#no I'm not pining for a good faithful Dracula series why do you ask

[see-arcane]

Would read a fic about the suitors being friends, and post grad adventuring, student Seward in Amsterdam with van Helsing, younger teen Mina and Lucy development and sharing everything, young teen clerk Jonathan. And delving on each's family background a little.

Honestly, I'd take a Dracula series that started just a heartbeat before the events of the book so that everyone involved could have a 'get to know the cast who will break your heart' foundation.

We see Arthur, Quincey and Jack together. Have they never split up since their adventuring together? Is it a reunion? Is it some Mamma Mia style shenanigans in which Art is introducing them to Lucy for the first time and they're tripping over their own hearts? Any would work.

We see Abraham van Helsing playing professor before new students, an eccentric and engaging old showman, perhaps laying out some lesson on one of his myriad specialties that foreshadows events to come. Something to do with blood and disease? Or something to do with--admittedly shaky--psychological profiling of certain villainous minds. Conquerors and abusers and monsters, oh my.

We see Jonathan and Mina trying and failing not to brim over with excitement at the new job. His first assignment as a solicitor, and he is going traveling to meet the noble client himself! He's nervous, she's encouraging, they're both a little high on all the potential of their future. We see him kiss her ring. We see them kiss each other. One of their last nights together is spent talking of wedding venues and honeymoons. Is it possible to get married on a train?

We see Jonathan, Mina, and Lucy, the three tragic beats who are victims-to-be, who are the Start, Middle, and End, all together a single heady moment before the storm. They are young. They are in love. They are happy. Their lives are truly about to begin...

...And somewhere, in a distant darkness, in a high window of a cliffside castle, a shadow stands and stares. Lambent red eyes look unblinkingly out at the mountainous horizon, as if seeing those three prizes all laid out and waiting for him to take.

Which they are.