Work Text:
Scott likes Owen best down in the mines. It must be the shadows. Scott waltzes through them like the darkness is little more than a series of thin curtains lining a familiar hall. Owen’s never down there long before Scott appears, all easy like it’s coincidence.
“Your hair’s a mess,” Scott says.
Owen brings his pick down on the stone here at the edge of the torchlight. He just needs the coal. “My hair’s fine.”
Scott’s in his face before the sentence is even done, and Owen turns, irritated, but Scott has a loose strand of Owen’s hair wrapped around his finger and it pulls.
“Ow!” Owen snarls. He wonders if he should try bartering with the humans for coal instead.
Scott coos, “Aww, did I hurt the poor little baby vampire?”
“I am two hundred—” Owen starts, and Scott interrupts him with a laugh.
“Come up, Owen. I’ll fix it for you.”
“Enjoy it,” Louis chuckled in Owen’s ear. His breath carried the tender coolness of the cellar, of stone that had not been touched by light in many long years. “The last sight of your reflection.”
He’d dressed Owen for the occasion. An evening of endings. Owen took in the delicate puff of the sleeves, the neat brown vest. There was something dream-like about this. About how he looked in the mirror, fitted so neatly into the elegant lines of this new clothing. Even his face: the sallowness of long illness transformed into something almost delicate while he wore— Were they Louis’s clothes? It occurred to Owen that they fit remarkably well.
Louis touched Owen’s rough ponytail, and Owen saw again, clearly, the grim colour of the bandages on his hands, the feral strangeness of his hair.
“I won’t miss it,” Owen said. He watched himself brush bandaged fingers over creamy fabric. He was, just barely, taller than Louis, though the mirror showed nothing there. He laughed at himself, ignoring how his reflection’s expression stretched strangely around his bones. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice sooner. You had this big old mirror right here and I never even— turned around.”
“What would you have done,” Louis asked, tone lilting playful, “if you found out because you couldn’t find me in the silver?”
“I don’t know.” It was as honest as Owen could be. “I mean, I’m here. So maybe I would have simply joined you sooner. I—” He was still there in the mirror. Clean clothes. Angular body. “I think I might have been happy to be eaten here, instead of by the wolves out in the woods.”
“And here I was worried I would scare you off.”
Louis’s hand, tipped with the long, sharp nails he didn’t hide anymore, brushed the knuckles of Owen’s hand. Looking down at those pale fingers, there was a pang in Owen’s chest, the kind of fear he hadn’t known how to feel since he was very young. He turned, and like a magic trick, Louis was there.
“You’re actually quite pretty,” Scott says, musing. Owen grits his teeth as Scott yanks the comb remorselessly through his hair. Plain, wooden, borrowed from Shubble. It does its job well. “You know, I was actually thinking of keeping you as a bride before all that business with Pyro.”
“A bride,“ Owen repeats doubtfully. “Not even a groom?”
Scott snorts. “You think you deserve that?”
“Are you finished playing with my hair?” Owen leans forward on the stool he’s perched on and there’s another vindictive tug of the comb. “It’s just going to get tangled again in a day.”
Sweetly, Scott grazes Owen’s jaw gathering up a section of his hair. Pulls hard enough to make Owen hiss. “Didn’t anyone teach you anything when you turned? You’d be my bride ‘cause you’d be mine. As soon as I saw you, this weird loner lumberjack dressed up all cute, I wanted to know what you’d taste like. See what you do when the big bad vampire gets you! But then you were already turned and your clothes are torn up.” He picks at the thready edge of a sleeve and Owen burns, defensive, marrow-deep. “You should get someone to mend this.”
Owen shuts his eyes. The comb has started sliding through Owen's hair with less resistance. “These clothes serve me just as well as anything else I could get around here.”
Scott hums derisively; it vibrates in Owen’s bones like a ripple across a still lake. “But you could look so much nicer.”
“Why do you care?”
Scott’s laugh is a brief bark: Ha! “I’m the one who has to look at you.” He leans in close behind Owen, syllables like an eerie breeze at his neck. “We could make a deal. I don’t need to be the one who turned you to be your master. And you’d get to stop wandering around smelling like pig blood.”
“I need to eat.” There is something in the darkness between the constellations of his body, and its demands pierce Owen like a spear through the gut. Another star winking out. Another.
“You’re that hungry, Owen?” Using the rope of Owen’s hair, Scott forces him to look up, to crane his neck and meet Scott’s gaze.
“Your last meal as a free man,” Louis said, in that strange tone that made it hard to tell if he was joking.
Owen looked over the table. The size of the room alone made it feel too luxurious for him to be in. His mother and father, when they lived, had kept sheep, which were never Oakhurst’s pride and joy like the cattle were, but everyone needed warm clothes come the cold season. They had held to the necessary in all things. Little more.
Louis's hand landed on Owen's cheek, gentle, and Owen startled.
Louis laughed, and Owen thought nothing of fire, of festering sickness. “Forgive me. I run cold.” There was a winking glint in his eye. “Why do you think I wear the coat?”
It was a lovely thing, black with a pretty silk lining, the buttons gleaming as immaculately as if they had never seen daylight. Maybe they hadn't. Louis had hung it comfortably on one of the chairs, presumably claiming it as his own. There were two places set.
“You’re cold?” Owen asked, feeling lamb-stupid. Eternity unrolled like a plush carpet before him. “You should put on the coat, I wouldn’t mind—”
“No, no, it’s not so bad,” Louis promised. He didn’t touch Owen’s cheek again. “You’ll see, Owen.”
Owen had relished it then. The sound of his name in someone else's mouth.
It seems Scott is intent on braiding Owen’s hair. Owen hadn’t realized how long his hair had gotten. He touches his own face, which is smooth. He feels out the shape of his chin. Exploratory, his left cheekbone.
Scott finishes the braid. Lets the rope of it hit Owen’s back and Owen shivers with the dreamlessness of incomprehension. He straightens. Now he can’t shake the image of it, his mother’s braided hair like a second spine. Does he look like he was made in her image? He goes to stand and Scott’s hand shoves him back down.
“Wait,” Scott says. A command and not a request, of course.
“What.” There is little point in telling an elder vampire no. Given he’s a Goldsmith, he might not even know the word.
Scott comes around the stool and presses fingers to the side of Owen’s neck. Doesn’t care that he flinches. Those fingers probe, dig in too hard, retract.
“Mm.” Scott purses his lips, tilts his head. There’s a shamelessness to his all-over appraisal. “The face isn’t great, but you make a nice girl.”
“Excuse me?” Owen chokes. “I’m not—”
Scott flicks his hand dismissively. “Not what? I have eyes, Owen. You can try to hide it with that cloak, but you look like some noble’s daughter who got lost in the woods. Don’t dress yourself like that if you don’t want me to tell you what I see.”
Owen reaches for the mirror in his pocket, something in his throat like a slice of the moon fell into his mouth. It’s hardly in front of him before Scott’s sighing and knocking it away, letting it hit the floor with a crack.
Scott taps him under the chin, halting his protest with a click of teeth. Chiding: “Do you really not know anything? We don’t have reflections, Owen.” Another tap, though this time gentler, on the tip of Owen’s nose. “Do you think I’m lying to you, fledgeling?”
“I was asleep for a long time,” Owen manages. The words he cannot say crowd his mouth, needy and crushed between his molars. “I didn’t have much choice about what I wore.”
Scott raises his eyebrows. “So you let someone do that to you?” The slow curl of his smile. Owen thinks of dawn light dragged like a heavy blanket along the treetops. Scott sinks his fingers into Owen’s hair and grabs tight, pulls him forward until he’s right on the edge of his seat with his mouth infuriatingly close to Scott’s wrist. “We should find them and say thanks for getting you dress up. Makes things so much easier for me.”
“I’m not becoming your bride just for some secondhand blood,” Owen says. He doesn’t need to swallow or to breathe. The animal remnants of him want badly to do both. The pain in his scalp snarls desperately at him. The pain in his stomach howls worse.
Scott hums. “You silly goose. Who said you get a choice?”
Louis’s hand stayed on Owen’s arm the whole way to the cellar.
“I’m not going to get lost,” Owen said, a tiny coil of amusement rising in him as they stood there together at the top of the stone steps. Louis was shifting his grip to take hold of Owen’s forearm, as Owen was some straying child. “You’ve shown me down here before.”
“I would hate to lose you now,” Louis replied simply. “When our destination is so near? I would curse myself forever, Owen.”
The manor was still, and there was an echoing quality to the soundlessness of the stairwell.
“Our destination,” Owen chuckled. “Surely you don’t intend to wait beside my resting place. Whatever the townspeople have told you, I’m not so frail that I can’t climb a set of stairs alone.”
“No?” Louis said in that strange tone again. “I have plied you with food and fine clothes and promised a cure for your sickness, and now my blushing maid from the cabin at the edge of the woods would deny me?”
Owen nearly did stumble on the next step; wasn’t he so grateful for Louis’s hold on him then. His free hand found the railing and the other hand drew out of Louis’s grasp.
He halted there a moment, tucking the stray end of a bandage back into place.
“I was only joking,” said Louis.
“Oh,” Owen said. The manor, sturdy and expansive, held them both. Two animals in a burrow, hidden from the hunting dogs. He reached for Louis’s hand, filled with an anticipation that had nowhere to go. “No, no, I— Sorry. I don’t know what came over me there.”
“My friend,” Louis said, soft and warning as he entangled his fingers with Owen’s.
Scott is faster than him and stronger than him. In the end, Owen goes down pathetically fast, the stool knocked aside as Scott shoves him to the floor and pins him there. He bucks under the touch of Scott’s fangs.
“Hold still and be quiet,” Scott murmurs, all sugar. “If you behave, I’ll give you a treat.”
Sharpness at his neck and Owen freezes. His skin is soft like a human’s. Like some pampered creature that hasn’t known blade and blood. Scott mouths at him, then bites down hard, and Owen shudders, hot and woozy.
Fool he was. Of course a vampire has tricks for subduing its prey. Of course all those people of Oakhurst didn’t go weak-kneed from fear alone.
Owen remembers glutting himself, once upon a time. He thinks of dying. Scott’s teeth are flint points dug deep, and Owen can’t swallow down his useless panting breaths without feeling them twitch inside him.
Scott lifts off long enough to lick red from his lips. There is drool or blood or both dripping coolly down the side of Owen’s neck.
“Your bite isn’t there,” Scott observes with all distant curiosity the sun might grant a star tumbling from the sky. He holds Owen’s wrists above his head with one hand while the other wanders. Neck — accompanying stab of dull pain — then shoulder then collarbone then—
“Oh my god.” Scott’s eyes flash with mirth. They look brighter now, all of him flush with easy triumph and food in his mouth, and Owen is so ferociously, wildly jealous he snaps at empty air, half for the twinge of the fresh injury and half to be doing anything at all for the churning in his stomach. Scott hardly seems to notice. “Your chest? Really? What, did you lie down and let them do that to you too?”
“Let me go if you’re done with me,” Owen rasps.
Scott’s fingers press down where they are, and Owen doesn’t know how he’s ever going to shake Scott’s touch off his skin. He’ll drown himself and the river will bury him under its bed in disgust. A sound claws, involuntary, at his throat, and Scott tuts pityingly. One-handed, he begins to undo the buttons of Owen’s vest.
“You’ll kill me,” Owen snarls, though he can’t say where the desperation comes from. “Tell me you have enough dignity not to bed a corpse.” What is he if not writhing darkness? What is he, under these clothes?
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not going to kill you,” Scott says. “And don’t talk to me about self-respect. Look at you. You look like a whore.” He leans in close and licks the wound he made with broad, savouring laps of his tongue. He taps Owen’s shoulder when he’s done, then shoves his wrist up against Owen’s mouth, leaning too much of his weight into it. “Relax. Eat.”
When he came up from the dark of the tomb, he did not think, at first, to call out. And why would he need to? Louis had promised to be there. Dying had been so easy, Owen remembered it mostly as a confused bliss, Louis’s weight on top of him and the utter solidity of the stone under him. He remembered, perhaps, that his friend had hugged him, saying something strange and relieved.
Owen climbed out of his resting place and each moment that passed without greeting or touch left him colder. He was oddly peckish. He looked down at himself and found Louis’s clothes still on him, though they seemed to hang flatly from this angle, and looked washed of colour in the dim light.
There was no one in the cellar. Owen climbed the stairs. Was he stronger now? Did motion come easier as he learned his joints and muscles unfettered by illness? He reached the top of the stairs. Called for Louis. His heart, still halfway in its old life, took in the quality of the light and told him he’d woken up unconscionably late.
Louis had warned him of loneliness. Of the sense of falling out of time as the world trotted on without a look back at you. Owen had called it familiar, and Louis had set his hand on the table, staring across at Owen as if to commit Owen’s face to memory.
He roamed a while. A few times, he looked behind himself, but there was only the carpet. Only the empty manor. Only the spill of light through an open door like the long train of a wedding dress, which he had seen exactly once when he was very young, uncovering his mother’s old clothes at the bottom of a wooden trunk.
Scott grabs Owen, hand under his chin, fingers digging into his cheeks, and says, admonishing, bright, “Don’t ruin your lipstick, Owen.”
There is the dull, wretched throb of hunger like a heartbeat buried in his guts. The smell of iron like a rope around his throat. Blood must be smeared on his face, but Scott does not relent for a long moment.
Then, a smile ticks up the corner of his mouth and he lets go. “Good girl! See? You get to eat and look pretty when you listen to me.”
The blood’s drying on Owen’s lips. He’d be horrified at his reflection if he could see it now, he’s sure. It still aches where Scott reopened the bite marks on Owen’s chest. It hurts when he moves, straightening out his clothes, fixing his sleeves and dusting himself off. His vest stays unbuttoned. Scott uses his thumb to rub at Owen’s face. Cleaning him, maybe. Owen bears it; he doesn’t think he can speak without tasting the blood on his mouth.
“Cute,” Scott declares once he’s done. He pats Owen right over the bite mark and Owen hisses, more instinct than thought by now. “Don’t be rude. I’m giving you a chance here, Owen.”
“How generous of you,” Owen says slowly, his voice clangingly hollow in his own ears.
Scott grins beatifically. “Exactly!” He holds Owen in place with a hand on the back of his head and kisses him hard. Then Scott stands, wipes his mouth, and leaves with a cheerful goodbye, letting the door slam shut behind him. Once he’s gone, Owen finally licks his lips clean. He breathes out hard, running his hand down the length of his new braid. Even mostly dried and secondhand, the blood tastes like heaven.