Walter strode in from the motor pool, face paler than usual, apparently speaking to nothing.
"That's it. I've had enough. I'm cutting it."
You cannot cut it. Alucard's voice was a silken hiss in his mind.
"I most certainly can. It is my hair and it nearly got me killed tonight." His voice dropped as he passed one of the servants on the night shift. Alucard was the dirty little secret that a van Helsing couldn't admit to keeping even if the name was now Hellsing.
The servants were used to the butler's odd habit of talking to himself. Most blamed the fact that he was also Hellsing's preeminent hunter. How sane could he be, they murmured to each other when they were sure he was out of earshot, with all that responsibility from such a young age.
Was it any wonder that in his 20s, Walter was such a peculiar person, with his long hair and his bloody weapons, and his isolation from everyone and everything human when it didn't have to do with work? Turning gun barrels on a lathe at four in the morning was not a hobby; it was just another example of his odd obsessions.
That Walter stalked through the halls after another mission, scowling and talking to himself was nothing new.
Do not cut it.
"That's easy for you to say. You can have yours any way you want it at any time." He finally reached the sanctuary of his rooms and locked the rest of the world out before saying decisively, "It goes."
Angel…
"Why do you care? And come out of the shadows, we're in private now." He sighed irritably and started to strip off his blood-sodden waistcoat.
"I find it pleasing," Alucard said, stepping out of the wall. "You know that I think men in this era wear their hair too short. You would think they want to make themselves less appealing. Do not cut it." The please would remain unspoken, if implicit in the vampire's tone.
Walter's scowl had not softened, now he winced as he unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off to expose his bruise-patterned torso. "If I hadn't had hair in my eyes, I would have seen her. No vampire should ever get close enough to do this."
Alucard's eyelids dropped as his gaze passed over the imprints of fists, livid against the white of the young man's skin, so brutally impressed that the individual lines of fingers and knuckles were distinct. He reached out to pass his fingertips just above one of those angry marks.
"I am close enough."
"Only because you cannot harm me," Walter countered, hissing when Alucard's fingers pressed into the bruise. "Don't be childish," he snapped and pushed the hand away.
Alucard moved his hand to push a stray piece of hair away from the young man's face instead. "Indulge me. I ask for little."
Walter snorted derisively and turned away. "I already give you more than any other human would willingly."
"Because you are barely human yourself, Angel."
Walter could feel Alucard's presence close behind him, that skin tingle as it wanted to crawl. There was always the feeling that if he allowed himself a moment's weakness, the beast would be at his throat.
For Walter C. Dornez, Angel of Death, and Hellsing's trash man, that was part of the attraction. For all that he had almost taunted Alucard that he could not harm his partner, he was not fool enough to think the vampire was harmless.
Alucard knew the same of him.
"You haven't given me any reason not to cut my hair other than your wants." He stiffened when he felt fingers in his hair, combing through the strands. It was soothing – the gentle touch, the cool fingers on his scalp.
"I will not do this if your hair is short," the vampire murmured, finger-combing the hair back from the young man's face. "These little intimacies please us both."
He gathered Walter's hair into a thick hank at the back of his head and then gave it an ungentle tug. "Tie it back when you fight. Or tie it back all the time. But don't cut it."
Walter tilted his head back with the tug. Tying his hair would work, but making Alucard work for the agreement was more entertaining.
"It will be simpler to take care of after I cut it. It will be more efficient, less time consuming." He didn't bother to keep the slight teasing lilt out of his words.
"But if you cut it, I cannot do this," the vampire purred then pulled again, forcing the young man's head back and stretching his throat in a strained arc.
He took a moment to appreciate the sight of a hunter exposed and vulnerable, the pulse jumping in his throat, his lips parted as his breath came faster. The rising scent of the young man's lust explained both quickened heartbeat and breathing.
Alucard's tongue flicked out, snakelike, tracing Walter's jugular and the gooseflesh that rose under the light touch. "So in control in public, my Angel. Organized, reliable, deadly."
He breathed his next words into his lover's ear. "Everyone needs a release. We both know that you need these chances to let someone else take control."
"And we both know that you need these chances to be in control," Walter whispered toward the ceiling.
Alucard went dangerously still for a moment before chuckling. "I would call us a fitting team – old and young, vampire and human, dominant and submissive, and monsters both."
It was a measure of who Walter saw himself to be that he did not find being lumped as a monster with Alucard to be disturbing, but rather having the term "submissive" applied to him. Never mind that Alucard was right. It was hearing it stated in such a naked manner. Perhaps in his mind he had always rationalized it as the vampire being his teacher, but here his teacher had laid the truth bare.
"Do not cut it," Alucard repeated. The hand not holding Walter in place slipped over one of his hips and up the center line of his abdomen. The touch was gentle in contrast to the demanding grip in his hair, turning feather light as he passed over the raised weals his partner had received earlier in the night.
Walter tensed in anticipation of pain from the touch, but the vampire's skin barely brushed his, tantalizing and soothing the overstretched nerves under his fingertips. Once past the injuries, he resumed stroking over his lover's skin with assurance, using the human's smallest cues to refine pressure and direction leading inexorably up to a nipple to circle and entice.
"Do not cut it." No request this time, but an order made with lips against skin and the bare scrape of deadly fangs an impotent threat, but a thrilling one.
Almost gasping now, Walter tried to nod against the hold keeping him in place with the tether of his hair. "I will not."
"Ahh…" A sighed out sound of approval. "Good."
∙∙∙
In the morning Walter rose from his bed, leaving Alucard to soak up the last of the heat he'd left behind. He went through his morning routine of bathing, shaving, and dressing with his usual quiet efficiency.
Before he left his rooms to go about his daytime duties of keeping Hellsing manor running like clockwork, he pulled his hair away from his face and tied it back, then left without a glance for his lover's pleased smile.
There's an uncut version of The Cut over on adultfanfiction dot net. This is by far the tamer version.