Chapter Text
Owen tried not to let on how disturbing he found it all.
Pyro was new, and Owen felt some sort of… not ownership, but a certain responsibility. He may be Scott’s fledgling, but Owen had tasted him first, and they had pinned him in the water and turned him together. Or, as close to together as two vampires their age could. It made him… reluctant to cause the fledgling distress by letting on his own disgusted feelings, despite the fact that he wasn’t in any way shape or form part of Scott Goldsmith’s coven.
So Pyro wasn’t his. He was his own, despite the indulgent way Scott let Pyro call him ‘Sire’, and the way Scott brought the fledgling food, despite the fact that Owen was fairly sure the vampire could hunt for himself. He even allowed Pyro to sleep with him in his coffin, the two tucked together like two puzzle pieces, a thick ball of something choking Owen in his chest as he made his own bed upstairs, between two crates.
He didn’t need to cuddle, and he certainly didn’t want to do it with Scott Goldsmith. He might have… perhaps, allowed Pyro close while he slept... but the fledglings loyalty to Scott (when he wasn’t wavering like a spineless coward at the prospect of the disapproval of cattle) put Owen off enough that he made his bed himself. Tucked amongst burlap, and salvaged silk and linen from the castle stores.
Owen thought it would become more normal once Shelby was with them, but to his horror it got worse.
Scott had offered some of his old wardrobe to the coven— most of it had moldered away, but some long ago enterprising servant had taken the initiative to wrap some of the finer of the Goldsmiths clothes in paper, and place them in a cedar chest safe from insects or mold. Scott had been beside himself with delight, and even opened some of his remaining bottles of wine for them to share in celebration.
Shelby had one glass before she was flushed and giggling— and Pyro had only needed two, before placing himself into his sires lap with all the fastidious precision of a spoiled cat.
Owen had been drunk enough to be pleasantly swimming, eyes blinking languidly— he wasn’t going to turn down free wine, especially from the Goldsmith cellars. But at the sight of Pyro crawling into Scott’s lap with no sense of propriety, he had sat straight and cold and sober, heat rushing to his bloodless face and fingers tightening on his goblet.
Scott had looked… smug, was the only word for it, pulling Pyro’s head down to rest against his shoulder, and indulgently bringing his hand up to run through his fledglings dark hair. Owen found his eyes drawn helplessly to the motion, fingers cold and stiff where they were clenched on the goblet and the table surface, pupils dilated in the dim candle flicker light of the formerly grand banquet hall. Scott had made eye contact with him, his smile slow and sharp. A bare flicker of pointed white teeth flashed on his bottom lip as Pyro let out a content sigh and relaxed, half on Scott’s lap, and half tucked onto the grand chair Scott had positioned at the head of the table.
It felt… obscene, that he would just. Do that.
Owen was only troubled it for a moment, before he thought of— of Louis, and whether. Whether Louis would have wanted that. If the way he reached out, and drew Owen close was a facsimile of this want. He had pulled away at the time, thinking of his sores, of the disease, of the way his limbs were pitted and wasted and… unclean. He hadn’t wanted to touch him, despite the assurances that he couldn’t hurt Louis, that vampires were above such things as disease. Even after Owen had inevitably given in, there had been only so far he had been willing to go.
‘I denied him the only thing he wanted from me,’ he thought, the sorrow almost choking him. ‘I thought I had time, but we could have had that. He wanted me… in his bed. In his home…’ he had to school his face, the flush creeping up his neck and making his ears hot, his veins freshly fed on chickens, and wine, and cattle. The thought of himself, perched in Louis’ lap. Loved. Treasured.
Just when Owen thought he had control of his expression, Scott reached an arm around Pyro, and as delicately as a surgeon, unbuttoned and rolled down the cuff of his sleeve to reveal his wrist. Without breaking eye contact with Owen, he rested his wrist on Pyro’s neck, and even from two seats down Owen could smell the archaic vampire scent. Older, more powerful than his own— Scott said he had slept for six hundred years, been alive for a further than that, but Owen was starting to think he may be more powerful than he had even revealed.
Pyro had— had leaned into it, and even from here Owen could hear him purr in delight, letting Scott rest his wrist along the back of his neck, and pushing his head under Scott’s chin like a… a… fledgling.
“Oh, I want a turn!” Shelby complained, immediately clambering over the table, her chair wobbling and almost falling over backwards. (The chairs Owen had made, he thought petulantly, taking a sip of wine.) Owen thought Scott would be irritated at the lack of manners, but he seemed more interested in making room in his lap for Shelby, stretching an arm out to guide his giggling fledgling into sitting, and tucking her knees alongside Pyro’s.
Pyro gave a lazy growl, but it only took a chiding look from Scott for him to subside, allowing Shelby to drape her legs across the arm rests and Pyro both, skirt draped over the three of them and riding up carelessly to show her wool tights. She got her turn butting her head under Scott’s chin, clumsy with it like she was with anything, purring like a rusty cat.
Scott patiently gave her a turn, still looking at Owen, a small divot forming between his flawless, smooth brows, a smile still on his lips, although he looked more thoughtful now than anything.
“That chair is far too big,” Owen observed in a flat tone, unclenching his fingers enough to loosen his grip on the goblet, and put it to his lips. He took a sip— human food wasn’t digestible to them, but some liquids were. Most notably, wine. Owen had never drank wine until after Louis had turned him— and even then, it hadn’t been with Louis.
Just one more thing taken from him. It had been a bottle of wine still left intact from the rubble that was his first drink, and it had almost slipped from Owen’s grip from the blood coating his hands. He’d uncorked it with his teeth, slugging swallows straight from the bottle. Washing the taste of blood, and smoke, and salt away.
Before he’d gone back to his grim work.
“I suppose,” Scott said slyly, petting Shelby along her collar and smiling at Owen. “Room for one more, though.”
Owen stiffened and drained his cup, setting it down with a very pointed clunk.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” He said, trying not to display his disdain too obviously. Didn’t want to hurt the fledglings feelings. Scott still raised a warning eyebrow, folding a hand over Shelby and setting his mouth in a sort of chaste kiss to her head.
Owen didn’t see the rest, because he left.
Owen was a vampire.
He wasn’t a very good vampire.
There were things he didn’t know about being a vampire, of course, because there hadn’t been time to explain. The days before his turning…
Even now, no day in his life had compared to the feeling of those warm, well fed days with Louis. There were hazy memories of before he had gotten sick, when he was a child. The youngest son of a poor, but not destitute family. He remembered collecting chestnuts in the forest, roasting them with his mother. He remembered a sister, perhaps, holding his hand, his view swallowed up by the sea of skirts and trouser legs and damp brick under his feet, too small to see over the top of the market stall.
The memories were hazy, with his long sleep. Like something he dreamed, of another person. (Another human.) It didn’t matter anyway. Those memories belonged to someone even further removed from him than that wretched creature that had dragged itself to Oakhurst, covered in bandages.
The easiest thing to remember was Louis.
Louis had taken his hand. Had fed him, had clothed him. Owen hadn’t touched another person since those hazy memories of his sister, except for a kick to get him off of someones stoop. Louis had… had offered his bed, but Owen had been so afraid he had said no. Not until he was turned. Not until he could feel touch again, on the dead parts of his skin. Not until he could unwrap the bandages, and be unafraid of Louis recoiling from him in disgust, from the pitted welts eating into his hands.
(Despite the fact that he’d never let any disgust show before.)
It was his biggest regret now, in a life full of them. He could have had one night, and he’d let fear stop him. He’d thought they’d have… forever, that when he awoke, he’d be clean, and Louis would look at him with the same look of love he already had, and Owen could be happy with it. That he would deserve it.
But that had never happened.
Owen had awoken, and he’d been a fledgling himself. Weak, lonely, looking for his sire.
He’d found him.
It took hours for Louis to burn. Owen had began to hope that maybe they’d run out of fuel before screams stopped, it took so long.
The town burned quicker than Louis had.
So Owen had nothing but a brief short week or two before he was turned, where Louis had told him small things. The sunlight will burn you, animals will quench you, there were other vampires out there. Few and far between, but they were there.
(He hadn’t mentioned the Goldsmiths.)
What he didn’t know, was why Scott acted the way he did.
It was only a day later, the sky covered in clouds and rain pounding on the roof above, when Scott reached out to touch him. Owen had recoiled instinctively, bewildered. He’s bared fangs and hissed, and while Scott had pulled his hand back, he hadn’t backed off nearly as far as Owen would have liked.
“Stop,” he demanded, putting space between them. He had to come from his crouch to do it, where he was cornered between the table, and the wall of the meeting hall he had been working on. “What are you doing?” Scott remained standing, only shifting to lean a hip against the banquet table and studying Owen like he was a tricky problem to solve.
Owen had been repairing the walls, dried mortar flecking the edge of his cloak and dried into a chalky film on his hands. Heavy deepslate bricks waited in tidy stacks, dropped off by an eager to please Pyro, before the fledgling had gone off again. (Sent off by a fond scenting from his sire, Scott’s mouth and chin disappearing into Pyro’s hair for a brief moment before he was gone in a flurry of wings.)
(Owen had looked away, burning.)
“I’m just touching you Owen,” Scott said, vaguely admonishing. “You’re so jumpy.”
“Well don’t,” Owen snapped, shoulder hunching as he turned back to the walls, fingers clenching the deepslate so tightly he thought for a moment it might crack. “I’m not a fledgling,” he put the mortar into the fitting, the back of his neck prickling at the feeling of Scott standing behind him.
“Aren’t you though?” Scott said thoughtfully, quietly, and Owen gave him a surprised look. Scott looked pleased, at the surprise, and it was only Owen’s vampiric eyes that allowed him to see his pupils dilated faintly, the same as when he looked at Pyro, or Shelby. He tucked a hand under his chin, tapping one long elegant finger against his pale cheek. Thoughtful. “I can smell it on you, you know. You say you’re two hundred, but that’s not quite true, is it?”
“It is,” Owen put the deepslate down, needing space all of a sudden. He wiped his hands against his trousers, ignoring the flicker of annoyance that crossed Scott’s face at the mess. Good. “I was turned centuries ago, and that’s all you need to know. You don’t need to know my sire, you don’t need to know—“
“I don’t need to know, you’re right. I have my own secrets, my coven is perfectly welcome to their own…” he paused, looking Owen from top to bottom, and Owen had to fight the urge to cross his arms, to pull his sleeves back down over his mottled scars. “But I want to know, and what I want, I generally get.”
Scott said it with that same indulgent tone he spoke with Pyro, or Shelby. Patronizing. Owen’s lip curled up involuntarily, rankled because he had a sire, and it wasn’t Scott. He showed his fangs, and Scott’s smile disappeared in a flash so quick even Owen had trouble seeing it in the dim.
Owen caught the motion, and instinctively started to move— but this was an ancient vampire. Owen was strong, and fast, something fueling him that was different from what flowed in Pyro and Shelby, he knew that because they just smelled different. They didn’t have the same ache, the same rage in them that made things blur, made things… difficult.
But Scott was something else. Louis would have known, but Louis was dead. If he wasn’t, maybe he would have taught Owen more. Maybe Owen wouldn’t have slept for two hundred years, maybe he would be strong enough to dodge the hand that Scott wrapped around his throat.
Scott slammed him down against the table, and Owen immediately lashed out with claws, snarling with a guttural hiss that echoed under the cavernous roof. He caught brocade, and that actually pissed Scott off more than before, golden threads tattered under his claws. The growl that happened behind him sent a shudder down Owen’s spine, Scott’s exhale moving the hair on his neck. Owen found himself stiffening. Something hooked into his hind brain, and made him think hold still.
‘Fuck that,’ he thought, and thrashed wildly, managing to kick at Scott’s knee and temporarily get the elder off of him. Long enough to push himself off the floor and go skidding across the table, cursing the size of the thing as he had to finish rolling over, taking the scarlet table runner with him.
He landed on all fours and got two steps into a sprint, before Scott landed on him and his nose smashed into the floor.
“Now, why would you do that?” Scott asked irritably, pressing Owen down into the floor with one knee in his back, and a hand gripping his hair. There was no room to kick any longer, and his nose ached horribly. Judging by the wet he could taste on his lips, the cold taste of iron, Owen suspected he’d broken his nose. “I swear, I can tell your sire didn’t teach you any manners, or else you wouldn’t be jumping around like a scalded cat every time Shelby so much as looks at you.”
“Get off,” Owen bellowed, beyond done with this elder. This was the final blow— he could put up with getting the castoffs of Scott’s meals. He could put up with working together, if only because they were trapped together in Oakhurst by those blasted beacons, and he knew Scott could kill him if he tried. He could put up with the— the, displays of affection, stomach rolling.
But this was the last straw.
“Now why would I do that, silly?” Scott asked, and his voice would sound fond if there wasn’t that hint of steel in it. The same Scott got in his voice when Pyro misbehaved, and Scott was forced to put him in his place. The one a sire used with fledglings, and Owen roared wordlessly, struggling against the grip in his hair and the pain in his neck and back and nose to get free, and tear Scott limb from limb. “If I let you go now, I’ll never see you again, most likely. You’ll go bury yourself in a sulk for another two hundred years, or worse, one of those villagers will get you. Then where would we be?”
Scott settled his knees on either side of Owen’s hips, pressing his body down against Owen to cease his struggling. It was effective, and Owen was dizzy with rage he hadn’t felt since he’d killed thousands, vision narrowed to pinpricks and boots scraping uselessly against the dirt they had yet to lay with new mahogany flooring. “I need every hand on deck I can get to put those villagers,” and there was disgust in his tone when he said it that echoed in Owen’s heart at the mere thought of those cattle. “In their place. You Owen, are a very useful hand indeed. But you know what your problem is?”
Owen did not care what his problem was, and growled wordlessly, sore and hurting and helpless under Scott’s grip that was as immovable as iron. “You’re my bloody problem you gilded, frilly, bastard—“
“Your problem is you don’t know your place either,” Scott hissed into Owens captive ear, all fondness gone from his voice. “And I’ve indulged you long enough.”
And then Scott sunk his teeth into Owen’s neck.
He howled in surprise, struggling anew, even as he felt cold. It spread from his neck, and for a moment he felt a thrum of fear. He didn’t— didn’t know what Scott was doing, Louis hadn’t said anything about this. Louis had been gentle, too gentle he’d thought sometimes. His kind heart was what got him killed, and it was only monsters like Scott, and Owen, who lived. Who made it, who survived.
The cold spread and Owen found himself weaker, the weight of Scott heavier. He blinked, and it was slow. So slow, that between one blink and the next, Scott’s face was in front of him, wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of his grinning mouth. His vision swam, and he had to frown to keep Scott’s face in view as he crouched down to get closer to Owen, head tilted.
He growled reflexively, but it was quiet, and Scott just chuckled at the sound. It was distorted through the ringing in Owen’s ears, as if he was hearing Scott from underwater.
“There we are. How’s that sweetheart? Better?” Scott reached down and thumbed underneath Owen’s eye, and Owen found it closing, wincing against the sharp claw coming so close to the fragile skin, to his blown and stinging pupil. He felt pathetic. Weak. Helpless. Scott could dig his thumb in, could take Owen’s eye and he wouldn’t be able to stop him.
If he had a heart, it would be kicking in his chest, and for the first time in quite a while, he felt afraid. Owen struggled to rise to his feet, getting as far as putting his weight on his elbows and lifting his face from the ground. It took too much effort, the cold numbness in his neck making his head heavy, and blood from his broken nose dripped onto the dark stain left in the soil. He could taste it, mineral on his teeth and dripping off his lips.
‘Soil enriched in blood, indeed,’ he thought blearily, before he had another one of those slow blinks.
When his eyes opened again he was no longer on the ground. There was pressure under his knees that he realized was the arm rest of that blasted chair, and his face was pressed against something soft. He couldn’t see, his eyes covered by— by something, cloth, or the edge of a cloak.
He couldn’t tell if he was blinking any more, the dark and the quiet making something in his brain slow to a trickle— but the smell was wrong, and he hissed blearily, claws flexing where they were grabbed and bundled into— into someones hand.
“There we are,” Scott said gently, and Owen hissed again at how close the sound was, his head spinning with the effort it took. A noise kicked to start next to Owen’s ear, that he realized was Scott purring, and to his disgust he quieted, blinking blearily into the dark covering him. “This is going to take awhile, I know. But I have nothing but time Owen, and so do you. All you need, is someone to show you how things work.”
The next time Owen blinked, his eyes did not open. They weighed too much, and Scott’s chest was a comforting vibration against his cheek.
He fell asleep.
Scott felt it when the venom finally took effect, the stiff uncertain feeling of Owen in his lap turning to the languid looseness of sleep. Owen had been trembling with stress, confusion. With rage as well, probably. This vampire had a temper Scott knew, and he was rapidly finding it more amusing than irritating.
‘Works every time,’ Scott thought smugly, looking at the young vampire in his lap. He moved the silk cloth off of Owen’s head, wincing to see the blood smeared across his face, the dirt in his collar. He reached up, and Owen was deep down enough in the thrall that he didn’t even awake as Scott wiped his face and set his nose, the cartilage pushing into place with a familiar crackling pop. His face just wrinkled slightly, in that permanent way between his brows. As if he was thinking too hard.
Scott made it a point never to think too hard. Already these villagers and these fledglings had him putting more effort into managing his lands and his life than the previous thousand years combined. It was exhausting really, and this young little fledgling running around after a two hundred year nap, disrespecting him in his own castle?
Well. It just had to be fixed.
“You’re much cuter with your mouth shut,” Scott told the sleeping vampire, resting his cheek on his propped up palm, and smiling down at Owen’s disgruntled looking face. The purr kept steady in his chest, keeping Owen calm and sleeping. It had been awhile since Scott had needed to remind someone of their place before— normally, he just killed them.
He’s been sorely tempted to kill Owen at first, when he stared across the beacon at him and realized he was looking at another vampire. Pyro’s heart was thumping loud and wet and human next to them, but no sound at all was coming from Owen. Nothing but a cold, lifeless exhale of surprise.
Scott was weak from his slumber, but it wouldn’t have taken much. He could get rid of the competition, run these lands how they used to be. Villagers bringing tribute, passing vampires owing him respect, not sass.
But something stopped him.
Maybe it was his own desperation. Loathe as he was to admit, the beacons were a problem, and he needed all the help he could get. These Villagers were wily, determined. Rude. Besides, it had been awhile since he’d ever brought in a pet project like this.
Scott hummed in interest, brushing some of the chestnut brown hair from Owen’s tanned face, licking his thumb and ineffectively scrubbing at a smudge of dirt with the pink saliva left behind. When that didn’t work, he sighed. “We’ll get you a bath, later,” he promised, moving his wrist to his other hand, in order to uncuff his sleeve. The linen was buttery soft, slightly more worn than he liked. He preferred a good starch on his cuffs and collars, but he was frankly having trouble just getting a bath in these conditions.
“But that’s a generous sire’s lot in life, I suppose,” he hummed, resting his wrist against Owen’s neck— over where his scent was strongest. Owen smelled like warm oak, and loam. His face crumpled in his sleep, fitfully turning away from Scott’s wrist as if he could smell someone that wasn’t his sire, his claws tightening on Scott’s vest and almost causing more damage than the little ingrate already had. “Taking care of others before themselves— and I am very generous.
Scott relaxed back in his chair, adjusting Owen in his lap so he could rest him against the arm of the chair, making note indeed that if he truly wished he could probably fit most of his fledglings at once. Shelby and Pyro certainly had fit, and Owen was about as large as they were. Perhaps smaller, if Scott was honest. Probably didn’t get enough food when he was a human, and it meant his spine was knobby where Scott could feel it, his weight spare despite the strength behind his blows when he’d tried to fight against Scott. His wrists thin despite the corded muscle from wielding an axe.
With his free hand he brought out more of the silk cloth, mopping some of the mess he’d made off of Owen’s neck and face, tutting, folding the handkerchief to a clean side and continue into Owen’s hair. Mostly to sink his scent in even more— the less often he had to do this until the scent stuck, the better. He had a feeling next time Owen wouldn’t make it nearly as easy for him to pin him down.
He might have to break something beside his nose. Ah, well.
“You’re stubborn, and I’m sure you’re confused if you’re as ignorant as I think you are… but there’s no such thing as rogue vampires. You are either in my coven, or you are dead, there’s no in between sweetheart,” he whispered, knowing already that he was going to have to press, to repeat, to discipline.
The same way he did Pyro, when he stole. The same way he did Shelby, when they lied.
“But that’s what family is for,” Scott sighed. “We’ll get through this, and someday, you’ll thank me.”