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shachaai · 7 years

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[Fic] Whistle Past the Graveyard 2/?

EngPort modern day werewolf/vampire AU.

Part 1

Chapter summary: Everyone suffers the fallout from a magical exploding corpse.

Warnings for this chapter: SFW, but mentions of blood, and set in a hospital environment with appropriate machines and medicines. Injuries, though they’re all bandaged up, and one instance of deliberate aggravation of another’s injury. Contemplations of mortality and semi-immortality.

Gabriel is Portugal, and Rodrigo is Macau.

Terminology and Fact File: Witch: a human with any kind of magical power. Unless aided or otherwise affected by magic, a witch will live an average human life in respects to their health and longevity, with the same potential for abilities, disease and disability as a human without magical powers. Witches who use malevolent magic tend to suffer from issues relating to their health and lifespan, as do witches who consistently overuse their powers, as, when the magic runs dry, many witches are able to draw at their own vitality instead. There are a few cases of witches dying from magical overuse because of this. Magical powers tend to run in human bloodlines, and powers can survive death, inhabiting the vestiges of a witch’s corpse and, occasionally, their spirit: for this reason, many witches prefer to be cremated after death, to avoid their corpses becoming susceptible to necromancy and being brought back as a zombie, ghoul, or ghost. No witch’s powers have, as yet, survived transformation into another living being - i.e, becoming a vampire or werewolf. Pack witch: technically speaking, this refers to any witch attached to a werewolf pack. The term is, however, predominantly used by werewolves to refer to the principle witch of a pack: the ‘head’ witch that is consulted by the alpha/alpha pair of the pack for advice and assistance. In - the not uncommon - cases where there is more than one witch attached to a pack, it is not always the most powerful witch that is considered the pack witch.

Arthur wakes feeling a little cold and vaguely annoyed. The cold is fairly self-explanatory, since when he slowly blinks his eyes open he can see - and feel - that his arms and upper body are bare, the hairs prickling in a long shiver across his skin, but his thoughts are sleepy, muddled, and it takes some time for him to slowly parse through them to realise why he feels so disgruntled.

Something nearby is beeping at him.

Arthur squints blearily, trying to work out what could be beeping so rhythmically at him when he has half his face buried in a pillow and can’t see much more than a grey plastic chair, bedside cabinet and wall in front of him. It doesn’t sound like his alarm clock - he hasn’t used an alarm clock since he left his brother’s house anyway -, but its strident repetitive tones are definitely something mechanical, cutting through his skull and nagging a sore point in his belly with a clock’s persistent precision. Gabriel can’t have gotten an alarm clock either (if he has, Arthur is going to throw it at his thick head); Gabriel hates waking up more than Arthur does.

But then - Arthur isn’t in his bedroom. Not the one he shares with Gabriel, and not even his old childhood bedroom in the Kirkland home. Even if he had somehow managed to sleep through someone sneaking into his room and replacing all the furniture whilst he was out, the room is too bright for either, white, sharpness that swims in fragments between the protective shutter of Arthur’s eyelashes, and the room smells…

Well. The room smells familiar enough Arthur’s hackles don’t rise by instinct, but it’s not familiar enough to be comfortable. The floor smells of lemon-scented bleach. Everything else - including the mattress under Arthur’s body and the pillow under Arthur’s cheek - smells clinical.

He’s in a hospital then. Or, much more likely, in one of the little private medical rooms kept in the basement of Gabriel’s home, because the faint scent Arthur is getting in the air, over all the bleach and sterilisation, is that of vampires, and vampires he knows quite well at that. (Even vampires occasionally require medical attention. Even if it’s just to grab some pain relief until their wounds fade and a missing limb grows back.) Since the medical stores and private wards are just along from the house’s morgue, it would explain why Arthur feels so damn cold as well.

“Good morning,” says a voice. The vampire smell is stronger.

Arthur knows that voice. Frustratingly, he can’t immediately put a name or face to it, though he knows he knows both; the thoughts keep slipping away from his grasp, too quick for his still-sluggish thinking.

“Something is beeping,” he growls thickly as a response, squinting again in search of his companion, and is somewhat horrified because his voice is more gravelly cracks than actual words.

“Your heart monitor,” says the voice, calm as you’d please, and obliges Arthur by walking into his line of vision, a skinny creature made up of nothing but grey jeans and a black turtleneck until he sits down on the even greyer plastic chair. “Please don’t try to move; you will aggravate your injuries.”

Arthur hadn’t even realised he was trying to lift his face and upper body from the bed. His back stings, a needling heat that doesn’t warm him sliding down his spine between his shoulderblades. “...Rodrigo?”

Rodrigo, still calm, motions for Arthur to lie still again. Can’t stop the heart monitor from beeping, no; it’d mean Arthur’s dead.

Arthur lies stills, allowing his body to settle back into the unfamiliar plasticy-sounding mattress underneath it again. His face, however, is not so buried in the pillow. He can see the vampire sitting beside his bed much better now - although, admittedly, he is both reassured and rather unhappy about Rodrigo even being there, because Rodrigo’s presence means that Arthur’s injuries are likely serious.

Despite being one of the oldest vampires in Gabriel’s House, Turned as a child by Gabriel sometime in the late sixteenth century, Rodrigo barely looks like he’s twenty. Arthur has heard the vampire’s brothers and sisters try and tease him for it before, but the words roll off of Rodrigo like water off a duck’s back. The Chinese part of Rodrigo’s mixed heritage has left him smooth black hair, a slender frame and a now eternally youthful face, his smile a secret thing behind the long sleeves he prefers to wear and his slanted eyes a rich, tawny shade of brown behind the tinted lenses of his glasses.

A few of the House call him Rui. Even more, teasingly, call him doctor, because Rodrigo is one of the only vampires in the House with any serious medical knowledge: he had wanted, Gabriel had explained once, when Arthur had asked why Rodrigo knew how to patch Feliciano up after an incident involving a knife in the kitchen, to go to school. And then to university. And then on to further medical studies. Had argued for it more passionately than Gabriel had seen his Rui argue for almost anything in five centuries, and what real reason had Gabriel had to try and stop him? It was - and very much still is - useful to have someone with medical training around, and Rodrigo had stopped having serious problems with walking around in the daylight by his second century, quite able to attend his classes.

Arthur’s back stings very badly, and something is throbbing dully in his stomach. His head hurts - and yet all of it still feels very distant to him, his brain registering all the pain but not quite allowing it to sink into his body, something thick and pillowy between hurt and consequence.

...His sister, Caitlyn, had described a similar feeling once. When she’d been in hospital, after being hit by a car in her wolf form. Running in the woods. There’d been bodily trauma even when she’d shifted back to her human skin (saying nothing of the state of the state of the car), blood on the road and rusting in her auburn hair, so in the hospital they’d given her their heavy-duty drugs. For the pain.

“...You’ve given me opiates,” Arthur surmises, his voice still aching. It’s why his thoughts are so hard to put in order, to keep hold of. Why the pain is there but not quite there, a splintered glass wall between the two places, and why he’s being so distracted by the little things like brightness and chairs and Rodrigo. There’s something -

“Yes, among other things. If you had lost any more blood than you did we might have had to consider a transfusion, but I think, with your werewolf healing abilities, we should be fine with just fluids and medication.” Rodrigo offers Arthur a glass from the bedside cabinet, half-full with clear liquid and a purple straw. Lowers it, so the straw butts up against Arthur’s mouth. “I had to call your brother for access to your medical records.”

“‘Brother,’” says Arthur, garbled around the straw. He closes his eyes again, trying to focus on anything but beeping . The liquid - water - in the glass is lukewarm, but a wet relief to his rasping throat. “Iain?”

Rodrigo’s brow creases in something vaguely like sympathy. “The alpha.”

“Should’ve spoken to my sister-in-law if you wanted to get yelled at by an alpha,” Arthur slurs, and pushes the straw back out of his mouth with his tongue. That’s enough water for now; there’s something he’s supposed to be thinking about. “Says more with pursed lips than Iain does lecturing for an hour.”

Rodrigo laughs - almost -, a little sound in the back of his throat. Arthur smiles drowsily, pleased to get a reaction out of him. “I’m afraid to say that I handed the phone to Antonio as soon as I could, so I may have missed the full experience for either. Patients take priority.”

Patients…

Arthur’s eyes snap open and his back stiffens, sharp and sudden enough a jolt of pain lances straight to his head. “Gabriel -”

The rotting body on the lawn. Gabriel crouched beside him, idiotic and unknowing. The old magic, the raw magic, that smell, and then the explosion -

Rodrigo has his hand on Arthur’s arm, back, trying to push him down as Arthur tries to struggle up from the bed. It hurts, it hurts a lot - Arthur pushes back instinctively, feels hurt shriek through his chest and abdomen and sing sharply in his bones to the tune of wild, frantic beeping, something tugging at the hand he’d been turned away from, his legs tangled in starched sheets. His back and arm and shoulders and hips are on fire, but Gabriel -

Gabriel isn’t there; the spell had been meant for Gabriel and Arthur hadn’t -

“The lord is fine!” Rodrigo has his voice raised, struggling to try and cover Arthur with his body to push down because Arthur is taking every spare bit of air he can see as an opportunity to try and escape the bed, the tugging on his hands and tangle around his legs, to escape Rodrigo because he can beat the vampire in a fight, possibly, if necessary, and it’s very necessary to Arthur to find Gabriel right now and check the idiotic vampire lord isn’t slowly bleeding out alone somewhere because a malicious spell probably sent by the ghosts of vengeful fashion police tried to blast his fat fanged head off. “Arthur, I swear to you that he’s fine!”

“Alive?” Arthur demands.

“Alive!” Rodrigo answers. “You took most of the injuries for him -”

“Uninjured?”

Rodrigo’s mouth closes.

Arthur begins struggling again. His hand - he has a thing on his thumb attached to the annoying beeping machine and a cannula in the back of his hand, connected by a tube to a half-full drip-bag and infusion pump. It’s why moving his hand is so awkward, the infusion pump joining the heart monitor in beeping angrily at him for disturbing the flow of liquids entering his bloodstream by daring to bend his wrist.

“The injuries aren’t serious,” says Rodrigo, and sounds perhaps the most desperate Arthur has ever heard him. “Yours are much worse - please lay down calmly? If you injure yourself further trying to get up it’s me he’ll get angry with.”

Arthur looks at the vampire dubiously, compromising by stilling somewhere on his hands and knees and pretending that his arms aren’t shaking trying to hold his strangely heavy upper body weight. (Drugs.) “I have never seen him angry with you.”

The statement is a distraction. Something very small and lost and childishly petulant is crying close to a whine in Arthur’s throat: if Gabriel is relatively uninjured, why is he not there?

“With all due respect, you did not see my childhood.” With Arthur a little calmer, woeful around the edges, Rodrigo takes a chance to take his hand from Arthur’s shoulder and push up his glasses where they are sliding helplessly down his nose. “You really need to move as little as possible, or you may end up doing permanent damage to your back. I’m not too sure how injuries match up when you change between humanoid and wolf form, but if the tissue on your back doesn’t heal correctly, you may have problems running as a wolf. And definite stiffness as a human.”

On all fours, Arthur can feel exactly what Rodrigo means. The skin between his shoulderblades is pulling tight and angry against the movement of his arms, a deep, hot throbbing that burns and spreads through his ribcage, joining the sharp ache already emanating from his belly. “Get Gabriel and I’ll lie down.”

“Lay down and promise to stay down while I am gone,” Rodrigo counters, “and I will go get him.”

“Now?” Arthur asks. There are tears prickling at the corner of his eyes and he isn’t sure why.

“Now,” Rodrigo promises him.

Arthur lays down, trying not to sigh too obviously when his head touches the pillow again and some of the tension eases from his body. Even more of it leaves him when he sees Rodrigo leave the room on his errand, comforted at the thought of being able to check Gabriel’s injuries for himself. For a werewolf, seeing - and smelling - is really believing.

Even with the pain and beeping, Arthur dozes. He isn’t sure for how long, or even the precise point he drifts off, but he goes from hazy, nervy formless dreams to suddenly blinking awake again, the seat beside his bed once more occupied.

Gabriel smiles at him, small and soft and clearly tired, but still sincere enough that it crinkles the skin around the corner of his eyes. “Good afternoon.”

Stupidly, silently, Arthur stares back at him. At Gabriel’s hand atop his hand on the bed, his gaze slowly following the line of the vampire lord’s arm up to the strange white choker wrapped around Gabriel’s neck. It’s a lot thicker and uglier than Arthur’s collar, and Arthur dislikes it immediately.

Even more so when it eventually clicks that he’s looking at bandages around his lover’s neck, not a choker, and there are even more bandages around Gabriel’s other arm - something Gabriel is probably trying to hide from him, since he shifts his wrapped arm away from Arthur’s sight when he leans in closer to the bed, moving his touch from Arthur’s hand to tenderly cup his cheek instead.

“Rodrigo said you were upset.”

Arthur will give Gabriel upset. When he breathes in, lips pulling back from his teeth in an irritated warning, he can smell Gabriel, Gabriel and, he realises rather dully, another familiar vampire, Antonio, who must be hovering elsewhere in the little room, and Gabriel smells of his own blood and medicines that burn the air rather than his usual more mellow musk. Both vampires smell of bitter anger and sour fear-sweat, and Antonio in particular still carries the stink of malevolent magic on his clothes, as well as the rotten flesh of the corpse that has caused them so much trouble.

“Why are you still injured?” Arthur’s voice is still rough, but he forces it out anyway. Doesn’t bother to look for Antonio, though he can hear the vampire shifting his weight from foot to foot on the squeaky floor. “Your healing rate is much faster than mine.”

Caught, Gabriel winces, and the pads of his fingers rasp over Arthur’s cheek, catching on rough skin and dried wetness from the corners of Arthur’s eyes. Francis’ sodding lilies might inconvenience Arthur’s werewolf nose, but not opiates. “Ah, it seems the projectiles stuffed inside the body were chosen for maximum effect against vampires. Hawthorn and wild rose spikes, and they and the metal were coated in bad blood. With such a little dose though, it just makes for slow healing, annoyingly.”

Annoyingly. Arthur’s lips pull back further, a soundless snarl. “It could’ve killed you!”

Antonio makes a low, bitter sound at that - Arthur chooses to take it as angry agreement -, but Gabriel speaks over them both, his gaze still focused fierce and close on Arthur despite the teeth. “It did not, because of you. I-”

Something closes hard in Gabriel’s throat. Arthur watches it stonily, hurt and angry, a weighty swallow that moves Gabriel’s Adam’s apple in a bob and still sits thickly on Gabriel’s tongue when he can prise out words once more:

“Arthur, don’t ever do that again - it could have killed you. What if there had been silver in the blast? Wolfsbane?” Gabriel has to feel the almost-vibration of Arthur’s snarl at him, the rising indignation at the vampire lord’s hypocrisy. “You’re so badly hurt and it was clearly not even meant to hurt you - if there had been something in there specifically aimed at werewolves you’d be dead. You’re mortal, and I-”

The sour fear-sweat smell is stronger now, Gabriel’s, and the bubbling pit of confusion that is Arthur’s emotions at that moment cannot take the addition on top of everything else, cannot take these feelings from Gabriel on top of everything else -

“You’re mortal,” Gabriel says again, and it’s like he’s already standing over Arthur’s grave.

Arthur cracks and shoves Gabriel’s hand off of him, pushing himself up off of the mattress again in a less-than-sinuous twist of limbs and tubing. “You think you’re so much more invincible than I am?!”

“That is not - ”

“If you think for one bloody minute -”

“Please, lie down -”

“Then listen to me!” Arthur snaps, and, pain or not, pushes at the hands Gabriel is trying to settle on his shoulders to get him to lie flat on the bed again. The sight of the white bandages wrapped around the vampire’s hand and forearm just makes Arthur more annoyed. “I might just be some lowly mortal werewolf -”

“Arthur, that is not -”

Arthur grabs at Gabriel’s wrist - the injured one, his thumb pressing hard against bone and the beat of Gabriel’s pulse beneath the bandages. It must hurt, for Gabriel rears back instinctively and almost drags Arthur straight off the bed and onto his own lap, his words dying in a pained hiss and flash of his own fangs. “I’m still talking.”

Silence falls then, save the beeping: silence enough for Arthur to try and untangle his own limbs and not faceplant straight into Gabriel’s chest, for Gabriel’s mouth to snap closed as his lips thin - and for Arthur to remember Antonio is still in the room, his steps slightly too-casual as he approaches from the other side of the room to finally walk into Arthur’s view, taking up a solid unimpressed position behind his brother. He still reeks, overpowering the lemon bleach smell of the room.

Carefully, but currently without regret, Arthur releases his grip on Gabriel’s wrist. Sitting like this makes his chest hurt in such a way it’s hard to draw a full breath into his lungs. “Even I,” he says a lot more quietly, subdued by the atmosphere as well as the pain streaking down his back, “know that vampiric immortality comes with rules attached. Vampires die when they are killed, when they are too seriously injured all at once to repair themselves, and they stay dead.”

Arthur curls in on himself a little, instinctively trying to ease the tight pressure across his back, the hot ache throbbing in his middle. To his own vague dismay, the hand he’d laid on Gabriel has now risen to splay itself rather protectively around the base of his own throat, which is currently missing the reassuring weight of his collar. It’s not a submissive gesture among werewolves - or vampires -, nor a penitent one, but too obviously defensive for Arthur’s comfort. If the collar were there… Well, it’d still be bad if the collar were there.

Arthur has no idea where his collar is.

“I smelled it, you know?” he says. “The… spell-bomb. Magic. Hex. For just a moment. It smelled just a little bit like you, and I’ve known witches long enough to know that that meant it was most likely a spell focused on you.” His gaze flicks up rather aggressively at the two vampires in front of him again, not prepared to take another bout of hypocrisy. “I don’t regret what I did.”

Antonio, his face still far more serious than Arthur is used to seeing it, just nods at him. He and Arthur now get along much better than they used to: Antonio has stopped both protesting Arthur’s presence in his brother’s life, House and bed, and complaining about a werewolf’s influence over the ‘young impressionable vampires’ in the House, and Arthur has stopped deliberately shedding wolf fur all over Antonio’s belongings and/or burying them in hard-to-reach places in the garden. Their relationship now is one of fairly friendly, mostly grumbling, exasperated fondness - and unspoken, absolute agreement that they’d throw the other one under the proverbial bus if it meant putting Gabriel’s life first. Arthur has done nothing that he knows Antonio wouldn’t have done, and the both of them know it.

Gabriel has missed that memo. He reaches out for Arthur again, touch-starved by increments, and settles his palm wide and warm over the muscle of Arthur’s thigh. “Please don’t do it again.”

“Don’t make me have to,” Arthur says, but lets the last of the fight drain out of him. He feels tired. Heavy. He should probably lie down again. “...What did you do to piss off a witch?”

Soothingly, Gabriel rubs at his leg. “Nothing, to my knowledge.” Both Arthur and Antonio give him disbelieving looks and Gabriel has the gall to look (emotionally) wounded. “I mean it! Arthur, when you say the spell smelled like me…”

“Just a bit.” Arthur’s shoulders sink a little bit more, and he casts his gaze around to see if Rodrigo has left him any water. He’d never need to explain this to werewolves. “Mostly magic smells like its age and power and intent, and each witch has a particular scent to their magic that is pretty unique to them and them alone. The bit of you in it smelled like blood.”

“Blood,” says Gabriel, with the strangest tone Arthur has ever heard him use on that word.

“Your blood?” Arthur clarifies, a little lost at the need to explain blood to a vampire. “Blood can be used as a spell component, quite often to focus a spell on a particular target. Blood magic is vicious. Mostly used for curses, I think.” An exploding corpse probably counts as a curse, not that Arthur has had much experience with either before this instance.

Lip curled and sharp fangs displayed, Antonio’s displeasure is showing. “No-one should have access to his blood, let alone a witch.”

Distracted by that information, Arthur stops looking for water and focuses on the vampires with him, Gabriel tipping his head back over his seat to look at his brother. “Toniho -”

“No, hermano,” Antonio cuts him short, “things need to be asked.” Antonio frowns at Arthur, for once every inch the authoritative second-in-command of the House that he rarely seems to be. “How would a witch get his blood? How much blood would be needed for that blast?”

Arthur blinks at him. “You’re asking me?”

“It’s werewolves that witches like, not vampires.”

Arthur stares incredulously. “...You’re blaming me?!”

Antonio’s arms unfold, a restless movement and too-quick movements of his fingers. “We have a few witches living in our territory, but there have been no real incidents with any of them in years. Nothing big enough for attempted murder of a vampire lord. But you -”

“What about me?” Arthur had thought he was done with being angry, but. Apparently not. It’s exhausting, and his voice is close to cracking again, rough from too much talking. And yelling. “You don’t think your stupid brother is capable of making people want to kill him without my help?!”

Gabriel pouts. “Oi -”

Arthur ignores him, lifting his hand from his throat so he can slam his palms down aggressively on the bed. “I had nothing to do with this. Fuck you.”

Gabriel tries to take his hand again. This time, Arthur lets him, though he is not at all mollified by the thumb sweeping gently across the backs of his knuckles. “Antonio was not blaming you, lobinho. His choice of words was so poor because he is worried; you know how he is. Usually we know why someone is mad at us.”

Arthur shifts and bares his teeth at him again half-heartedly, more as a show of grumbling than actual aggression. Arthur is owed so much pampering after this, not to mention the dinner that Gabriel had promised him out on the lawn. And he’s going to bury Antonio’s pillows in the compost beside the vegetable patch.

Gabriel just keeps stroking his hand, being unreasonably reasonable. “As a werewolf, you do have better knowledge of witches than us; it’s well-known they often attach themselves to werewolf packs.”

“I know a few,” Arthur concedes, “yes.” He likes witches. For the most part, witches make useful friends, and are wonderful casual company. One of his old girlfriends had been a witch, and her magic had come in useful when Arthur had gone through what his siblings had called ‘his phase’ and dyed his hair several particularly violent shades of the rainbow.

God, defending a few witches had been what had brought Arthur to Gabriel’s attention in the first place - that, handing one of Gabriel’s vampires their arse in a fight, and the good solid kick he’d gotten in to the vampire lord’s balls right before Gabriel had threatened, flirted with and then subsequently flattened him.

“There was a stone,” says Antonio, abruptly enough Arthur wearily bristles at him. “We picked it up from amidst the wreckage on the lawn.” Which might explain why Antonio still smells like bad magic and rotting flesh, lovely. Had he been poking around whatever bits must be left scattered on their lawn? “It looks like something a witch would make. It has markings on it, and it is stained with blood.”

“This idiot’s?” asks Arthur, head tipped ever more sleepily towards Gabriel (who just makes a face back at him). It would be more helpful if Antonio would actually bring out this stone for Arthur to look at, but Antonio does not appear to be forthcoming. Irritably, Antonio shrugs back at him - everything today has, for obvious reasons, put him in a terrible mood. “Probably this idiot’s.”

On any other day, Arthur would be charmed by how quickly Gabriel adapts to being consistently called an idiot. Today, focusing on the vampire lord’s words are a hard enough task.

“We will need to talk to someone discreet. Can you recommend anyone?”

Arthur gives in to the inevitable, and starts shifting again so he can lie down, noisy plastic mattress under the bedsheets or not. Let the tributaries come to Rome, not Rome to the tributaries. Or something. There’s a quote like that, isn’t there? “...You want a fairly powerful witch with good connections for this. And definitely not one associated with any particular community?”

Gabriel helpfully lifts the tubing so it didn’t get tangled around Arthur’s arm, death-glaring the infusion pump when it lets out a single angry beep at being jostled. Arthur loves this idiot. “I think you can appreciate why it might be in our best interests to avoid telling everyone that a vampire lord was attacked in his own home.”

“Technically,” says Antonio, ever helpful, “it was in his own garden.”

Arthur ignores him just as much as Gabriel does, the vampire lord of debate still shuffling around with the tubing as Arthur tries to get comfortable without pulling at the cannula in his hand. “If you don’t want to go to the Kirkland pack witch, I know three witch siblings that could help. They’re very good, but they do charge to match their skills.”

“Money is not an issue.” Gabriel speaks with all the assurance of one who has built up interest on their investments over centuries. Arthur hates him for it, just a little bit. Werewolves are expected to get careers. “Their address?”

Tired, Arthur shakes his head - although the effect is ruined by his face-down position, ending up doing little more than nuzzle into his medicinal-smelling pillow. “That won’t work. They hate vampires, and they live in werewolf territory. I’d have to introduce and vouch for you.”

Gabriel finishes fiddling with the tubing at last, easing some of the pinch in Arthur’s veins. “You are not allowed to leave this bed for at least a week.”

“Then you’ll have to wait. Or consider another witch.”

Two vampires sigh overhead, but Arthur is zoning out too much to care about it. He’s annoyed, yes, truly, but nobody he gives a shit about is currently in immediate danger and he hurts, so he feels fully entitled to drift off.

“...Tell me,” says Gabriel at last, taking up his seat at Arthur’s bedside again. “In your opinion, are these witch siblings worth waiting for for this?”

“...They’re the best I know,” says Arthur, which is the truth. The Kirkland pack has some good connections, and it isn’t considered shameless for any member - or former member, provided they had not been expelled from the pack in disgrace - of the pack to draw on them at will. That is what pack is about. “And they’re old friends,” loosely speaking in the case of one of the siblings, but that’s just splitting hairs, “so I can swear to you that they’ll keep this business a secret.”

Antonio and Gabriel speak so more, quietly, a background murmur like a television set in another room, and it lulls Arthur into enough of a doze he doesn’t notice when Antonio leaves the room, or even how long Antonio has been gone. When his eyes slide muzzily apart again the room only actively smells of lemons, Arthur, and Gabriel, the scents of Antonio and Rodrigo muted beneath the two still present.

Gabriel is reading the terrible trash romance novel that had been cluttering up his bedside cabinet for a week now, his bandaged hand a little awkward around the spine. The book’s lurid cover looks particularly weird in the middle of a cool white hospital room, too bright against the starkness of its surroundings - and too bright against Gabriel’s complexion.

Even discounting the bandages, Gabriel looks tired.

“...Are you really alright?” Arthur’s voice cracks in the middle, his throat dry.

Gabriel startles like it’s the crack of a whip, the book sliding through his hands and landing on the floor with a clack-thump. He brightens when he sees Arthur looking at him, leaving the book on the floor to fetch - God be praised - water, another glass with another straw in it held up to Arthur’s lips. Arthur is developing an appreciation for straws.

“I will be healed much earlier than you,” Gabriel says as Arthur drinks eagerly, Arthur smiling crookedly around the straw in his mouth when his lover attempts to look reproachful. “Meu amor, at least look a little sorry for getting hurt. Do you know what you do to my heart?”

Arthur breathes, licking his lips to wet them and not at all sorry. When he is impulsive, it is wholehearted, and, for all his injuries, he cannot think he would have picked another course than the one he did. “You know what you do to mine?” He’s slurring.

Gabriel sighs at him, and takes away the glass when Arthur shakes his head at it being offered to him again, too busy snuggling back down into his pillow. “Remind you that you have one, I think.” He replaces the glass with himself - smelling more like himself again, to Arthur’s quiet satisfaction, amber and vanilla under the stress of the day -, a kiss laid on Arthur’s forehead that Arthur drowsily wants to drown in, the warmth and familiarity of it as much a comfort as rolling around naked in their bed-linen upstairs. “Thank you. But please never make me stand in the shower and wash off so much of your blood ever again. I don’t know how to lose things.”

Arthur smiles at him, aware that it a loose, somewhat sloppy expression as his eyes slide shut again, a rumble of happiness in his throat at the touch of Gabriel’s warm hand on his nape. Not quite as good as his collar, but good. Very good. Christ, Arthur’s tired. “You underestimate my stubbornness.”

“As you like to remind me,” Gabriel sighs at him - again -, and his thumb runs back and forth, sure and steady, over the pulse in Arthur’s neck until Arthur, once more, falls asleep.

#Shacha fic #engport #it's been a while since the first chapter but a lot's happened to me since then #the annoying nature of disgruntled beeping medical equipment recounted from personal experience whilst on a lot of pain medication #Arthur Kirkland #aph!Macau #aph Portugal #Antonio Fernandez Carriedo #vampires #hetalia #BB: WPtG

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