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The first time Sypha kissed Trevor, it had been when he was least expecting it.
Of course he hadn’t expected her to think of him that way at all; he’s… well, he’s him. A drifting tramp, a drunk, a disgrace. Irritable on his best days, hostile on his worst. Handy with a whip and a sword, but then again what’s that when compared to magic?
And Sypha is so alive. That’s really the only word he can think of that doesn’t pale into insignificance against the total, incomprehensibly fierce force of her. She’s alive in all the best ways; warm, energetic, powerful, dangerous. She doesn’t just burn like a star in the endless dark, she’s every single heavenly body in the universe put together. She’s a whole damn meteor shower happening all at once, pinpricks of bright light and arcing streaks of silver exploding above you in all their blazing, overwhelming, awe-inspiring glory. She blinds him, every single day, but he can never get enough of looking at her.
And Trevor is—well. He’s him.
It’s been maybe two weeks since they had left the castle, and he’s beginning to realize that the countryside needs them more than he’d initially thought. It is, to put it simply, chaos. The people are entirely scattered, villages either overflowing with refugees or totally empty, with only bloodstains smeared on the houses and the town square cobbles to account for people who once might have lived there. Night creatures have gone rogue, their thirst for blood apparently unquenched by their master’s demise.
It seems to him that the only thing between what remains of Dracula’s armies and the people of Wallachia is Sypha and Trevor.
Every village they go to, every town and every city, has been ravaged by attacks. The people are in disarray, the headmen and headwomen are either dead, catatonic with panic or an inability to handle what’s happening, or have run away. There are no weapons, no fighters, nobody defending the place. Every day their dead go unburied, piling in an ever-heightening heap on the outskirts of town like macabre signposts until they eventually begin to outnumber the living.
And so he and Sypha arrive and try their best to help, and try to leave having done the best they can. They teach able-bodied men and women to hold swords and knives, how to kill a demon with holy water, how to use salt and silver and blessed things to defend themselves. They stay for a few days, a few raids. They kill as many night creatures as they can. And then they move on.
They’ve just encountered their first horde on the road when it happens.
“God, it’s getting hot,” Sypha says, stretching languidly where she’s sprawled across the front seat in the wagon, her head in his lap. She’s beginning to do that more and more these days, casually show affection in ways he cannot even begin to hazard how to respond to. Putting her head on his shoulder, looping her arm through his, sticking her icy little feet into his lap to warm them up.
And because he can do nothing else, he lets her. He lets her lean on him. He lets her fall asleep and drool on him. He digs his fingers between her toes and rubs warmth back into her feet because fuck, they’re cold. She must store her ice magic there, because it’s definitely not normal to have feet that cold. She’s a deadly riptide of physicality and nearness and it’s all he can do to stay afloat, to keep his head above water and tread like his life depends on it.
“Summer is coming,” she goes on, stifling a yawn against the back of her hand. “I always preferred summer to winter.”
“Me too.” Summer had always been a welcome respite after bitterly cold winter nights when temperatures had dropped below freezing back when Trevor was still on the road drifting. All he’d had was his cloak and what pitiful firewood he could light, and that was never usually enough.
“We should get new clothes,” Sypha says. “Ones suitable for the weather. We’ve got the money the previous townspeople gave us, we can afford it.”
He makes a face. “New clothes? Next you’ll be asking to buy a house and a couple of goats.”
She huffs, sitting up. “I don’t need to buy a house and a couple of goats. I have Alucard’s castle and I have you two, don’t I?” She smiles artlessly. “Though I imagine it would be less tiring tending after goats.”
“Hey now.” He stretches his arms above his head with a sigh, feeling the kinks in his back and shoulders loosen with audible cracks. “I’m very low maintenance. It’s Alucard who you’ll really have trouble looking after. With his stupid pretty face and stupid luscious hair and his stupid low-cut clothes…”
“Pretty face and luscious hair, hmm?” Sypha arches a brow high, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. “Why, Treffy,” she goes on in that sugar-sweet tone that tells him he’s absolutely fucked up. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were attracted to our dhampir.”
He doesn’t quite know what to name whatever settles low and hot in his stomach at the words our dhampir, nor does he think he wants to. He ignores it instead, turning away from Sypha and hoping the heat he can feel creeping up his neck doesn’t show.
“Oh, fuck off. I know you noticed it too.”
“His shirt was very low-cut, wasn’t it?” she says musingly, leaning back with an odd glint in her eye. “And as for those pants… it didn’t leave very much to the imagination, did it?”
He coughs, alarmed. “I mean, I suppose—when you put it that way.”
“Oh, come now,” she says with an adorable pout, turning towards him. “Surely it wouldn’t be beneath you to admit he’s attractive.”
“I—well, of course he’s attractive,” he says. He can practically see his own dignity withering away bit by bit with every word of this conversation. “He’s half vampire. That’s how they lure you in close enough to stick their fucking fangs in your neck.”
“That’s beside the point.” She leans her head back, shutting her eyes. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you staring at him whenever you thought he wasn’t looking.”
Trevor splutters inelegantly. “I—what? I never stared at him!”
“You did,” she says, her eyes still closed. She’s smiling a little. “It’s okay, you know. If it’s of any help, he stared at you just as often.”
To Trevor’s utter chagrin, it does help. A lot more than it should. God, when had this conversation gone this far south?
“You stared too,” is all he mutters. It’s true; she had stared at Alucard. He’d noticed it, on the road and in the Belmont Hold, noticed her eyes lingering on him for a fleeting second at a time before she’d look away, the faintest of blushes coloring her cheeks.
Alucard had looked at her too sometimes, when they’d been ambushed by night creatures. He’d look at her with her hands raining shards of ice and wreathed with flame, look at her wield it all with such deadly precision with that same mix of adoration and awe and fear Trevor had felt then and still feels now, lips parting and eyes shining.
“Of course I did,” she says without a shred of embarrassment, her eyes still closed. “And I stared at you too, you thick-skulled idiot.”
Trevor has no fucking clue how to respond to that—and he’s saved from trying to do so by a sudden, low chitter from the bushes ahead of them, inhuman and unmistakable.
Sypha’s eyes snap open as Trevor’s fingers immediately go to his hip where the Morning Star is looped, wrapping around the handle and gripping tight. He yanks on the reins with his other hand and the horses whinny softly as they come to a halt in the middle of the road.
They’ve never come across night creatures on the road before—it’s too secluded, and what few animals have woken after they had all burrowed underground before the winter have enough instinct not to make themselves targets. The night creatures are usually attracted to the glowing lights of villages, the promise of fear and easy prey luring them in.
They melt from the shadows up ahead, smudges of darkness coalescing into the form of four or five of them, ugly hulking things with gaping mouths full of rows and rows of sharp little teeth and spikes along their spines, serrated claws curved and stained with blood. Even from the wagon their stench is unbearable. Hell and death and demon slime.
“Take the first two,” says Sypha quietly, already moving. “I’ll follow.”
She turns towards the back of the wagon almost as if on instinct before seeming to remember that it’s empty now, that nobody sits there anymore. No golden eyes burning in the dimness alert and awaiting her command. Sypha turns back around, her jaw tight and a momentary but unmistakable vulnerability flashing in her eyes, then catches Trevor’s eye and nods before slipping out of the wagon and disappearing into the trees.
Well then. Showtime.
He stands, grasping the edge of the seat and levering himself up and over, landing in a neat crouch on the gravel below. The night creatures chitter gleefully at the sight of him, their eyes practically lighting up at the prospect of fresh and easy meat.
Trevor doesn’t give the illusion even a moment to fester, stepping forward and casting out his whip. The loops of silver unspool around him and snake towards the night creatures, a bright flexible arc of light. The heavy metal head connects with the first demon and its skin blisters immediately, the magic forged into the silver fissuring beneath its veins and tearing it open with a deafening crackle. It rends apart in an explosion of blood and stinking demon guts, bits of skin and bone and charred muscle flying everywhere.
The night creatures behind their less fortunate companion screech and move backward, clearly wary. Trevor doesn’t give them a moment, darting forward and unsheathing his sword in a single smooth motion, sweeping the blade upward and slicing through another demon’s throat.
It topples backward, jaws dripping blood, and a moment later a spike of ice impales itself through its skull, killing it instantly.
Sypha spins out from behind its falling body, her hands wreathed in flame and ice, her face set in a determined snarl. She ducks beneath Trevor’s whip and sends another volley of ice shards at the night creatures, leaping into the frenzy of battle without so much as a second of hesitation.
He allows himself a moment to marvel at her, feeling his lips tilt upward into a smile almost involuntarily at the sight of her fighting like this, reckless and graceful. She’s merciless, powerful and magnificent and beautiful. He lets his eyes cling to the curl of her lip, the line of her jaw, the fluidity of her movements—then he steps forward beside her into the fray.
It’s a tireless whirlwind of slashing and stabbing, feeling warm heavy wetness seeping over his weapons and over his hands, running along the ground like a scarlet river. He loses himself in it after a while, the repetitive movements of it and Sypha in his periphery, both conscious of themselves and each other, moving together and balancing every move they make.
It’s taking more than he’d thought to get rid of them all—more time and more energy—in Alucard’s absence; the both of them have apparently grown so accustomed to fighting alongside the dhampir that Trevor has found himself looking around wildly during the battle, eyes seeking golden hair and a black coat that flies around a tall slender body like angel wings when he moves too fast for the eye to see, before remembering that he isn’t here.
It’s over after what could be hours or seconds, and he looks around at the demons that lie twitching and bleeding around them in a grisly ring. He looks up to see whether Sypha is hurt, whether she’s all right—and sees her just as she turns around to face him, flushed and panting but grinning, a blazing incandescent look of pure exhilaration on her face.
She runs towards him, her eyes bright and wide and impossibly blue. She’s laughing as her arms go around his neck, a high sweet sound, and then she’s pulling him down towards her and she’s kissing him.
Everything goes blissfully blank for a minute, everything but the feeling of her lips on his, her arms around him, the scent of her filling his head in a dizzying cascade of sweet and spicy and Sypha. Before he can fully comprehend what’s happening his arms move of their own volition, dropping his whip and his sword and catching her up against him, nearly lifting her off her feet. She laughs against his mouth, surprised and delighted, and God, if he could get drunk on a sound then he’d gladly get drunk on the sound of Sypha’s laughter every night.
They break apart and she’s still smiling, her cheeks red and her eyes bright, and it strikes Trevor suddenly as he looks at her that he might just be in love, and nothing else matters. The sun is setting and there’s air in his lungs and Sypha in his arms, and he’s in love.
He’s… surprisingly okay with that.
“Well,” Sypha says, still smiling with a distinctly smug glint in her eye, “I’m glad we got that out of the way.”
It takes a moment for the world to swim back into focus, for his brain to make sense of her words. “Out of the way of what?”
She pats his chest, planting a kiss on his cheek before drawing away. “Oh, Treffy,” she says, taking his hand and leading him back towards the wagon, “I suppose I’m just going to have to show you.”
Summer has come early this year, Sypha thinks.
The crisp coolness of Spring had faded within weeks, giving way to blazing sunshine and jewel-blue skies, the days lengthening and the lands around the castle and the hold coming to life in explosions of viridescent vegetation. Birds begin to gather, hovering around the trees and bushes and building nests in the topmost boughs. They burble out their high, sweet tunes every morning to herald the sunrise and dip their beaks delicately into the open throats of the flowers that have started to grow, creamy lilacs and crepe-petaled lilies that weigh down the bushes in riots of color.
The once-dead lands around the hold are beginning to come to life, slowly but surely, the land and the people thriving in the wake of their victory—and Belmont, Sypha thinks, is a paragon of that triumph. An embodiment of the reality that they’re truly healing, standing again after years of being cut down and taking their first steps towards the future.
Sunlight is streaming through the windows of the kitchen, pooling on the hardwood floors like puddles of liquid gold. It’s stiflingly warm even with all the windows thrown open, and the heat makes her robes stick to her back with sweat. She shifts, uncomfortable; she already feels hotter than usual with the added weight of her pregnant belly, and the sweltering summer heat isn’t helping.
“Sypha?” Alucard’s face swims into view, cheeks flushed and golden hair pulled up into a messy knot at the back of his head. There’s a bit of bread flour on his face, his hands liberally dusted with it. “More ice?”
“Yes, please.” She sighs, resting her head against the wall behind her. “Thank you, Alucard.”
He smiles at her, handing her another chunk of ice wrapped in thin cotton for her to rest on the back of her neck and her wrists to help cool her down. He had said something about blood vessels and cooling points, but the rest had been rather lost on her; she had been too busy watching him and trying to hide a smile. He had shifted into what Trevor has affectionately dubbed his ‘doctor lecturing mode’, his back straightening and his hands gesturing extravagantly, adopting the obliging tone of a teacher explaining something to a student.
She watches him move back to the counter where he’s stationed himself temporarily, kneading soft bread dough in his hands. There’s another loaf in the oven, baking slowly and nearly finished. The rich, sweet smell of it fills the whole kitchen, making Sypha’s mouth water.
She sees Alucard lift an arm to wipe his forehead, leaving another little smear of flour on his face. Her eyes travel along the curve of his throat, the loose locks of hair that have escaped his hastily tied bun and rest gently on the back of his neck, the delicate sweep of his parted lips revealing just the tiniest hint of fang.
A few weeks ago she would have averted her gaze, pulling herself up with a start and a burst of guilt. A few weeks ago she would have felt conflicted, ashamed even, of looking at Alucard. Of liking looking at Alucard. Of wanting him to look back.
But then she had seen Trevor look at him the same way, and she had known instantly. She had been sitting by the window reading and Alucard had been changing Trevor’s bandages, brows furrowed with concentration, holding him so gently it was as if he thought Trevor would otherwise shatter. Trevor had been looking at him, and there had been such raw, unguarded longing in his eyes that her breath had caught for a moment.
Unused to keeping secrets from the people she loved she had sought him out about it the very next day, and after a long, long discussion that had involved a fair amount of kisses, a more than fair amount of tears and at least two confessions they had come to the conclusion that yes, they both wanted Alucard and no, they didn’t really have a plan to court him. They’ve both—unsuccessfully—been trying to seduce him for the past three weeks or so, but either they’ve been too subtle or Alucard is simply oblivious.
“He’s oblivious,” Greta had said firmly when Sypha had confessed their plan to her one day, exasperated and desperately seeking counsel. “I’m telling you, Sypha, unless one of you goes up to him and just kisses him, he isn’t going to realize you want him.”
“But what if he doesn’t want us?” Sypha had asked, her face in her hands and her voice muffled.
“Oh, he wants you, all right,” Greta had said, a knowing glint in her eye. “Trust me.”
She clearly knew something Sypha didn’t, but she hadn’t asked. She knows how close Alucard and Greta are, knows how much he confides in her. Whatever Greta knows, Sypha is determined to find out herself.
She stands from where she’s perched on the windowsill, placing the chunk of ice on the counter beside her as she makes her way across the kitchen towards Alucard. He turns his head as she approaches, and she notices that he draws back ever so slightly when she comes to a stop beside him, close enough that their shoulders touch.
She wishes she could tell him he doesn’t have to, but she settles for putting a hand on his arm instead. Muscle like steel cable jumps beneath her touch. His delicate, porcelain looks and willowy build belie his inhuman strength, and the dichotomy of it never fails to startle her a little.
“Alucard,” she says softly. “Thank you. You’ve been taking such good care of us.”
He ducks his head, avoiding her eye. “It’s the least I can do.”
“We missed you, you know.” She turns fully towards him, her hand still on his arm. “When we were on the road. More than I can say.”
He turns tentatively towards her too, and there’s something guarded in his eyes. “I—I missed you too. Both of you.” She sees the vulnerable line of his throat move as he swallows hard. “Maybe a little too much.”
“I wish we had come back sooner,” she says.
He shuts his eyes then, briefly, but not before she sees the flash of pain that blooms there. Pain he is trying to hide from her. “There were far more important matters at hand,” he says, his eyes still closed. “There was no reason for you to return here.”
“There was you,” she says softly. “Isn’t that reason enough?”
His eyes open then, finding hers, impossibly gold in the afternoon light. “Is it?”
“It is.” Her other hand comes up, covering his own where it rests rigidly on the counter. She threads her fingers between his and he lets her, his eyes never leaving her face.
“Sypha,” he whispers.
“You don’t have to tell us what happened while we were gone,” she says. “Not if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.” His fingers grip hers back, bruisingly tight. “I want to—but not now. Not today.”
“Someday?”
“Someday.”
“Okay,” she says softly. “But until then I want you to know that we will be here with you, every day.”
He smiles a little, and something warm cracks open in her heart at the sight. “That’s very kind of you, Sypha,” he says quietly. “And it means a great deal.”
“We imagined what it would be like when we saw you again, you know.” She allows their fingers to interlock and cannot help but marvel at how perfectly their hands fit together, pressing against each other as if they had been made to come together like this. How had she never allowed herself to take his hand before today? “Every day we pictured it. You and us, together again.”
His lashes flutter, his breath hitching as a blush rises to his cheeks. “You dreamed of me?”
“No,” she whispers. “We thought of you.”
She steps closer, emboldened when he doesn’t move away, and reaches up to put a hand on the back of his neck as she leans up on her tiptoes to reach his mouth. And when she kisses him softly, he doesn’t pull away.
It’s a careful kiss, slow and chaste and closemouthed, merely a brief press of lips. He’s entirely still, but she feels his eyes close, feels his long lashes feather against the tops of her cheeks. She draws away after a few seconds, not wanting to have overstepped some invisible line that one or both of them have drawn, afraid of having said and done too much too soon.
Alucard’s eyes are still closed, lips slightly parted. The look on his face is entirely unreadable, and even when he opens his eyes, molten gold, she can’t tell what he’s thinking. She swallows, something akin to panic clawing its way up her throat, and makes to take a step back.
An apology is already rising to her lips when his fingers tighten suddenly on hers, and it’s the only warning she gets before he yanks her closer, their bodies slamming up against each other. She has time only to gasp before he’s leaning down and kissing her hungrily, his hands on either side of her face and his lips hot on hers.
She’s lost to it immediately, the desperate caresses of his mouth and the way his body presses hers back against the counter, the feeling of his long fingers framing her face and holding her to him so reverently. He’s likely leaving dustings of flour all over her hair, but at that moment she can’t bring herself to care.
He tastes like sweet bread and wine and summer sunlight and she chases it, her arms going around his neck and pulling him down, taking control of the kiss. One of her hands tangles in his hair, pulling the silky blond tresses from their messy knot and letting them shower down around his shoulders. She grips a fistful of it and he gasps, his lips parting in a wordless invitation.
She takes it, allowing her tongue to stroke into his mouth and curl against his, gathering the taste of him; sweet and musky and Alucard. He makes a soft, wonderful sound into her mouth and she feels his sigh feather out onto her lips, warm and tickling.
Sypha pulls back for air, breathing hard. He’s staring at her, face flushed and pupils blown wide, his lips swollen from kisses. The collar of his shirt gapes open at the neck, affording her a glimpse of the indents of his collarbone at the hollow of his throat and the pulse there fluttering wildly. A surge of desire rushes through her, so strong it nearly makes her knees buckle.
Alucard swallows, his throat working as if he’s trying to remember how to speak. “Trevor?” is all he manages to ask finally, and his voice cracks in the middle.
“He knows,” Sypha says, still slightly out of breath. Her fingers reach up and carefully brush the flour off his cheeks, the gesture impossibly tender. “We both want you. We talked about this—about the three of us. He’d only be disappointed that I got to you first. Something about taking advantage of his bedridden state.”
“He would say that.” Alucard laughs hoarsely, shutting his eyes and leaning his forehead against hers. They stay like that for a few seconds, breathing each other’s breath and soaking in each other’s nearness, and time seems to turn to honey around them, sticky and slow and sweet.
“You… you both truly want me?” Alucard asks after a minute, quietly. “Like this?”
“Yes, we do.” Her finger strokes carefully down his nape and he shivers all over his body, his eyes fluttering shut. “Is that all right with you?”
“I—God.” He steps back and turns away for a moment, and there is so much raw emotion on his face, longing and fear and ecstasy and apprehension—that she thinks she actually feels her heart break.
“Alucard—Adrian,” she says, and the name—his real name—settles comfortably between her lips, her voice hugging the sound of it as it curls in her mouth. It feels good, feels right, to say it. The name he had been given and knows himself by, not the title he had earned and then donned like armor before going to war. He sucks in a breath when she says it, going entirely still for a moment.
He’s only a few steps away but a second later he blurs forward in a flash of scarlet anyway, coalescing in front of Sypha and taking her face in his hands, pressing kiss after feverish kiss to her lips, each one more heated than the last. She can taste salt and regret and desire on his lips, hope and want and desperate longing finally realized.
“I have,” he murmurs between kisses, “never wanted anyone but the two of you, on the road and in the Belmont Hold and even afterward—the world was ending and everything was fire and blood but all I saw and all that mattered to me was you, both of you.”
“Tell me—” Sypha gasps, her fingers in his hair and the heat of his breath on her lips, the taste of him in her mouth dizzying and intoxicating. “Tell me we didn’t ruin this, that it isn’t too late—”
“No,” he whispers, shaking his head. “You didn’t. It isn’t. We’re here now, and there is nowhere else I would rather be, no one else I would rather be with.”
She swallows hard past the tears threatening to rise in her throat, feeling them prick hot behind her lashes. Her heart feels too full, sodden almost with whatever this emotion is that’s choking her.
For all her efforts the tears fall anyway, spilling over her eyes and tracing down her cheeks. Alucard’s brows knit into a frown as he swipes careful thumbs over her face, wiping them away tenderly.
“I’ve made you cry,” he murmurs unhappily, leaning in to kiss the salty tracks her tears had left behind. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No,” she says, her voice cracking. “They’re happy tears. I just—it’s getting harder nowadays, to control my emotions.”
His fingers find the gentle swell of her stomach, spreading carefully over the growing bump there. “What will this mean?” he asks softly. “What will we mean, for your child?”
“Our child.” She reaches out to grip his hand tightly. “You will be as much of a father to this child as Trevor is, Alucard. We’re going to raise them together.”
His eyes dart up to meet hers, wide and disbelieving, and she leans in to press a quick, hard kiss to his lips. “When will you understand,” she whispers, “that when we say we want you it means we truly do, in every way it is possible to have you? We want you with us, Alucard. Always.”
His finger runs absently over the swell of her bottom lip. “I suppose that means we’re all stuck with each other, then.”
She laughs wetly, putting her arms around his shoulders and drawing him close. “Yes, we are. For better or for worse.”
She feels his lips curve up into a smile underneath hers, his arms wrapping around her and pulling her against him. They trade slow, syrupy kisses and it’s sweet and warm and perfect, the moment seeming to stretch on and on. Somewhere distantly she thinks she hears the oven making an alarming sound, and there might even be smoke curling from beneath its doors, but neither of them pay it any heed.
It feels good to kiss Alucard in the sunlight, feel his lips soft and warm on hers, the weight of his arms holding her against him and the softness of his hair against her fingers. It feels good to be with him like this, after so long of only dreaming about it.
It feels good to be home.
“Can you sit up?”
Trevor winces, his fingers tightening on Adrian’s as he struggles into a sitting position. He shakes his head when Adrian reaches out, making to help him, and manages to haul himself up so that he’s half-sitting, leaning back against the bedframe with a sigh.
“Are you—”
“I’m fine,” Trevor says before he can finish, a familiarly stubborn glint in his eye. Adrian knows that even if he overexerts himself he won’t say it; it’s been two months already but his pride has refused to soften, and he’s still reluctant to tell them when his arm causes him pain or when his fingers refuse to straighten.
But Adrian knows better than to prod at the edges of this open wound—because this is, in its own way, another injury. One dealt to his spirit rather than his body.
“All right,” he says instead, taking his usual place beside Trevor, perched on the edge of the bed. He gently takes Trevor’s injured arm in his hands, carefully examining it for any signs of improvement or deterioration. Its mobility seems marginally better than yesterday, and he makes note of it with a rush of relief.
He still isn’t used to the sight of the shiny, ropy red patches of burn tissue that spiderweb their way up Trevor’s arm and up to his shoulder, spreading till his shoulder blade. Adrian is always hesitant to touch him there, worried that he’ll cause Trevor pain. Trevor always laughs and tells him that he isn’t so fragile that he’ll break if Adrian handles him too roughly, but Adrian always makes sure to be as gentle as he can anyway.
He lets go of Trevor’s arm and hands him a glass of water. “Hold this and lift it as high as you can.”
Trevor does, his fingers shaking ever so slightly as he takes the glass. They’ve been doing small exercises every day to build up Trevor’s strength again, the two of them—and occasionally Sypha when she stays to watch—to help him regain it bit by bit after it had been shattered so brutally during his fight with Death.
They’d taken baby steps, as Sypha had ironically dubbed it whilst patting her belly with a grin. It had been a slow, steady thing—just like what the three of them had built up between them over the last few months as he and Sypha had cared for Trevor.
There had been time to talk, to sort everything out, maybe a little too much of it. Not like it had been before, in the wagon and on the road, with night creatures attacking them every other night and the looming threat of the end of the world hanging over them. Then there hadn’t been any lull, any day in between when they could address whatever it was that crackled between them, connecting them like live wires pulsating with something they knew they couldn’t put a name to. Not when everything was so fragile, so new. Not when it could all shatter within days.
But in the long summer days by Trevor’s bedside it had all slotted together so easily; when Trevor had been half-asleep and half-delirious and had taken Adrian’s hand and said, When I said it, I didn’t just mean Sypha. I didn’t just say it to her, I said it to you too, you thick bastard. And when Sypha had kissed him that day in the kitchen, standing in the sunlight while the bread burned in the oven and neither of them had realized.
“Adrian,” Trevor says, breaking him out of his reverie and bringing him sharply and abruptly back to the present. He’s still getting used to hearing his given name in their mouths but he loves hearing them say it, loves the way their voices sound when they do.
He turns to Adrian, his jaw set resolutely. “I want to try and stand up.”
Adrian hesitates, choosing his next words carefully. “That… may not be a good idea, Trevor,” he says slowly. “You’re still recovering, and standing may put an unrecoverable amount of pressure on your regenerating muscles.”
“I want to try,” he insists. “If it hurts too much, I’ll tell you and we’ll stop. I promise.”
“All right,” he says haltingly. His trust that Trevor will tell him if there’s any pain outweighs his concern, though he’s been given ample reason to favor the contrary. He stands, hovering close by as Trevor braces both hands on the mattress beside him, swinging his legs out of the bed and taking a deep breath.
He steadies himself for a few seconds and then slowly, carefully gets to his feet, his other hand reaching out and gripping the edge of the bedframe for balance. He teeters for half a second but Adrian is already there, moving to steady him with a careful arm around his shoulders. Trevor lets out a steady breath, letting go of the bedframe—and then he sags against Adrian with a soft groan, an arm encircling his waist and his fingers bunching in the fabric of his shirt at his hip.
Adrian takes his weight, holding him up carefully as he recovers. He’s reeling from the contact, taken aback almost; Trevor had just stood up for the first time in months and he had leaned against Adrian without a second thought, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to trust him with this new vulnerability.
He turns his head, and Trevor is already looking back at him. There’s a question there, darkening those blue eyes Adrian knows so well, a question he yearns to answer. He wonders if he will. If he’s brave enough to.
He’s leaning in before he can lose his nerve, hesitating just before their lips can touch. There’s less than an inch of space separating them, and they’re so close can feel every one of Trevor’s breaths feather out on his lips. When he doesn’t move away and Adrian sees his eyes close in wordless assent he finally closes the scant distance between them, tilting his head and pressing his mouth to Trevor’s.
He feels Trevor’s arm tighten around his waist, fingers gripping his hip as he turns further in the circle of Adrian’s arm to kiss him back. It’s a slow, careful kiss, unhurried and cautious and sweet. He floats in the bliss of it for a few long seconds, allowing the feeling of Trevor’s lips on his carry him on an aching swell of warmth that’s slowly unfurling somewhere in his chest.
They break apart slowly and Trevor blinks out at him, a small, soft smile curling his lips. “Well,” he says, “took you long enough. I was afraid we’d have to sort this out by actually talking about it.”
The words startle a laugh out of him. “Knowing Sypha, she’ll make us talk about it anyway.”
“Probably.” He leans in and presses a featherlight kiss to the corner of Adrian’s mouth. “She told me she already told you everything a few weeks ago.”
“She did.” He eyes Trevor carefully. “You didn’t… mind, did you?”
“Be a bit hypocritical if I minded, wouldn’t it?” he asks with a modest shrug. “Sypha isn’t the only one who…” He glances away, an adorable flush rising in his cheeks. “You know. Cares for you.”
“A Belmont, caring for a vampire?” Adrian says, unable to resist poking fun at him, just a little. “And the son of Dracula, no less.”
“Yeah, yeah, my forebears are rolling in their graves and cursing me from heaven or hell or wherever they are. We’ve established that already.” He’s still blushing. “You know what I mean.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you someday,” Trevor says, leaning in again.
“Then I’ll wait,” he breathes.
They’ve only just started kissing again when the door opens with a loud click, making them break apart hastily. Adrian turns towards the sound just in time to hear a delighted peal of laughter and see Sypha at the door, a pleased grin on her face as she makes her way towards the bed.
“Finally,” she says happily, coming to a stop beside them. “I was beginning to worry you would never see what was right in front of you this whole time and sort it out.”
“I suppose you’ll still sit us down like children and make us hash out the finer bits?” Trevor raises a brow.
“I am a Speaker,” she says, looping her arms through both of theirs, linking the three of them in a loose ring. “Talking about things is what I am best at.” She turns to look at Trevor as if suddenly realizing what’s different, her eyes widening with surprise and happiness as a slow, wondrous smile spreads across her face.
“You’re standing,” she says, squeezing his arm gently.
“Not entirely on my own, I’ll admit.” He glances down ruefully at where he’s clutching onto Adrian for balance. “I have help.”
He wriggles and Sypha quickly moves to his other side, hefting him up with a shoulder and an arm across his back. Her fingers twine with Adrian’s at Trevor’s shoulder and he thinks his heart may well burst, a long-since empty cup suddenly filled and flowing over.
A strange sort of wonder dawns in his chest as he looks at them, golden rays finally unfurling in a sky that had only ever known night. When had he gotten so lucky that he has them both like this?
“This is…” He struggles to find words, to bind this moment into physicality even if he knows that it’s impossible, that something as simple as words cannot contain this feeling. “This, now, it’s… good. Being here. The two of you.”
“The three of us,” Sypha corrects him softly, leaning up to press a kiss to his cheek, and he feels a smile tug at his lips as he looks at them beside him.
“Yes,” Adrian agrees, holding onto them both and hoping that he will never have to let go. “The three of us.”