Work Text:
Jonathan has always held a reverence for stillness. While just a boy, he learned quickly that the best time to read, to write in his diary, was when his family was out of the house; or when they slept. A bright flame from a good candle was a fine companion. On such a night, when the wind didn't rattle the old slate roof and the scratch of his pen was the only sound to be heard—well, such things sufficed to fill him crown to toe with a tingling pleasure akin to ecstasy.
And stillness, now: Vlad is asleep in their bed, cheeks almost ruddy from the blood he's taken this evening, brow unvexed, mouth curved into a half-smile. His body looks deceptively fragile between the rich mounds of eiderdown. He's taken to dozing after he feeds, for surely Jonathan poses no threat. Languid, satisfied, like a cat with a bellyful of cream who dotes on Jonathan with cozy affection to match—Or nearly always, for there are times when the same act of feeding leaves Jonathan punchy and fierce, when he cannot wrestle his energy into submission and so he provokes Vlad into an argument or sex; or both.
So too there are times when Jonathan joins Vlad in sleep. It doesn't come to him easily. It hasn't since his death. To calm himself, he reads by the lamplight his sensitive vision doesn't require; and he listens to the occasional in-out of breath Vlad doesn't need to take. In stillness, the horror of their existence seems removed. Jonathan wonders what it would mean to be truly sated. To grow happy by Vlad's side, or to unabashedly enjoy the extravagancies Vlad arranges to ensure their comfort. In such fleeting, mad notions, they are not men. But nor are they monsters.