A Pulse Flows Under His Wrist
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The physical universe was a very frightening to Alucard.
As a youth, he'd enjoyed the education his noble birth entitled him to. He'd learned classical languages, math, philosophy, logic and the sciences. He had been a bright and eager student-mostly because his tutors provided a temporary escape. Astronomy particularly interested him, and he thrilled at the early telescope. He learned the fundamentals of medicine, about the humors of the body, and how disease could be cured with leeches, prayer and fasting.
"The North Star is not a single star, but a cluster of six celestial masses. It shines brighter every day. It's grown fifteen percent brighter since 1890. It grows larger by 8 seconds every year." Arthur Hellsing adjusted the telescope's tripod legs, making sure they were firmly planted in the soil. "Growing brighter, growing larger. What do you think that means, Alucard?"
Alucard was a charming nymph, no more than nine or ten, a small white pixie with straight jet black hair and thick bangs falling into her mischievous red eyes. It was summer, and so she took the opportunity to look as feminine as possible in a cotton white sun dress and a wide-brimmed derby hat. "I don't know, master. It's getting closer?" she guessed demurely, watching Arthur curiously.
She had not changed back into her male form since before the war. Walter had tried to stage an intervention, tried to take Alucard aside and tell her it was time to ditch the dresses and the ribbons. She had merely giggled in response. Vampires was all but unheard of. Her master no longer needed a vampire enforcer. He needed a pleasant companion as he aged, and she knew how to look pleasant.
"Besides," the white vampire said with a hint of bitterness, "it's nice to be wanted."
Walter had been stunned. What had existed between them had been so very, very brief and mutual.
Arthur made one final adjustment to the telescope, and satisfied it wasn't going to fall down, he stood back and admired his own shoddy handiwork. "But it's also a fixed point in the sky. The Earth rotates on its axis, the Earth rotates around the sun, the solar system rotates around the Milky Way. And yet the North Star is always in the same place. What does that tell you about the trajectory of the North Star?"
Alucard said had no answer. She waited patiently, knowing full well Arthur talked to hear the sound of his own voice. She was also fond of his voice.
"The North Star is coming right for us, Alucard." Arthur decided he was too drunk to stand anymore. He looked around absently for a comfortable spot to sit. Somewhere, there was a half empty bottle of scotch. But it had vanished after he'd set it down somewhere in the grass. He suspected his gender-bending vampire had something to do with that, though he doubted he could compel a confession. "Alucard: I command you to save me from the treacherous North Star. Go get it."
Alucard looked up at the sky blankly.
He pointed with confidence at the black sky. "That one."
"Ah. You there. Piss off."
Arthur nodded in satisfaction, sinking to the earth. He laid down in the grass, groaning. "Alucard, love, come here and help me."
The vampire entered his field of vision, looking uncertain. "What do you want me to do?"
"Give me back the bourbon."
"Let's go back inside instead," the vampire suggested pleasantly. "I'll draw you a bath. I'll rub your shoulders."
"I'll miss the lunar landing." His eyes closed.
Alucard tried to roll the human onto his side so he wouldn't drown in his own vomit if he threw up. "Go inside and watch it on television with all the other humans. You'll never see the space shuttle with that little telescope."
Arthur was incredulous, his eyes fluttering open. "Why the hell did you think I dug out the telescope and dragged it all the way out here? It's a damn expensive telescope, of course I can see…" Arthur didn't seem to notice Alucard was manhandling him. He allowed himself to be moved.
Alucard brushed the man's graying hair out of his face and tucked it behind his ear. "I'm sorry for questioning you, master. I won't do it again."
He smiled affectionately. "And you never should." Arthur closed her eyes and patted his arm. "Alucard."
"Yes?"
"Alucard."
He was just making noises now. Alucard waited, anticipating Arthur would lose consciousness soon and she could bring him back to the main house, tuck her master into bed, and sneak away to her coffin and avoid his hangover in the morning.
"Alucard," Arthur muttered again.
"I'm here," Alucard assured him, watching, waiting for her to fall asleep.
His eyes fluttered open momentarily again, then slid shut. "The universe is incredible," he declared in his final conscious throes. "If I wasn't director of the Hellsing Organization, I'd be an astronaut." He shifted lazily.
Alucard decided to try and talk him to sleep: "I dreamt once about floating in the vacuum of outer space and falling into a black hole-and wondering if I would still remain conscious."
"You would die without human blood to sustain you," Arthur dismissed drowsily, his eyes shut. "And you couldn't exist in the vacuum, even if you could manage without oxygen. Your cells would explode without a pressurized suit. You wouldn't be molecularly stable enough to regenerate."
Alucard eyes Arthur suspiciously. "You've thought about launching me into space, haven't you?"
He smiled slightly. "'l'll never send you off in a rocket, darling, I promise."
Alucard remained quiet for a long time. The warm glow of the Hellsing mansion below made her long for its warmth. Eventually, Alucard turned back towards her master. She wordlessly shifted closer and lay down in the grass beside him on her side, folding her arm under her head and looking down at their feet. They were less than a foot apart. Alucard gently placed her hand on her master's hip and slid it down his thigh and back up.
Arthur grunted unintelligibly and did not stir.
He was his father's son.
His father Abraham had been a great and terrible tyrant who beat him and beat him and tortured him, all in the guise of medical experimentation, even as he made it no secret he enjoyed Alucard's cries. There were countless ways flesh could be conditioned to respond. After fifteen years, Alucard found himself yet again on a familiar examination table, naked and strapped down and spread as he had been countless times before, and realized with a mixture of amusement and revulsion that he was actually leaning towards the man's touch. That was when Alucard started calling the man "master." Abraham rewarded his pet that night with a different kind of touch, one that brought gasps and whimpers as well as cries of pain.
And the son that eventually came to live with them had been beautiful. Arthur was strong and motivated, like his father, but not as hard, not as touched by death and ridicule. He had grown up insulated by the Hellsing's mounting wealth, and never suffered the scorn of being thought of as a backwards, superstitious doctor. As a youth, Alucard was immediately drawn to him, drawn to his confidence and energy. The vampire wondered how young boys could be so bold and strong, when his own sons died of disease and weakness centuries ago. He was envious of these Hellsings and their powerful blood. He wished, more than anything, to mix his blood with theirs. He wanted to be absorbed by them, become like them.
Arthur had not been attracted to lithe, beautiful male vampires as Abraham had been, even when called "master." But once Alucard feminized himself and returned from the war, it was then that she felt Arthur's eyes raking up and down her body, felt his hands linger a little too long where they shouldn't.
Alucard slowly worked her knee between his legs and worked it forward until her thigh was firmly rubbing against her master's loins. Her mouth planted warm kisses against the back of Arthur's neck. "Master," she purred.
With that, Arthur groaned and opened his eyes and rolled away. "Enough of that," he muttered, "I've talked to you before about teasing. You may be able to fool the guards and the soldiers, but I remember who you really are. I won't soil myself with you." His eyes began to slide shut again. "Demon."
The vampire rolled over onto her back and batted her eye lashes demurely, lifting her skirt and opening her knees to give Arthur a clear view of what lay between. "I feel so empty..."
"That emptiness is the pit in your soul, and nothing can fill it."
"I bet your cock could." She reached behind her neck and untied the strap that held up her cotton dress, leaving the strings in the grass and her top ready to tug down. "I've watched you with your ladies. I want to fuck me as hard as you fuck them."
Arthur said nothing.
Alucard slid her cotton top down her front, revealing her white breasts. "I can see how stiff you are from here." Her eyes shouldered. "Your prostitutes can join us. I don't get jealous. I can hypnotize them and make them do whatever you want. We'll have a whole harem of tireless sluts calling you 'master,' just like I do. I can make them hungry for just your cum and nothing else."
The man sat up, a smirk spreading over his face. "Faggot."
Alucard touched his thigh again and slid it up until she felt his firm erection. She cupped it boldly and shuddered when she heard Arthur groan softly. "I can talk dirty to you all night," she offered. "Or I can suckle you all night. Whatever your wish. Kiss me."
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Arthur had not kissed him that night, or any other night, though the vampire had a few pleasant, close calls. And ultimately, the vampire was glad Arthur was too drunk that night to remember all he had done. Walter staged another intervention, this time to rid Arthur of his ever-present bottle, and gradually, Alucard became more masculine, though he continued to hang on his master's every word.
In time, Alucard re-learned astronomy from the man. At some point, at the apex of the vampire's androgyny, Arthur suggested Alucard should attend university, to study whatever his heart desired.
Alucard immediately became male again, so eager a son was to make his father proud.
The pseudo-family, like a real family when an intruder disrupts the balance, fell apart when Arthur took a pretty new wife.
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Integra held the faded transcripts in puzzlement.
Alucard Hellsing. The transcripts were dated 1969, the year Alucard had been imprisoned.
She often discovered little treasures left behind by her father, tucked away in books covers, in old file folders, in between shelves. Ten years later and she was still finding odds and ends.
She tucked away the little faded sheet of paper and put it back where she found it.
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Alucard loved her, but Walter intervened one last time.
"You have an illness," the old butler insisted. "You have to stop obsessing over every member of this family. You aren't their concubine to be passed down to each successive generation."
Alucard already knew that. And some illnesses couldn't be cured with leeches, prayer or fasting. So when the day came that his tawdry joke came out at just the right moment, when Integra was in just the right mood, that she smiled warmly at his foolish vulgarity, finding it charming for once, the vampire felt his pulse quicken under his wrist.
And Integra was so grand, as she always was. Her honey face framed by that unnaturally white hair. Her lips were so perfect. Her shoulders so broad, like a man's, but her waist was so narrow and her hips so full, her voice so commanding. He felt he could be taken by her, as a man takes a woman, and then he could take her in return.
He complimented his joke with a sweet nothing whispered in her ear.
She was receptive, playful. Bold.
He felt a chaste kiss planted on his chin. "Flirt," she dismissed.
Oh, he could show her what a flirt was like. His lips were hungry and her skin was so warm. He wanted to kiss her then, fully, forcefully.
But he did not.
He took a shy step back, taunted her some more, and they both laughed while his pulse pounded and his loins screamed for relief. They bid each other a fond good night, and when Alucard was alone again, he willed his clothes to disappear and looked down at his own naked body, at his dejected but unwilting erection. Did he find her so alluring because she was a Hellsing, because he had been attracted to all his masters?
She deserved so much more than his fleeting obsession.
He could not remember a prayer at that moment, so he closed his eyes and recited constellations. He imagined himself floating in the cold vacuum of outer space, alone forever. After much concentration, he smoothed his fingers down his shaft and found it blessedly flaccid.
It would not always be an easy feat.
The End.