Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2011-09-26 02:32 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2011-09-26 02:32 pm
Entry tags:
Fake News(/Hellsing): Sense and Sensibility and Vampires
Title: Sense and Sensibility and Vampires
Rating: PG
Warnings: Blood, character undeath
Pairings/Characters: "Stephen", Jon
Disclaimer: Characters belong to the Report. Names of real people are used in a fictitious context, and all dialogue, actions, and content are products of the author's imagination only.
From the Eagle of Hermes 'verse, with spoilers for the main story. For the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fakenews_fanfic prompt "the five senses." Or, in Stephen's case, five and then some. Illustration here. Mirror on the AO3.
Given his newly heightened sense of smell, Stephen thought his taste would blossom the same way. If the peach tasted ashen and watery in his mouth, it was because of the inferiority of non-South-Carolina stock, that was all. Ten minutes and one truly disgusting mess in a hastily grabbed dish of Tupperware later, he was forced to admit that even with the fruit of his home state, it wasn't worth trying that again.
The smell thing wasn't consistent, anyway. While all particles in the air should have been created equal, he was by far the most sensitive to salt-sweat and rich iron. It was a blessing when he landed Axe as an advertiser; it gave him an excuse to douse the staff in a scent that screamed do not eat me.
He'd been wearing glasses most of his life when his vision spiked, and didn't plan on giving them up, then or ever. It made people that much less likely to suspect the whole vampire thing. Plus his face felt naked without them. As long as he didn't forget himself and visit an optometrist, nobody except Jon had to know that they were plain, uncurved glass.
His habit of always sitting to the right of people, on the other hand, he shook in a week.
Even in his first blush of fledgling power, churches made Stephen queasy. He ended up only able to visit in the dead of winter, when it was okay to wear gloves and thick socks and wrap his face in a scarf, all in a desperate attempt to keep his skin from stinging with the holiness thick in the air.
He wasn't sure if sensitivity to sacred objects counted as a sense unto itself. In a human, his old organization would have classed it as a routine psychic power, with a flag for possible follow-up as a precursor to witchcraft. In what he was now, it felt as natural and organic (if those words even applied to something like him) as his inability to cross running water most of the time, or his restlessness when bedding down anywhere but his native soil.
During the fracas in the wake of gorging himself on his stage manager, Stephen discovered a whole new range of senses. An instinct for the outlines of his body, which he had probably had before, but had never been conscious of until it adapted to his flesh flowing like water and coalescing into a medley of feathers and beaks. An electric awareness of the pulsing press of other minds around him, both inside and out.
These days, he has one more.
It's like an itch in the back of his mind, or, frequently, on the backs of his hands. Thin but binding lines of power wrap around everything he does, always ready to hold him in place if he stretches too far. If he tugs on them just right, he can feel which way they're coming from, can know almost to the inch how far and in what direction he is from Jon.
Stephen should hate this. Shackled like a pet to a being he could have broken in half otherwise. He's an embarrassment to what was, for all he knows, a proud and ancient line of Nosferatu.
Still, he's always had a hard time being sure of anything he can't confirm with his own senses at that exact moment. And now there's nothing in the heavens or the earth that can block him from confirming Jon any moment he wants.
And anyway, once you get used to it, bagged blood doesn't taste half bad.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Blood, character undeath
Pairings/Characters: "Stephen", Jon
Disclaimer: Characters belong to the Report. Names of real people are used in a fictitious context, and all dialogue, actions, and content are products of the author's imagination only.
From the Eagle of Hermes 'verse, with spoilers for the main story. For the
fakenews_fanfic prompt "the five senses." Or, in Stephen's case, five and then some. Illustration here. Mirror on the AO3.Given his newly heightened sense of smell, Stephen thought his taste would blossom the same way. If the peach tasted ashen and watery in his mouth, it was because of the inferiority of non-South-Carolina stock, that was all. Ten minutes and one truly disgusting mess in a hastily grabbed dish of Tupperware later, he was forced to admit that even with the fruit of his home state, it wasn't worth trying that again.
The smell thing wasn't consistent, anyway. While all particles in the air should have been created equal, he was by far the most sensitive to salt-sweat and rich iron. It was a blessing when he landed Axe as an advertiser; it gave him an excuse to douse the staff in a scent that screamed do not eat me.
He'd been wearing glasses most of his life when his vision spiked, and didn't plan on giving them up, then or ever. It made people that much less likely to suspect the whole vampire thing. Plus his face felt naked without them. As long as he didn't forget himself and visit an optometrist, nobody except Jon had to know that they were plain, uncurved glass.
His habit of always sitting to the right of people, on the other hand, he shook in a week.
Even in his first blush of fledgling power, churches made Stephen queasy. He ended up only able to visit in the dead of winter, when it was okay to wear gloves and thick socks and wrap his face in a scarf, all in a desperate attempt to keep his skin from stinging with the holiness thick in the air.
He wasn't sure if sensitivity to sacred objects counted as a sense unto itself. In a human, his old organization would have classed it as a routine psychic power, with a flag for possible follow-up as a precursor to witchcraft. In what he was now, it felt as natural and organic (if those words even applied to something like him) as his inability to cross running water most of the time, or his restlessness when bedding down anywhere but his native soil.
During the fracas in the wake of gorging himself on his stage manager, Stephen discovered a whole new range of senses. An instinct for the outlines of his body, which he had probably had before, but had never been conscious of until it adapted to his flesh flowing like water and coalescing into a medley of feathers and beaks. An electric awareness of the pulsing press of other minds around him, both inside and out.
These days, he has one more.
It's like an itch in the back of his mind, or, frequently, on the backs of his hands. Thin but binding lines of power wrap around everything he does, always ready to hold him in place if he stretches too far. If he tugs on them just right, he can feel which way they're coming from, can know almost to the inch how far and in what direction he is from Jon.
Stephen should hate this. Shackled like a pet to a being he could have broken in half otherwise. He's an embarrassment to what was, for all he knows, a proud and ancient line of Nosferatu.
Still, he's always had a hard time being sure of anything he can't confirm with his own senses at that exact moment. And now there's nothing in the heavens or the earth that can block him from confirming Jon any moment he wants.
And anyway, once you get used to it, bagged blood doesn't taste half bad.
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I hope you've read the whole comic; it brings in plenty of subtextual soul-bondage ^_^
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