AN: Thank you again to my reviewers. I apologize for the delay in publishing this. My schedule for the rest of this month and the next is going to be busier than usual, so the next update might be late also, but I'll do what I can. All corrections to this chapter and the last will be made ASAP!
After all the things Vlad had taken out of Ezreal's backpack were gathered and safely returned to the bag, the hemomancer had requested Ezreal's company in the living quarters of the tomb, which sounded shifty enough on it's own even without Ezreal being reminded of the bodice-ripper romance novels Caitlyn pretended not to read back home. The stories in those trashy novels were always the same: they started with some tall, dark, handsome, sexist male character requesting the presence of his maiden captive in his chambers; then they ended with wild ravishment. Well, a maiden Ezreal was not, and there would definitely be no ravishment, wild or otherwise.
He let himself be led in the opposite direction of the bloodstone's resting place to a completely innocuous arch worn into the wall. The door occupying the crevice was laquered black, appearing like a shadow that swung open into the hall. Already he was burning to ask questions about the architecture, but it didn't seem entirely likely that Vlad knew or cared about the place where he lived from an archaeological standpoint. Ezreal contented himself with looking around frantically, trying to take in every room they passed through quickly. Once, he caught Vladimir looking back at him with a smile of amusement- it looked like amusement, anyway.
They passed through what looked like an ancient surgery theatre that Ezreal guessed had been used for either rituals or embalming (or maybe both) into a long chamber where actual living quarters had been set up, much to Ezreal's surprise. The furniture was much older in this particular room, and before Vladimir could make any formal gesture of welcome Ezreal had hurried over to examine the carvings on the long table and it's many chairs. This had proved to be a mistake, but not a terrible one- just an annoying one that made Vlad clear his throat audibly to recall the explorer's attention. Feeling slightly embarrassed and remembering how many times Vlad had already told him that his manners were poor, Ezreal turned to face his host.
"This is where you'll be sleeping during your stay. Appropriate amounts of rest will be crucial for you." The hemomancer explained, gesturing towards a large, square bedframe with a number of smaller mattresses stacked into it. Ezreal raised an eyebrow. There were other frames in the room, all shoved into a corner. Vlad must have taken the mattresses from all the little ones to reappropriate a new one for the large bedframe. That would have been funny to him if it didn't lead directly into the realization that Vladimir must've expected Ezreal to share a bed with him.
"Uh, not to be rude, but... that is, er, we're not going to be sharing the same bed, are we? I mean, there are all those other bedframes over there, I could just-" A dismissive noise from Vlad cut him off.
"What kind of host would I be if I let you sleep on one of those termite-eaten excuses for beds? I insist that you sleep in this grand- and I use grand very liberally in this case- bed. We will have no need of sharing the bed, before you came along I spent so much of my time asleep that all I want to do now is enjoy wakefulness to the fullest for as long as I am able, which may very well be days. I am sure that when I feel like sleeping, you will want nothing more than to be wide awake." Vlad offered a winning, disturbingly fanged smile that Ezreal returned sheepishly. He was absolutely sure that if Vlad was correct. If Vladimir climbed into the bed he would want to be as far away from it as possible.
"Alright. Thanks." Stilted words, but Ezreal had already realized that it was in his best interests to suck up to Vladimir if he wanted the hemomancer to hold his temper. Being polite whether he needed to or not was a survival strategy. Ezreal jumped when Vlad placed a hand on his shoulder to usher him along around a corner to show him to an alcove containing a latrine. The explorer's discomfort soared to new heights suddenly. There was neither toilet paper nor any other kind of partition to hide him if Vlad decided to take a stroll while nature called.
"I know you have more bodily functions than I do, so there is the-"
Unafraid for his own safety, Ezreal cut him off. "Right, okay, thanks. I'll just use that when I need to, thank you for showing me." Vlad audibly snickered at him. The bastard found his squirming funny. With the hemomancer standing at his back, Ezreal took the opportunity to glare in Vlad's general direction without offending him. When Vladimir brought him back into the room with the table and shuffled him towards a chest against the wall, Ezreal couldn't help but wonder if Vlad was going to complain about his dress sense too and commence the creepiest game of dress up ever.
Just when Ezreal thought nothing could be worse than that, Vladimir proved him wrong. The chest was full of food. Not rotten food, or even disgusting food, just simple, packaged, non-perishable food like the kind Ezreal was carrying. It was stacked up inside the chest, packing the whole thing full, and Ezreal could only wonder with dread how many dead explorers Vlad had looted for it. "When you run out of provisions, there's plenty more for you to eat here." The hemomancer explained cheerfully. Vlad obviously had no idea why his young guest might be stupified by the sight of food, but on the assumption that he was hungry, Ezreal was herded gently back to the table.
The hand on his shoulder now pressed him forcefully towards a chair, which was "helpfully" pulled out for him and pushed back in once he was seated. Another can was set in front of him, this one full of fruit. "Eating will also be important, you know, so don't skimp at mealtime. I will personally be making sure that you eat three times a day." At that moment, Vlad began to sound more like a fussing nanny than a bloodsucking lunatic. What was this, some kind of babysitting programme? Ezreal stopped rummaging in his pockets for his army knife to turn in his chair and frown at the man standing behind him.
"Wait, what?" Ezreal couldn't come up with a more verbose question. It was one weird thing right after another with Vlad, and it was getting to be a little overwhelming. "Why?" Vladimir circled around to sit opposite him. Just then, Ezreal decided that the table was far too narrow, but there wasn't much he could do.
"We have to keep your blood count up, you know." Ezreal's stomach dropped, weighed down by fresh horror. He had hoped that the blood sucking was a one-off thing that wouldn't see a repeat performance. At that moment he realized that he should have known better. His hand flew to his neck to find the wound Vlad had left bandaged already, a gauze pad secured over the bite mark. So they would both be playing host: Vlad to a guest, and Ezreal to a humanoid parasite. "Now, now. Don't fret. I won't be feeding on you every single day. You would run out of spaces for me to bite." Vlad smirked. Ezreal felt the hemomancer's eyes move over him, neck and chest. "Every other day, if I am very hungry, but you are safe from more constant attentions."
Ezreal's hand found the army knife. It didn't comfort him that the only feasible weapon he had against Vlad for the moment was currently being used to open a can of fruit. It was also good for opening bottles, sawing through various things, snipping, clipping, and slicing... but not vampire slaying. Ezreal glumly slurped the juice in the can, averting his eyes from the gleaming red ones affixed to him. Vlad made a disapproving noise at the slurping, and without thinking, Ezreal stopped and sipped more silently. When the explorer looked back to his host he found himself staring into a fanged smile. "What?"
"Oh, nothing." Lilted Vladimir. "Only that you learn so very quickly, without much prompting." The uncomprehending furrow of Ezreal's brow made him laugh. "I didn't even have to speak to make you stop slurping."
"Oh." Ezreal's face smoothed out, and he glanced away again, now picking the peaches out of the can and eating them one by one. They weren't that good, but the explorer always expected canned food to be tolerable rather than tasty. It made him appreciate real, fresh food far more when he came back from his adventures. The silence dragged on until he was on the verge of squirming. Vlad was just watching him, staring, smiling personably. Creepy didn't even begin to cover it. "So, is it alright with you if I go around examining more of the carvings on the walls and furniture?"
To his surprise, Vlad's response was immediately positive. "Of course. I will be supervising you when you wander outside of this room, but you are welcome to your archaeological pastimes."
"Thanks." Ezreal actually meant it this time.
"There is, however, one condition." The hemomancer amended. Fortunately, he left no room for apprehension. "Tell me what more you deduce about the hemomancers who lived here, once."
"You mean you aren't one of them?"
"No indeed. They were apparently a bit before my time. My former master never told me anything about them. Perhaps even he knew nothing, as I have no residual memories of them from his blood."
"Hmm. I'll see what I can get out of the carvings. You can't read any of the weird writing on the walls either, can you?"
"Not a word."
"Then it's lucky that pictures are worth a thousand words." Then, stricken by a sudden revelation, Ezreal tilted his head at the hemomancer. "Wait, you've never looked at the carvings yourself all this time?"
Vlad chuckled. "I have. I know what they depict, certainly, but the story they tell is lost on me. They're all out of order, you see, as if they were carved in as needed, like pages written into a book. With there being so many of them, I cannot hope to piece them together in a logical progression without the help of tools such as you have: charcoal and paper. As you can likely guess, I have not had access to either in some time."
"I hope I have enough of both." Ezreal grinned. He was more than up to the challenge the tomb's disjointed carvings presented to him, and would have started after them if not for the realization that he was trying to pick fruit from an empty can. He looked blankly at his hand, sticky from the fruit juice, and Vladimir laughed at him again.
"You look lost. Do you need to wash your hand?" Vlad stood and pulled out Ezreal's chair for him.
"You have a water source?" Asked the explorer, looking around for it.
"Of course. It isn't plumbing such as you would find in civilization, but water trickles through some of the walls and collects in basins carved specifically to catch the flow." With a hand on his shoulder, Vlad led Ezreal back into the surgery theatre to point out one such basin. Looking down, Ezreal noticed that a sluggish trickle of water ran through the grooves in the floor, also.
"Probably to sluice away blood." Ezreal muttered aloud, finding himself too exhausted to really feel horror at the thought anymore. Vlad made an affirmative noise and didn't offer more than that. Ezreal washed his hands and let himself be guided back towards the bed. Without any resistance he laid down. He'd slept so awfully earlier that sleeping in a real bed was a welcome change. Ezreal was only vaguely aware of Vlad easing the boots off his feet and put up a sleepy token protest, but before long he was out cold.
/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/
It came as a complete surprise to Ezreal that, for the most part, Vladimir didn't harass him in any direct sense. Sure, the creep followed him around constantly as he wandered the catacomb, always watching him with a stare so fixed that Ezreal could feel it, but it could have been worse. Ezreal had expected it to be worse after waking up to Vlad touching him. It hadn't been a sexual touch, but for all he knew, Vladimir had thought of it that way. Any touch at all from a freaky, temperamental not-vampire was entirely unwelcome. By now Ezreal was at least comfortable in the assumption that his host was completely out of his mind, and that he would have to tread very lightly if he wanted out of here in one piece.
His waking hours were spent making rubbings of the carvings on the walls. Vlad had been right, they didn't progress chronologically, but there was enough separation between them that Ezreal could tell where one began and another ended. The explorer's portfolio became bloated with paper within the course of a few hours, no matter how neatly he folded them they just accumulated into fat piles. To preserve his charcoal he often switched to sketching the less elaborate carvings in miniature on the pages of his journal with pencil. Vlad leaned over his shoulder to glance at these sketches, but he never commented. Ezreal couldn't help the concern he felt over Vladimir's opinion of his art. He thought he was a pretty good artist, but Vlad seemed like the type who would have stood around in art galleries appreciating the classic works of masters.
The only time when Vladimir spoke was at meal time. Following lunch, Ezreal expected the narrow hand that settled on his shoulder once again to gently direct him away from his work as it had done hours before. "Time to eat, Ezreal." The announcement was the same as it had been during lunch, too. Being seated like an honored guest and served a fabulous meal of canned meat and vegetables was going to become a routine, Ezreal supposed, but it was never going to get any less weird.
"How is your research coming along?" Vlad questioned as he sat himself opposite Ezreal and steepled his fingers on the tabletop. At some point after offering Ezreal "breakfast," Vladimir had procured a wooden spoon from a drawer of miscellany on the far side of the room. What hemomancers might need with a spoon was a mystery to Ezreal. He hoped it hadn't been in anybody's innards or eye sockets at any point. Nonetheless, that spoon was now being used awkwardly to pick up things that really weren't made to be spooned, like spinach and some sort of vile canned meat block.
"Alright," Ezreal said between bites. Vladimir was a stickler for table manners that Ezreal didn't spend enough time around people to regularly observe. On the list of things that offended Vlad were talking with one's mouth full, elbows on the tabletop, slurping, and chewing too loudly. Ezreal had already begun to miss the relaxed lunches he occasionally had with Jayce and Vi back home. They'd just talk about the latest advances in hextech they were using for their individual hobbies; belching was allowed, and the manners didn't matter. "Everything I'm finding is pretty sinister, but I expected that. I haven't really gotten a full story on paper yet, but I've been taking note of recurring themes in the murals. Not that I need to tell you that."
"Yes, I've been watching you sketch. You're a fair artist, pretty boy."
Once again, Ezreal couldn't help the rush of pride that invaded him at the compliment. He stopped eating and looked up from his food to meet Vlad's unwavering gaze briefly. "Thank you. I've had a lot of practice." After that it was back to the food. "Anyway, I need to review what I have so I can start piecing together the-"
"No. No more work for today." The hemomancer commanded. Ezreal once again looked up at his host, concerned with the gravity he found in Vladimir's pale face. "You need to rest a little while. I'm hungry again, you understand, and bloodloss will hinder any further progress." Ezreal visibly tensed, prompting Vladimir to try and reassure him. "I promise that you won't need to endure any such thing tomorrow. You will be welcome to your own devices for as long as you like."
"That doesn't do much to comfort me, to be honest." Ezreal admitted. "You're still gonna bite my neck and suck my blood. Knowing that you'll leave me alone tomorrow doesn't change the fact that you're planning to snack on me."
"Please, Ezreal, try not to get your blood up over it." Thus followed the longest silence the two had ever sat through between speaking to one another. Ezreal stared at Vlad in bewilderment, unable to believe he'd made such a joke in the face of what was obviously very real concern over what lay ahead. Vladimir, in turn, offered nothing in the way of remorse. He stared back, straight faced, as though he hadn't said anything at all. Silence was typical between them, and it was always tense.
But before long, Vlad's lips twitched. There was a slow progression into smiling, and from behind that smile came a laugh that increased in volume from a chuckle to out-and-out laughter. "I'm sorry, Ezreal, but you ought to see your pretty face." The hemomancer managed to say. "That was an off-color joke, please forgive me. I thought it might make you laugh, but I see it has only served to amuse me." Ezreal said nothing. Anything he had to say to the lunatic in the chair across from him would have warranted another outburst. Instead, he frowned and waited impatiently for Vladimir to be finished.
"Really, though," Vladimir went on breathlessly upon regaining a small amount of composure. "Please relax. You'll do yourself more harm than good if you're tense."
"How can I relax? Seriously, I would love to know how you expect me to relax knowing that at any moment you're going to attack me and turn me into your personal juice box." The explorer's exasperation was clear in his voice.
"What an odd analogy." Vlad commented brightly, to Ezreal's annoyance. By now the hemomancer was at least paying attention, as he immediately realized his mistake. More delicately, he asked "Is there anything you do to calm down in unfamiliar places?"
Ezreal thought for a moment, trying to remember what he'd brought to amuse himself. "I read or play solitaire. It makes me sleepy when I'm having trouble dozing off."
"Solitaire? You have a deck of cards, then? Play a game with me. It has been an unbelievably long time since I've been able to do anything so... civilized. I might start to feel more like a man and less like an animal." Vladimir sounded so excited (in his own way) that it was hard for Ezreal to want to turn him down, even knowing that the card game was just a way of pacifying him and delaying the inevitable. The explorer went and got his worn deck of cards out of his backpack.
"What did you want to play?" Ezreal asked as he set the cards down on the tabletop.
"Rummy is simple enough. You know how to play rummy, don't you?"
"Yeah, though I haven't played in a while." Ezreal shuffled and dealt with deft hands put to practice in many games of poker with Vi and a handful of other Piltover officers predisposed to gambling.
"Do you keep up on current events, pretty boy?" Vlad asked as he arranged his hand of cards into a neat stack.
Ezreal was already learning to ignore the moniker. There was no use in getting riled over it, that wasn't going to stop Vlad consistently using the annoying nickname. "I do. Why, you want the news?"
"Yes. Tell me the news of Valoran in the last few years, as far as you know it."
In the course of a game, Ezreal laid out the major events of the past few years. There was the Kalamanda conspiracy that had Demacia and Noxus at each other's throats in violation of armistice, then the upheaval in Noxus prior to Jericho Swain's ascent to power. Jinx's attack on Piltover was more than worth mentioning, and Zaun's open alliance with Noxus still had everybody on edge. There had been an outbreak of illness at the Institute of War. The piracy going on along the eastern coast hadn't been dealt with, and the city-states of Noxus and Demacia were still hashing out an uneasy truce despite goings-on in the Freljord. Ezreal found himself laughing while describing Garen Crownguard's defense of the Noxian assassin Katarina Du Couteau, saying that the peace negotiations might go a bit faster if the two would just admit their feelings rather than playing at idiotic grudges. "I blame Katarina," Ezreal half-joked, "Noxians have to pretend to be heartless, even when someone's panting after them like a happy puppy."
Vladimir smiled indulgently, already dealing out another hand before Ezreal realized the game was over. Due to Ezreal's lack of investment in playing the game, Vlad had won. "I'm from Noxus, you know." It didn't surprise Ezreal to learn so. Only Noxus could produce the kind of person who would enjoy being a bloodsucking monster.
"Is that so?" The explorer responded politely despite his opinion. Vlad seemed to like the sound of his own voice. Prompting him to talk was a surefire way of keeping him occupied.
"Oh, yes. I was the only son of an upper-class Noxian family. My parents were associated with the Du Couteau family you mentioned. I was probably going to be married into said family myself when I was old enough."
"Sounds comfortable. Why did you leave?"
"I killed two of my playmates when I was fourteen." Vlad said it as casually as he might have commented on the weather. Ezreal bristled. "The crime never would have gone unnoticed. They were from similarly rich families. I ran away."
"Oh." The rest of the game played out in silence. For a while, Ezreal had actually been having a good time. The nonchalant mention of murdering two people tended to dampen any mood. On the other hand, Ezreal did win the game that time around. He'd feared that Vladimir might be a sore loser, but the hemomancer did little more than lean back in his chair and sigh melodramatically.
"Ah, I lost. Well played, pretty boy." Vlad smiled at him, inspiring just enough ease for Ezreal to return it. The hemomancer stood up, which Ezreal took to mean that dinner was over. His chair was pulled out, but when he stood up Vlad stepped into his path. In the course of half an hour, the explorer had ignored the mention of Vladimir's hunger. They'd taken so long that Ezreal hadn't thought there would be any follow-up. Now, with the hemomancer standing head and shoulders above him, keeping him boxed in with the backs of his thighs pressed to the table, Ezreal's worries reignited. "You seem much calmer than before. Please excuse the obstruction, but I like to take my meals at the table, too."
"Wait!" Was all Ezreal managed to stammer out before he was on his back. The normally light hand on his shoulder had shoved him onto the tabletop and held him down. One look at Vladimir's face told him that the polite, congenial man was gone, overtaken by something wild and unreasoning. The hemomancer's weight descended upon him, the strength of the hand on his shoulder replaced by Vlad's body pressing against him. A thigh nudged his legs open, and Ezreal hoped against hope then that blood was all Vladimir wanted. Hot breath on his neck made his hair stand on end, goosebumps rose where each short exhalation broke on his skin. Ezreal screwed his eyes shut and waited for the pain.
Even bracing for the bite didn't stop him from groaning in agony when the fangs broke his skin. A wave of nausea washed over him, brought on not only by pain but by the greedy way Vlad feasted on him, panting and embracing him like a lover, arching against him. Lightheadedness only added to his problems, but he was grateful for the apparent approach of unconsciousness. It was only when he lay limp in Vladimir's arms that the whole experience stopped. He felt weightless when Vlad lifted him to put him in a bed that had never felt more comfortable. Ezreal didn't recognize the feeling of a wet cloth or the gauze pad being affixed to his neck opposite the one that Vlad had already treated the last bite with.
Finally, he slipped into sleep.