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Mina used to prefer white wines.
He’s poured a glass for her, which waits on the table next to his own red.
His wife joins him when he dines, when he drinks. She cannot partake of the meal, not any more, but she offers the pretense and her company so that Jonathan doesn’t have to drink alone.
She never drinks alone these days.
The room is lavishly opulent by Jonathan’s standards, demure in comparison to the other chambers of the castle. The dark drapes by the window sway gently back and forth, moved by the midnight breeze. A fire blazes in the hearth, sending shadows dancing across fading, once-magnificent wallpaper.
There’s a bookcase now, that Jonathan had lugged in for comfort to the room he’s claimed as his own.
And, on the table next to the wine: a mirror.
There’s no shortage of fine vintage in the Count’s home, but the mirror is an object of some rarity. Mina had found it while exploring the many wings of the castle, looking as always for information, for order, for explanation. The looking-glass had been tucked in a drawer, shrouded in silk and memories. Jonathan has the mirror now too in his room, as a small defiance. Surely not for vanity’s sake.
Jonathan sits at the mirror and studies his pale reflection, not entirely sure what he seeks to find. Damnation, perhaps. But if it’s in the glass, he cannot decipher such in his own beseeching eyes. Maybe he only looks to see that he still recognizes the man that married Mina. As he understands things, she’ll look exactly as she does, his newlywed bride, for years to come. It’s folly to think he’d see the passage of only a month inscribed on his face, written in wrinkles, but he cannot help but feel every grain of sand that falls in the hourglass like a vast weight upon his back.
He slowly brings his hands to the dove-gray silk scarf he’s taken to wearing around his neck, with the Count’s approval. He’s not trying to present himself coquettishly, not teasing with a veil so easily removed. It’s more that it seems to allow both the vampires of the castle a modicum of self-control, not having to always see the marks they leave. His neck looks for the moment unblemished, save for a faint lilac shadowing over his pulse. He experimentally trails a finger along the skin, testing for soreness.
Jonathan startles when a long, sharp nail strokes over the path he’d traced, and a cold hand wraps gently around his throat.
The Count’s grip is careful, meant only to hold him in place while the vampire explores his skin, whispering his fingertips across his neck in a gentle back and forth that makes Jonathan shiver.
He sees in the mirror only his own face, and watches with no small amount of shame as his reflection flushes.
“Are you cold, Jonathan?” the Count asks, soft and solicitous. “Shall I fetch you some hot spiced wine? Bring you a fur cloak that’s been warmed by the fire?”
Jonathan attempts to shake his head, but held as he is it serves only to allow the Count to caress the side of his throat.
“No, though I thank you,” he says, managing the manners the Count demands from both him and Mina. He does not want Dracula’s supposed kindnesses, to accept the pre-offered rose only for thorns to embed themselves in his trusting hand.
…And yet, there have been times when the count has been curiously intense in his care of Jonathan. In his care of them both.
“I was only surprised,” Jonathan says, and continues to watch his reflection resolutely lie. He makes a half-motion to stand. As expected, the vampire’s hand keeps him pressed into the chair. “I didn’t hear you enter.”
“Is that so,” the Count muses. “I believe you, my friend. You didn’t hear either of us enter.”
Jonathan turns to check; indeed, his wife stands on his other side. He hadn’t heard her, had no idea she’d entered the room. Her tread is velveted, her shadow has been stolen. Jonathan alone looks back from the mirror, lost and forlorn.
“I suppose I could be persuaded to wear a bell about my neck, like a cat,” Mina says, and laughs. Her amusement isn’t silvered or otherworldly, it’s the laugh of the woman to whom he’d whispered secrets while they were sweethearts. He’s always delighted in making her smile.
“A charming notion,” Dracula agrees, and soothes his hand over Jonathan’s hair, petting him as one rewards a beloved hound. Jonathan cannot help but to lean into the touch. Glancing upwards, he sees cold approval in the Count’s eyes. “We’ll get one for your husband as well. I know how you two love to do all things together.”
Jonathan’s eyes flick in the mirror to the faint bruises that remain from when they’d last fed on him, and knows he’s been marked more thoroughly with their ownership than a collar could ever, ever signify. A wave of arousal washes through him, so sharp and sudden that he’s left floundering in its wake.
“He’s poured you a drink, my Mina,” the Count observes. He derives a cruel entertainment from both Harkers sitting at a dinner table, playing at being a human married couple. Dracula reaches over Jonathan’s shoulder for the glass of red wine. He moves gracefully, leisurely, as if he has all the time in the world. Jonathan supposes the vampire does. He looks on with some surprise as the Count dips a pointed fingertip elegantly into the red, and then holds his hand above the glass of white. The crimson beads down his pointed nail, impacting off the surface and sinking into the amber wine, a straining spreading scarlet.
Mina strides forward, abruptly taking the wineglass he’d set by the side of the table she favors. “I believe my husband poured this for me.”
“He can give you nothing that it doesn’t please me for him to offer,” the vampire answers, amused by them both, as he so often is. “I am always glad that, through him, you enjoy my hospitality. But his little gifts and offerings do nothing to quiet your thirst, I trust.” He gives her no time to retort, turning his attention back instead towards Jonathan. “And you, my friend. Were you so lost in dreams as to not hear either of us approach? Where have you wandered to in your thoughts?”
His thoughts are of days lost, of damnation. “I was thinking of prayer,” Jonathan begins, and sees Mina flinch from the corner of his eye. Quiet devastation robs him of further speech.
“Prayer,” the Count says as if tasting the word, novel in his mouth. “I see. Though it may be a custom of the English to say their graces before a meal, I do not insist upon such things in my own house.” He flicks the spare droplets of wine from his peculiar hand, and then brings his fingers to Jonathan’s mouth. He’s not quite touching his lips, but surely able to feel the heat of Jonathan’s breath.
Jonathan hesitates, not entirely sure what’s being asked, before dipping his head in a quick kiss to the Count’s fingertips. The vampire laughs brusquely, and trails his nails down to Jonathan’s chin, tipping his head up. Exposing his throat.
For this, he knows what's expected of him. Jonathan slowly begins unbuttoning the front of his shirt.
Dracula continues stroking through his hair in light reward. “I am not unfamiliar with prayer, with begging the wolf at the door for mercy. Would you ask for our mercy, Jonathan? Your beloved needs something more than wine.”
Mina lets out a faint noise of protest, but doesn’t speak to deny this truth.
The Count pats his cheek. “And you, I think, need something more as well. You endure so beautifully, my Jonathan. You’ve found something in our embrace that you crave. But, do you know it?”
Jonathan thinks of the times they’ve fed from him before, of being held by them both, of their deep bruising draughts and possessive kisses until he whimpers and writhes in their grasps. Yes, he too can crave. He looks downwards at his own hands, folded and clasped in his lap, and doesn’t answer.
But the Count lets out a harsh sound of amusement as if he knows his thoughts. He directs Jonathan’s gaze back to the mirror with a firm caress, saying simply, “See yourself.” There is no one else to see. Jonathan is alone in the mirror, and the eagerness in his expression cannot be denied, not even to himself.
The vampire then snaps his fingers imperiously, and beckons. “Come, my Mina, to slake your thirst. As before, this must be done carefully if we are to share this moment. Do not lose yourself.”
“Who are you to caution me about control?” Mina accuses cooly, and Jonathan’s heart leaps into his throat for her bravery. “I’ve seen you become but a beast with a single spilled drop. He’s my husband, my dearest own. You see that you don’t hurt him.”
She’s clearly braced for rage, but the Count simply inclines his head in a courtly fashion, amused and indulgent. As he’s done before, he holds out his palm to Jonathan’s cheek, silently asking for his surrender.
Jonathan rests his head on the vampire’s palm with a tremulous sigh of submission, and hears and feels the vibrations of Dracula’s satisfied growl against one side of his neck.
And then he feels Mina’s fangs sink into his skin: a sharp, terrible pleasure.
He watches his reflection cry out, watches agony and bliss flicker across his face as his wife feeds from him. The Count holds him in place, stroking his face and his hair while he gasps with each of Mina’s swallows, each short breath getting closer and closer to a wail until Dracula silences him with a savage kiss. Even then, the sound of Jonathan’s moans are not entirely muffled.
Mina withdraws and the Count takes his turn on the other side of Jonathan’s throat, approaching with a deliberate drag of his tongue up the length of Jonathan’s neck, a slow, cold taste of his skin that makes him sob.
His wife embraces him affectionately while the Count feeds, brushing her cheek tenderly against his.
“Mina, I love you,” he manages, turning to her clumsily for a kiss on lips already deliciously sore. He wants to say more, but every time the Count swallows against his throat, a steady pull on already purpling skin, he loses his thoughts to the hot swirl of sensation fluttering in his chest. “I, I love you.”
Her mouth tastes of rust, and her eyes are glowing red like the sun seen through stained glass.
“Jonathan,” she murmurs. “I love you so much, my darling,” and she bends her head to drink from him again.
The throbbing of his neck is beginning to find rhythm with the pounding in his chest, with the heat pooling in his groin. He finds himself clutching the front of the Count’s evening jacket to steady himself, a handful of dark velvet crumpled in his fist. “I need,” he begins, scrabbling for a veneer of control, failing as Mina affectionately flicks her tongue across the bite she’d made. “I need…”
“I know what you need,” the Count whispers into his ear. He feels Dracula’s hands turning his head gently, inexorably back to the mirror. As before, he sees only one man, yet now having undergone his own transformation.
Jonathan stares at himself in the glass: pleading, panting, with tears pricking the corners of his eyes. Debauched. He watches the fabric of his shirt ripple as the Count runs a hand down his front, over his stomach, to the fastening of his trousers.
“It’s only fair that you should have pleasure in turn, my Jonathan,” the Count tells him, cold breath tickling the shell of his ear, and then returns to his throat. He mouths at the skin before biting again, more deeply, making Jonathan moan at the sharp sting coupled with an even sharper stab of arousal in his core. He can’t help rolling his hips up into the vampire’s hand, quick shallow juts of his hips with each sip of his blood that the Count takes. Dracula laughs against his throat, a rumble that burns and buzzes across and within his skin.
On his other side, Mina has begun pressing a path of kisses along his collarbone, a necklace of soft there-and-gone affections. Her kisses are gentle and deliberate, as if to prove her self-control. It’s only driving Jonathan further to losing his own.
The Count finishes his current drink of Jonathan’s life, but remains close, holding him, resting his mouth on his pulse, rubbing his prick firmly through his trousers. The vampire’s motions are deliberately slow, as if he’s waiting for something.
“Please touch me,” Jonathan begs with desperation dredged up from his soul, if he still has one. “Please, master.”
The Count purrs against his ear, a pleased, “Good, Jonathan,” and undoes Jonathan’s pants to wrap his hand around his cock. He rubs a thumb across the head of Jonathan’s leaking prick, and the man jolts in his seat, trying not to thrust into the vampire’s hold lest he be disciplined for it. He pants, shaking slightly, as he tries to remain still. The confident ease with which the Count touches him, pleasures him, is nearly as heady as being bitten.
“Master,” Jonathan begs again with a shaky, guttural groan as the Count mouths the hollow of his throat. A trickle of red down his neck fades from his reflection like a conjurer’s trick, and he breathes in Mina’s perfume. She moves to kiss his cheek, and he watches a tear vanish from his face when she drinks those as well.
With that, Jonathan gives himself up to sensation: Mina’s arm around his shoulders and the tickle of her hair pressed against his cheek, the icicle rasp of the Count’s cruel tongue against the bitemarks, Mina’s hand joining the vampire’s to wrap around his cock, the firm pumping of their hands in a steady rhythm finally, finally, and Jonathan comes sobbing for breath.
He’s dizzy afterwards, but that’s no surprise.
Dracula lifts him easily, smoothing back the hair from his forehead, and there’s care in his touch. He picks up the silk scarf as well, but rather than wrapping it around his neck, the Count uses it to brush away a few last stray tears Jonathan had been unaware of.
Jonathan leans his head up against the Count’s chest, resting his warm cheek against cool velvet, imagining it feels so to be embraced by a coffin. He stays floating in that soft place he’s reached, reality several safe shores away. He’s dimly aware that Mina stands by the Count’s side, that the two of them are discussing whether he should eat or rest. He feels Mina’s ice-cold hand slip into his own, and squeezes feebly to offer her what reassurance he can.
The Count’s chuckle rumbles through him, and then lapses back into silence, a stillness that is suddenly uncanny to rest up against.
Jonathan relinquishes Mina’s hand and rests his palm against the Count’s chest, feeling, listening. The Count’s heart, if he has one, does not beat.
“Mina,” he mumbles, and struggles to sit up in sudden alarm. “Mina!”
She rushes to take both his hands, looking down at him with concern. “Dearest, I’m here, I haven’t gone. Some sleep will put you right.”
Her eyes are a beautiful crimson, like a ruby he bought her a lifetime ago. “Where will you be?”
“At your side,” she assures him. “With you.”
Such an assurance from a creature as she’s become would be a promise to strike fear in anyone else’s heart. Jonathan looks muzzily into her face, and cannot see anything but love.
Her promise pacifies his worries, sends his stalking fears scuttling back into the shadows. At least for tonight.
The Count watches them both without comment, for once. Perhaps he’s seen such scenes play out a dozen times, a maudlin melodrama that no longer entertains. But he tucks Jonathan against his chest, a protective heavy arm wrapped around his side, holding him as if he’s precious.
Jonathan lets his head fall back and closes his eyes, content to be carried to the bed and let the world fade away for a brief time.
He has to be awake in a few hours; he promised that he would always watch the night’s fading so that he could describe the dawn.
Mina likes to hear what the sunrise looks like.