Thanks to Ishkhanuhi for helping to beta.
ASHES TO ASHES
A cold dawn slowly crept across the rain swept grounds of the Hellsing estate. The grey light encroached upon Integra Hellsing as she was reading in the library. Smoke wreathed in the shrinking pool of yellow light cast by the lamp on the side table as Integra leisurely smoked a cigarillo over an old tome spread open in her lap. Every time she shifted, the fabric of her suit jacket whispered against the brown leather of the chesterfield she was sitting on, its surfaces worn smooth from decades of use.
Though the hour was late – or early, depending on the point of view – and her eyes stung with fatigue, Integra had learned to make full use of the rare moments of tranquillity. Tonight had been one of aggravation for her.
Hellsing's personal intelligence network had come up with a report about a self-proclaimed journalist posting worrying pictures on his weblog. Pictures of a blurry figure donning a scarlet coat and similarly coloured hat wielding two large guns. Unfocused but unmistakeable.
What had followed was a night of feverish damage control and tracking down the one behind the photos.
A remorseless Alucard had been singularly unhelpful as he eagerly offered to hunt down and eat the threat to Hellsing's secrecy. He'd only left Integra alone after she shouted at him that he was the threat to Hellsing's secrecy and that he should go away and eat himself, his mad grin the last thing to vanish as he sank into the shadows.
All in all, the information had been public online for less than six hours, but the other members of the Round Table had insisted to converge at once for an emergency meeting.
Without fail, the old men had hinted that she lacked control over her pet – with varying degrees of subtlety. Lord Percival, a bloated toad of a man with about as many warts, had gone as far as to suggest she was too taken by her handsome servant to properly restrain him.
'As is only natural for someone of your sex,' he'd added in a pompous and fatherly way, the condescension all but dripping from the indulgent smile he gave her from behind his oily moustache.
A muscle beneath her left eye had twitched dangerously, but she had managed to keep her voice icily polite as she forced out a tight smile of her own. 'If you believe you are more resistant to my servant's,' a delicate pause, 'charm, feel free to exert your control over him as you will, Lord Percival.'
Her smile had widened, turned superior, as Percival visibly swallowed, his watery eyes darting away from Integra's. None at the table held her gaze long as she swept it across all their faces, silently levelling the challenge if any of them thought they could keep her vampire in check.
Said vampire, however, had been adamant on proving the aged farts right when he went straight back to ceaselessly pestering her upon her return to the manor. Clearly bored and frustrated at missing out what he had deemed an easy snack, he had ignored her urgings for him to leave her alone in favour of bickering and bending words. Alucard was an expert at camouflaging his flagrant insolence with false platitudes and polite insincerity.
As the tide of their bantering had swiftly turned against Integra, her tired mind too sluggish to keep up her verbal parries, she had outright ordered him to stop speaking to her for the rest of the night. The final straw had been when she found out her trusty container of slim cigars had vanished from her desk drawer.
It had been tempting for Integra to cut her losses and go to bed, but she was wholly determined to enjoy her hard earned silence amidst the books of the extensive Hellsing library.
Without raising her eyes from the page, Integra reached out to tap the ash from her cigarillo into the waiting ashtray beside her. The ashtray gave a distinct huff.
'Uncomfortable, pet?' She queried fondly, finally deigning to look up from her book and at her vampire.
Alucard sat on his knees, red duster coat pooled around him like so much blood, and his gloved hands planted on the floor before him. His wide brimmed hat and tinted sunglasses were discarded as he sat with his head tipped back, lethal maw stretched open wide. White ash, darkened to a wet grey, stained her servant's tongue, sticking to the insides of his cheeks.
'Perhaps you will think twice about stealing from me in the future. It's not your place to criticize my decision to smoke.'
The vampire demonstratively rolled his eyes, but did not otherwise move from his assigned position at Integra's feet.
'Oh, but of course you only said it out of concern,' Integra continued in a saccharine tone, 'because you were- how did you put it?- "attempting to save me from a disgusting mortal addiction"?'
Placing the tip of her cigarillo to Alucard's lower lip, she expertly brushed off the cone of ash, rolling the newly exposed glow of flame over her servant's lip. Alucard's eyes flared more brightly than the tip of her smoke as she darkened his pale skin with a delicate burn, a scalding lipstick. But still he did not move.
Integra pulled back her cigarillo to brush a fleck of ash into Alucard's mouth with her finger as it threatened to flutter onto the carpet, thoughtfully grazing the vampire's upper lip.
'I suppose you might be correct,' she mused, 'you would know all about addictions, wouldn't you, servant?'
Pushing back Alucard's lip, she exposed one of his fangs, gleaming sharply even in the low light. She pressed the pad of her thumb to the ivory tip, letting it sink through her glove and into her skin.
Something between a sigh and a hiss escaped Alucard and his jaw tensed, ash covered tongue squirming restlessly, rearing as a drop of scarlet formed to dangle from Integra's finger.
Swaying her thumb back and forth over her vampire's hankering mouth, Integra watched his eyes track the quivering droplet that clung to the stiff cotton of her glove.
'Do you want a snack, pet?' she crooned, a mocking quirk to her lips that would put the No-Life King's smirk to shame, 'you were so eager for one earlier tonight.'
Alucard's eyes momentarily flitted to Integra's in a silent plea before the glistening blood, already darkening to maroon, commanded his full focus again. Her servant's entire body rippled with tiny, restless motions, fingers flexing against the carpet and his raven locks swaying with unnatural life, but he stilled almost instantly, once again waiting soundless and statuesque.
Integra's smile warmed as she regarded the vampire at her feet, patient – if only by her orders – in his display of hopeful obedience. Giving her bloodied thumb an inviting sway, she said, 'Good boy. I think you deserve a treat after all.'
Another sigh sounded from Alucard, smouldering eyes falling half mast as his demon tongue snaked forward. The tip of his tongue was a scant inch from the dangling drop when Integra pulled her hand from his reach and unceremoniously stubbed her cigar out on the reaching muscle.
There was a faint hiss as the glowing ember was extinguished on Alucard's damp tongue and the vampire's lips quivered, twitched. His eyes were glowing pools of molten metal as she gave the smoke a slow twist for good measure before letting it fall into her servant's upturned mouth.
'I wouldn't want to exacerbate your concerns for my well-being by staying up too late. I'm going to bed.'
The sound was well masked by the creaking of leather as she rose from her chair, but Integra did not miss Alucard's open-mouthed whimper, his body jerking as though he was going to reach for her.
Smiling, she replaced her book on the shelf and strolled from the library, patting her kneeling vampire's dark mane once in passing. She ignored the locks of hair that coiled around her fingers in a vain attempt to keep her hand in place.
'Good night, Alucard. Enjoy your treat. Don't forget to chew before you swallow.'
A/N: Thank you for reading. All comments are welcome.