museyboxy | Vampire AU

Vampire AU

In Thedas, vampirism is a rare, powerful, and highly unusual form of blood magic that can be directly learned only from hunger demons. It differs from all other forms of blood magic in that it directly changes the user's body, making them into essentially a monster.

How to become one: Becoming a vampire is far more involved than learning simple blood magic. It's a ritual that must be conducted in the waking world, rather than the Fade. Therefore, the hunger demon needs a body. In other words, vampirism requires sacrificing someone to become a hunger abomination. The hunger abomination then feeds the mage their own blood, and drains the mage's blood in return. Once the last drop of living blood is gone from the mage's body, they collapse and the abomination takes them, feeding on them for a night and a day. The second night, the mage rises again as a vampire, and the hunger demon is freed from the bond between them. Most vampires let the abomination go, but many choose to kill their demonic sire, to cover their own tracks.

How common: The choice to become a vampire is a serious one, requiring a real, extremely risky deal with a demon. Albeit one that many end up betraying. Vampirism is most common in Tevinter, but not as much as one might think: the weaknesses of vampirism make the prospect unattractive to many magisters.

Outside of the Imperium, vampires are the subject of legend and folktales, but most folk, common and educated alike, believe them nothing more than ghost stories. The Chantry teaches nothing about them, and most templars believe them a fiction.

Abilities: Vampires can turn others, of course, in all the usual vampire ways. Vampiric abilities (speed, strength, hypnosis, etc) are immune to templar cleansing and dispels, and vampires cannot be tracked using their mage phylacteries.

Vampires have abilities similar to those in True Blood: speed, strength, the ability to sway the minds of others (glamouring/hypnosis), and heightened senses. Vampire mages can all do blood magic (even if they weren't directly turned by a demon, and never directly learned blood magic). Vampiric weaknesses are similar to those in Buffy: sunlight, though they can handle being in shadows, staking, silver, and certain holy symbols- though, ironically, not the Chantry symbol.

Vampires can walk in sunlight, but it hurts their skin and weakens their abilities. If mages, their magic is hampered, giving them the strength of the average Circle mage and nothing more. Their ability to tolerate sunlight increases the more recently they've fed. However, they will always be stronger at night.

Prompts:
1) Sire - make someone a creature of the night.
2) New Blood - maybe you wanted this, maybe it's being done to you. Welcome to vampirism.
3) Victim - some fanger's sticking a straw into you like you're a Capri Sun.
4) Hunter - did a vamp kill your family? Are you a Templar off the reservation? Idk.
5) Harem - that hypnosis thing? Yeah, you're some vampire's pet now.
6) Wild Card - roll your own. Let's get weird.

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"Well I was just doing it, and you didn't notice." And he almost hadn't either, which bothers him more. He opens his eyes, but turns his head to glare obstinately at the back of the clinic. Hawke is only visible in his periphery, and that's how he intends to keep it until she leaves. Or until he does. He has a feeling she won't take this next part well.

"And this is exactly why you shouldn't be here. I can't control it, and you can't stop it from happening. Until one of those things changes, I need you to keep your distance. For both our sakes."

Well... well. That's certainly something. Knowing that he was just using his weird shit on her almost gives her pause, but it also makes her realize how actually dangerous he is. How dangerous it is to have him be like this- untrained, unawares, unable to stop himself.

Hawke has an almost suicidal confidence in her own abilities, and it shines through now. There's nobody better for this task than her- she knows him better than anyone in the city, she's strong, she's clever, and she has her own blood magic if things get out of hand. Besides, Anders is a drama queen on the best of days. Most likely, the 'I can't control it, keep ur distance' thing is more of the same.

"Sorry, I'm not that smart," she quips. "Besides, I can't exactly leave you here all alone now, knowing that you're a vicious powderkeg ready to burst." Sarcasm very much intended, you freckly doofus.

To make her point clearer she gets closer, well aware that proximity on her part will make his control waver. Wanting to force the issue and make him deal with this.

"I'm not going anywhere, Anders."

She puts her hand on his shoulder.

Would it be too much to ask for Hawke to listen to him, just this one time? Anders has always been equal parts irritated and enamored with Hawke’s stubbornness, but he’s firmly on the side of irritated right now. The irritation edges close to panic as she comes closer.

He can hear her. Feel her. She’s the only other living thing in the room, and his every sense is acutely attuned to her and her voice and her body and her blood. The only reason Anders doesn’t move out of her reach, his own pride be damned, is that he can’t quite make himself move. His traitorous body wants her close. It’s not lost on him that she must know that.

But his temporary paralysis lifts the moment Hawke’s hand touches his shoulder.

Anders had been fast before, but nothing like this. He has Hawke pinned to the nearest wall between one heartbeat and the next, his hands pressing her wrists to the wood in an unrelenting grip. It’s not hard enough to bruise, though she won’t be able to get herself out of it with ease.

“Did Varric not tell you what I did to the people who did this to me?” he asks, leaning in much too close. He’s caught in the rush, in his own anger, eyes blazing with that magnetic power from less than a foot away from Hawke’s own. “I drained them, Hawke. Like wineglasses. They were husks by the time I was through. And I enjoyed. Every. Moment. If I ever even came close to doing the same thing to you, I…”

His anger falters, showing the real fear that lies beneath it. Anders leans his forehead very lightly against hers, closing his eyes, his voice pitched low as if sharing a secret.

“I can’t bear the thought of hurting you like that. Let me protect you.”

Honestly, Hawke would be hypnotized even without the help of vampiric thrall. Nobody has ever manhandled her like that in her life, so inhumanly quick, so impossibly strong, and the fact that it's Anders makes her heart pound in her throat with something like a thrill. Then's looming over her, too close, pale pink lips wrapped sensually around cruel words.

Maker, by the time he stops and gets serious, she isn't sure if she's turned on or terrified.

He's begging her. He's truly, genuinely terrified. For once the concept of limits hits her: she pushed him too far, didn't take him seriously enough, didn't take this seriously enough. He's touching her, now, close enough that she can feel his breath (cold, like his body just moves the air without truly warming it). Close enough that-

-she should answer him. Soothe his fears, agree, tell him he's right. Come back later, with a better plan. Later, when he isn't leaned up against her, body so close to hers, mouth a hair's breadth away, confessing that he couldn't bear to hurt her. Later, when she doesn't want to kiss him so badly. Later, when she isn't so very alone, with nobody else in the city who knows where she is tonight.

She tries. To open her mouth, to speak. To give a rare apology- but something stills her tongue. The memory of that blazing anger of a moment ago, when his eyes had seemed to burn with something deeper and older than fire, when her own heartbeat had felt more real than she. Something about that moment- something stops her, makes her limbs heavy, her mind just a tiny bit sluggish.

She tries to ask him to let her go, but all that comes out is a soft whimper at having him so close.

There’s a moment when Anders is hopeful she’ll actually listen. He can almost feel her fear, the way her pulse races faster beneath his touch.

But the words never come. Instead, there’s that soft whimper, so unlike Hawke usually that Anders feels thrown off-balance just by hearing it. But there’s more to it than that. From the sound to the way she remains still beneath his touch, it’s almost like submission. Anders groans quietly, a frustrated sound deep in his throat.

“Hawke, please. I need you to…” To push him away. To make her wants known. He knows it shouldn’t be up to her, that he should be the one to move himself. His actions are not a consequence of hers.

But she’s so close. Warm. Seemingly willing. He shakes his head, trying to throw the thoughts off with that simple motion alone. He swears he can almost hear the blood itself… singing, the way Justice claimed lyrium would. Intoxicating and so, so close.

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it. I… I need to hear you say it.” He swallows hard, a slight tremor running through him. “Marian.”

Let me go, her mind says. Let me go, back up five paces, and let's talk about this. Hawke very much wants him to back up and let her free, to close his eyes and shut off this connection between them, and leave her able to talk about it.

She can't say it. Anders is looking at her again with those golden-amber eyes, the same eyes she's looked at so many times, that she's caught gazing at her glittering with something that made her wonder about their flirting. This time those eyes draw her in, snapping soft shackles and gentle chains around her so she can't move, so she can't say what she wants to say.

He's so close. So close, and Hawke has dreamed of moments like this. Of his lips so close to hers, of stolen time, of confessions and feelings and kissing so hard she never wants to let him go.

Let me go. Kiss me. You're scaring me. I want you. These things fight for primacy in her head, and the soft shackles of blood magic weighing down her better judgment still her tongue.

What comes out is: "I don't know."

Anders knows what it feels like now, when he uses his newfound magic unwittingly. He should be able to recognize it in this moment and stop it from going further. But he’s in the sway of his hunger as much as Hawke is, in a different sort of way. And aside from the vampirism and the call of her blood, there’s the fact that Anders has wanted Hawke in so many ways for so long. It’s difficult to untangle that desire from all the rest. He leans back, just enough so that he can release Hawke’s wrists and use one hand to tilt her head back by her chin, keeping eye-contact with her the entire time. His eyes are less their usual amber now and more pupil, the darkness magnetic. And when he speaks, his voice echoes with the soft, subtle cadence of suggestion.

“It’s so difficult to fight this.” He sounds a bit lost as he says it, his thumb gently brushing Hawke’s bottom lip. But his fear from just moments before is no longer there. He’s falling back under the sway of Hawke’s heartbeat, and the thrill he’s always gotten from having her close.

“What would please you most?”

It’s almost the same question as before, but inherently different due to how he asks it. This sounds more like a question one would ask in a bedroom, not a question of desperation. And his magic doesn’t help, subtly working on Hawke, turning her thoughts from the potential horror of his teeth to the underlying desire they share.

Anders leans close again, nose brushing Hawke’s as his lips hover over hers.

“Tell me… and I’ll give it to you. What I want. What you want.”

It's so difficult to fight this, he says, voice thrumming with magic. So don't, it answers in her mind. Oh, and he's tilting her head, and touching her lip, and-

Her breath catches and her heartbeat quickens, buffeted in a powerful surge of want from deep within her. This closeness, his touch: she's dreamed of it for so long, and to have him here now, looking at her like that, asking her questions like that, is almost too much to bear.

Let me go. Kiss me. You're scaring me. I want you. Once more warring urges fight in her mind. The soft chains of thralldom won't let her speak her mind, and the iron will still fighting deep under layers of blood magic won't let her give in.

In the end, something far baser wins out. He's so close, close enough to kiss, and though the struggle inside her keeps her from kissing him - it would be dangerous, she doesn't want it like this - she manages to force out an answer. A simple truth. The only thing she can manage right now. Something that's been true for a long time.

"I've always wanted to kiss you."

She doesn't say she wants it now. But, ah- she's always wanted it in the past.

With that answer, there should be nothing left to keep Anders from closing the distance between them. His own misgivings are buried beneath layers of hunger and want, putting him in a state of almost eerie calm compared to the near panic from moments before.

But it's not just the vampiric hunger. Anders has ached to hear those words from Hawke for years now. And it's the truth. Anders can feel that somehow, just by listening to the cadence of Hawke's voice. She isn't lying to him.

But it isn't the entire truth, either.

"That isn't what I asked." Anders turns his head, pressing a kiss to Hawke's cheek rather than her mouth. "Do you know how long I've wanted to hear that?" he asks, a hint of his usual tone breaking through the smoother, more seductive tone his voice had taken on. "How long I've wanted..."

He trails off, the admission winning out over his baser instincts for the time being. Perhaps his monstrous side is content with the fact that Hawke is already in his grasp, and that he doesn't need to fight to keep her there. It gives the humanity in him room to speak.

"Speak freely, Hawke," he murmurs, magic lacing his words as his lips move to her ear. "What would you have me do?"

Despite the very real fear in her, sinking down so far now that she can hardly see it, it's drowning in an ocean of suggestion, magic, and desire. Hawke has wanted him for... oh, so long. The magic laced into his words and threading her mind whispers about years of desire, of how close he is, how easily she could feel his heart beat so close to hers. She hears how badly he wants her, realizes he's wanted her for how long? Maybe almost as long as she's wanted him.

In truth, she gave in a few minutes ago. When the moment came to tell him to back off, and all she could summon was a whimper, she was his. All that's left to do is stop fighting it. This is Anders- it's Anders, the man who cares so much for so many, and he cares enough now to ask her.

There's no way for her to say let me go, not with his cheek almost to hers and his lips at her ear. Not with his claws sunk deep into her mind, not with his body against her. There's no way to say no, so she says the only thing she has left:

"Kiss me."

With that simple sentence, Anders has no reserves left with which to put this off any longer.

Not that he wants to. He's never wanted to hold back, not really, not with Hawke. Yet he always has: for his own sake, but for her's as well. Nothing good could come of getting close, or so he'd always told himself. It would be nothing but pain for them both.

But this? This is the opposite of pain. It's warmth, and desire, and hunger that pleasantly buzzes through his whole body. It had hurt, once. Now, with the promise of being satiated soon, the edge of that pain is blunted by anticipation. Soon.

Anders turns his head and cups Hawke's face with one hand as he leans in, brushing his lips over hers. His fingers tremble against her skin at the first, soft touch; but it's not long before the kiss deepens, Anders closing what distance there is between them with a quiet groan.

He needs her. He needs more. In mere seconds, everything in Anders's being has shifted solely towards want. He pins Hawke thoroughly to the wall with his body, kissing her with a growing heat of years' worth of restrained passion. If there was a Point of No Return, they've just crossed it.

If his fingers tremble against her at first, she trembles against him just as well: from the struggle still roiling within her, from the blood magic pulsing beneath her skin, from the sheer depths of her want coupled by the sharp sting of her fear. Marian can't pull away, she can't put voice to the protests she longs to say, but his kiss sweeps her up with a longing so pure she can feel an actual ache between her legs. A soft, needy whimper drowns in their kiss, lost in their mouths and the caress of tongues, of him claiming her mouth passionately.

Her hands flex and clench in the air above her head as she pulls lightly, futilely, against his irresistible grip. The sheer strength in him makes her weak, the heat between them pulling her mind down to a soft, warm, senseless place where everything is blurred, where her fears and worries and wants wash away in the river, where all of her pours out to fill up with him. A place where his wants are her wants- where she submits entirely to his will. It's terrifying, and the internal struggle she gives against the weight dragging her down comes through as a soft moan in her throat, and a brief struggle against him- that feels more like she's grinding against his leg, or moving with him.

Edited 2018-06-17 23:47 (UTC)

The kiss is the culmination of every desire Anders has felt toward Marian in all the years he's known her: physical and emotional both, the physicality a combination of human and inhuman desires. And he can feel its echo in her, either through his heightened senses or the blood magic or both. She wants as he wants, and he's drawn to that need like a moth to a flame.

Anders hums softly into the kiss, an encouraging, soothing sound, while his hands loosen on Marian's hands. His fingers trace light paths down her forearms, feeling the warmth of her skin and the beat of her heart beneath. Perfect. She is perfect, and his magic works on her with that same sentiment. A sense of perfection, of rightness. Everything is fine. More than fine, even.

His hands roam further, slipping down over Marian's shoulders and catching on her clothes, particularly the material at her neck. The rapid beat of her heart thrums with a hypnotic rhythm that has him moaning softly into her mouth.

When he finally pulls away, his eyes are bright with both arousal and a new, unnatural light.

"... I need..."

His hands speak for him, tracing the pulse point at Marian's throat.

"... you. All of you."

When his hands move down she drops her arms, clutching at his shoulders like a lifeline, like he's the only thing keeping her afloat. Maker, it may only be a kiss, but it feels so good already- she wants him so badly, she's wanted him for years, and nothing has ever felt more right than this.

Distantly, Marian wonders what she was ever uncertain about. Why did she fight this? Why would she fight against something that has his body pinning hers to the wall, hands on her bare skin, his tongue stroking softly against hers, Anders's soft moan lost in their mouths?

Then he's speaking, resting a hand at her throat and professing a need that makes her gasp. It's not surprise, exactly- it's something softer. The gentle chains of blood magic closing in around her almost made her forget about his fangs and his hunger, so to be reminded of it now is almost shocking. Almost.

But that's okay. Everything is fine- better than fine. This is right, she knows that. This is how things are supposed to go. She's meant to bare her throat for him, and he's meant to move in closer.

Marian is just about to tilt her head back and say yes (yes, of course, of course she'll give of herself- it would be selfish not to, unthinkable, she wants him-) when something roars from deep inside her. It screams for her to push him away, to run, to scream, to fight. But the voice is distant and the blood magic is strong, and for all her efforts to obey that voice, part of her is also trying to follow Anders. She tries to- to something, but succeeds only in writhing helplessly in his hands.

A hand comes up to grip his wrist. It might be an answer, if Anders can interpret it.

Edited 2018-06-29 10:09 (UTC)

Anders's gaze drops down her hand, the smallest furrow between his eyes. Were he completely of his own mind, he would stop there. Truthfully, he would have stopped long ago and had Hawke locked out on the street for her own safety. Anyone she might meet in Darktown at this hour would be safer than him.

But he isn't Anders now, not completely. Or he is Anders, merely... a different facet. He isn't fully in the throes of starvation yet, and so he is both the human the inhuman together, watching Hawke from behind his honey-gold eyes.

"I won't hurt you," he says, and he means it. Hurting her and drinking from her, they aren't the same thing. "I would never... you're mine, Marian." And there it is, a dark undercurrent in his voice and a sentiment he would never presume otherwise, and will be embarrassed to remember later.

He pulls his hand away from her throat, bringing the hand Hawke has clenched around his wrist to his mouth. He kisses her fingers, one by one, never looking away from her bespelled eyes.

"And I am yours," he practically purrs, the vampiric aspect in him not at all opposed to that thought. She gives him what he needs, and in turn, he gives her what she desires. His magic reminds her just what form that desire takes with a gentle pulse of power that rolls through her body and mind both. No, he will not leave her wanting.

"Trust me," he says against the skin on the back of her hand, fangs flashing in the low light but not bared to bite. For now, at least, he seems content to wait.

That sentiment that Anders lets slip burrows its way into her mind, growing into the crevices like ivy until it’s all she can we. He is hers and she is his. Marian has thought of that, dreamed of it, for such a long time. And here he is, kissing her gently and promising to give her everything she wants.

Everything she wants- that’s to give over to him, isn’t it? She’s quite sure that what she wants is to submit to him, to tilt her head back and bare her throat and help him. She should help him. She loves him. He needs her. Anders needs her.

“I love you,” she murmurs almost absently, eyes caught on those glittering fangs. Stripped of her defenses and her will, the words come out as soon as she knows they’re true. There’s no hiding anything right now. Blue eyes never leaving his, she tilts her head to the side, baring her throat for him.

Anders goes entirely too still, his dark eyes wide as he stares at Marian's face. Even as lost as he is, those words reach whatever humanity is left in him. His grip on her wrist tightens almost imperceptibly.

He has dreamed of hearing her say that. Selfish as it was, dangerous as it was, he hadn't been able to stop. In his weakest moments, Anders had even imagined himself telling her the same. I love you. I've loved you for years. At this point, I don't think I could ever stop.

If she had said that at literally any other time, absolutely nothing else would have mattered.

But of course, the hunger can't be forgotten for long. It surges back up with a vengeance, and Anders can't help himself. He leans in, nuzzling against the column of her throat that she'd bared so willingly.

"And I love you," he whispers against her skin, his voice almost sounding normal in that moment. If one didn't look too closely, they might mistake Anders and Hawke for two lovers in an embrace. Perhaps they wouldn't even notice the way Anders sinks his fangs into Hawke's skin without even a bit of hesitation.

Mine. Yours. Need and want and love and hunger. The lines between them all are blurred beyond recognition, now. Anders groans as he presses Hawke back to the wall with the weight of his body once again. For Hawke, there may be just a few seconds of pain initially; but Anders's magic makes quick work of it. It's so easy when you have access to someone's blood to make pain feel like pleasure.

Marian lets out a soft, pained cry at the first bite, trying to struggle with limbs that barely move and a body firmly held in place. It's a bare thing: she scarcely manages more than a leaden squirm in his arms, that rubs their hips together and does nothing to free her. Even that little takes enormous effort- but she must, because something inside her rages and bangs its fists. Something inside her is terrified, is horrified, knows that this is wrong.

But it feels so good. The pain melts soon into pleasure that has her gasping and letting out a quiet, wordless whimper. One hand comes up to grip at his robes, nails digging into the fabric on his back. The other is pinned to the wall, as helpless as she feels with his fangs in her neck.

There's something unsettling about the feeling of blood leaving her body, of the life-force leaving her... but every time her mind tries to pursue it, to grab hold of that thought, the blood magic gently steers her away. The gentle magic filling her with pulses of pleasure when he drinks her, that makes the sensation of being fed on feel like a hand between her legs- that same magic is still trying to drag her mind down, to a dark, warm place where her will is gone, where everything she wants is what he wants.

Gradually, it begins to work. Her mind fills with the echoes of his want, with the toll of his hunger, and how much he wants her to hold still and let him feed. Her writhing calms.

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Vampire AU

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