Another Hellsing birthday was about to pass without notice, lost among endless nights of work and the fact that October seemed to breed trouble with the supernatural, either in the form of real threats or from stupid but elaborate pranks. When Alucard and Walter had suggested that the occasion of turning seventeen was worthy of some sort of celebration, the birthday lady had politely declined. Actually, it had been more of a wave of the hand and a growl before Integra had closed her office door and buried herself in paperwork. The butler had insisted on leaving her alone and only interrupted her to bring her meals, but the vampire would not have been so easily satisfied. It was not purely out of boredom; he also, deep inside, believed that his Master ought not to be alone on such a date, no matter how much she argued otherwise.

He had planned on pestering her, perhaps disarraying her paperwork. He was pleasantly surprised to find her folder full of files already neatly set aside only a half full glass and a bottle of single malt scotch in front of her. So this was her idea of a celebration… much better if it resembled his own. The whole situation reminded the vampire of so many birthdays under Arthur's control, though the lack of naked women was an obvious difference. She was looking at the amber liquid lost in thought, and barely reacted to his some tense seconds, she turned her face to look at him and asked,

"Alucard, are you in need of anything?"

Was she already being affected by such a small amount of alcohol? Her husky, drawn-out voice indicated so. This was so much better than he could have anticipated! For all he knew, his Master had never indulged in liquor, despite being very open about her smoking habit. He could not remember what his own tolerance had been at her age, or was it because he was among the Turks at that time? Such small human years blurred together for a creature old as he was.

He pulled a chair and sat down in front of the desk, across from her.

"I only had wanted to wish you a happy birthday, my Master, and perhaps entertain you in such a joyous occasion." His eyes gleamed in the dimly lit room as he gestured to the objects in front of her. "However, I can see that you are doing a good job of that yourself."

Integra scoffed, "Oh, don't give me that sanctimonious crap. I finished my work early, and I am old enough…:" Her voice turned into a murmur. "Why am I even justifying myself to you?" She grabbed the glass and gulped down its contents. She flinched and trembled; she obviously had not acquired the taste for the liquor. Too bad, since it was an expensive bottle that had once belonged to his father but had never been opened.

"Now, now, Master, there is no need to be defensive. Your humble servant is nobody to judge you if you wish to get yourself blind drunk." He took off his coat and set it behind him on the chair. "I will only keep you company for the evening… you will not deny me that, will you?"

His master gave him a skeptical glance.

"Very well, vampire. Just keep in mind that if you try any of your antics on me, I will order you back to the basement."

He laughed at her. "You offend me, I do not want to make your birthday a bad occasion. So," he took another glass from the side table and pushed it forward. "will you be a gracious host and invite me to drink with you?"

That did make her laugh, perhaps louder than usual because of the alcohol, and she poured a drink for him. She passed him the glass, her slender, gloved fingers circling it. "Do you want to play human tonight. Alucard?"

"Only if you plan to play normalcy, my Master."

She smiled at him for the first time that night and sighed. "I guess taking a night to go through Hellsing's liquor cabinet can be taken as that."

He only sipped on his drink; his body could not truly process anything but blood, but he could still enjoy flavors in the same manner that he did with red wines. However, he was in this to keep an eye on his little Master, who, by the way, was not so little anymore. Truth be told, she had hardly acted her age when she had woken him up in the wake of Arthur's death, and she had shown repeatedly after that that she did not need constant protection, much less from herself. Then. perhaps he had just been bored.

Conversation ran its usual course; discussing the latest missions and what had happened at the Knights' meetings in the last weeks. Alucard could tell the drinks were making her more conversational than usual, perhaps even taking off part of the cold edginess from her comments. Not too much; scotch apparently loosened her tongue about her opinion on some of the old men to the point that he found himself smirking at her use of British insults.

He listened to her eagerly for he knew she was not prone to pour her opinions and feelings out on anyone. Just looking at how she moved her hands to emphasize her point was delightful and he was reminded of how precious humans, with all their little quirks, were. And she was the one to have captured his attentions the most in all those centuries, the only one he respected enough to let her to hold his leash. What he felt for his human master was indeed too much to impose on a girl her age, who already carried so many responsibilities on her shoulders. He was not there to take advantage of her state, but more to look over her… or perhaps he was there for himself, a night in the company of a young human to appease the loneliness of eternity. Had evenings such as these with ladies not been a balm for knights' souls? However, that evening he could tell that there was something bothering her, something that she kept talking around. He decided to push his luck on the occasion that she seemed willing to upon up to him without having him invade her mind. He interrupted her,

"Somethings ails you, Integra. Do you want to tell me what it is?"

She looked slightly aghast, unused to both him interrupting her and being asked about her state of mind. Perhaps the scotch also made it so she had been losing herself in a reverie a moment before.

She looked down and whispered, "Nothing."

Alucard chuckled at his master. albeit with no ill intentions. "Is that so? Well, Master, if the centuries have taught me anything it is to know better than to take a woman's 'nothing' literally."

She laughed with him, a little embarrassed. "The No Life King is actually an expert in giving women advice?"

"You are not just any woman."

She looked sideways awkwardly. "Well, that is the point. I am not just any woman. And some of the Knights have started making comments…" He raised his eyebrow, trying to see into her expression. "Things about me being at an age when I should at least be dating, about how someday I will need an heir…" She noticed the darkening of his eyes and quickly added, "Not that they are ever going to force me, of course. Even if I make fun of it sometimes, they are not that medieval in their practices."

He relaxed his shoulders only a little bit, enough to ease her fear that he might do something uncalled for. "That is still a blatant act of disrespect to the Hellsing heir."

She laughed again, trying to lighten the mood. "And since when do you care? No, Alucard, they say more as some sort of nosy uncles. My father did not marry until very late in life, and I have to reason to believe that they expect different of me." Her gaze drifted to the window, pensive. She was already halfway through a third full glass of the drink and her dreamy stare and sighs confirmed it. "I just wonder, that is all. I am not exactly bride material for a wealthy British aristocrat."

He gave her a sly smile in return. "One of the most powerful women in the country, really only toppled by the Queen herself? I would say any man would be honored to have you as his wife, Master." He tried not to let anything else slip off his tongue. He had already gained this much insight of what was in her mind and it was better not to push his luck.

"Hm, that is true. However, I was thinking more about… well, I don't advertise myself as a very caring future wife. Apart from my status, I think men are more terrified of this suit-wearing girl than anything." She made a hand motion to herself and laughed. It was indeed rare that she would talk like this. She was not in any way ashamed of her looks, that he knew, and she did not care for male attention. It had to be that inebriation had loosened her tongue and she was only voicing out a fleeting thought.

Still, he reached out his hand and covered hers with it. His shadows moved with him, darkening the desk between them, shattering any illusion that this was a mundane conversation among two ordinary individuals. "You know well that the issue, would you ever wish to find a companion, would not be you but finding someone who deserves you. Both as a leader and as a person."

She seemed surprised, but she did not move her hands from his. Instead, she drew circles on his gloved palm lazily with her fingers. He almost purred at the touch, but waited for her words. Even if she pushed him away, it would have been worth getting some of the rare caresses that the master ever offered her hound.

He was not expecting what she said next. With heavy lidded eyes and a smile playing on her lips that he had never seen before, she teased, "Do you think that you would make a better candidate?" She pulled her hand back. "You are, after all, royalty, Count." She laughed, throwing her head back lazily, letting it rest on the back of the chair for a little longer than usual. She lost herself in the stars in the night sky behind them, while Alucard waited for her to continue, to give him some sort of clarification to such a cruel joke. After what seemed like ages, she looked at him again. "Not just that. I do not think any other man could handle me, nor do I wish to be anywhere close to them."

He was the one to lead forward, half expecting her to either push him away or sink into the seat trying to recoil from him. He was surprised that she did not, but he was also worried. "Hm, are you then implying that you would be the one to enjoy such arrangement, Sir Hellsing? Shall I ask for your hand in marriage this same evening, wake the queen up from her slumber, cause chaos among the noble families?"

She looked amused, but also pleased. "Always such a gentleman… Do not mock me, Alucard, has it not been you who has been courting me all these years, from before I was even eligible for marriage by modern standards?" He frowned at her words. "Don't tell me it will be you who gets cold feet."

Dark tendrils moved from the darkness that surrounded him to her side and moved her hair behind her ear, creating goosebumps in their wake. "I think that my Master should be more careful of who she is taunting, lest the monster actually be true to his word."

"Who said I would be opposed to that?"

He gave her a skeptical look. As much as the conversation was moving in a pleasing direction, he felt as if she was toying with him, and the lack of certainty as to how much was the alcohol and how much was herself bothered him. He suddenly stood up and crossed the space to her side of the desk, fast enough to place his hand on her arm when she was reaching for the glass once again.

"That is enough, Master." She stared at him with wide open eyes.

She tried to remove his hand. "And who are you to-?!" She watched in shock as he grabbed the glass before she could and drank the contents down in a single gulp.

"There, all gone. Come on, Master, it is time to go to bed."

Anger contorted her features and she stood up.

"That… that was mine!"

Her fists clenched at her sides and he cocked an eyebrow, wondering if her next move was to slap him. Instead, she pulled him by his cravat and crushed her lips to his awkwardly, almost hitting her teeth against his own. She just stayed there looking at him through tired eyes until her lips left his. She was gasping for air, inches away from him. Her gaze dropped from his eyes down to his lips. "Mine…" She repeated, this time in a whisper. Her hand snaked around his neck and pulled him closer. "Kiss me now, Alucard. This is an order" She did not wait for him to follow her command either way and kissed him again.

He was reluctant to make any movements. He had waited for two years, no, formuch longer, for something like this to happen, though he would not easily accept it. To say that he had lusted after his Master, the descendant of the man who had bested him, from an age when she was forbidden to him, who was hundreds of years old… But it had been her strength that he had been after, the kind of power that had made him bend his knee for her and gladly serve under her. He had been tranquil to wait, to look from the shadows until she had reached an age that was more appropriate for the current times, and yet it had been her who had made the first move.

A clumsy move, at that. She had no experience with kissing, he had made sure of that. She had quite literally crushed his lips with hers, a little to the side, in what looked like a kiss but was not progressing further. His hands gripped the edge of the desk as she experimented by licking his lip. He was still debating whether to make a move, but then she whimpered against him in frustration and he felt part of his control snapping. He groaned and grabbed her chin to move her back for a moment.

"Let me show you… my Master."

He did not wait for an answer, nor was he sure that he would have stopped if she had hesitated. She could punish him later. He lifted her by the waist and sat her on the desk, one hand going to the small of her back while the other cupped her face to steady her. He went down for another kiss, this time parting her lips with his own and slipping his tongue inside her mouth slowly enough not to shock her. She did not seem bothered by that development at all and let him continue as he proceeded to deepen the kiss.

When he had dreamed of it, because, yes, he had, he had always pictured it including the vivid taste of cigar smoke in his Master's tongue, but now, as he traced it, her teeth, the roof of her mouth, every corner that he could reach, with his own, it was the taste of alcohol that was mixed with the expected taste of smoke.

He thought for an instant of whether it was alright given her inebriated state, but her next move erased any caution left in his mind. She moaned, and Integra Hellsing did not moan, and then she encircled his waist with her muscular legs, pulling him to her roughly. It was him who gasped even though he needed no air when she started returning his ministrations and rocking her hips to his in a fashion that indicated she was not at all oblivious of what she was doing to him. It was as if that primal energy he had seen flare underneath her icy gaze so many times had finally risen to the surface. Exhaling a pleased sigh, she started following what he had just done. She pushed his cold tongue back into his mouth with hers, imitating the thrusting movements that he had just shown her with his own kiss, teased him by pressing her tongue up into his canines, almost to the point of drawing her own blood, only to retreat before the warm liquid could come to the surface and bit down on his lower lip and tugged on it, just a little harder than would have been advisable had her partner been human, but perfect for her vampire. He pushed his hips into her warmth and moaned his name almost as a prayer, drawing out each syllable in delicious agony.

"Integra…"

By then was not probable that she could not know what his reaction was; its very obvious result pressed blatantly against her inner thigh. And, for God's sake, he could almost feel her arousal rising in waves with his, the heat pooling at her center, the blush covering her cheeks, the frantic heartbeat… They were both panting, an entanglement of limbs and wandering hands upon her desk, the glasses knocked over and rolling to the opposite side as they moved.

She finally pulled away from him and looked into his eyes, a content smile gracing her lips. "Hmmm." She just made a noise of satisfaction and let her head rest on his shoulder. That demonstration was enough for Alucard to remember that she was, indeed, still drunk, and that he better did something about it. Separating his body from her warm one was almost painful but he did it quickly, even as she whimpered in protest at the sudden deprivation of contact. He helped her down from the desk and lifted her chin to inspect her features.

"You are going to need water."

She shrugged, set her feet back on the floor, and let him grab her arm to guide her away towards the door. Before they started walking, however, he changed his mind and decided to just phase through the floors down to the kitchen. He would not usually have done something like that, his Master would have found it rude, but she seemed too lost in thought, or too drunk, to scold him. She had to clutch onto his arm: mixing alcohol with passing through walls was not that good of an idea.

Integra chuckled when he caught her back as she stumbled a couple of steps into the kitchen. He glanced at her with concern in his eyes as he filled a glass of water and she moved a chair from the kitchen table to sit at. She seemed too relaxed for his Master who would usually have been worried about having so little control, but, again, he could not tell if that was also a result from the drinking or from the fact that she felt as sober as she appeared. Her cheeks were still flushed, but she didn't seem too wobbly, and she drank the water without saying a word or sparing him a look.

It wasn't until she had emptied her glass that she looked up to him with a blank expression and removed her glasses. A couple of droplets of water hung on her lips. Oh. So that was what she was playing at. He was both too enthralled and amused to feign ignorance. He leaned in and licked the water off, knowing by her satisfied smirk that it had been her her intention all along. He had expected that reaching a certain age his Master would be a temptress, but he had not been prepared to find himself so thoroughly captivated by these games.

How drunk was she, really? Seeing how… skilled she was getting with each exchange, it was hard to tell. He was the one to moan into her mouth when she sneaked her hand to the nape of his neck and pulled at his hair only hard enough to elicit a pleasurable degree of pain.

If she was intoxicated, there was no lack of coordination to show it. She had been more in the receiving end of the kissing earlier in the evening, but this all but proved that she had just been learning. She was positively massaging his tongue with hers, responding to each of his motions, and he was happy to be powerless under her hungry lips and hands. He had known that she had fire running deep under that iron will, but never expected her to be this wicked, for her to sweetly torture him, having full knowledge of his devotion for her…

She laid her forehead against his and regained her breath. "I am tired." She picked up her glasses from the countertop, put them back on, and ran her hands through her hair to either try to tidy it or to get her focus back. Her words might have broken the spell, but they were uttered softly and with a small smile, almost apologetically, so he merely untangled himself from her and followed her as she made her way to her bedroom. She seemed alright enough not to need him to spot her, and she walked up the stairs with the certainty that he would follow.

"Close the door." She laid on the bed fully clothed and pulled the covers over herself. She would be so upset in the morning to find her clothes all tousled… He leaned over her as her eyes started to close. Her fingers lifted to his face, twitching before trying to touch his cheek, but he pulled back before she could.

"Goodnight, my Master."

He left before she could mutter the words for him to stay; he knew he could not have refused her, and, oh, how he wished for and feared the idea. He saw her shrug and then fall asleep in his mind's eye even after he had passed through the floor to the basement. The real question would now be about her reaction the next morning. He could account for all that he had done, yet he was not so sure about her, and that fact weighed on him, left a void in his stomach that he had not felt in centuries. He sat on his high chair, sighed, and shook his head. Stupid, stupid, lovesick No Life King…

He woke up right after sundown; she had not called him during the day, either from the lack of need or, what he feared, shame and anger. As much as he had told himself that he would take all her rage come morning, he felt less than ready to be rejected. It would irk him, make him burn with rage, if she were to say that it had all been merely the result of a drunken liaison. And, worse than rejection, was the possibility that she did not remember a thing. He had thought she was not drunk enough for her memories to become blurry, but his experiences with alcohol were so far away that he could not truly tell; she was young, and much smaller than him, and thus those two and a half glasses of whiskey could have been too much for her.

Tired of waiting to find out, he disappeared and materialized in her study. All indicatives of the night's activities were gone: the table was clean, not even the water markings of the glasses remained, and the chairs, the ones that had been moved aside when she had finally kissed him, were back into their own places. And, amidst the perfect order, there she sat, not a single hair out of place or a crease in her clothes that could tell of what had transpired between them.

As well as she had hidden it all (or had it been Walter?), he saw that she was feeling the lack of sleep and the excess of alcohol. Just a small wrinkle on her brow and gritted teeth behind her full lips indicated that she was still recovering from a rather bad headache. She was drinking tea as she always was, yet he could tell that her stomach was still unsettled. Typical signs of a night of drinking having gone too far.

She did not look at him. "Good evening, Servant."

"Master." The bitterness of his tone was barely contained. He would have preferred her anger, her yelling, anything, but this. To act as if nothing had happened stabbed him more deeply than he cared to admit. Perhaps he should have waited…

"Why are you here? I do not recall calling for you." His gaze darkened, and he did not answer. She had to, at least, know that she had wounded her pet. Whether out of pride or shame, he did not know. She proceeded,"I was about to tell you to come anyway. We have reports of vampire activity near Watford. Regular armed forces are having a hard time controlling the situation. Leave immediately."

He did not do any motion to indicate that he was about to leave. His quiet refusal forced her to look up to him to study his expression. She did not, however, explode in a fit of rage over his insubordinance as he thought she would. Instead, she set her pen aside for a moment and kept on staring into his eyes. She looked up to him over the rim of her glasses, then went back to her paperwork.

"I was not that drunk, you know?"

With the speed of wind, he leaned onto the desk with his whole form covering her field of vision. It was a menacing position, topped with a predatory grin that showcased his fangs, but she didn't even flinch. In fact, her sly smile only grew wider.

"Don't be too full of yourself." She handed him a stack of papers. "Here is your assignment for the night. Make sure to do a clean job."

He made a swift bow and materialized his hat in his hand to put it on as he fancied doing before all his missions. He turned around on his feet and headed for the door when her voice halted him.

"Alucard."

"Yes, my Master?"
"You may join me again when you are done." She said casually, then added, "No alcohol involved this time."

He chuckled as he passed through the wall, a self-satisfied grin on his lips. "As you command, Sir Hellsing."

Finis