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Stephen doesn’t often like to visit the world of humans.
There’s a good reason behind it, in his opinion: they’re dirty, loud, and utterly undignified. They scream and laugh and shout at all hours of the day, carrying on like they were being commissioned only to ruin the peace and quiet of every other occupant of the Earth. If he ever did venture down to visit, always cloaked and masked, it was usually only to collect stories to regale the rest of his father’s court with. The other Lords and Ladies, particularly those his age, loved to titter and gasp about what he’d seen them doing, what they got up to when their villages weren’t being ransacked for food and blood.
They dared not venture down themselves, after all. They were quite content with blood poured into their glasses and goblets like wine, as it meant they didn’t have to soil their clothes or skin with the dirt and disease of humanity. Stephen, however… well, he considers himself different, because, as much as the antics of humans scandalized and disgusted him, he could never settle for blood when it wasn’t accompanied by the dying throes of a wailing body beneath him.
This is where he journeys to now: the village a few miles out from the castle. It’s a bustling, dirty city—it disgusts him. It enthralls him, excites him. They’re all so clueless, so stupid and mediocre. They don’t notice him walking the dirt streets, not any more than they notice anyone else. They only walk around, in their stink and dirt, shouting their wares or greeting family, clashing together glasses of rum or grabbing the collars of those who offended them. He watches them beneath the hood of his cloak, his lips twitching against his will. He can’t help himself. They’re entertaining in a dirty way, like seeing rats fighting in alleyways. He can’t look away.
None of these vermin are fit to feed from, not really. He isn’t desperate enough to tolerate their stench or their filthiness, not quite. Sometimes, he’d be lucky, and he’d catch some caravan of some minor human lord or lady, and he’d have someone marginally more dignified to tear open and drink from, but it appears as if his luck has run out. He wrinkles his nose, turning off the main street and into one of the alleyways. Maybe he’ll track down one of the clergymen of the village; simple and boring, but clean enough, in most cases.
The alley takes him back behind one of the local bars, which is made readily apparent by the puddles of liquor and other unmentionables littering the walkway. He holds up the edge of his cloak, frowning, and tries to step around them as best as he can. He’s almost entirely sure that one of those puddles is nothing but piss.
Stephen spends so long watching the ground that he doesn’t notice the other boy in the alleyway until he nearly runs into him. Scowling, he narrowly dodges the boy, dragging his eyes up from the ground as he steadies himself. He gives the boy a once-over; skinny and dirty, just like the rest of the town. His hair, long and blonde, might be pretty if it weren’t so stained with dirt and grease. He sits huddled against the wall, knees drawn to his chest.
Pathetic, Stephen thinks, crossing his arms. I almost feel sorry for it.
“You ought not sit on the ground like that,” he tells the boy. “Someone might only brush past you and dirty their clothing irreparably.”
“...sorry,” comes the hoarse whisper in response. The boy doesn’t even look up when he says it—he continues to stare at his knees, unmoving.
It intrigues Stephen, at least a little. He would’ve understood it if the boy were merely asleep, or if he were waiting for a parent inside, but he hadn’t said anything like that. No excuse for his state whatsoever. And what a pitiful, distasteful state he’s in.
“Why are you here?” Stephen asks him. When the boy doesn’t respond, Stephen sighs and collects the bottom of his cloak in his arms before kneeling down, attempting to not let any other part of himself touch the dirty ground or the dirty boy. It nearly puts him at eye level with the runt, though he still stands a few inches taller, even on his knees. “I asked you a question, runt. Look at me.”
Though slowly, and clearly reluctantly, the boy tears his eyes off of the ground, and looks up. His eyes, though hollow and half-lidded, are such a startling shade of blue that Stephen almost would have suspected that he stumbled across the abandoned child of some aristocrat if his manners weren’t so clearly underdeveloped. Blonde hair, blue eyes; features like that do not survive long in a world like this. He sticks out like a sore thumb in comparison to the dark haired, dark eyed occupants of the town.
“You have beautiful eyes for a street rat,” Stephen murmurs.
The boy blinks, slowly. “Thank you.”
“So you do possess manners,” Stephen remarks, smiling. “If you answer my question, I might be convinced that you are not entirely hopeless. I ask you again, why are you here?”
“I’m waiting to die,” the boy whispers.
“To die?” Stephen repeats, chuckling. “Well, you’ve chosen a rather ineffective way of doing so, runt. You’d meet your end much faster if you were simply to stand and throw yourself onto a blade.”
The boy makes a little sighing noise, like maybe that had been his thought, as well. His shoulders hunch up to his ears, and he withdraws into himself further. “...I can’t walk.”
“No?” Stephen asks. He raises an eyebrow as the boy extends his leg a little, enough for Stephen to see that the bottoms of his feet are bloody and flayed open, as if he’d been walking barefoot for days before he had finally settled here. Stephen clicks his tongue, raising himself back to his feet and glancing down at the pathetic form still lying on the ground. “Well, perhaps if you were to ask nicely, someone might toss you a knife. I shan’t stay here a moment longer, lest someone mistakenly assume that I would be the one to do it.”
The boy intrigues him, to be sure, but Stephen isn’t in the business of killing just to be merciful, and the boy is far too dirty to be fed from. No, it would be better for him to continue his search for some priest or other, and return home before the sun rises again.
As he leaves the alleyway, the sound of a door opening catches his ear, which twitches backwards to hear it better. He pauses for a moment at the sound of someone being thrown bodily to the ground, splashing piss and alcohol all over the rotten brick walls. Whoever it is grunts as he hits the dirt.
“Come back when ye have some coin for that tab of yours,” a voice shouts—likely the bartender, or some other muscle. A door slams, and as Stephen glances backwards, he sees the man—a skinny, twiggy thing—stumble up and off the ground, futilely swiping some of the dirt off of his soiled pants.
“The fuck are ye lookin’ at, eh?”
Stephen raises his eyebrow again, but to his minor surprise, the man isn’t talking to him. No, the man is hovering over the boy, scowling down at him although it’s abundantly clear that the boy isn’t looking at anything else but the ground. Even so, the man kicks a foot out, cracking against the boy’s ankle.
“I said, the fuck are ye lookin’ at, rat?” the man demands. When the boy doesn’t respond, he scoffs and kicks him again, ignoring the boy’s quiet noise of pain. “Stupid vermin like you are always litterin’ the streets. I tell ye, the governor oughta grind you rats up and use ye for fertilizer. God knows ye’d be better in the dirt than drainin’ resources for the good people.”
What an idea, Stephen thinks to himself. If it wouldn’t be such a waste of food, he’d love to see the effects of blood and carnage on local flora. If bone were a good fertilizer, perhaps blood might be, as well.
“Maybe I oughta save him the labor and do it meself,” the man sneers. Stephen is roused from his thoughts by the sound of a body hitting the ground, then a soft ‘oof’ as the man’s foot lodges into the boy’s stomach—once, twice, a third brutal time before that same foot pins the boy’s head to the dirt. “A good deed like this’ll carry me into heaven, I’m sure.”
And Stephen really shouldn’t care. It’s what the boy wants, after all: to die. It’d be cruel to step between him and the one thing in life that someone would gladly give him. But, well… to be quite honest, he’s bored. This town is boring, its people are boring, and so far, his journey has been boring. His father will have his head for causing such a ruckus in the middle of a human town, but even that’s preferable to going home with nothing but clergymen’s blood to show for his venture.
“Heaven is an awfully ironic thing for someone such as yourself to be speaking about,” Stephen calls, grinning. The man glances up at him, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed. “Wasn’t it your God who said that, oh, the rich were as likely to get into the golden gates as they are to fit through a needle’s hole?”
“Who the hell are you?” the man spits. “Mind your own business.”
Stephen steps closer to him, withdrawing his claws beneath the thick fabric of his cloak. The man is none the wiser, utterly clueless to who he’s insulting. This is the excitement Stephen had been hoping for; the thrill of a kill, the promise of blood. “You should watch your words, my friend. I only seek to help you in your endeavors.”
The world blurs and then he’s standing behind the man, relishing in the brief flash of fear that appears in his eyes as Stephen wraps a sharp-fingered hand around his neck. He opens his mouth, probably to squeal something equally as annoying as his previous drivel, which Stephen quickly silences with a flex of his hand. He digs his claws into the man’s throat and squeezes, tearing through flesh and muscle to the bone beneath, which he grabs as simply as if it were the neck of a bottle of wine. It’s ridiculously simple to yank the man’s spine out of his body, spraying blood and viscera all across the brick wall of the alley.
Grinning, he holds the man’s head up to the sky as blood rains down from the stump of his neck, splattering across Stephen’s face and clothes. The man’s blood is rank with alcohol and illness as Stephen opens his mouth to taste it. He promptly spits it out onto the ground, nose wrinkling.
“Disgusting,” he mutters, throwing the spine and skull to the ground with a wet thump. “At least you might fit into your god’s needle hole now.”
The man has nothing to say to that. Good, because Stephen would sooner tear his ears off than hear him speak again.
He glances down at the boy, who lays motionless on the ground. The only sign that he’s alive is his eyes, wide and bright, standing out starkly beneath the blood staining his face.
“That’s a prettier color, I think,” Stephen hums thoughtfully. “Maroon and gold and blue. I should think it might look prettier were you not so dirty, runt.”
“...thank you,” is all that the boy says, voice quiet and trembling.
“Thank you?” Stephen echoes. He laughs once, caught off guard. “For that? Or for killing him?”
The boy blinks, twists a little on the ground to look up at him. His eyes are so, so bright; alive for the first time since Stephen spoke to him. Stephen could see a hundred other blonde haired, blue eyed boys, and yet he’s sure that this is the pair that will continue to linger behind his closed eyes for centuries to come. Blue, like the ocean. Blue, like glaciers, like rivers. This is the kind of boy that poets would write verses about. Such a beautiful, pathetic thing.
“Both,” he whispers.
“Shall I kill another for you?” Stephen asks. He kneels down again, this time uncaring of whether or not his cloak is dirtied; the boy has completely, and unequivocally stolen his attention now. He reaches out to take the runt’s chin in his hand, lifting his head. “The bar, the town? Your family, perhaps?”
“I have no family,” the boy says.
“Indeed,” Stephen says, smiling. “Well, your Lord or Lady, then. Surely someone must have ownership of you.”
The boy shakes his head. “No one.”
“Well then…” Stephen takes a moment just to look him over, considering. Beneath all the dirt, he has nice skin, and good bone structure. A regal jawbone, a strong nose, full lips… cracked and dry, but enchanting, nonetheless. Perhaps the dirt was for the boy’s best benefit; if someone were to see him clean and dressed, Stephen has the strongest suspicion that he’d be able to find work very quickly. But, no one has—the boy is still here, laid out like an offering for him. No Lord or Lady, no family, no friends or benefactors. No one would miss him. No one save for Stephen himself. “...how would you like to be mine, runt?”
The boy’s eyes widen a little. He looks over Stephen’s face in turn, lips parting. “What- what should I call you?”
“You may call me Stephen,” he says, letting go of the boy’s face. “Lord, Master, Sir, Father, it matters not to me. What are you called?”
“I have no name,” the boy murmurs.
“Would you like me to give you one?” Stephen asks. The boy nods, rising up to his knees. “Very well, then. You can be… William.”
“William,” the boy says. And then, bowing his head, he says, “Thank you, my Lord.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Stephen says wryly. “Stand up now, runt.”
Despite his aching feet, William tries to do so. He holds on to the wall to steady himself, making little noises of pain as he stands on unsteady and weak feet, and though he trembles rather violently, he holds himself upright before Stephen. He barely comes to Stephen’s waist, as small and undeveloped as he is. Most humans barely reach Stephen’s shoulders, but this boy in particular is nearly miniscule.
Stephen can’t help but take pity on him, pitiful as he is. He reaches an arm out and twines it beneath William’s legs, hoisting him up and onto Stephen’s hip. It’s there that he cradles the boy, wrinkling his nose at the scent all the while. William, though, he tentatively reaches his little hands out, holding on to Stephen’s cloak. He tucks himself against Stephen’s chest as Stephen makes to leave the alleyway behind, breathing soft against his neck.
“Your cloak is beautiful,” William whispers, almost as if to himself.
“Yes?” Stephen chuckles. William will have to raise his standards if he’s to join the court at Stephen’s side; a dirty, blood-stained cloak is hardly something to be labeled as ‘beautiful’. “I might gift it to you, if you have nothing else to wear. It is trash to me, now.”
“Thank you,” William says again. He sounds as if he means every word—it’s almost cute.
If William continues to marvel so beautifully over such simple, little things, then he may prove to be more interesting than Stephen had hoped for.