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Claude von Riegan was no stranger to paying his dues.
That wasn’t to say that- usually- he was a fan of it. But, a deal was a deal. And if he’d made that deal with his money, his land or his favours- well, he had enough to trade for what he really wanted. Perhaps he lacked the gentlemanliness of his peers amongst the gentry- but if push were not coming to shove, he hardly wished to be perceived as dishonest.
With that said- silently and to himself, cushioned by the upholstery of a much-too-large stately living chair from a century ago- an exchange of blood was something he hadn’t ever negotiated before. And though the vampire whose family (or clan- Claude wasn’t quite sure) held the financial ledgers that gave him the best chance of reuniting with the lost Failnaught bow was rather affable, he could not entirely dispel the nervousness which bubbled in his stomach.
To his credit, this Ignatz- who masqueraded by day as an arts merchant, and who was roughly his age- had explained the process in detail. Rather sheepishly, he’d given Claude nothing short of a small lecture on the topic of safety and responsibility, reassuring him that as he’d never drunk from a human before, and that vampire fangs were sterile, there was no potential of him contracting something undesirable from the experience. He’d seemed more worried than Claude had been- or was- and he wasn’t sure whether that put him more at ease or simply made him more anxious.
Claude conceded that it was simply nice of him to take such great care.
With his eyes closed, it was hard for him to tell exactly where Ignatz was. He smelled of very little, emanated no warmth and did not breathe, for as Claude had been informed, doing so was not necessary for him to live. He had instead to trust that Ignatz was approaching him from the back, ready to expose the right side of his neck and sink in his fangs, as gentle and professional as he could.
When a cold hand came to rest on his shoulder, Claude did his utmost to restrain himself from gasping.
“You’re definitely not a haemophiliac, right?”
That was another thing Ignatz had explained- or asked, really. Several times, despite Claude’s insistence that if he were prone to uncontrollable bleeding, he’d probably have noticed it by then.
“Nope. My blood likes staying put where it’s supposed to be.” Claude didn’t feel half as nonchalant as his tone suggested. But if he knew that if he panicked, it was more than likely that the situation would only get worse. “I promise- if there was a problem, I would have told you about it.”
Tentatively, Claude’s eyes flickered open. He saw Ignatz to his side- not his back- still dressed in the antiquated outfit Claude assumed was standard vampire fare, looking profoundly nervous.
“C’mon.” Claude encouraged. “I want to know if I taste good.”
Ignatz’s mouth twitched. Claude wasn’t sure whether from amusement, or from hunger. But he seemed, at least to Claude, to be shuffling closer- and he could only interpret that as a good sign.
“Scared?”
Ignatz shook his head insistently.
“Then let me uphold my end of the bargain.”
Claude shut his eyes again, and waited, determined to no longer play games with his surprisingly bashful compatriot.
He was soon to find that the sensation of two knife-sharp fangs stabbing into his jugular felt nothing like he had ever felt before, nor anything that he’d expected to feel. To his great surprise, it was almost a nothingness- a complete neutrality, an absence of anything aside from lips, cold and smooth, pressed up against his neck. Once it began to flow, he became conscious of his blood leaving him- yet its exit was near-impossible to pinpoint.
Too much like a kiss, albeit one drained of its human warmth, for his taste.
Nevertheless, Ignatz drew back quickly enough that he ended up questioning little. The strangeness did not dissipate as his fangs were retrieved from the fresh wounds they had made in his neck, but Claude had been warned of such, and decided that he could live with that.
He’d only become more woozy soon. The loss of blood was its own misfortune, but for the “pacification of food sources” (terminology which Claude hadn’t enjoyed whatsoever) vampiric fangs contained a mild sedative, enough to prevent the “victim” from wandering too far in the direction of their own home and giving a warning as to the location of the clan.
It made sense- Claude was sure that for the average person, being in a drafty stone castle in the middle of the woods could not be counted as a particularly ideal experience for them. He’d gotten used to it over his lifetime, though.
More to the point- he was going to be spending the night there. After a discussion, they’d concurred it was for the best, anyway.
“...Did it bother you?”
The sound of Ignatz’s voice snapped Claude back to attention. He turned, weakly, to face his dinner guest.
“It felt like you were giving me a big kiss. Just a big, sloppy kiss on my neck, but a really cold one. Like you’d just been eating ice cubes.”
If Ignatz was capable of blushing, Claude was quite sure he would be doing so. His face contorted in embarrassment each time he spoke the word kiss, and though he’d never expected prudishness for a vampire, he found working Ignatz into a state much too fun.
“Please don’t say that.” Ignatz whined, disappearing into one of the dark corners of the great room, arriving back with a bundle of blankets in his hand.
“Was I your first kiss?” Claude inquired, impish. Ignatz shot him a look of contention, and he chuckled.
“You were my first human feed. As for kissing- that’s none of your business, Master Riegan.”
Master Riegan. Claude couldn’t remember if anyone but his parents’ most elderly servants had called him that before.
“Note taken.”
Careful not to overwhelm him, Ignatz arranged the blankets gently over Claude. Each one was old, and quite fine, with some designed in ways that did not befit Fodlan design. Claude accepted them all eagerly, unsure if they were all required, but rather unwilling to find out.
He had his information- and a place to stay for the night. If Ignatz planned to harm him, he already had many opportunities to do so during the night, each one passing unremarked. He had not once surveyed him for weak spots, as Claude had done to him, nor had he caught sight of any poorly-concealed weapons which might put him on a level playing field with Claude’s hidden wooden stake.
Despite circumstance, it all felt rather relaxing.
“I’ll bring you some food tomorrow morning.”
Though the elders of Ignatz’s clan lived and worked at night, he persisted in the daylight, which he had explained as only slightly unpleasant. It did not take Claude long to conclude that the lack of vampiric sightings in the daytime hours was more to do with conspicuousness than anything else.
“Human food, right?”
As if offended by the suggestion that it would be anything else, Ignatz nodded sharply.
“Yes. Human food. I don’t know what you like, but I’ll make sure it’s edible.”
Edible food. Claude liked the sound of that more than the alternative, he had to admit.
“No blood?”
He certainly felt as if he were lacking his blood. Most likely, the sedatives were kicking in, lulling him into a falsely peaceful rest.
“No.” Ignatz reassured, the last thing Claude heard before his eyelids shut abruptly, hands falling slack against his lap. “No blood.”
-
What Claude found on the table in front of him, the morning after everything, was certainly not blood. Rather, it was a plate of pastry cases filled with a heat-blistered white substance he couldn’t quite identify, but which he suspected Ignatz had left for him while he was still asleep.
He had a rule- one which he held to quite tightly- that he never ate a bite of food handed to him he hadn’t watched be made. It made dining quite difficult- which he supposed was one of the reasons why nearly everyone of his status gave in eventually to the idea of having a private chef.
But. As he’d told himself earlier, if Ignatz truly wanted him dead, he had given him a thousand opportunities to make good on his intentions, and at no point had he even seemed to intuit the fact that Claude suspected him. Though the draining of his blood had left him with nothing but a thrumming headache at the back of his mind, he was hungry- and it was all too tempting to slip.
Claude stopped himself halfway through reaching for the plate, halting just before he touched the gold-painted rim of the china plate.
Not a good idea.
He’d live if he didn’t get to eat for an hour or so. His car was still parked in the gravel-patch that the Victor family called a “parking lot” (which was empty when he arrived; and as he had saw no evidence for them doing so he concluded that they likely did not own a vehicle). Stumbling to his feet, he rationalized to himself that even if he went out of his way to exude the necessary formalities, it would take no longer than an hour for him to make a quick escape and pass through into the restaurant front of some roadside takeout spot.
Staggering almost the entire way, Claude stalked off in the direction he vaguely remembered the kitchen being in. As far as he was concerned, anyone who didn’t own a vehicle likely didn’t own a dishwasher, and thus Ignatz was most likely to be in the fray of cleaning up after preparing what seemed, to Claude, an unnecessarily elaborate breakfast.
He paused when he came to a break in the long wooden corridor; a tart and not-unpleasant smell drifting from one distinct direction. Following the signs, limping only slightly, he managed to arrive in the near-spotless kitchen with relative haste. Finding Ignatz inside, labouring by the kitchen sink with his gaze fixed out of the broad, scenic windows, he quickly took a seat by the large circular table which occupied the area sectioned off for dining.
“I never imagined you’d want a kitchen this fancy just for eating raw meat.” Claude quipped, already surveying the pale etches in the dark wood for signs of bloodstains and nail-marks. Only when he heard a gasp from across the room did he realize that he had frightened Ignatz; or at least, caught him by surprise.
“C-Claude.” Ignatz’s breathing was heavy, his words spoken unsteadily. “You’re not in the sitting room anymore.”
“I had to come and say goodbye to you at some point, didn’t I?”
Ignatz turned to face Claude, who flashed at him an affable smile. It was a gesture that Ignatz did not return; rather, his brows furrowed and his lips upturned into a frown.
“I’ll admit I don’t exactly know how humans should sound, exactly. But you sound… a little off, Claude.”
Nonchalant, Claude shrugged.
“I can’t be expected to maintain my charm 24/7. Near-effortless isn’t effortless, I’ll have you know.”
“No, it’s- there’s nothing wrong with what you’re saying.” Ignatz clarified. “But you sound like you’re, um. Sick. Or at least not very well.”
Ignatz squinted at him, clearly trying to better understand Claude’s condition.
“Claude. Did you eat the food that I left for you?”
For a second, Claude paused, slipping his hand underneath his chin and balancing his heavy head.
“Nope.” Claude sighed. “Not a fan of… whatever it was.”
Ignatz’s frown shifted quickly to a disapproving grimace. He turned away from Claude, and began rooting amongst the old cupboards which lined the walls haphazardly, filling the air with a cacophony that only worsened his headache.
“If you don’t eat something, you’ll end up feeling terrible.”
Claude groaned. Being lectured by a vampire? Really?
“Not in the mood.”
A loosely assembled platter of long-life crackers and small, sugary biscuits clattered in front of Claude, being faced rather insistently by Ignatz.
“If I let you drive out of here on an empty stomach, you might crash.”
Claude snorted.
“Do you really have such little faith in my driving abilities?”
“No,” Ignatz sighed. “I don’t think anyone can drive safely if they’re in your condition. So you’ll have to be patient with me, or I’ll… I’ll, um-”
“I’ll eat your biscuits.” Claude groaned, picking up one of the wrapped, rounded biscuits in the hope that it would be more appetizing than what he could already see. “Don’t get my car impounded.”
“Pounded?”
Mouth already half-full of a mint-cream and chocolate biscuit, slightly after its prime, Claude didn’t bother to offer a clarification. He continued eating, long past when Ignatz had given up on his hope of being given any other information, until he’d finished with the biscuit- at which point he moved onto the rest of them. He found none of them even half as appetizing as the first- or even the little tarts Ignatz had made for him in the first place- but they were unlikely to be poisoned. And as much as he didn’t want to admit it, while nothing was ever certain, he was hardly in the condition to be driving a car on the busy motorway which provided the only access to Ignatz’s aging forest castle.
“I’m done.” he said when he was, well, done. By that point, the plate was covered with nothing but crumbs. And if Ignatz insisted on him licking them from the plate, Claude resolved to leave immediately.
“You’re done?”
“With the biscuits. Are you reassured enough that I’m not going to end up bruising the bum of someone’s precious Fraldarius?”
Claude practically felt himself deflate when Ignatz shook his head once more.
“Give it some time to enter your bloodstream.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Claude whined. “I’m sure you know a lot about bloodstreams.”
“What?”
“You know. Being-”
“A vampire.”
The joke seemed, now he’d told it, distinctly less funny to Claude than he’d imagined.
“If it’ll keep you off of those roads, then you can ask me whatever questions you’d like about vampires.”
“...Alright.” Claude wasn’t sure if he had many questions about vampires. Being one seemed an awfully clandestine affair, and he was best off being careful about the sorts of forbidden knowledge he found himself acquiring.
Still- Ignatz had volunteered a considerable amount of information already. It was reasonable to assume he wouldn’t surrender anything that could truly get him in trouble, judging by his over-careful nature.
“Can you tell people apart from the way their blood tastes?”
Ignatz blinked at him.
“What?”
“If you were at a crime scene, and the person who’d done the crime had left some blood behind, could you taste it and tell everyone who was responsible?”
Ignatz blinked at him again. Claude hated small talk.
“Well- no. Even if I’d drank from them before. I guess if it were a dog- or some other animal- it would taste different, because it’s always different from human blood.”
Claude sighed, leaning back in his chair. There went his perfect scheme-slash-movie plot about a crack crime-fighting team of vampires who could identify criminals by the taste of their blood- which had seemed, in those few moments before Ignatz had shattered his dreams, viable, if somewhat idealistic.
“But, um. Animals tend to commit less crimes than humans.”
“Right, right.” Claude nodded. “That’s how you know that humans are the real monsters.”
“You seem fine. Mostly.”
He’d meant that as a joke- but Claude didn’t feel much like clarifying.
“So all blood tastes the same?” he asked, redirecting the conversation again. “That seems like a pretty boring diet.”
“I still eat human food for fun. Some older vampires rally against it, but, well. Everyone does it. The people who are ashamed of it just don’t talk about it.”
Interesting, Claude remarked silently to himself. It was hardly the question he’d asked, but if anything, it struck him as perhaps more intriguing.
Perhaps he’d have to come back one day, with Ignatz’s blessing, to investigate from the ground-up how vampire social structures worked. He’d certainly seen worse anthropological projects.
“When it comes to human blood,” Ignatz continued, undeterred by Claude’s diverted interest, “the main difference is in the blood type. You can tell.”
“Really?”
Ignatz nodded.
“What am I, then?”
His companion paused for a moment to think. Claude watched him, as if his observations could uncover the process of deliberation he was going through.
“AB blood type. Minus.”
Damn.
“Have you been looking through my medical records?” Claude teased, only to be met with a profound frown on Ignatz’s face.
“N-no. If I had, I wouldn’t have asked you so much if you were a haemophile.”
“I was joking.”
“Oh.”
The contempt Claude held for small talk was doubled by awkward small talk. For a vampire, Ignatz seemed quite awfully sensitive. Claude couldn’t deny that this was certainly amongst his charm points- but it did make his usual banter a little harder to maneuver through.
“You were right.” Claude mumbled. “About my blood type.”
“I’m glad I haven’t lost my touch. And if it’s any consolation for all of this trouble, your blood is rather healthy.”
Claude grinned. A vampire wasn’t a doctor, but he’d take it.
“So, did I taste good?”
Again, if Ignatz could blush, Claude was sure he would be doing so. His arms folded with an endearing nervousness that made Claude marvel at the fact he’d once considered himself to be endangered by visiting a vampire’s estate. His gaze diverted towards the corner of the room, no longer making eye contact with Claude.
He hadn’t heard a no.
“Good.” As far as Claude was concerned, he didn’t need to hear Ignatz’s actual answer. Everything was clear in his body language. “Bringing a disappointing dish to a meal is never good form.”
Flustering Ignatz was unexpectedly entertaining. He’d have to- no, he was sure he would- come back another time.