[Twilight AU] "Sanguinem Vitae" (PG-13)
Jun. 16th, 2012 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtxref_ficAuthor's Note: Written for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fic_promptly's Edward/Carlisle, "The blood is the life!" - Bram Stoker, Dracula I apologize for my hideous Latin in the title.
A week after the night Carlisle turned the young man, he deemed it safe for Edward to venture out again and resume a normal life, if not the old life he had had before his turning. But still, even as Carlisle's consort and childe, he had to carry the illusion that he was nothing more than a paying guest in the doctor's home. To the world around them, they had separate lives, which served as a mask for their true natures and for what they did in the dark.
But as Edward walked along the main street of the city, moving through the ordinary humans going about their business and their errands -- and their lives -- he became aware of something:
He could hear the thoughts of the people around him: he'd been highly intuitive before Carlisle had turned him, and his sire had warned him this might happen. But aside from the hum of thoughts around him, he could sense something else.
He could smell something about them: coppery, salty, warm, acrid but pleasantly. A scent that sang within his nostrils. He no longer needed to breathe, though he kept doing so in order to blend in, but he had to drop that part of the mask, so as to keep calm. The scent that came from the living around him heightened his hunger, a hunger that gnawed at him anyway, but now screamed within him.
He finished his errands -- buying writing paper and a bottle of ink at a stationer's -- and hurried back home to the house he now shared with his sire. Bottles of blood waited for him in the icebox, and he slaked his hunger that way, but while it nourished him, it did not satisfy him. He wanted to feed, to slake his hunger from a living human, to hunt prey and feel their life flowing around his fangs and down his throat. Passing by hitching post at which someone had tied their horse, he had to force himself to keep walking, force himself not to attack the creature and feed from it, as nourishing and satisfying as it could be. Not here, not in the daylight.
Carlisle arrived him after a day of seeing patients, to find Edward curled on the sofa, quivering in frustration.
"Edward, what's bothering you?" he asked, sitting down beside his childe.
"The scent... I can smell people's ...blood," the young man murmured. "It frightens me."
"You are smelling their life," Carlisle said, reassuring the youth. "Their blood is your life as much as theirs. Fear your hunger, fear what it can goad you to do, but do not fear the blood."
Edward uncurled, looking up at his sire. "I still have much to learn."
"You're still growing: you are still a youngster, but we all were and there is no shame in it," Carlisle said. "The only shame is in not letting yourself feed and do so responsibly."
fic_promptly's Edward/Carlisle, "The blood is the life!" - Bram Stoker, Dracula I apologize for my hideous Latin in the title.A week after the night Carlisle turned the young man, he deemed it safe for Edward to venture out again and resume a normal life, if not the old life he had had before his turning. But still, even as Carlisle's consort and childe, he had to carry the illusion that he was nothing more than a paying guest in the doctor's home. To the world around them, they had separate lives, which served as a mask for their true natures and for what they did in the dark.
But as Edward walked along the main street of the city, moving through the ordinary humans going about their business and their errands -- and their lives -- he became aware of something:
He could hear the thoughts of the people around him: he'd been highly intuitive before Carlisle had turned him, and his sire had warned him this might happen. But aside from the hum of thoughts around him, he could sense something else.
He could smell something about them: coppery, salty, warm, acrid but pleasantly. A scent that sang within his nostrils. He no longer needed to breathe, though he kept doing so in order to blend in, but he had to drop that part of the mask, so as to keep calm. The scent that came from the living around him heightened his hunger, a hunger that gnawed at him anyway, but now screamed within him.
He finished his errands -- buying writing paper and a bottle of ink at a stationer's -- and hurried back home to the house he now shared with his sire. Bottles of blood waited for him in the icebox, and he slaked his hunger that way, but while it nourished him, it did not satisfy him. He wanted to feed, to slake his hunger from a living human, to hunt prey and feel their life flowing around his fangs and down his throat. Passing by hitching post at which someone had tied their horse, he had to force himself to keep walking, force himself not to attack the creature and feed from it, as nourishing and satisfying as it could be. Not here, not in the daylight.
Carlisle arrived him after a day of seeing patients, to find Edward curled on the sofa, quivering in frustration.
"Edward, what's bothering you?" he asked, sitting down beside his childe.
"The scent... I can smell people's ...blood," the young man murmured. "It frightens me."
"You are smelling their life," Carlisle said, reassuring the youth. "Their blood is your life as much as theirs. Fear your hunger, fear what it can goad you to do, but do not fear the blood."
Edward uncurled, looking up at his sire. "I still have much to learn."
"You're still growing: you are still a youngster, but we all were and there is no shame in it," Carlisle said. "The only shame is in not letting yourself feed and do so responsibly."
