Work Text:
Jonathan begins – and ends – his day's wanderings in the castle library.
Located near the heart of what must be the oldest part of the building, partially offset above the grand hall, it's a vast, airy space, both cleaner and more well-lit than any of the surrounding rooms; and Jonathan has never before seen such a collection.
Or certainly not one privately held—books and manuscripts and maps and scrolls and heaven knows what else, tucked all the way up to the vaulted ceiling…
Just then, a wide, winged shadow sails nimbly through a hole in the rafters. No: a bat.
Jonathan shivers, despite himself, recalling how the unholy screeching of a thousand such creatures had sent him cowering into his blankets the night before. How the whole of them had almost sounded like a chorus, and quite as jubilant.
Why are they here? he'd wondered feverishly, though now it seems absurd. And again: Where have they come from?
"They live here," comes an elegantly accented voice from behind him.
Jonathan turns heel to find Dracula standing almost close enough to touch. "Oh!" he sputters, a flustered blush rising up his neck. "Forgive me, my lord, I—I didn't hear you come in."
Dracula smiles and flicks his hand as though to dispel the thought. "I simply know which floorboards creak, and which do not."
And there's something about him—something Jonathan can't quite put a name to, for surely the notion that he's looking at least a decade younger than the last time Jonathan saw him is—again—absurd.
Then Dracula's gaze flicks down, leaving Jonathan wondering whether he's got a bit of mustard on his tie. He clears his throat. "I've some of the amended contracts ready for your perusal, if you've a moment—"
"Do you like to read, Mr. Harker?"
Jonathan hesitates. The standard answer to this is to say that one reads the paper, or to list off a couple of law journals: nothing identifiable for scrutiny. But something in Dracula's expression – thankfully set again on Jonathan's face – demands honesty.
"Wells," he says. "Verne. Poe. Stevenson. And sometimes I treat myself to the pulp magazines they sell on a spinner at the newsstand. Just a lot of rubbish, really."
Dracula raises an inquisitive brow. "Not at all. Every written work has its purpose. To invigorate. To delight, or to horrify. To love, with your hero. And to die with him too." Jonathan finds Dracula's words unexpectedly moving; he sets them to memory, wanting to include him in his next diary entry even as Dracula continues, "There is no harm in fantasy, Mr. Harker."
Jonathan is acutely aware of Dracula's gaze sinking down again. The Count licks his lips. "Cook informs me that your dinner is now served. Alas, I have just lately supped and will abstain until… well after you've retired for the evening, I daresay…"
"Oh," says Jonathan, blinking. It's suddenly hard to focus—perhaps he's more peckish than he thought—so Dracula's steady hand at the small of his back is most welcome. And so: "Thank you."
To think of a bloody aristocrat taking care with him. It confounds reason!
It's absurd.
The shadows stretch, lengthen, grow in the air above them. In a flash, Dracula is grabbing a gilt-spined little volume from a shelf to their left—and then pressing it into Jonathan's hands.
Jonathan can't resist opening it to the first page, and then, not recognizing the title, flipping forward at random, straight to one of the most pornographic images he's ever laid eyes on. He sucks in a breath, pointedly ignoring the sudden tightness in his trousers, and the way Dracula's smile makes him look like one of the wolves Jonathan had spotted in the wilds beyond the Borgo Pass.
Men. The drawing had been men, it had been—
"A fantasy of the highest degree, Mr. Harker, recently translated into English for the first time. You will…enjoy," Dracula explains. He waits for Jonathan to tuck the volume into his pocket, and Jonathan's hand doesn't even shake, even as his mind is roaring with the thought of—
So like the Count, but younger. It had been—
—opening it later. When he's alone.