I opened the doc so many times to write this, and I'd just stare at it, words not coming out. It's been very frustrating (although I have been watching a LOT of Young Dracula to try and inspire me, which was admittedly fun).

-YD-

Vlad waited, confused and lying awkwardly on the bed. Ingrid huffed, shifting both of them around until she was... if Vlad didn't know better, he'd call it cuddling him. Lying there expecting to be punched or wake up from the surreal dream any moment, Vlad slowly relaxed when the low sound of breathing and her closed eyes suggested Ingrid had actually gone to sleep.

Lying there thinking, Vlad tried to work out what could have prompted it, before realising why she hadn't said anything.

Ingrid was scared.

He had his suspicions before; her life was about to completely change, and she'd had far less time to adjust to the idea than he had. And while she'd fronted it well, even when their relationship had been rocked and thrown away to be replaced by something else when they discovered they were half siblings, Vlad supposed it wasn't surprising that she was jarred by it all.

Potentially saying goodbye to her mother and her brother for all eternity too... Vlad could stake his dad some days, but he'd definitely still feel some serious hurt by losing the crotchety old bat.

Vlad took a while to drift off, still half-certain he was dreaming and not keen on waking up from it if he was. It had been a while since he'd felt Ingrid against him, even through pyjamas and when they were no longer... intimate, and he shamefully committed it all to memory again. Her skin was cooler than he remembered it being, which wasn't actually that weird now he thought about it.

He woke very confused, sharp pain in his neck telling that it wasn't a dream but Ingrid was very definitely on top of him. It was achingly familiar and he really needed to stop her, but Ingrid was sucking at his neck hard enough to make him dizzy even if she hadn't broken skin, cold fingers twisting tightly in his hair to pull his head to the side, exposing more of his throat to hungry teeth. It was too much for him to take, especially when he was painfully hard and it was Ingrid, and his body simply did not care that they should stop, all but forgotten they were siblings as Ingrid pressed tighter against him.

Vlad came with a pathetic, choked whimper, his twitching and the wet sensation against her thigh as his pyjamas grew damp seemed to jar Ingrid out of her stupor. She pushed up away from him, his neck wet and pulsing with pain and while it could have been saliva, Vlad wouldn't have been surprised to look and see blood.

She looked as unsure as him, and Vlad couldn't blame her when Ingrid vanished, moving almost as fast as she would after coming out of the Mirror room later. Oh bats, the transformation. He definitely needed to get cleaned up before they went downstairs; he didn't want to explain to his father why he smelled of Ingrid and sex when even his obtuse idiot of a dad knew Ingrid was his daughter, and so Vlad shouldn't be doing anything like that with her anymore.

And Ingrid could sense the arousal on the air too, wrinkling her nose when she came back from the bathroom, fully dressed and not looking at him properly. Vlad grabbed clean clothes and went to get rid of the evidence, as it were, peeling off his soiled bottoms and rinsing off under the shower before he put on clothes for the day. Only then did he brave looking in the mirror, a stark purple mark covering his neck and there was definitely broken skin. Dabbing the breaks with a cleaning solution, Vlad hissed in pain. He grabbed a jumper in his room, hoping the hood would help mask the bite marks.

"You ready?"

Ingrid shrugged, pressing her hand to her chest with a thoughtful expression.

"No heartbeat? Yeah, that's normal. A bitten half-fang loses their pulse and stops needing to breathe even before their fangs come in. Come on."

Ingrid might not want to talk to him, but he wasn't going to cold shoulder her on that day of all days. When he got downstairs, he groaned hearing his father crowing on about the coronation of the Grand High Vampire, brain unhelpfully offering memories of those damned dreams and the whole 'chosen one' thing. Which then led to him thinking about how the dreams had picked Ingrid, and how Ingrid had just...

Tearing his mind away, Vlad shoved dry cornflakes in his mouth for a distraction, Ingrid seeming unsure (a rare occurrence in itself) on what to do, standing off to the side and jumping with a hiss when a beam of sunlight crept through a crack in the window covers, burning her hand.

That, more than anything, seemed to really drive it home for her that she was actually a vampire. No heartbeat, no sunshine. Now all that was left...

The castle bell tolled, deafening to the point Ingrid covered her ears and winced in pain. Vlad sympathised, glaring at his dad until the Count acknowledged the ringing bell, which silenced it.

"Oh. Happy birthday, by the way."

It only properly occurred to him then, and Ingrid gave him an unreadable look before nodding stiffly.

"Are we doing this then?"

Washing down his cornflakes with what Vlad strongly suspected was a drink Renfield had made a few days ago, the taste bitter and a little off, Vlad coughed up a burp before he got up, leading Ingrid down the winding halls of the castle, ignoring cobwebs and dust and the occasional bit of floor that completely gave way and seemed to go right to the bottom of the large hill the castle was on... until they came to the door that seperated them from the Blood Mirror.

"How long will I be in there?"

"Anyones guess. Could be minutes, could be hours. I think the record is a week, but that seems to have been someone who didn't want to merge so it was probably more of a stalemate than a transformation."

Ingrid reached for the handle, then dropped her hand.

"Will you be here?"

Her voice was small, quiet, as though if he didn't hear it Vlad couldn't mock her nerves.

"If I'm not here when you come out, I've only gone as far as the loo."

Ingrid wrinkled her nose in distaste, but it seemed to be enough for her to reach for the door again. It didn't open, which made her frown deepen.

"What's going on?"

"Oh" Vlad took a few steps back "the knights recognised someone who shouldn't be there. Try again."

Sure enough, with Vlad not close enough to interfere, the door swung open at last. Ingrid stepped through, and the door slammed shut behind her. Vlad walked a few steps to the side, boosting himself up on to the rocky seating area that he was pretty sure was just an old coffin stand shoved against the wall, and settled in for the duration.

-YD-

Sorry, shorter chapter, but it's alllll coming together, I promise.