint of an instant, the beat of a heart.
Harry may be mere moments from death, but he’s not - not yet.
Louis cradles his near lifeless form in one arm, but brings his other arm up to his mouth and sinks his teeth into his own wrist, nearly vomiting at the taste of his own blood on his tongue.
Usually this is done with a ceremonial knife, small and clean cut, but he doesn’t have the time.
Blood dripping from his wrist, he holds it to Harry’s mouth, smears it on his lips, lets it drip down his throat. He prays it’s enough, prays he’s not too late. There is only the stillness of the room, of the world, for a few moments as he sits in purgatory, not knowing whether he was truly too late.
Then he feels Harry’s breath on his shoulder, shallow and halting.
He’s done it.
Loathe to leave his side but also feeling a fury greater than Louis has ever known, Louis lays Harry on the floor, looking like a sickly Snow White, and turns to Danny. The man looks concerned, he’s saying something that Louis doesn’t even register, pointing at Harry’s body, realization of what Louis has done in his eyes.
Louis gets up and runs at him, tearing through the man like a wild animal, breaking his neck and slitting his throat, and watching him crumple to the ground. In revenge for attempting to take Harry’s life, and maybe even revenge for another. He’ll likely never know for sure.
Louis turns his back on the man and comes back to Harry, his love, his forever, laying on the ground and already looking more alive, the breaths coming stronger now. Louis kneels over him, putting his hand over Harry’s chest and feeling the strong, fast heartbeat, the one indicative of vampiric blood in the system. He doesn’t even realise the tears are dripping from his face until Harry’s face screws up and, eyes still closed, he reaches up a hand to wipe them away from where they’ve landed on his own cheeks.
Louis bends down and buries his face in Harry’s blouse, embarrassed at the crying, relieved at Harry’s life, exhausted.
“Lou,” Harry croaks, after a few minutes. His hand comes to rest on the back of Louis’ head. “Lou, my skirt is ruined.”
Louis laughs a snotty laugh into the damp material. “I’ll buy you a new one,” he promises. “A whole closet of them.”
—
The river at the back of the cave must have been how Danny entered and exited on a daily basis. Even with Harry’s still recovering form, it was a quick swim to an open clearing at the edge of a small village. They recognize Louis there, bowing respectfully and offering him rides back to the castle in every shape and form imaginable. Louis keeps an iron grip on Harry’s hand, and declines them all. He doesn’t feel that he could trust anyone right now.
They walk.
At the base of the castle they’re met by Niall, who could see them coming. Harry, even with his newly replenished life force, is ready to collapse. He looks terrible. Niall runs ahead to alert Louis’ family, who rush to surround the two of them when they’re inside. Louis’ mum, seeing Harry, quickly ushers the children away. She kisses first Louis on the head, then Harry, and dismisses them to his wing of the castle, to get clean and rest. Louis has never felt so grateful to her.
Alone, in his quarters, Louis draws the bath as Harry sits on the tiled floor, his head resting against the wall. It feels too normal, too much like every other day.
“I can see really well,” Harry remarks eventually.
“Yeah,” Louis agrees. “You’ll need sunglasses now.”
“I can also smell the blood on my clothes very stronly.”
“Just wait until the next time you try to wear perfume.”
Harry sniffs. “You’re telling me my perfume was disgustingly strong and you never mentioned?”
Louis beckons him to lean forward, working blouse off of him when he complies. “You liked it,” he says. “Who am I to say no?”
“You’re a sap,” Harry says. He looks down forlornly at his ripped skirt. Now, with his blouse off, Louis can see the gash that runs across his chest.
“We can go shopping all the time now,” Louis says. “I’ll buy you every skirt you see.”
Harry stands and strips, stepping into the steaming bath and sinking down into the suds, staining the water a murky reddish brown as he does. “I’d like that,” he says. “But you know what I’d like more?”
“What’s that, Darling?”
“For you to join me in this bath, and to kiss me properly, because I bet being a vampire means I can kiss much better now.”
Louis leans over the edge and meets his lips, smiling into the kiss as Harry eagerly reciprocates. “I won’t be justifying that with an answer,” he says, “As you were a perfectly wonderful kisser before.”
He does join him, though.
They sit together and talk about how life will be now, as the sun starts to rise outside the castle. They sit until the water has gone cold and they’ve run out of words, but they are in the safety of their own little world, and the knowledge that they have centuries to come together. The knowledge that they belong to each other and that is all that will ever matter.
Everybody wanna steal my girl
Everybody wanna take her heart away
Couple billion in the whole wide world
Find another one 'cause she belongs to me