Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Trevor doesn’t notice it at first.

In his defence, this is largely because, despite the combined efforts of Sypha and Alucard (who he’d like everyone to know is still a bastard), he is painfully fucking human, and it takes two weeks of bed rest after his fight with Death to even be able to walk. (Even then, he’s left with a shoulder that twinges every time he uses it - and a scar that wraps the length of his right arm - but what’s another couple of bloody injuries? Trevor’s nothing but aches and pains these days, and at the very least he catches up on months of lost sleep).

If anyone were ever to ask, Trevor would say he noticed in the first few weeks after he started walking again.

But that would make him even more of a liar.

**

One morning Sypha sends him away for being too distracting (“right now you are being a pain worse than sitting in stinging nettles Trevor Belmont”). So, he takes it upon himself to explore the castle grounds. This involves navigating the piles of shit that come with building a whole fucking town and trying to visualise where the shit is even meant to go.

But Trevor was never the most careful of people, and he growls a sharp, “fuck,” as his booted foot connects with a beam.

“Whatever have you done now Belmont?” Alucard drawls, appearing in front of him, leaning dramatically against a pile of bricks.

“Stubbed my fucking toe.”

“Shall we add gracefulness to your list of abilities?”

Trevor turns his face to hide a smile. “You’re a dick.”

“How did I forget how charming you were?” Alucard drawls with a quirked mouth, no heat behind his words.

Only when Trevor shuffles away, pulling the finger at the dhampir as he goes, does it occur to him that Alucard had been in the hold less than a minute earlier.

**

Trevor reels back from the beam that just smashed him in the forehead. “Absolute pile of shitting bollocks!”

He hears laughter and turns to see Greta not even bothering to hide her mirth, shoulders shaking.

Trevor pulls the finger at her. His forehead throbs.

She doesn’t react, aside from a toss of her dark hair and the arch of her eyebrow. “I can see where Alucard got his foul mouth from now… Certainly wasn’t from the stick up his arse.”

Oh, Trevor likes this one.

**

Trevor is rounding a corner in the castle when he catches a flash of wildfire hair in the chest of a polished suit of armour.

Curious, he continues with his documentation of one of the many rooms in the castle (Sypha decided a comprehensive map would be ‘beneficial to know what they were actually dealing with.’ Alucard was wise not to argue). When Sypha finally jumps at him with a roar when he exits the fourth room - filled with a collection of vases - Trevor is ready to catch her.

She laughs, throaty and loud, throwing her arms over his shoulders as he grips her carefully by the waist.

“How long have you been following me?”

Her sapphire eyes sparkle down at him. “You, Trevor Belmont, must be losing your touch.” A while then. And then, because she’s Sypha, she bites his ear.

Trevor may be many things and may be amenable to most of them, but there could be children around. So he lifts her squirming body away from himself with only a muted twinge in his shoulder. “How does anyone think you’re the sensible one? You’re as crazy as a bag of cats.”

She laughs, tugging the hair at the nape of his neck. “It’s just part of my charm, Treffy.”

**

Trevor is just beginning to drift off when a surprisingly warm foot draws itself up his calf.

Eyes shut and breathing slow, on the precipice of unconsciousness, he is determined to ignore it.

The foot only becomes more intent on winding itself between his knees.

Eventually, he cracks open an eye. It’s heavy with effort. “Sypha, stop that,” he mumbles, face sunk into the pillow. For a blessed second, it’s quiet.

Then Sypha jabs him in the side, right into a spot sensitive with scar tissue.

His body jolts. “Fuck off,” Trevor grunts automatically.

“Never~” she sings, close enough in the faded dark of the room for her breath to tickle his ear.

Knowing her as well as he does, Trevor manages to smack her hand away when she goes to do it again.

Sypha just wiggles further into his space. Thankfully, once her ginger head is nestled under his chin, she quietens back down.

Arms full, Trevor is pulled back into a rare dreamless sleep.

**

“I was just starting to wonder if you’d fallen in a hole and died Belmont.”

Trevor pulls the finger at the all-too-smug dhampir. (Since the both of them were both relatively unused to people, especially a town full, they had started taking dinner in the kitchens every alternate night. He wasn’t quite sure when it had become a tradition). “Didn't know you cared. What’s for dinner?”

“Stew.”

Trevor groans. His stomach gurgles. Sypha may be good at many things, but cooking? Cycling between tasteless sludge with portions to feed an army and bubbling pots filled with vibrant colours and just plain wrong smells, no one trusted the Speaker in the kitchen. Stew just happened to be her latest obsession (in the past three weeks there had been so many fucking varieties of stew that it was practically coming out of their dicks)... But when Sypha wanted to do something, it was very hard to stop her.

“Do not worry, I oversaw,” Alucard says, turning towards the bubbling pot, framed from the back by the setting sunlight. He ladles the stew into two bowls and brings them over, managing to avoid spilling any on his billowy white shirt (which Trevor is not jealous of).

Trevor uncrosses his arms from his chest, hooking a stool closer with his ankle and plopping heavily into it. “How many times did she try to add that old goat meat?”

“No less than seven.”

They both chuckle.

Soon, with their focus on their food, they slip into a companionable silence that lingers until the clinks of their spoons against the bowls stop. The slowly darkening sky throws out its colours in vain and the orange, yellow, and pink slanting through stained glass paints Alucard in a light too bright to see.

However, when he stands, Trevor’s eyes catch on the dhampir’s arm. Where Alucard’s sleeve has slipped down, an angry red scar winds itself around his arm. Cut deep into his skin, the line is ugly and harsh, with edges blurred it almost looks like a ligature wound.

It takes a lot to scar a dhampir.

“How the fuck did you get that?” Trevor blurts.

“A misfortunate slip in judgement,” Alucard replies, shaking his sleeve back down. He looks away. His jaw clenches. Sombre. Closed off. It's almost like Trevor is looking at the Alucard they met months ago.

Sypha would know how to tease it out of him, but Trevor senses it is not the time to push.

So he picks a fight instead, “Like you holding your spoon like a posh git?”

He’s not fast enough to dodge the utensil thrown in response and the stew spoon splatters across his black tunic. The thump only stings slightly, but it’s enough to bring a small smug smile to Alucard’s mouth.

**

Trevor dodges yet another child, cursing quietly as the movement pulls at his hip. “Why are there so many bloody children?”

Greta just laughs at him, clucking her tongue as she pores over her scroll.

Despite everything, Trevor doesn’t actually hate having more people around, mainly because they aren’t the people who excommunicated and killed his family - they all died in the first attack which he is somewhat grateful for - but they also interact freely and kindly with both Sypha and Alucard. Which is rare. Sypha had chided him with a try not to look so scared of them, they’re nice people. But she has always been more awkward with children than he has - “but you’re a Speaker,” “did you see any children in my group? they’re unpredictable, odd little things.” Trevor actually doesn’t mind kids - they always tended to be kinder than their adult counterparts- they didn’t know or care what a Belmont was. Plus he’d had a big family.

“Excuse me,” comes a voice with a tug of his cloak.

“What?” It comes out gruff and he internally winces. Just because he likes children doesn’t mean he knows how to handle them anymore.

A small child with fair hair, brown eyes, and a missing tooth stares up at him. “Can I hide in your cloak?”

Trevor is bewildered enough that his mouth says, “Sure kid.”

Now there’s a kid hiding in his cloak.

“I’m Timmy by the way,” comes the muffled voice.

“Trevor,” he replies, giving Greta a panicked look.

The woman just laughs. Tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear and turns back to her inventory. Bitch.

Trevor stands there for longer than he’d care to admit. But standing motionless in the middle of the yard next to the animal pens garners him a few odd looks. “Timmy?” He says, feeling very stupid talking to his cloak.

“Yeah?” comes back the matching whisper.

He feels out of depth. Wrong-footed. “Why the fu- why are you hiding exactly?”

“Hide and seek!” is all Timmy offers.

“Right.” This is fine.

“You look like a goat kicked you in the balls, Belmont,” Greta says.

Trevor flips her the finger but Timmy must find it hilarious because he starts laughing. High little giggles that were most likely tipped off by an adult saying a naughty word.

“He’s coming,” Greta warns, before swanning away, slinging her hammer over her shoulder.

Alucard comes striding up to him, followed by a swarm of children. Cocks his head. “Now, why is your cloak laughing, Belmont?”

“It isn’t,” Trevor lies belligerently.

Cocking a pale eyebrow, Alucard crouches down - in a way that shouldn’t be possible with how tight his pants are - to address Trevor’s cloak with no small amount of grandiosity, “Timothy?”

Timmy pops his head out, “how do you always find us?!”

“Ah ah, can’t give away all of my secrets,” Alucard says, tapping the child’s nose with a small little smile. “Until next time.”

“Okay bye!” Timmy calls, immediately running off to join the gaggle of kids doing whatever kids do.

“Trevor Belmont, letting a kid hide in his cloak,” Alucard drawls, honey-coloured eyes dancing with no small amount of mirth, tutting, “what would people think if they knew he was not as much of a bastard as he portrays?”

Trevor pats his pockets for something to throw but comes up short. Settles for pulling his middle finger out of the depths of his cloak.

Alucard’s laugh lingers long after he leaves.

**

Not that long after, Alucard finds him again, appearing next to Trevor as he swings an axe at the base of a tree in an attempt to fell more wood for houses. The quip about Alucard actively seeking out his company dies in Trevor’s mouth at the furrow in the dhampir’s brow.

“It is going to storm. We need to muster everyone inside.”

Trevor tips his chin back. The sky above the hold is a clear blue. Any darkening clouds seem miles away. Shrugs. Settles on, “alright. How do you know?”

“I can smell it.”

Fucking dhampirs.

“What’s the plan?”

“Greta and Sypha are handling the villages - they’re moving them and the animals into the castle. We shall secure what needs to be out here.”

Trevor surveys the partially-built structures that stretch across the castle grounds. Abandons his axe, and moves to keep pace with Alucard as he strides off. “Will the foundations hold up?”

“I am unsure. But the animals have already been herded in, as this was a contingency Greta and I had planned for.”

“Where are we going first then?”

Alucard’s face is grim. “To secure the hold.”

The half-completed repairs Alucard had managed in the time Sypha and Trevor were gone are what mainly needs to be secured - so they simply nail planks across the exposed entrance. Between them both, with the use of dhampir strength and speed, it makes for quick work. Sypha appears part-way through, with a nod towards Alucard, and begins engraving what protective magic she can into the wood.

As they are finishing up there is a deep rumble. The sky practically splits open. Rain upends itself on them.

Attempting to oversee the rest of the ‘town’ for stragglers or things missed, leads to the three of them being soaked to the bone in mere minutes. Once the last section has been checked, they make a run for it.

Alucard keeps pace with them in his wolf form while Sypha leans on Trevor so she doesn’t slip in her sandals - for some reason she does not use her magic to shield them and she’s as drenched as them when they burst through the castle’s front door.

Trevor collapses against the heavy wood when they push them closed. His boots squelch. He makes eye contact with Sypha, her hair a darker shade of orange from the wet, plastered to her forehead. She starts to giggle. She giggles harder when the wolf shakes its fur violently, and the dirty droplets flick up into Trevor’s face. The wolf makes a deep chuff in its chest, tongue lolling out.

Despite himself, Trevor starts to chuckle.

When they turn away from one another, almost simultaneously, around fifty pairs of eyes blink back at them owlishly.

It only makes them all laugh harder.

**

Trevor isn’t sure what wakes him, but between one breath and the next, his eyes are open. Sypha snuffles in her sleep. Outside, the rain lashes at the windows. A flash of lightning illuminates a shadow in the doorway.

“Alucard?” Trevor says, half-asleep, but knowing that silhouette anywhere. Rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, he pushes back the covers and heads out of the room.

It does not take long to find him.

Alucard stands in front of the large window at the end of the corridor. The faint moonlight that slants down paints him in a pale grey. In the distance, mist paints the tops of dark mountains.

The dhampir turns enough to show a singular eye. “I did not mean to wake you.”

Trevor leans against the wall, arms crossed. “Almost forgot how bloody melodramatic you were.”

Standing as he is, in front of stained glass in the middle of the night? Come on.

Alucard’s chuckle, although it bares the edge of a fang, is a little tired, a little fake.

“When was the last time you slept?”

“Oh Belmont you care,” Alucard simpers, but Trevor is not so easily deflected. Not like he used to be.

So he waits.

Alucard sniffs. “You and Sypha are like dogs with a bone. At least she possesses an ounce of decorum.”

“Fuck you,” Trevor replies easily, no real heat in it. Then he shifts foot to foot, his body losing the last of its bed-warmth; the chill of the stone and the cold draught it brings stings his skin.

“Always half thinking things through aren’t you Belmont,” Alucard says, lips quirking.

“Well I was bloody sleeping, wasn’t I? You’re lucky I don’t sleep naked.”

Alucard rolls his eyes at that, but then he quiets, gaze turning back out the window. Rain runs rivets down the glass.

Faced with the unwelcoming black of leather, Trevor takes a step closer; his feet numb against the ground. “And the townspeople?” He prompts. (Under Greta and Sypha’s competent hands, everything had almost fallen into order too easily in the ample space - it helped that these people had faced much worse in the interim - but they had been rather nervous about the fate of their emerging city).

“They’re all asleep.”

“Safe,” Trevor states. Almost challenges.

One that Alucard does not immediately rise to, as before he can say anything else, there’s a grumble from the nearest doorway.

Sypha is standing there, cocooned in a gigantic blanket. All that can be seen is a shock of vibrant hair and one half-open sapphire eye. “Come back to bed,” she mutters, rumpled. She mumbles something intelligible and shuffles back off. (Sypha sleeps like the dead and he is confident she won’t remember this in the morning).

Trevor turns back before Alucard can hide his soft look behind cool neutrality. There’s something young, something vulnerable, in the dhampir’s face and in the soft-looking sleep clothes under his leather coat. So Trevor settles on a simple, “Goodnight Alucard.”

“Goodnight… Trevor.”

**

In four days, when the storm completely passes, everybody gladly ventures outside. The kids in particular careen off, screaming in delight at the puddles of mud and various bugs. All in all, nothing is too badly damaged - but the vegetable gardens have suffered and a few of the housing frames will have to be rebuilt.

Trevor, along with all of the other adults, makes himself useful.

“Thank you, sir!” One woman says when he drops the bales of hay at her feet. She smiles up at him, kind eyes squinted against the burgeoning brightness of the sun.

Trevor scratches at his head with empty hands. “Uh, you’re welcome.” (Trevor Belmont, fighter and killer of demons, last of the Belmont name, absolutely does not bid a hasty exit from a simple shepherd woman, no sir).

“They’re good people,” Greta says, suddenly at his side. She slugs him on the shoulder. “You saved them. They don’t give a shit about your name or nasty rumours.”

Fuck she punches hard. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

She snorts.

Then Trevor almost throws his back out transferring bricks and is bullied into sitting down by Sypha, Greta and several of the village women.

Slouching so he looks asleep, Trevor leans against the tree with his chin tucked into his cloak, watching Sypha with half-opened eyes as she directs the rebuilding efforts to what is left of the vegetable garden.

Minutes pass easily into an hour like this. The sun gradually warms enough for Sypha to discard her heavy Speaker robes and bare strong, scarred shoulders. Someone offers her a straw hat and she places it jauntily on top of her hair. The villagers all chatter happily to her as they work, and she digs her pitchfork into the wet dirt with glee, uncaring of the flecks that start to land on her clothes and skin.

As Trevor watches, Alucard approaches, arms held behind his back. When Sypha sees him, she pauses in her work, leaning her chin on the handle of her pitchfork to look up at him with a hand blocking the sun from her eyes. They exchange several words.

Then Sypha’s lips turn down and a hand drifts down to knuckle at the jut of her hip. The two bicker for a few minutes - Trevor isn’t sure about what - until she pulls out another hat out of thin air and forces it onto the dhampir’s head. Alucard allows it, and they both laugh.

Alucard bends slightly to murmur something in Sypha’s ear and both of them spin in place, looking for something.

Only too late does Trevor realise they’re looking for him, and he throws up a sarcastic thumbs up when sapphire blue and topaz yellow eyes meet his. Both smile. Fair hair and fair skin, and tan skin and vibrant hair almost gleam too bright in the sun.

It hits him harder than Death.

Trevor remembers Alucard’s face when they came through the mirror. Remembers Alucard’s and Sypha’s faces when he came off the horse. Twenty-five years of a miserable existence made less so. Broken bones and healing touches. Love.

So, being the mature well-adjusted individual he is, Trevor waits until they look away and bades a hasty retreat to the Belmont hold. Finds himself a spot behind a bookcase, pressing his back against the dark grey rock of the wall, a ‘borrowed’ jug of ale in hand. With the meat of his forearm pressed into his bent knee, Trevor dangles the jug from tingling fingers. Rubs the handle with a calloused thumb.

Would happily ignore his problems but Sypha has gotten into his head.

Problem one: Sypha and Alucard keep seeking him out - looking for and after him. Problem two: He’s having a breakdown over his love for them and their love for him. All in all: he is a little miffed about the timing of his breakdown - why now of all times?

He knows why. Trevor never thought this was a life possible for him. It’s because he cares for them. More people to love, more to lose. Trevor fucking Belmont.

“Trevor?!” comes a cry that is almost pained. Sypha?

“I’m here,” he calls, shifting into a crouch, feeling at his waist for the Morningstar. A familiar tingle at his chest that he recognises as Sypha’s magic.

Sypha comes sliding into his hideaway - hair and breathing erratic. She throws herself at him and Trevor catches her just, falling heavily back onto his arse. A frazzled-looking Alucard meets his eyes over her head.

“What’s going on?” Trevor asks, bewildered, rubbing Sypha’s heaving back, her fingers clutched pain-tight into his tunic.

“We could not find you,” Alucard says, and the fact that Trevor can even tell that his outfit is not meticulous lets him know that the dhampir is bordering on frantic. Why?

“I was only gone for two hours,” He says, slowly.

Sypha pulls her face from his neck, leaving uncomfortable damply-warm patches on his skin. Furious tears line her eyes. Splotches of red dot her chest and face. “I thought you’d died ten minutes after you told me you loved me. Dammit, Trevor, I was prepared for us to die together,” her voice cracks, “Instead you left me - us - behind.”

Trevor, shocked, falls properly back down, taking Sypha’s curled form clutched to his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says into her hair, meeting Alucard’s eyes where the dhampir has slid down against a bookshelf beside them. The dhampir’s jaw clenches. "I'm sorry," Trevor repeats.

“And we should never have left you,” Sypha adds, sticking her chin out as she twists to look at Alucard. Extends her hand almost desperately.

Alucard takes it, eyes wide.

Trevor nods. They’d never voiced it, but it tainted every tired night until they returned. “And when we saw the bodies…” he trails off, gruffly, not allowing himself to finish.

“Taka and Sumi,” Alucard says quietly, engrossed in the tan of Sypha’s tiny but calloused hand against his own. “The first humans who came to me while you were gone. I -” Alucard’s eyes drop, “I trusted them. Cared for them,” a long pale finger traces his bottom lip. “I was lonely. They caught me unawares. Bound me with silver wire.” Alucard shrugs off his jacket - revealing that the scar that Trevor saw a week ago curls up and around both arms. He gestures to his whole body. “I killed them before they could kill me. I couldn’t take the risk that it would - could - happen again.”

Sypha half-lunges off Trevor to take gentle hold of Alucard’s forearm. “We will never make the same mistake of leaving,” she says, furiously. If Trevor is not mistaken, sparks fly from the tops of her hair.

Trevor’s own stomach is broiling at what he’s just heard, scuffs his boot against the dhampir’s long leg. “I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say in one go, mate. Usually like pullin’ teeth.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Trevor sobers. Reassurance doesn’t quite sit right against his sharp edges, but this is not about him. “We are here to stay. We promise.”

Alucard smiles. It’s small. But it’s there.

Sypha sighs. Cheeks puffing out as she rolls off Trevor - “Sypha watch your fuckin pointy elbows” - and onto her back on the cobblestone floor. Throws her limbs out in akimbo. “I am exhausted! Talking and crying is tough work,” She hums, melodic, tapping her chin. “I think this calls for stew.”

Alucard catches Trevor’s eye.

Trevor can do nothing but throw his head back and laugh. Alucard joins him.

Sypha sits up. “What are you two laughing at?”

Chapter Text

The following weeks pass in an almost unheard of sense of normalcy. 

Without the pressure of imminent death, Greta quickens the village-building process by delegating with a terrifying proficiency. Alucard teaches a handful of budding archers and spearmen how to hunt. Sypha sets about engraving protective runes into the low wall of bricks that spans the perimeter of the village. And Trevor? Trevor goes wherever they need an extra set of hands. 

Which currently is splitting the wood of felled trees. 

The monotony soothes him. Soon he sweats from the effort and he grunts as a particularly large piece splits in two. Tossing the logs to the side, Trevor makes sure to kick the remaining chips off the stump (he didn’t the first time and a stubborn splinter hit him in the face). He wipes his palms on his trousers before picking up the axe again. 

Trevor is hefting a fallen log back into its pile when he sees Greta approach from the side.

She takes a seat on one of the trunks, lying a sword across her lap. “I’ve left them in Sypha’s very capable hands,” is all she says when he spares her a look, beginning to hone the edge of her blade against a whetstone.

“Got bored of bossing people around?”

“Never,” she laughs. There’s something sharp and shrewd about Greta. Maybe that’s why Trevor likes her. “Just want some quiet where I don’t have to think. Without the war there’s-”

“Too much time,” Trevor finishes. 

“How poetic of you Belmont,” Greta replies because she can’t help herself apparently.

Trevor pulls the finger at her before picking up the axe again. Only the cracking of the breaking wood and the chink of metal against metal accompany them for the time it takes for him to break down an entire tree. Looking now at the amount of piled firewood, he may have gone slightly overkill.

When he pauses to scratch at his jaw, Greta stands. Her dark hair pulled back against her nape - a rare sight - she wordlessly holds out her hand.  She catches the axe he throws at her one-handed, wrist turned. 

Trevor is impressed. He plops himself down in her vacated spot, next to the sharpened sword. Leans his body on his arm and watches her back as she swings the axe down in a controlled arc. There are words in his throat. He just doesn’t know where to start.

“You gonna say what you wanted? Or are you just going to stare until you pluck up the courage?”

Trevor can hear the smile in her words, but his ears still go hot. He clears his throat. Watches her wipe her forehead with the back of her gloveless hand. Forces out a mumbled, “thank you.”

That stops her. She turns, squinting down at him. “What for?”

“Being there for Alucard,” Trevor says slowly. If he doesn’t say it now he never will. “He suffered while we were gone, but you kept him sane.” 

“He’s a good man,” Greta huffs. It’s said bluntly. Matter-of-fact. But it’s obvious in their interactions that she cares for Alucard.  “And he cares for you both deeply.” Her voice turns. “I wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving him again.”

“Never.”

They work side-by-side for a few hours; with the serious conversation over Greta and Trevor trade quips, insults and the axe back-and-forth. As the day stretches closer to noon, the sun starts to gain its heat. 

(But as surely as night turns to day, things in Wallachia turn to shit).

Trevor has just taken a swig from his waterskin when loud shouts are heard. 

With only a glance between them, Greta and Trevor abandon their work and set a brisk walk towards the disturbance. An uneasy crowd is gathered in the entrance to the eastern boundary and when someone sights their approach, the panicked villagers make way to show a man slumped on his horse. 

A scroll dangles from a bloody hand. With a grey face, he pushes it towards the nearest villager who immediately passes it to Greta. She gestures for someone to see to the man and he almost lists off his horse as they lead him away.

Trevor keeps it to himself, but the man does not look good.

Greta’s face is grim, her eyes flicking over the missive clutched tight in her hand. “Fuck. Devon is being terrorised by a horde of night creatures. Seven of them are already dead.”

“Where is it?”

“About two leagues from here.”

It is quickly decided that Alucard and Trevor will go - they are two of the three best fighters and Trevor does not begrudge Greta for not sending the villagers to fight. Although it has been months since he has genuinely prepared for a battle, his chest plate and armour are still beside the bed - a habit he has never been able to break.

Both Trevor’s horse and Alucard are waiting for him when he makes his way back down the stairs (Viata, the mare that had carried him for two weeks back from the brink of death, had taken a liking to him and although Trevor wasn’t a rider by nature, he couldn’t say he minded having the luxury that was a horse). The horse whickers, throwing up her head at him. Alucard’s sword is strapped to the top of her saddlebags.

“Too lazy to carry it yourself?” Trevor says to the dhampir, who is back to wearing his ridiculously impractical leather coat.

Alucard waves a hand lazily. In between one breath and the next, a wolf is standing there. 

Trevor rolls his eyes at the dramatics. He turns to greet Sypha, who rises up onto her tiptoes to kiss him. 

She settles back with a frown. There had been a disagreement about who was going to go, and Sypha was very vocal about her distaste in being left behind. Once Greta had told her that it would not be a smart strategy to send away their most powerful protector, she had stopped yelling, but it did not take a genius to see that she was still incredibly displeased. 

“We’ll be back soon,” Trevor reassures. 

Sypha’s eyes are like shards of ice. “You’d better.”

Trevor swings himself into Viata’s saddle. With a two-fingered salute, he urges the mare out of the village.

**

Even alternating between a gallop, a canter and a trot to avoid tiring Viata or Wolf-Alucard out, the journey barely takes an hour. 

Trevor lets Alucard lead the final distance, relying on his nose rather than the map to find Devon. They hear the shrieks long before they see the night creatures.

A mixture of nerves and excitement bubble underneath Trevor’s skin. He rolls out his shoulders as they draw nearer, and he dismounts Viata several hundred metres from the town - not wanting to risk being given away even if Viata is as calm as a warhorse. 

Wolf-Alucard chuffs when he staggers slightly on saddle-sore legs. 

“Fuck off.” 

With nothing but his heartbeat and demons howling in his ears, Trevor ties Viata’s reins loosely around a tree and creeps the final distance. From the edge of the trees, Trevor can see where the night creatures roam the dirt centre of the small village - empty save for a few picked-clean carcasses. The sky here is a murky grey. He counts roughly two dozen of the rotted-purple demons.

“We’ve had worse odds,” Trevor remarks, shrugging when Alucard’s gleaming white snout swivels around to look at him.

The wolf’s weight shifts to his front paw. 

Taking it as the signal it is, Trevor darts forward. The morningstar wraps around the closest creature’s neck - a hideous six-legged creature with an unnerving amount of eyes - and with a jerk of his elbow, the creature explodes. Flying forward with the momentum, he lands on the back of the next demon, finding himself laughing maniacally as he stabs the silver knife into its neck. His blood sings. He takes down two more with his whip easily. 

When Trevor spares a quick glance to the side, Alucard isn’t there. 

On the opposite side of the clearing, a wolf fights three creatures at once. It tears out the throat of one but it isn’t moving as fast as it usually is. Sluggish almost. 

Trevor is already moving when one of them catches the wolf under the belly with a three-taloned claw. With a high-pitched whine, the wolf - Alucard - slams into the side of a house back-first, collapsing bonelessly into the dirt. 

Heart in his throat - Trevor lassoes his whip around the limb of another night creature to pull him closer. Twisting mid-air to land in front of Alucard’s limp form, he lands heavily, knees jarring. The demon explodes behind him. 

Eleven more creatures approach.

Trevor digs his heels into the dirt. As he fights, restricted, he collects wounds like trophies - a cuff to the face splits his lip, the tang of blood salty in his mouth, and a cut to the upper arm of his non-whip side stings profusely. Mind buzzing and chest heaving, Trevor dispatches the night creatures with thoughtless haste. As the last one explodes into searing heat, he turns to Alucard, who now lies there in his human form. 

Alucard barely stirs. He’s seen the dhampir face full-blooded vampires with so little as a scratch - mindless creatures like these should not have even posed a threat. 

Trevor grimaces. Collecting planks of wood from the bones of a destroyed house closest to him, he gets a fire started in the main square, not drifting far from Alucard; waiting for any survivors to come to him. 

The dhampir’s breathing doesn’t change. It’s steady, even. But he still isn’t awake. Trevor’s seen him bounce back from wounds that would have killed even the strongest man. Does he look paler than usual? 

Minutes pass. Previously ignorable aches and pains start to ebb back in, before returning with vengeance. The cut along his arm is long and still weeping sluggishly. The surrounding black fabric is damp with blood. Pulling against a split in his tunic from the battle, Trevor tears a strip of fabric off and ties it around his arm, pulling it taut in his teeth. Good enough. 

He is taking a swig from his waterskin when one of the villagers pokes their head around a door. Unable to manage a smile, Trevor nods slowly. 

The door closes. When it opens again, they all shuffle out. There are around fifteen of them - their faces dirty and grim.

“Did you kill them all?” The man at the front asks, eyes sunken into his skull. 

“We did. Is this all of you?”

“All that’s left, yes. I am Richard. What should I call you?”

“Trevor Belmont. We received your message. But with his injuries, we are not sure if the messenger will make it.”

“Ah, Wilhelm,” the man says, his eyes briefly squeezing closed. “My nephew.” He says nothing more, but his eyes track the stick Trevor is using to stoke the flames.

“If you wish to stay here in Devon, you can. Or you may come back to our village. Start again.”

One of the women steps forward at this, tattered headscarf plucked at by the wind. Her hand settles on Richard’s shoulder. “What is blessed upon us to receive such kindness?”

Trevor shrugs. “If you want to come, I suggest grabbing everything you can carry.”

Richard nods. They huddle between themselves, holding one another up, and Trevor does not listen to the hushed whispers of a village lost. 

Everybody disperses.

One woman, also in a headdress, drifts closer. Her eyes tip over his shoulder to the visage of Alucard, looking past the bulk of Trevor’s body before he can move. “If you wish, the healer’s house is still standing.”

Trevor nods his thanks. Curls his whip and tucks it into the loop of his trousers. Throws his knapsack over his shoulder and scoops Alucard into his arms. 

The woman pushes the door open for him to a small but well-kept room. It seems removed from the destruction outdoors, made of wooden walls and plants sitting in the alcoves. It smells of herbs. Exactly which ones he can’t say, but Sypha would know. 

“Why exactly am I facing the indignity of being carried?” Alucard says when the woman leaves with a bow at Trevor’s gesture, voice quiet but strong with indignation. 

Trevor places Alucard into the cot. “Because you passed out in a fight against a horde of night creatures. Why aren’t you healing?” He demands, looming over the dhampir.

Hands linked on top of his stomach, Alucard sighs. Stares out the window like he is a sulky child instead of an incredibly powerful individual. “Human food can mostly sustain me. But my vampiric powers require vampiric sustenance.”

“Blood,” Trevor finishes, arms crossing over his chest. “Gonna go out on a limb and say you haven’t been feeding?”

Alucard is quiet for a long time. “It is not something I exactly enjoy doing,” he says slowly. He’s avoiding eye contact, his jaw clenched, hiding behind a tangle of fair hair.

Trevor breathes sharply out of his nose. Shrugs his cloak off, and then attempts to unlace the top of his tunic. When it knots itself he gives up with a grumble and shrugs it over his head. Chucks it to the side near his feet. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Alucard says, eyes wide.

Trevor grabs his left shoulder with his right hand and twists to stretch it out. Raises his eyebrow. What do you think I’m doing, genius?

“No.”

“Can you make it back to the village without blood?”

Alucard struggles to sit up, and although his face remains neutral, the skin around his eyes tightens. 

The silence stretches. Trevor rolls out his neck. 

Propped up on his elbows, Alucard eventually admits defeat. “I will only take enough to protect us on the travel back,” he says stiffly. Pissed.

Trevor is used to it. “No shit,” he says cheerfully. “Where’s the easiest? Neck? Arm? Wrist?”

“Neck.”

With a grunt, Trevor crouches beside the cot, knees clicking in the process. Wonders idly whether the ghosts of his family are screaming at him for besmirching the Belmont name. 

Alucard’s face is stone cold. Fists clenched at his side. “If I start taking too much I want you to stop me, Trevor. Understand?”

Even if he didn’t, the dagger pressed into his hand spells it out clearly enough. “I trust you,” Trevor says. After everything, it’s not difficult to admit.

Eyes like liquid topaz search his face. “This will sting.”

“Get on with it,” Trevor goads, rolling his shoulders. He’d rather not have anyone walk in on this thanks. 

As it does with waiting, time slows down. The silence broken by only their breathing and their heartbeats.

When Alucard’s mouth seals itself against his neck, against his pulse point, between the juncture of his neck and shoulder, Trevor grunts reflexively. It’s like a current just passed through his entire body. There are brief twin stings when Alucard’s teeth pierce his skin but the pain is but a drop. Alucard’s hand, gentle but with a vice-grip, moves to tilt his head and strands of curled blond brush Trevor’s bare skin. He can almost feel Alucard’s throat as he swallows.

Trevor’s eyes slip closed of his own accord. There’s a weightlessness that almost feels heady. Time passes. How much - he can’t say. 

Eventually, Alucard pulls back. Goosebumps erupt across Trevor’s skin with the parting swipe of tongue against the bitemarks and he can’t help but watch the dhampir’s mouth as a long finger brushes the corner of his lips to ensure there is nothing left behind. 

“See, that was nothing to worry about,” Trevor says with effort, words seeming to come from outside his head. The world doesn’t tilt exactly, but it seems less inclined to stay on a stable axis. 

“You have very little self-preservation Belmont, do you know that? Who invites a vampire to bite them for fuck’s sake?” Despite himself, and the anger, Alucard does look better - cheeks pinker, eyes brighter. The small cuts on his face knit themselves back into smoothness. 

Trevor shrugs shoulders that feel like jelly. “Half.”

Alucard avoids him on the trek back.

Trevor, atop of Viata, with saddlebags full to bursting with herbs and bandages the village healer could not bear to part with, watches Alucard’s stiff back for a minute, before slowing the mare to a walk to keep pace with Richard.

As Devon’s de facto leader, Richard brings up the rear, leading three horses behind his own. He finds out that Devon had lost the most people in the first attack, but had incurred less and less casualties as the attacks had gone on. That by barricading themselves inside a house doused in night creature blood to disguise their scents, the dwindling of food and water supply was what really drove the request for help. 

“That’s brilliant actually.”

“Well. No one else perished thanks to you.”

Trevor rubs at the back of his neck, accidentally brushing the bitemarks with his fingers. The foreign sensation tingles, sensitive. 

Their late-afternoon arrival is headed off by a scouting party of two. One rushes back to the village,  while the other talks lowly with Alucard in the front. A handful of villagers meet them at the village boundary, and Greta welcomes the newcomers - some she knows by name - and leads them away to get them sorted. Alucard follows her, still determinedly ignoring Trevor.

Sypha appears as Trevor swings himself down from his saddle. “What did you do?”

“Yes, hello to you too Sypha.”

She swats at his arm and hisses, “You were barely gone for four hours. How did you piss off Alucard in so little time?”

Trevor shoots her a look over his shoulder as he unbuckles Viata’s saddle and saddlebags.

She frowns up at him. “You know what I mean.”

Trevor, raising an eyebrow, pulls down the collar of his tunic.

Sypha’s eyes widen. She stares at the twin wounds with parted lips. 

Trevor only gets one second of pride before “Ow, Sypha don’t hit me!” 

“I’m going to help,” she points at him. “Do not piss any more people off while I’m gone.”

“I’ll try my very best,” he calls after her retreating back, unable to stop his grin.

**

Several days pass. In the rare space between the sky darkening and dinner approaching, Trevor finds himself with nothing to do. Currently, lying on his back at the foot of their bed, he occupies himself by throwing his vambrace up in the air and trying to catch it. Sypha sits against the headboard, poring over some spellbook she had found in the castle, her ginger hair curling onto her forehead as her eyes and finger run along the words. 

Since Devon, Alucard has been noticeably absent. To Trevor’s begrudgement, there is something that chafes with not having him around. Two years ago he would’ve thought he’d lost the plot by caring for people - let alone a half-vampire. Now, after four days, he is desperate enough to seek help.

The vambrace slips past his fingers and hits him in the shoulder. Putting it aside, Trevor shuffles up the bed and props himself up on his elbow, practically oozing casualness.  “Have you seen Alucard?” 

Sypha spares him a look like why do you even try. She turns back to her book and flips the page. “I have.”

“He’s avoiding me.”

“He is.”

The easy agreement stings. “Why?”

She pushes her foot against his thigh. “Now I know you’re not this dense.” 

Trevor catches her foot in his hand before she can kick him, thumbing her arch. His face must be doing something truly helpless because she relents. 

“Tell me your thoughts,” she says, with a puff of air, flicking the page.

Trevor lies back down, rubbing his free hand down his face, rough enough to pull at his skin. “Even though I know he hates the vampire side of himself I said he could. He didn’t overfeed.” Doesn’t voice the little thought that whispers, ‘I was hoping he’d be too busy wanting to punch me that he’d forget to hate himself.’

“Your family were vampire hunters. Battlefield trust is one thing but this is on a whole other level,” Sypha points out, and the unspoken especially with what happened while we were gone sits heavily in both of their heads. 

With that cryptic advice and no pointers on how to actually locate the dhampir, Trevor uses his tracking skills one of the children pointing out that he saw Alucard walk through a certain door detracts nothing to track Alucard to the Western Wing.

The Western Wing was one area that still bore destruction from the battle at Braila, and although entry was not explicitly forbidden - not that any of the villagers ventured this far into the castle regardless - the heavy chains on the doors spoke loud enough. 

One of the chains is now undone, black metal hanging towards the ground.

Pushing the door open enough to slip through a gap, Trevor slowly navigates the broken pillars and gouges in the floor that make up the Western Wing’s dust-covered corridors. Although the Wing takes up a quarter of the castle, he has a feeling he knows roughly where Alucard is.  With only a quick glance, he bypasses the door to Alucard’s childhood bedroom  - still lying sadly on its hinges - with the hole in the wall and the blood-stained carpet. (Dracula is not something they talk about. The twenty years he had with Alucard’s mother does not change the fact he was a monster). 

Trevor finds Alucard a few rooms over, perched against a table, long legs crossed at the ankle. His eyes are focused on something in his hands. 

The room is a plant nursery. The windows stretch from wall to wall and all available space is covered in green. Surprisingly, most of the flowers are alive. The bright colours are almost garish in the gloom. 

“Oi.”

“Yes?” Alucard says, relatively smoothly. Can’t quite hide the tensing of his shoulders, however. 

The situation required sensitivity and finesse. So naturally, Trevor’s first words to him are, “stop overthinking dick.”

A pale long-fingered hand turns over what he can see now is a cloth bunny. A child’s toy.

Trevor tilts his face to the ceiling - the roof is dusted with cobwebs. Remnants of melted wax and a warped candelabrum are not quite hidden on a far shelf. The book covers are faded. He sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“The problem is not you Belmont.  I’m more aware than most of a vampire’s true evil,” Alucard says, tilting his head away, so all he can see is the working of a pale throat. “Alas, you can imagine how I felt when I found that I did not hate it.”

Trevor blinks. “Well, that’s good. Does that mean you have an undesirable lust for my blood now?”

“No!” 

“Well there you go then,” Trevor says, bygones and all that. But his mouth keeps moving, “it was nice.” 

What. The. Fuck. 

Alucard, thankfully, doesn’t say anything. Just stares in what must be disbelief.

(That makes two of them).

“Er, right. See you at supper,” Trevor says gruffly, slapping his palms against his trousers. He needs a beer. And maybe to bury himself in the back garden because again what the fuck. “Alucard.”

Alucard inclines his head. “Trevor.”

Trevor doesn’t quite run away from Alucard and the flowers spilling throughout the conservatory. But it’s close. 

Over the months, three banquet tables had been built in the Great Hall so that the village would be able to eat dinner together if they wished (any more than occasionally would be too much work - and the population only currently fills one table). It means that dinner is a noisy affair. (Helping with supper had almost kept Trevor busy enough to forget whatever-the-fuck-his-mouth-decided-to-do in front of Alucard. Almost). 

Sypha wrinkles her nose at the amount of gravy Trevor pours over his meat. He chuckles evilly - the gravy is mainly a defence tactic to ensure she won’t steal his vegetables. She jabs her pointy elbows into his side in retaliation. 

Her table manners really leave something to be desired. 

Shovelling a chunk of lamb into his mouth - Trevor looks a few places down to where Alucard is laughing at whatever the kid beside him says. (He had seded the head of the table to Greta with a dramatic bow, but not without a slug to the arm). 

It’s almost overwhelming - the clinking of the cutlery. The overlapping of voices. The warmth of the room from body weight and hot food. One of the women takes out a lyre and starts playing, her chair balancing on its two back legs. Sypha, red-cheeked, attaches herself to Trevor’s arm around his elbow, singing along badly. Alucard catches his eye and raises the goblet in his hand - a little mocking, a little genuine. With a grin, Trevor makes a rude gesture back that rapidly turns to a wave when a small child swings their face towards him.

It’s not bad. 

**

Trevor wakes late. (It’s a miracle he didn’t wake earlier with the sun shining almost directly into his eyes and no Sypha beside him). Half-asleep, he heaves himself out of bed to pull his clothing on, almost falling when his calf cramps up and his foot gets caught in the leg hole of his trousers. 

He doesn’t encounter anyone on his bleary trip to the kitchen and Trevor resurfaces confusedly, gnawing on a hunk of bread. The castle is eerily quiet. 

Eventually Trevor ventures outside. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he follows a pocket of noise to the eastern boundary where he finds what seems to be the entire village. Whilst he can’t quite see, the noise is familiar enough that he has a good idea of what is going on by the time Greta appears from somewhere within the throng. 

Dark hair swinging, she grins at him, her arms across her chest. “Glad you’re awake. I’d really hate to go up against these two.”

With the crowd parting enough to let them to the front, Trevor turns his eyes to the blur that is Alucard and Sypha sparring. “How long they been at it?”

“Hard to say.” 

A hush spreads across the village as they watch. (Trevor doesn’t blame them).

With a sound like boulders colliding, bolts of lightning strike the earth, leaving deep divots in the dirt. Almost disappearing from sight with speed, Alucard dodges and his sword leaves his hand, sending the deadly blade to fly sharply towards Sypha’s front.

Dodging the sword, Sypha spins out of her cloak a second later, leaving Alucard clutching at empty fabric. In the same breath, her fingers form a hovering circle of ice shards. 

Alucard barely evades the flurry of razor-sharp projectiles, lunging forward, the hilt of his sword hitting his palm. He swings. Everyone gasps. 

The steel thuds against a thick block of ice.

They part and Sypha steps to the offensive, sweeping her arm out to surround them in a wall of flames. In one blink to the next, Alucard shifts, and a snarling wolf leaps at her. 

Sypha drops, sliding along the ground, using a blast of air from underneath to send him flying. 

The fight stretches on. 

Eventually, Alucard and Sypha start to slow, having been fighting for the good part of an hour. Sypha’s chest heaves, and Alucard’s curls are sweat-damp. After trading a flurry of blows, they both skid to a stop, inches away from one another, breathless and grinning. 

Sypha holds a flame-licked finger to Alucard’s neck. Alucard’s sword comes up against her chest a second after.

“Dead,” she mouths. Or something along those lines, but whatever it is it makes Alucard duck his head with a smile. 

Everyone cheers. To the whistles and claps, Sypha does a sweeping bow (Alucard’s is a bit more restrained), laughing throatily. With the show over, the people slowly start to disperse and she moves to stifle a patch of smouldering grass. When she turns back, Alucard offers her the crook of his elbow, her cloak thrown over his shoulder (the blue matching his black). 

As Trevor watches, leaning against a stack of barrels, they walk back towards the boundary, Alucard’s fair head angled down to listen to Sypha. Whatever she says makes him chuckle. It echoes. The sun paints his hair a brighter shade of pale gold (and hers like fire) and shines on his leather coat. 

An affection surges up in Trevor so quickly it’s overwhelming, and he stands there struck dumb with the force of it. It’s not like he had enough time before to sort through the complicated nature of their relationship. Why their arguments always left him vaguely wrongfooted. The reason, maybe, that he didn’t feel too concerned when he thought he was going to die, just regret. Because he’d known Alucard would have been there for Sypha. 

It’s as plain as whether a horse will shit in the stables. He loves Alucard. 

Before they can get close enough to call out to him, he bolts.

**

Trevor already feels alarmingly lightheaded by the time he is deep in his second cup (apparently almost dying turns you into a lightweight). He takes another gulp, pressing his back further into the stone of the cellar wall. Where he sits, he should be hidden even if the door swings open.

“Drinking before noon? This is a new low Belmont,” comes a warm drawl that comes with enough surprise to almost make Trevor inhale his beer. 

Fuck. He’d thought no one would even think to find him here - but dhampir senses are not an even playing field. Hic. 

“S’nothing,” He says, levering himself off the floor. The shelf creaks ominously (as does his knee) under his weight, and he glares at it. Hic. “Just looking for some quiet.”

Alucard’s shadow hovers outside the cellar. They’re having this conversation through a wooden door for fuck’s sake.

Feeling mighty warm, Trevor opens the door and almost walks face-first into Alucard’s chest. “Christ, can your shirts get any lower?” he blurts. Hic.

“Belmont, if you wanted me to take it off you should’ve said,” he murmurs, slow like that jar of sweet honey Sypha keeps. His smile is crooked, baring the edge of a needlepoint fang. When Trevor doesn’t respond to the tease, his smile starts to droop, his fingers twitching at his side.

“Fuck off,” Trevor mutters after a long wait, setting his cup aside haphazardly and making a hasty exit for the second time that day. Would never run from a fight, but he would from this. Hic.

Feeling sick to his stomach, Trevor stumbles into their room, croaking out something that resembles Sypha’s name. 

Alarmed, she shoots upright. Pauses tensely on the edge of the bed as he sinks to his knees at her side.

Throat hurting, Trevor presses his head, hard, into her thigh. His voice nearly fails him. “I think I'm in love with Alucard.”

Sypha sits back, cross-legged. Her small but calloused hand cradles his face, turning it up to look into gentle jewelled eyes.“You still love me, yes?”

Not trusting his voice not to fail, Trevor nods. Reaches, almost desperately, to hold her wrists in his hands. Always, he thinks fiercely. Until his dying breath. 

“Do you know of tridents?”

Trevor jerks his head so quickly that his neck cricks. “What?” He tries to gauge her reaction but she’s serious. (Of course, he knows what a bloody trident is. Good for killing sirens). But what the fuck does this have to do with anything?

“- Or a triskelion? Even a fork. What do they have in common?” 

Now, Trevor is aware this is Sypha Belnades’ world that he’s just living in, but an edge of annoyance creeps into his voice. “Groups of three, Sypha.” 

“Three prongs. Three of us. Boom!” She says, wiggling her fingers.

“I’m not following?”

Sypha is quiet for a beat. Her hand comes to cup the juncture of his jaw, finger brushing his ear.  “I don’t think I’ll ever love someone the way I love you, Trevor Belmont,” she says, eyes shining. Then she hums, a gentle furrow in her brow. ‘But I do care for Alucard greatly. I do not understand it quite enough to explain it, but my love for him is different to yours.”

With this, Trevor heaves himself onto the bed, pressing his face into her stomach. Breathes out deeply, in unbelievable and utter relief. 

“Trevor,” she says sweetly, slowly. Her hand cards through the hair at his nape. “Greta and I have discussed different forms of relationships before. It’s also not as if the Speakers are known for only ever taking just one lover.”

“My God,” Trevor drawls, in his best Alucard impression. Then he gasps, rolling onto his back, “What would the Church say? Sypha how dare we destroy the sanctity of marriage.”

“Bah. No imagination there,” she says with a toss of her hair, allowing the deflection. Then she smiles down at him, backlit by the low afternoon sun, and Trevor feels something settle in his chest as she gives him the time she somehow knows that he needs.

Trevor’s throat hurts. He feels almost lightheaded with relief. Staring out the window, particularly at the first row of trees in the surrounding forest, he speaks with more hesitancy than he has felt in a long time. “I really thought that I was going to ruin this.”

Sypha tugs at the front part of his hair. “Silly Treffy.” When he does not respond she hums. Then adds, “You wouldn’t have - you won’t. We’re an unstoppable team - we would’ve managed this even if I didn’t feel a similar way. If we can handle flying-goat-demon shit we can handle this.”

He’s hyper-aware of his ruddy cheeks and rumpled clothes and the alcohol she can probably smell on his breath. The clearing of his throat does little to hide his nervousness. “Do you think he knows?”

Sypha runs her thumb along the line of his jaw, unloosening the clenched muscle just by touch. She hums. “Even if he does, he may not believe it.”

“Should we tell him?”

“Not now,” she says. “But soon. There are few things more precious than time.”

**

All things considered - which for Trevor is usually two at most - the day it happens is otherwise bloody unremarkable. The sky is grey. The temperature middling. Stew for breakfast.

But when a determined Sypha sets off in the direction of the Hold, Trevor knows. 

(Days have passed since his realisation and it's been manageable to pretend everything is fine - Trevor has always been good at being a dickhead, so their interactions have been normal. Except… In the back of his head, he always knew Alucard was pretty, but now his traitorous brain won’t stop noticing the pale gold of his eyes, or the taper of his fingers. He wants to punch himself in the face).

They find Alucard in front of the case that used to house the vampire skulls, staring into the glass.

“May we speak with you?” 

The dhampir, to his credit, does not overly react, despite receiving a verbal death sentence. However, his arms do link behind his back when he turns - which Trevor takes to mean he’s going out of his mind.

Behind Sypha, Trevor leans against a bookcase and tries to look more stupidly confident than he feels. (He is sweating beneath his tunic. He wishes he had his cuirass on). 

Sypha is uncharacteristically hesitant. “The two of us were wondering… That is to say - well -” her hands gesture uselessly in the air. Her foot stomps against the stone almost angrily. “We love you,” She blurts. “Do you love us back?”

Trevor has to close his eyes briefly, his hand squeezing at his bicep to the point of pain. As blunt as he is, he really has nothing on Sypha, the human equivalent of a battering ram. 

Golden eyes are hidden by a pale swing of hair. The response is stilted; quiet. “Your friendship means a lot to me.”

Something heavy sinks into his gut. Trevor doesn’t have to see Sypha’s face to know what flicks across it.

But. But Trevor knows Alucard knows loneliness as he does. And Trevor knows what undeserving feels like. “Not just friendship.”

Sypha finds the next words when he can’t. “Whatever love you desire from us, is yours. We love you.”

This is the tensest triangle Trevor has ever been in since he bedded the wrong twin in Brasov. Even though they’d both threatened to chop his balls off, it still feels like much lower stakes than this (escaping with a scar on his inner thigh is nothing as what they stand to lose today). 

“Well,” Alucard says with a slow blink, after what feels like an eternity. He laughs, and it almost sounds disbelieving. “Is ‘everything’ an acceptable answer?”

“Of course,” Sypha says with a laugh that sounds suspiciously wet. Already so many steps ahead, she leaps at Alucard.

Alucard catches her by the waist easily. He lets go when her feet settle, but his hands flutter close to her skin until they find the curve of her lower back. He tilts his head down so she can whisper something that Trevor can’t hear.

Cheeks pinkening, Alucard nods.

Weight moving to the tips of her toes, Sypha presses a quick kiss to his mouth before resting her cheek against his chest. 

Trevor can’t look away. Topaz and amber. Fire and gold. When they both turn to look at him expectantly, he pushes himself off the wall with his foot, mouth dry. “Me too?”

“To my disgust,” Alucard drolls, but the corner of his mouth quirks up.

Trevor rolls his eyes. Something like relief trickles into his throat. “Just checking you don’t just have a thing for Sypha.”

“You had a crush on me,” Sypha teases, giddy like they didn’t just confirm it mere seconds ago. 

Alucard looks away. “Yes, I’ll admit I did care for Sypha first,” he murmurs, turning pale gold eyes and those long long eyelashes towards Trevor. “You took longer. After all, you do smell much better now.”

Sypha pats the bared skin of Alucard’s chest with a look akin to thoughtful. “Less like dirt… and beer.”

“Desperation?” Alucard suggests far too quickly, looking far too impressed with himself. 

“Oi,” Trevor interjects. They are going to be insufferable. “Stop ganging up on me.”

Sypha gets to Trevor first, darting over and up to kiss him, hands looping around his neck. Trevor gets a hand to her jaw, sliding it up so his fingers brush her ear.

Then she twirls away, and Trevor can’t help his body tensing as he makes eye contact with Alucard. He juts his chin out. He doesn’t waver, but his traitorous heart beats faster as the dhampir approaches.

Alucard stops just shy of him. Looms, a head taller. Arches an eyebrow.

Trevor throws a mental fuck you to the universe, and bodily closes the distance. Riding on seconds of bravado, he gets a hand in the pale curls at the back of Alucard’s head.  

Softer than expected, Alucard kisses him. 

Once. 

Twice. 

A pale white hand comes up to cup his jaw, gentle, and the dhampir grins into his mouth at Trevor’s sharp exhale.

Tilting his head for a better angle, Trevor tries to get a grip on Alucard’s waist, wanting to know if his hands touch, but his sweaty palms slide off the leather. “I hate this stupid fucking coat,” Trevor mutters.

“There’s nothing to stop you from taking it off,” Alucard drawls.  

Trevor’s hands tighten reflexively, leather creaking under his palms as heat flares in his belly. To wipe the smug little grin from Alucard’s face, Trevor butts him in the forehead with his own. The little thud of pain is worth the look on the dhampir’s face. 

Until Alucard steps onto his foot with all of his weight.

Trevor is rearing back to retaliate, still clutching the dhampir by his waist, when Sypha interrupts.

“You two really will find every opportunity to argue won’t you,” She says with a laugh and a shake of her ginger head when they both look at her. “Well,” she continues, moving closer, voice ringing loud in the quiet, eyes narrowing particularly at the shit-eating grin that must be decorating Trevor’s face. “If it continues in the bedroom, you better be promising me the best sex of my life.”

Alucard chokes on a cough. 

Although used to her bluntness - Sypha is anything but a prude - Trevor still swallows with difficulty. “Tall order.”

Sypha wriggles her way in between the two of them. She shivers as Alucard’s fingertips skim her scarred shoulder. She lets Trevor rest his chin on the top of her head. 

It’s not particularly comfortable. It’s kind of awkward. There’s hair up his nose and leather sticking to him. But Trevor doesn’t move.

“Oi!” barks a voice from the stairwell. Greta. “If you three are decent could you stop bloody slacking? Some of the horses have just jumped the fence.”

“Coming!” Sypha calls back, right in his ear.

“Well, we could be,” Trevor mutters, ear ringing, earning twin elbows to the ribs. Worth it.

As if practised, in a unity usually saved for battle, the three of them start to ascend from the Hold out into the village… To their home. 

And look, Trevor knows that the world sucks. It’s depressing and people are dicks and there’s no insurance that one of them won’t die.

But coming up against the three of them? Nothing stands a fucking chance.