Chapter Text
Trevor doesn’t notice it at first.
In his defence, this is largely because, despite the combined efforts of Sypha and Alucard (who he’d like everyone to know is still a bastard), he is painfully fucking human, and it takes two weeks of bed rest after his fight with Death to even be able to walk. (Even then, he’s left with a shoulder that twinges every time he uses it - and a scar that wraps the length of his right arm - but what’s another couple of bloody injuries? Trevor’s nothing but aches and pains these days, and at the very least he catches up on months of lost sleep).
If anyone were ever to ask, Trevor would say he noticed in the first few weeks after he started walking again.
But that would make him even more of a liar.
**
One morning Sypha sends him away for being too distracting (“right now you are being a pain worse than sitting in stinging nettles Trevor Belmont”). So, he takes it upon himself to explore the castle grounds. This involves navigating the piles of shit that come with building a whole fucking town and trying to visualise where the shit is even meant to go.
But Trevor was never the most careful of people, and he growls a sharp, “fuck,” as his booted foot connects with a beam.
“Whatever have you done now Belmont?” Alucard drawls, appearing in front of him, leaning dramatically against a pile of bricks.
“Stubbed my fucking toe.”
“Shall we add gracefulness to your list of abilities?”
Trevor turns his face to hide a smile. “You’re a dick.”
“How did I forget how charming you were?” Alucard drawls with a quirked mouth, no heat behind his words.
Only when Trevor shuffles away, pulling the finger at the dhampir as he goes, does it occur to him that Alucard had been in the hold less than a minute earlier.
**
Trevor reels back from the beam that just smashed him in the forehead. “Absolute pile of shitting bollocks!”
He hears laughter and turns to see Greta not even bothering to hide her mirth, shoulders shaking.
Trevor pulls the finger at her. His forehead throbs.
She doesn’t react, aside from a toss of her dark hair and the arch of her eyebrow. “I can see where Alucard got his foul mouth from now… Certainly wasn’t from the stick up his arse.”
Oh, Trevor likes this one.
**
Trevor is rounding a corner in the castle when he catches a flash of wildfire hair in the chest of a polished suit of armour.
Curious, he continues with his documentation of one of the many rooms in the castle (Sypha decided a comprehensive map would be ‘beneficial to know what they were actually dealing with.’ Alucard was wise not to argue). When Sypha finally jumps at him with a roar when he exits the fourth room - filled with a collection of vases - Trevor is ready to catch her.
She laughs, throaty and loud, throwing her arms over his shoulders as he grips her carefully by the waist.
“How long have you been following me?”
Her sapphire eyes sparkle down at him. “You, Trevor Belmont, must be losing your touch.” A while then. And then, because she’s Sypha, she bites his ear.
Trevor may be many things and may be amenable to most of them, but there could be children around. So he lifts her squirming body away from himself with only a muted twinge in his shoulder. “How does anyone think you’re the sensible one? You’re as crazy as a bag of cats.”
She laughs, tugging the hair at the nape of his neck. “It’s just part of my charm, Treffy.”
**
Trevor is just beginning to drift off when a surprisingly warm foot draws itself up his calf.
Eyes shut and breathing slow, on the precipice of unconsciousness, he is determined to ignore it.
The foot only becomes more intent on winding itself between his knees.
Eventually, he cracks open an eye. It’s heavy with effort. “Sypha, stop that,” he mumbles, face sunk into the pillow. For a blessed second, it’s quiet.
Then Sypha jabs him in the side, right into a spot sensitive with scar tissue.
His body jolts. “Fuck off,” Trevor grunts automatically.
“Never~” she sings, close enough in the faded dark of the room for her breath to tickle his ear.
Knowing her as well as he does, Trevor manages to smack her hand away when she goes to do it again.
Sypha just wiggles further into his space. Thankfully, once her ginger head is nestled under his chin, she quietens back down.
Arms full, Trevor is pulled back into a rare dreamless sleep.
**
“I was just starting to wonder if you’d fallen in a hole and died Belmont.”
Trevor pulls the finger at the all-too-smug dhampir. (Since the both of them were both relatively unused to people, especially a town full, they had started taking dinner in the kitchens every alternate night. He wasn’t quite sure when it had become a tradition). “Didn't know you cared. What’s for dinner?”
“Stew.”
Trevor groans. His stomach gurgles. Sypha may be good at many things, but cooking? Cycling between tasteless sludge with portions to feed an army and bubbling pots filled with vibrant colours and just plain wrong smells, no one trusted the Speaker in the kitchen. Stew just happened to be her latest obsession (in the past three weeks there had been so many fucking varieties of stew that it was practically coming out of their dicks)... But when Sypha wanted to do something, it was very hard to stop her.
“Do not worry, I oversaw,” Alucard says, turning towards the bubbling pot, framed from the back by the setting sunlight. He ladles the stew into two bowls and brings them over, managing to avoid spilling any on his billowy white shirt (which Trevor is not jealous of).
Trevor uncrosses his arms from his chest, hooking a stool closer with his ankle and plopping heavily into it. “How many times did she try to add that old goat meat?”
“No less than seven.”
They both chuckle.
Soon, with their focus on their food, they slip into a companionable silence that lingers until the clinks of their spoons against the bowls stop. The slowly darkening sky throws out its colours in vain and the orange, yellow, and pink slanting through stained glass paints Alucard in a light too bright to see.
However, when he stands, Trevor’s eyes catch on the dhampir’s arm. Where Alucard’s sleeve has slipped down, an angry red scar winds itself around his arm. Cut deep into his skin, the line is ugly and harsh, with edges blurred it almost looks like a ligature wound.
It takes a lot to scar a dhampir.
“How the fuck did you get that?” Trevor blurts.
“A misfortunate slip in judgement,” Alucard replies, shaking his sleeve back down. He looks away. His jaw clenches. Sombre. Closed off. It's almost like Trevor is looking at the Alucard they met months ago.
Sypha would know how to tease it out of him, but Trevor senses it is not the time to push.
So he picks a fight instead, “Like you holding your spoon like a posh git?”
He’s not fast enough to dodge the utensil thrown in response and the stew spoon splatters across his black tunic. The thump only stings slightly, but it’s enough to bring a small smug smile to Alucard’s mouth.
**
Trevor dodges yet another child, cursing quietly as the movement pulls at his hip. “Why are there so many bloody children?”
Greta just laughs at him, clucking her tongue as she pores over her scroll.
Despite everything, Trevor doesn’t actually hate having more people around, mainly because they aren’t the people who excommunicated and killed his family - they all died in the first attack which he is somewhat grateful for - but they also interact freely and kindly with both Sypha and Alucard. Which is rare. Sypha had chided him with a try not to look so scared of them, they’re nice people. But she has always been more awkward with children than he has - “but you’re a Speaker,” “did you see any children in my group? they’re unpredictable, odd little things.” Trevor actually doesn’t mind kids - they always tended to be kinder than their adult counterparts- they didn’t know or care what a Belmont was. Plus he’d had a big family.
“Excuse me,” comes a voice with a tug of his cloak.
“What?” It comes out gruff and he internally winces. Just because he likes children doesn’t mean he knows how to handle them anymore.
A small child with fair hair, brown eyes, and a missing tooth stares up at him. “Can I hide in your cloak?”
Trevor is bewildered enough that his mouth says, “Sure kid.”
Now there’s a kid hiding in his cloak.
“I’m Timmy by the way,” comes the muffled voice.
“Trevor,” he replies, giving Greta a panicked look.
The woman just laughs. Tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear and turns back to her inventory. Bitch.
Trevor stands there for longer than he’d care to admit. But standing motionless in the middle of the yard next to the animal pens garners him a few odd looks. “Timmy?” He says, feeling very stupid talking to his cloak.
“Yeah?” comes back the matching whisper.
He feels out of depth. Wrong-footed. “Why the fu- why are you hiding exactly?”
“Hide and seek!” is all Timmy offers.
“Right.” This is fine.
“You look like a goat kicked you in the balls, Belmont,” Greta says.
Trevor flips her the finger but Timmy must find it hilarious because he starts laughing. High little giggles that were most likely tipped off by an adult saying a naughty word.
“He’s coming,” Greta warns, before swanning away, slinging her hammer over her shoulder.
Alucard comes striding up to him, followed by a swarm of children. Cocks his head. “Now, why is your cloak laughing, Belmont?”
“It isn’t,” Trevor lies belligerently.
Cocking a pale eyebrow, Alucard crouches down - in a way that shouldn’t be possible with how tight his pants are - to address Trevor’s cloak with no small amount of grandiosity, “Timothy?”
Timmy pops his head out, “how do you always find us?!”
“Ah ah, can’t give away all of my secrets,” Alucard says, tapping the child’s nose with a small little smile. “Until next time.”
“Okay bye!” Timmy calls, immediately running off to join the gaggle of kids doing whatever kids do.
“Trevor Belmont, letting a kid hide in his cloak,” Alucard drawls, honey-coloured eyes dancing with no small amount of mirth, tutting, “what would people think if they knew he was not as much of a bastard as he portrays?”
Trevor pats his pockets for something to throw but comes up short. Settles for pulling his middle finger out of the depths of his cloak.
Alucard’s laugh lingers long after he leaves.
**
Not that long after, Alucard finds him again, appearing next to Trevor as he swings an axe at the base of a tree in an attempt to fell more wood for houses. The quip about Alucard actively seeking out his company dies in Trevor’s mouth at the furrow in the dhampir’s brow.
“It is going to storm. We need to muster everyone inside.”
Trevor tips his chin back. The sky above the hold is a clear blue. Any darkening clouds seem miles away. Shrugs. Settles on, “alright. How do you know?”
“I can smell it.”
Fucking dhampirs.
“What’s the plan?”
“Greta and Sypha are handling the villages - they’re moving them and the animals into the castle. We shall secure what needs to be out here.”
Trevor surveys the partially-built structures that stretch across the castle grounds. Abandons his axe, and moves to keep pace with Alucard as he strides off. “Will the foundations hold up?”
“I am unsure. But the animals have already been herded in, as this was a contingency Greta and I had planned for.”
“Where are we going first then?”
Alucard’s face is grim. “To secure the hold.”
The half-completed repairs Alucard had managed in the time Sypha and Trevor were gone are what mainly needs to be secured - so they simply nail planks across the exposed entrance. Between them both, with the use of dhampir strength and speed, it makes for quick work. Sypha appears part-way through, with a nod towards Alucard, and begins engraving what protective magic she can into the wood.
As they are finishing up there is a deep rumble. The sky practically splits open. Rain upends itself on them.
Attempting to oversee the rest of the ‘town’ for stragglers or things missed, leads to the three of them being soaked to the bone in mere minutes. Once the last section has been checked, they make a run for it.
Alucard keeps pace with them in his wolf form while Sypha leans on Trevor so she doesn’t slip in her sandals - for some reason she does not use her magic to shield them and she’s as drenched as them when they burst through the castle’s front door.
Trevor collapses against the heavy wood when they push them closed. His boots squelch. He makes eye contact with Sypha, her hair a darker shade of orange from the wet, plastered to her forehead. She starts to giggle. She giggles harder when the wolf shakes its fur violently, and the dirty droplets flick up into Trevor’s face. The wolf makes a deep chuff in its chest, tongue lolling out.
Despite himself, Trevor starts to chuckle.
When they turn away from one another, almost simultaneously, around fifty pairs of eyes blink back at them owlishly.
It only makes them all laugh harder.
**
Trevor isn’t sure what wakes him, but between one breath and the next, his eyes are open. Sypha snuffles in her sleep. Outside, the rain lashes at the windows. A flash of lightning illuminates a shadow in the doorway.
“Alucard?” Trevor says, half-asleep, but knowing that silhouette anywhere. Rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, he pushes back the covers and heads out of the room.
It does not take long to find him.
Alucard stands in front of the large window at the end of the corridor. The faint moonlight that slants down paints him in a pale grey. In the distance, mist paints the tops of dark mountains.
The dhampir turns enough to show a singular eye. “I did not mean to wake you.”
Trevor leans against the wall, arms crossed. “Almost forgot how bloody melodramatic you were.”
Standing as he is, in front of stained glass in the middle of the night? Come on.
Alucard’s chuckle, although it bares the edge of a fang, is a little tired, a little fake.
“When was the last time you slept?”
“Oh Belmont you care,” Alucard simpers, but Trevor is not so easily deflected. Not like he used to be.
So he waits.
Alucard sniffs. “You and Sypha are like dogs with a bone. At least she possesses an ounce of decorum.”
“Fuck you,” Trevor replies easily, no real heat in it. Then he shifts foot to foot, his body losing the last of its bed-warmth; the chill of the stone and the cold draught it brings stings his skin.
“Always half thinking things through aren’t you Belmont,” Alucard says, lips quirking.
“Well I was bloody sleeping, wasn’t I? You’re lucky I don’t sleep naked.”
Alucard rolls his eyes at that, but then he quiets, gaze turning back out the window. Rain runs rivets down the glass.
Faced with the unwelcoming black of leather, Trevor takes a step closer; his feet numb against the ground. “And the townspeople?” He prompts. (Under Greta and Sypha’s competent hands, everything had almost fallen into order too easily in the ample space - it helped that these people had faced much worse in the interim - but they had been rather nervous about the fate of their emerging city).
“They’re all asleep.”
“Safe,” Trevor states. Almost challenges.
One that Alucard does not immediately rise to, as before he can say anything else, there’s a grumble from the nearest doorway.
Sypha is standing there, cocooned in a gigantic blanket. All that can be seen is a shock of vibrant hair and one half-open sapphire eye. “Come back to bed,” she mutters, rumpled. She mumbles something intelligible and shuffles back off. (Sypha sleeps like the dead and he is confident she won’t remember this in the morning).
Trevor turns back before Alucard can hide his soft look behind cool neutrality. There’s something young, something vulnerable, in the dhampir’s face and in the soft-looking sleep clothes under his leather coat. So Trevor settles on a simple, “Goodnight Alucard.”
“Goodnight… Trevor.”
**
In four days, when the storm completely passes, everybody gladly ventures outside. The kids in particular careen off, screaming in delight at the puddles of mud and various bugs. All in all, nothing is too badly damaged - but the vegetable gardens have suffered and a few of the housing frames will have to be rebuilt.
Trevor, along with all of the other adults, makes himself useful.
“Thank you, sir!” One woman says when he drops the bales of hay at her feet. She smiles up at him, kind eyes squinted against the burgeoning brightness of the sun.
Trevor scratches at his head with empty hands. “Uh, you’re welcome.” (Trevor Belmont, fighter and killer of demons, last of the Belmont name, absolutely does not bid a hasty exit from a simple shepherd woman, no sir).
“They’re good people,” Greta says, suddenly at his side. She slugs him on the shoulder. “You saved them. They don’t give a shit about your name or nasty rumours.”
Fuck she punches hard. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
She snorts.
Then Trevor almost throws his back out transferring bricks and is bullied into sitting down by Sypha, Greta and several of the village women.
Slouching so he looks asleep, Trevor leans against the tree with his chin tucked into his cloak, watching Sypha with half-opened eyes as she directs the rebuilding efforts to what is left of the vegetable garden.
Minutes pass easily into an hour like this. The sun gradually warms enough for Sypha to discard her heavy Speaker robes and bare strong, scarred shoulders. Someone offers her a straw hat and she places it jauntily on top of her hair. The villagers all chatter happily to her as they work, and she digs her pitchfork into the wet dirt with glee, uncaring of the flecks that start to land on her clothes and skin.
As Trevor watches, Alucard approaches, arms held behind his back. When Sypha sees him, she pauses in her work, leaning her chin on the handle of her pitchfork to look up at him with a hand blocking the sun from her eyes. They exchange several words.
Then Sypha’s lips turn down and a hand drifts down to knuckle at the jut of her hip. The two bicker for a few minutes - Trevor isn’t sure about what - until she pulls out another hat out of thin air and forces it onto the dhampir’s head. Alucard allows it, and they both laugh.
Alucard bends slightly to murmur something in Sypha’s ear and both of them spin in place, looking for something.
Only too late does Trevor realise they’re looking for him, and he throws up a sarcastic thumbs up when sapphire blue and topaz yellow eyes meet his. Both smile. Fair hair and fair skin, and tan skin and vibrant hair almost gleam too bright in the sun.
It hits him harder than Death.
Trevor remembers Alucard’s face when they came through the mirror. Remembers Alucard’s and Sypha’s faces when he came off the horse. Twenty-five years of a miserable existence made less so. Broken bones and healing touches. Love.
So, being the mature well-adjusted individual he is, Trevor waits until they look away and bades a hasty retreat to the Belmont hold. Finds himself a spot behind a bookcase, pressing his back against the dark grey rock of the wall, a ‘borrowed’ jug of ale in hand. With the meat of his forearm pressed into his bent knee, Trevor dangles the jug from tingling fingers. Rubs the handle with a calloused thumb.
Would happily ignore his problems but Sypha has gotten into his head.
Problem one: Sypha and Alucard keep seeking him out - looking for and after him. Problem two: He’s having a breakdown over his love for them and their love for him. All in all: he is a little miffed about the timing of his breakdown - why now of all times?
He knows why. Trevor never thought this was a life possible for him. It’s because he cares for them. More people to love, more to lose. Trevor fucking Belmont.
“Trevor?!” comes a cry that is almost pained. Sypha?
“I’m here,” he calls, shifting into a crouch, feeling at his waist for the Morningstar. A familiar tingle at his chest that he recognises as Sypha’s magic.
Sypha comes sliding into his hideaway - hair and breathing erratic. She throws herself at him and Trevor catches her just, falling heavily back onto his arse. A frazzled-looking Alucard meets his eyes over her head.
“What’s going on?” Trevor asks, bewildered, rubbing Sypha’s heaving back, her fingers clutched pain-tight into his tunic.
“We could not find you,” Alucard says, and the fact that Trevor can even tell that his outfit is not meticulous lets him know that the dhampir is bordering on frantic. Why?
“I was only gone for two hours,” He says, slowly.
Sypha pulls her face from his neck, leaving uncomfortable damply-warm patches on his skin. Furious tears line her eyes. Splotches of red dot her chest and face. “I thought you’d died ten minutes after you told me you loved me. Dammit, Trevor, I was prepared for us to die together,” her voice cracks, “Instead you left me - us - behind.”
Trevor, shocked, falls properly back down, taking Sypha’s curled form clutched to his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says into her hair, meeting Alucard’s eyes where the dhampir has slid down against a bookshelf beside them. The dhampir’s jaw clenches. "I'm sorry," Trevor repeats.
“And we should never have left you,” Sypha adds, sticking her chin out as she twists to look at Alucard. Extends her hand almost desperately.
Alucard takes it, eyes wide.
Trevor nods. They’d never voiced it, but it tainted every tired night until they returned. “And when we saw the bodies…” he trails off, gruffly, not allowing himself to finish.
“Taka and Sumi,” Alucard says quietly, engrossed in the tan of Sypha’s tiny but calloused hand against his own. “The first humans who came to me while you were gone. I -” Alucard’s eyes drop, “I trusted them. Cared for them,” a long pale finger traces his bottom lip. “I was lonely. They caught me unawares. Bound me with silver wire.” Alucard shrugs off his jacket - revealing that the scar that Trevor saw a week ago curls up and around both arms. He gestures to his whole body. “I killed them before they could kill me. I couldn’t take the risk that it would - could - happen again.”
Sypha half-lunges off Trevor to take gentle hold of Alucard’s forearm. “We will never make the same mistake of leaving,” she says, furiously. If Trevor is not mistaken, sparks fly from the tops of her hair.
Trevor’s own stomach is broiling at what he’s just heard, scuffs his boot against the dhampir’s long leg. “I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say in one go, mate. Usually like pullin’ teeth.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
Trevor sobers. Reassurance doesn’t quite sit right against his sharp edges, but this is not about him. “We are here to stay. We promise.”
Alucard smiles. It’s small. But it’s there.
Sypha sighs. Cheeks puffing out as she rolls off Trevor - “Sypha watch your fuckin pointy elbows” - and onto her back on the cobblestone floor. Throws her limbs out in akimbo. “I am exhausted! Talking and crying is tough work,” She hums, melodic, tapping her chin. “I think this calls for stew.”
Alucard catches Trevor’s eye.
Trevor can do nothing but throw his head back and laugh. Alucard joins him.
Sypha sits up. “What are you two laughing at?”