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Random thing. I've been trying for Strange/Childermass for a while.
Title: Lightly Hold the Rein
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (TV)
Characters/Pairings: Jonathan Strange, John Childermass, Gilbert Norrell, mention of Arabella Strange and Jeremy Johns. Strange/Childermass, Childermass/Norrell, Jonathan/Arabella
Summary: Vampire AU. When Jonathan is forced to go for some time without feeding, Norrell grudgingly allows that he might drink from Childermass this once. Childermass takes this very much in stride, though it would not be true to say that he surrenders to it. That, he offers to only one vampire
Wordcount: 5058
Warnings/Notes: AU, Vampires, Blood Hunger, Feeding, Master & Servant, Backstory, Angst, Control, Defiance, Challenge, Surrender, Victory, Loyalty, Love
Disclaimer: Not Mine
Title: Lightly Hold the Rein
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (TV)
Characters/Pairings: Jonathan Strange, John Childermass, Gilbert Norrell, mention of Arabella Strange and Jeremy Johns. Strange/Childermass, Childermass/Norrell, Jonathan/Arabella
Summary: Vampire AU. When Jonathan is forced to go for some time without feeding, Norrell grudgingly allows that he might drink from Childermass this once. Childermass takes this very much in stride, though it would not be true to say that he surrenders to it. That, he offers to only one vampire
Wordcount: 5058
Warnings/Notes: AU, Vampires, Blood Hunger, Feeding, Master & Servant, Backstory, Angst, Control, Defiance, Challenge, Surrender, Victory, Loyalty, Love
Disclaimer: Not Mine
Lightly Hold The Rein
Norrell had not offered Childermass to him entirely willingly, Jonathan noticed. For all that the other vampire seemed to understand his distress, the depths of his hunger in the absence of his wife, his sheer need for knowing, willing blood after several weeks without, there had still be a marked hesitance on Norrell's part to offer him the use of his own servant. It had taken a few days of Jonathan growing increasingly distracted in the human's presence, days of following the sound of his heart beat with an increasingly hungry expression, before the master vampire would even consider it. There seemed, Jonathan thought, to be almost a protective instinct in operation. Which was odd, because he would not have thought that Norrell possessed such a thing. Though perhaps he was imagining it. Perhaps it was only possessiveness, instead. That would certainly fit with what he had learned of Norrell so far.
He had offered eventually, though. Once assured that Jonathan knew his limits and would not abuse the man more than he could bear, Norrell had, with some hesitancy and more than a few glances at Childermass himself, grudgingly allowed that Jonathan might feed from him. Childermass had not been much moved by this. He had blinked languidly, studying Jonathan almost curiously, before nodding his consent towards his master.
It was another oddity, too, at least as far as stories of vampires went, that said consent seemed to be necessary. That Norrell needed it, and would abide Childermass' decision should it not be granted. There was a strange thing between them, an imbalance of what was meant to be the usual arrangement of power between a vampire and his ... servant. Jonathan did not think that Childermass was a thrall. He did not think Childermass had ever been enthralled by anyone or anything, and frankly should like to see someone try. There was a silent self-possession about the man that made the success of it seem unlikely, if not impossible. Whatever he was to Norrell, he was not a slave, and on some days seemed only barely a servant. The reins of power lay oddly between them.
That was hardly the point now, though. Mr Norrell had closed and warded the door behind him as he left, and there was only Childermass now, alone in a dark and empty library with a hungry vampire. Jonathan licked his lips, without much thinking about it. Indeed, he could barely think at all. It had been so long since he had fed, since he had tasted the sweetness of Arabella's skin, or the calm, wry offering of Jeremy's wrist. They were away, visiting Henry while he was ill. They would not be back for near another week yet. He had tried to hold out until their return. Truly, he had. He had never gone so long without them, though. Animals did not satisfy at all, and the hunger grew daily inside him. He had become distractible, at times near insensible, listening to every human heart beat around him with increasing fascination. It would only have been so much time before his control had finally frayed and he did something irreversible. Norrell had realised that, even if he had not been happy about it. It had been near enough the only reason he had allowed what they were now about.
"What will you have, sir?" Childermass asked him softly, recalling him to the present. Jonathan twitched, startled and half-alarmed, and looked hastily over at the man. Childermass met his gaze steadily, a sly half-smile curled at the corner of his mouth, and drew one hand in illustration down his front. Jonathan blinked at him, the meaning of the gesture entirely escaping him.
"... What?" he asked, his voice hoarse and rasping in his hunger. God above, he was far gone. He hadn't realised his control would fray that quickly. He had read in books of vampires going so much longer without human blood, although he allowed that many of them had been a great deal older and more powerful than he currently was. Still. It was nearly humiliating, how quickly he had succumbed and how near bestial it made him now.
Not that his fading control and staring hunger seemed to do much to trouble Childermass. The man smiled at him, entirely unmoved, and elaborated gently. "I said, what will you have, sir," he prompted, making that gesture again. "Neck? Wrist? Summat else? I should like to know if I'll have to get undressed. 'Tis more awkward, you understand."
Jonathan blinked at him, and then flushed as he grasped that at last. He wouldn't ask ... by god, he wouldn't ask for that. What did the man think of him? He was married, for heaven's sake! As if Arabella would stand for that sort of thing, blood hunger or no blood hunger, and Jonathan was not so crude himself either. Honestly!
"Getting undressed will not be necessary," he said, rather snappishly. Childermass' smile flickered out into a grin for a second, a sly, satisfied sort of a thing, and then his face was impassive and calmly unperturbed once again. He shrugged mildly from his position by the western bookshelves, leaning back against them with a certain insouciant sort of grace, and only raised an eyebrow at Jonathan.
"Happy to hear it, sir," he said calmly. "I did not expect it of you, but gentlemen have been known to take liberties when offered. I am to grant you what you need, after all."
Jonathan stared at him. "I do not think Mr Norrell meant that," he said, after a brief pause. He truly did not. He'd seen no evidence so far that Mr Norrell was even aware of what 'that' was. A man more destined for a life (or unlife, as the case may be) of study and contemplation he had never seen. If it had been another age, and of course if Norrell had not been a damned and unclean creature, he'd have been packed off to the nearest monastery and probably even been very happy there. Jonathan was next to positive that 'that' had never so much as crossed the other vampire's mind.
Childermass laughed at that. Perhaps something similar had been running through his mind as well. He nodded, his eyes bright with amusement, and conceded the point. "Probably not, sir, no," he agreed, heaving himself up off the shelves a little bit to face Jonathan more properly. "That was not to say that you would not hear it, though. I thought it best to check. I do apologise if I have offended you by it."
Jonathan blinked at him. The hunger hazed his thoughts, made them thick and unwieldy, but there was a wrongness to that. He knew it, even if he was having trouble realising why. There was a wrongness to Childermass being here, having expected that.
He did not have time to remember why, though. Childermass took the reins of the situation from him once again, as casually and near absently as he sometimes took them from Norrell, and for the third time made his gesture, raising an eyebrow in near-impatient query now. "Not to rush you, sir," he said, "but you are beginning to sway a bit. What will you have of me, Mr Strange? I should like to have a decision before reason is lost to you altogether, if you do not mind."
Jonathan puffed up a little in offence at that, ready to defend his remaining faculties in no uncertain terms, but he lost the thought in a blind haze as Childermass unbuttoned one sleeve cuff abruptly. He felt his fangs run out to their full extension, so distantly it was almost as though they belonged to someone else. Childermass nodded faintly to himself, a strangely dark expression in his eyes as he watched Jonathan, and he brought that now-open hand to touch lightly at his neck cloth in question. Jonathan's eyes remained riveted to it. The sleeve had come open at the gesture, revealing a strong, bare forearm beneath it, decorated here or there with old scars. Mr Norrell's feeding, Jonathan presumed. He felt an absurd rush of anger at the sight of them, and something else much more primitive than that.
"Neck or wrist, sir," Childermass said again, and it was a demand now. A calm insistence, a demand for action. Jonathan swayed towards him, crossed the space between them while only barely noticing that he had done so. He might have flown, for all he knew. He might have levitated across the intervening space, to come to stand before Childermass now.
He did not want the wrist, though. Suddenly, and for reasons more instinctive than rational, it was not the man's arm that he wanted to taste. He watched rough fingers resting against white cloth, heard the steady beating of the pulse hidden beneath it, and it was not the wrist he wanted at all. Childermass took note of it. There was a vague flicker of apprehension in his eyes for all of half a second, before calm confidence overtook it once more. He moved his hand, brought his fingers to the knot instead, in steady acceptance of Jonathan's choice.
Jonathan forestalled him. He reached up, his mind still distant and his actions governed by something else entirely, and blocked Childermass' hand. He moved it gently aside, while the man's eyebrow reached for his hairline once again, and rested his own fingers questioningly on the cloth. "May I?" he asked, with an odd hollowness in his voice, and Childermass nodded warily. There was a darkness in his eyes now, though too steady to be a fear, and he watched Jonathan very carefully indeed.
Jonathan did not regard this. He was focused, instead, on the sight of his own hands as they carefully undid the knot at the man's throat. He watched them weave in and out of white cloth with fascination, and then with hunger as they unwound it gently, leaving only the fragile shield of a shirt collar between him and Childermass' skin. He peeled that away in turn, very gently. Slowly, in spite of all his hunger, distantly savouring the anticipation of so pale and strong a thing as this man's throat must surely be.
It was. Childermass swallowed as it was bared, only the once, and then breathed steadily through his nose, leaving only the steady, rapid pulsing of his blood to move beneath the skin. His heart had sped, a little, but not much. He denied fear, even now. Even with a vampire at his very throat, he denied any hint of fear. It was intoxicating.
It was not, however, the only thing revealed beneath the shield of cloth. There were scars here too, and they were of an order of magnitude greater than the ones on his arm. They looked nearly deep and ragged enough to have killed, had someone not stanched them in time. Something in Jonathan flinched at the sight of them. Something that remembered humanity actually staggered him, and pushed him back from his hunger just a little bit. A bitterness twisted through him, a pain and a distant anger, and he ran his fingers lightly across the scars, the marring lines of them that disturbed the skin of that handsome throat.
"What is this?" he asked quietly, with that humming, otherworldly thing still in his voice. Childermass went still beneath his hands. His eyes were very dark when Jonathan met them, and there was a sudden hardness to them that had not been there before.
"That is none of your business, sir," he said coldly, and as laughable a thought as it was there was a threat in his voice. There was a warning, calm and clear, as if Childermass might have any hope of acting against him. Jonathan blinked at him, an odd tangle of several instincts warring inside him, and he did not quite retain enough reason to pick his way through them. One of them tightened his hand about the man's neck, a warning in return, while another, more human one softened his expression in question. And anger, too. There was only one other vampire in England. There was only one other creature who might have done this.
"When did Norrell almost kill you?" he asked harshly, feeling an unlawful echo of that possessive, protective instinct he had seen in the other vampire. Childermass was not his, to feel such a thing towards him. Childermass, from the look on his face now, would never be his. Yet Jonathan held the man's throat beneath his hand, and his instinct would not be denied. The sight of that near-fatal scar drew a surge of fury through him, a maddened instinct that wished to challenge the other vampire suddenly, wished to master him and win this fragile human from him. Childermass was nothing that should be marked like this. There was too much self-possession to the man, too much sly and fascinating confidence for Jonathan to tolerate the idea of him being ravaged by anyone or anything else. The scar infuriated him, and he had no higher reasoning right now to keep from letting it show.
It stuttered, a little bit, when Childermass seized his arm abruptly. His fury faltered as the man's hand closed demandingly about his wrist, for all it had not the strength to truly damage or imprison, and dragged it angrily away from the man's throat. Jonathan did not fight this. In truth, he was too surprised to manage it. Childermass leaned close, a fierce and angry expression on his face.
"As I said," he growled lowly. "That is none of your business, Mr Strange. What lies between my master and me is none of yours. You do not get to demand it from me, do you understand that?" He even tried to shake Jonathan, perhaps more from instinct than from thought, for it did not work very well. Jonathan remained immovable with all a vampire's strength, and Childermass remained unmoved with all a human's stubbornness.
He blinked after a moment, though. He looked away, his mouth pinched and tight with anger, and seemed to consider something for a moment. Jonathan, too mired in conflicting impulses, only watched him and waited. After a long moment, Childermass looked back at him, something softer and less angry in his eyes.
"It was an accident," he said at last, as grudging as Norrell ever was when it came to revelations. "I do not want you to think wrongly of him. It was not meant to kill me. Any man who has been starved for twenty years may lose the run of himself when suddenly granted a meal." He laughed harshly when Jonathan's eyebrows shot up, naked shock rolling through him, and Childermass nodded sharply. "Oh yes. You think a few weeks has been difficult, sir? I found him sealed in a ruined house, his maker long since dead, and only animals for company or sustenance. He did not mean to kill me, and with that length of hunger he should have done. We survived it, he and I, and I will not hear a word about it from you. It is not your business. Do we understand each other?"
He held Jonathan's gaze, a dark, fierce light in his eyes, and Jonathan found himself nodding mutely. He remembered thinking earlier that Childermass was no-one's thrall. He found himself thinking it again now. The magic of enthrallment lay in the gaze, the vampire's will bending the other to it by the force of his stare, but no foreign will could hope to contest the one glaring out at him now. Even the greatest of the ancient vampires would surely have faltered and failed in the attempt. The Raven King himself could not have managed it.
"... Is that why he did not want to allow this?" he heard himself ask distantly. He turned his wrist in Childermass' grip, working it inexorably free, and reached back to touch lightly at the man's throat once again. "He did not wish me to see this? Or to remind you of it?"
Childermass blinked at him. He leaned back against the bookshelves behind him, let them take his weight as he considered this. He shook his head, that ever-present amusement at the world filtering back through him again.
"No," he said at last. "Perhaps a little, but I think that was mostly possessiveness. I have never been given to anyone else before. And as well, he does not feed from anyone but me. Once you have done so, he must wait again until I recover." He smiled, a little crookedly. "He has given you bread from his own mouth, sir. Not very willingly, but he has. You might remember that, I think. It might be worth thinking on."
Jonathan stared at him. In truth, the words made little sense to him now, though he sensed the weight of them enough to know that they would do so later. They might alter many things, when he had sense to remember them later. For now, though, it was only the word 'feed' that had caught him once again, and a strange sense of transgression. Possessiveness and transgression, filtered out from some vague understanding of Childermass' words. He was being granted a forbidden thing. He had stolen a forbidden thing, held it flesh and blood beneath his hand, and the thought excited something next to a madness in him. He was hungry, he was so hungry, and he had never been a shy thing. He wanted forbidden things. He always had. He had never done well at being denied.
His hand had tightened, while he thought this. It had curled close about the man's neck once again, and now there was a darkness in Childermass' eyes once more. There was tension, his body straightening against the shelves, his eyes going hard and lidded as he met Jonathan's gaze. He looked lower, to Jonathan's teeth, and his mouth twisted in understanding. His heart jumped, only once. He breathed again through his nose, that trick he had to keep himself calm, and he looked back to Jonathan's eyes with something that was the very opposite of surrender. Acceptance, yes, understanding of what was coming, but not surrender. When he turned his head sideways to bare his throat more fully, the gesture was almost a challenge instead.
Jonathan had not entirely forgotten himself, however. He was not wholly a monster yet. He reached up his other hand, brought Childermass' face back around. Held him, lightly, by the chin, and asked him carefully:
"Do you wish me to take your wrist? I can spare the throat, if you wish it. Let me have your arm instead."
That broke something. For no reason at all, that actually wrung a startled flinch from the man, a full-bodied jerk against the shelves. Childermass stared at him, a flash of genuine shock and wonder in his face. He glanced down, as if to check the teeth that remained on display, to be sure that this was still a vampire that held him, and when he looked back up there was an entirely uninterpretable expression on his face. He studied Jonathan for the longest second, inscrutable, and then ... then he drew his chin back from Jonathan's hand, and turned his head once again. Then he bared his throat, his lips curled in a faint smile, and demurred.
"Have your pleasure, sir," he said softly, letting his body deliberately fall limp against the shelves. A dare and an enticement, all at once. A challenge most definitely, and not out of fear, and there was not a single instinct left in Jonathan that could resist it. There were none that wanted to. He monstered close, muscled the man back against the bookshelf with implacable, supernatural strength, and brought his teeth to unresisting flesh. He did not break the skin. Not just yet. The throat spasmed briefly beneath them as Childermass swallowed. The man's hands gripped helplessly at a shelf. For a moment, Jonathan did nothing, the vampire inside him simply revelling in this heady, forbidden sensation of power, in letting Childermass know beyond doubt what manner of creature it was that held him.
And then, at long last, Jonathan bit down, and tasted the man's blood as it rushed into his mouth and down his throat.
God. God, oh god. A blasphemy, a thousand times a blasphemy, and yet the only thing worth thinking. The taste was an intoxication, the very definition of all that was profane and yet divine. Childermass' blood was a revelation. Only because Jonathan was starving, perhaps, only because at the rush of it after so long he could not quite remember Arabella's, but because of the power of it too. Because of what it was, what it meant, how he had stolen it from someone else. Because it was Norrell's, not his, and yet he was tasting it anyway. It was incredible.
Childermass made no sound, as Jonathan drank from him. No grunts, no whimpers, no moans. He breathed through his nose, calmly and steadily, the rhythm of it only hitching briefly at the first tearing. He held himself up, braced himself against the shelving, and endured so pointedly that it could not help but be a challenge in itself. It was a statement, a line drawn in the sand, and Jonathan couldn't help but delight in that too. In the strength of the thing he held in his power, and how it denied him even with his teeth buried in its throat. That was a heady thing, surely. That was a triumph and a hunger in itself.
It faded, though, as Jonathan drank deeply enough. Strength fled from Childermass, drawn away by the teeth at his throat and the pouring of his blood, and he could not hold himself up before long. Jonathan took him in his arms, then. He bore him up, held him as he drank from him, and Childermass made no move to draw himself away. Defiantly, even still, he bared his throat to Jonathan. He dared him to drain him dry if he wished it, to take his pleasure in defiance of all his promises to Norrell and to Childermass himself.
Jonathan had an inkling, then, of how the reins of power between this man and his masters could be so twisted. He made even his surrender into an act of power, a dare and a test of the other's will, so that even conquered he might still remain the victor. It was a lovely thing. Jonathan nearly laughed, with his teeth still fastened around the man's neck. It was a truly perfect defiance, and he loved it with every contrary bone in his body. There was nothing like Childermass, truly. Not in all the world. Jonathan thought he would never suffer anyone to ravage him again, save that Childermass himself should wish it.
He pulled away, after a shuddering eternity, when Childermass began to grow truly limp and fragile in his arms. He would not kill him. Never in life or unlife. He sealed his mouth back across the wound, now without the teeth, and laved it gently with his tongue to begin to seal it. Childermass moved, then. He reached up weakly with his hand and pushed Jonathan's face away, trying to prevent this. Jonathan, somewhat bewildered, let him. He picked him up, letting the man hold his own hand weakly and protectively across the seeping wound, and carried him across to the nearest chair. Childermass gave a little groan as he was settled into it. Now that the challenge was finished, now that Jonathan had effectively conceded, he allowed himself the luxury of making a sound. Jonathan stared at him in base admiration.
"I think you may well be the most stubborn creature I have ever seen," he said in amazement, standing powerful and strong above the man once again. His mind had awoken, now that he had fed. He had the presence of mind to grasp the meaning of things once again. "I've never seen such contrariness, not even in a mirror, and my wife will tell you what a thing that is. You are amazing, Childermass. Without doubt."
Childermass blinked languidly at him, dazed and bemused and as weak or weaker than Jonathan had been before they started. His hand was very pale against the stains on his neck, though it did not shake.
"... Thank you, sir?" he hazarded after a moment, his voice soft and weak and wryly bemused. "I am sure I have never been called that before, most certainly not for that reason, but thank you, I suppose."
Jonathan laughed at him. He felt ecstatic, suddenly. He felt fierce and powerful and capable of facing anything. It was like the first rush of sensation he had felt when he had become a vampire, and he wondered vaguely if that was only because this had been the longest he had ever gone before feeding. He wondered if there might be something about Childermass' blood itself, some latent power in it that was absent from Jeremy or Arabella. It made him feel ... effervescent. It made him practically giddy with power.
"You are welcome!" he said, perhaps too strongly. He grinned anyway, because he could not help it. The darkness of the library seemed like the brightest lights all of sudden. "Do you need anything? Your wound, can I help with it? What do you need?"
Childermass eyed him warily, bemused and perhaps a little amused by the rush of power and good humour. He shrugged, slowly and carefully around the leaking at his hand, and nodded vaguely towards the door.
"Break the ward," he said quietly. "It will summon Norrell. He'll have been waiting. Break the ward and let him come to me, sir. If it pleases you."
That last was a challenge too, but only a small one, a taunt towards Jonathan's possessive instincts and delight in his transgression. Jonathan allowed it, and with good grace. He was too madly cheerful right now to care. He moved to the door with the best will in the world, and snapped out a little of his newly-restored power to break Norrell's ward. He felt the magic snap back to its master, not having to travel very far at all, and true to Childermass' word Norrell appeared at the door in very little time at all. He glared suspiciously at Jonathan, his power and his aura bristling briefly around him, but then Childermass made a soft sound inside the room and Norrell had no more time for Jonathan at all.
Jonathan watched them, silently, from near the door. He wanted to see them. His mind was active now, piecing together all that Childermass had revealed and implied, and he wanted nothing more than to see them together in light of it. Curiosity was the very oldest of his instincts, after all. It was the last of them to be denied.
Norrell hesitated, briefly, at the sight of Childermass limp and pale in the chair. He checked himself, his steps faltering, and when they continued again they were hesitant, almost wary. He reached out a hand towards his servant, clucking agitatedly to himself over the state of him. Childermass watched him approach. He looked up with eyes that were dark and calm as his master came. It was only when Norrell was close enough to touch that Childermass held out his own hand, and Jonathan realised abruptly why Childermass had stopped him from sealing his wound. The hand was covered in blood, though the flow was not great any longer, and he turned it palm up to offer said blood to Norrell. A gesture of fealty, Jonathan thought distantly. An offer to show who had first and last claim to his blood and his life. Norrell made a sound of pain at the sight of it.
"Oh," the elder vampire said, sounding very small and upset. "Childermass, you ..."
"Hush, sir," Childermass overrode him, the smallest of smiles on his lips. He gestured vaguely with his red-stained hand, beckoning Norrell to him. "I'll need a day or so for this. Have a taste now, to tide you over, and then perhaps you might close the wound for me. It is not leaking much still, but I should like to have it sealed, if you wouldn't mind it."
Norrell obeyed him. It was not a master granting a request. Norrell obeyed, taking Childermass' stained hand between his own shaking ones, licking it delicately clean without ever once taking his eyes from Childermass' face. His servant did not mock him for it. He looked steadily instead, that fierce dark thing in his eyes. He made sure Norrell tasted every drop, and then turned his face into the chair. Closing his eyes, baring his throat. Not a challenge, as it had been to Jonathan, but an offer and a request. Norrell made a strangled little sound, and leaned down to press his mouth across the bleeding, sealing it viciously and possessively shut. Childermass went limp beneath him. He surrendered, and let Norrell happen. On his face, just visible above Norrell's head, there was still a smile.
Jonathan stared at them. It was not his business, Childermass had said. He had not experienced it, and so it was beyond his understanding. Childermass would not hear a word about it. Yet he did understand, suddenly. The edges of it at least. He understood something of blood and sacrifice, of an almost-death that had been unwished for, and a loyalty that had been offered in spite of it. He understood how the balance of power had been tipped, somewhat irrevocably, and how the servant might now command the master. Not out of defiance, but out of love. He understood, at least a little bit. He could see it, played out in front of him.
Norrell belonged to Childermass. As much as the other way around, and in defiance of all convention, the vampire belonged to his servant. Childermass had claimed him, and he did not mean to let him go. Human or not, the man was no-one's thrall.
Indeed, Jonathan thought, feeling with amusement the possessiveness left in his own chest, one could argue quite the opposite.
Norrell had not offered Childermass to him entirely willingly, Jonathan noticed. For all that the other vampire seemed to understand his distress, the depths of his hunger in the absence of his wife, his sheer need for knowing, willing blood after several weeks without, there had still be a marked hesitance on Norrell's part to offer him the use of his own servant. It had taken a few days of Jonathan growing increasingly distracted in the human's presence, days of following the sound of his heart beat with an increasingly hungry expression, before the master vampire would even consider it. There seemed, Jonathan thought, to be almost a protective instinct in operation. Which was odd, because he would not have thought that Norrell possessed such a thing. Though perhaps he was imagining it. Perhaps it was only possessiveness, instead. That would certainly fit with what he had learned of Norrell so far.
He had offered eventually, though. Once assured that Jonathan knew his limits and would not abuse the man more than he could bear, Norrell had, with some hesitancy and more than a few glances at Childermass himself, grudgingly allowed that Jonathan might feed from him. Childermass had not been much moved by this. He had blinked languidly, studying Jonathan almost curiously, before nodding his consent towards his master.
It was another oddity, too, at least as far as stories of vampires went, that said consent seemed to be necessary. That Norrell needed it, and would abide Childermass' decision should it not be granted. There was a strange thing between them, an imbalance of what was meant to be the usual arrangement of power between a vampire and his ... servant. Jonathan did not think that Childermass was a thrall. He did not think Childermass had ever been enthralled by anyone or anything, and frankly should like to see someone try. There was a silent self-possession about the man that made the success of it seem unlikely, if not impossible. Whatever he was to Norrell, he was not a slave, and on some days seemed only barely a servant. The reins of power lay oddly between them.
That was hardly the point now, though. Mr Norrell had closed and warded the door behind him as he left, and there was only Childermass now, alone in a dark and empty library with a hungry vampire. Jonathan licked his lips, without much thinking about it. Indeed, he could barely think at all. It had been so long since he had fed, since he had tasted the sweetness of Arabella's skin, or the calm, wry offering of Jeremy's wrist. They were away, visiting Henry while he was ill. They would not be back for near another week yet. He had tried to hold out until their return. Truly, he had. He had never gone so long without them, though. Animals did not satisfy at all, and the hunger grew daily inside him. He had become distractible, at times near insensible, listening to every human heart beat around him with increasing fascination. It would only have been so much time before his control had finally frayed and he did something irreversible. Norrell had realised that, even if he had not been happy about it. It had been near enough the only reason he had allowed what they were now about.
"What will you have, sir?" Childermass asked him softly, recalling him to the present. Jonathan twitched, startled and half-alarmed, and looked hastily over at the man. Childermass met his gaze steadily, a sly half-smile curled at the corner of his mouth, and drew one hand in illustration down his front. Jonathan blinked at him, the meaning of the gesture entirely escaping him.
"... What?" he asked, his voice hoarse and rasping in his hunger. God above, he was far gone. He hadn't realised his control would fray that quickly. He had read in books of vampires going so much longer without human blood, although he allowed that many of them had been a great deal older and more powerful than he currently was. Still. It was nearly humiliating, how quickly he had succumbed and how near bestial it made him now.
Not that his fading control and staring hunger seemed to do much to trouble Childermass. The man smiled at him, entirely unmoved, and elaborated gently. "I said, what will you have, sir," he prompted, making that gesture again. "Neck? Wrist? Summat else? I should like to know if I'll have to get undressed. 'Tis more awkward, you understand."
Jonathan blinked at him, and then flushed as he grasped that at last. He wouldn't ask ... by god, he wouldn't ask for that. What did the man think of him? He was married, for heaven's sake! As if Arabella would stand for that sort of thing, blood hunger or no blood hunger, and Jonathan was not so crude himself either. Honestly!
"Getting undressed will not be necessary," he said, rather snappishly. Childermass' smile flickered out into a grin for a second, a sly, satisfied sort of a thing, and then his face was impassive and calmly unperturbed once again. He shrugged mildly from his position by the western bookshelves, leaning back against them with a certain insouciant sort of grace, and only raised an eyebrow at Jonathan.
"Happy to hear it, sir," he said calmly. "I did not expect it of you, but gentlemen have been known to take liberties when offered. I am to grant you what you need, after all."
Jonathan stared at him. "I do not think Mr Norrell meant that," he said, after a brief pause. He truly did not. He'd seen no evidence so far that Mr Norrell was even aware of what 'that' was. A man more destined for a life (or unlife, as the case may be) of study and contemplation he had never seen. If it had been another age, and of course if Norrell had not been a damned and unclean creature, he'd have been packed off to the nearest monastery and probably even been very happy there. Jonathan was next to positive that 'that' had never so much as crossed the other vampire's mind.
Childermass laughed at that. Perhaps something similar had been running through his mind as well. He nodded, his eyes bright with amusement, and conceded the point. "Probably not, sir, no," he agreed, heaving himself up off the shelves a little bit to face Jonathan more properly. "That was not to say that you would not hear it, though. I thought it best to check. I do apologise if I have offended you by it."
Jonathan blinked at him. The hunger hazed his thoughts, made them thick and unwieldy, but there was a wrongness to that. He knew it, even if he was having trouble realising why. There was a wrongness to Childermass being here, having expected that.
He did not have time to remember why, though. Childermass took the reins of the situation from him once again, as casually and near absently as he sometimes took them from Norrell, and for the third time made his gesture, raising an eyebrow in near-impatient query now. "Not to rush you, sir," he said, "but you are beginning to sway a bit. What will you have of me, Mr Strange? I should like to have a decision before reason is lost to you altogether, if you do not mind."
Jonathan puffed up a little in offence at that, ready to defend his remaining faculties in no uncertain terms, but he lost the thought in a blind haze as Childermass unbuttoned one sleeve cuff abruptly. He felt his fangs run out to their full extension, so distantly it was almost as though they belonged to someone else. Childermass nodded faintly to himself, a strangely dark expression in his eyes as he watched Jonathan, and he brought that now-open hand to touch lightly at his neck cloth in question. Jonathan's eyes remained riveted to it. The sleeve had come open at the gesture, revealing a strong, bare forearm beneath it, decorated here or there with old scars. Mr Norrell's feeding, Jonathan presumed. He felt an absurd rush of anger at the sight of them, and something else much more primitive than that.
"Neck or wrist, sir," Childermass said again, and it was a demand now. A calm insistence, a demand for action. Jonathan swayed towards him, crossed the space between them while only barely noticing that he had done so. He might have flown, for all he knew. He might have levitated across the intervening space, to come to stand before Childermass now.
He did not want the wrist, though. Suddenly, and for reasons more instinctive than rational, it was not the man's arm that he wanted to taste. He watched rough fingers resting against white cloth, heard the steady beating of the pulse hidden beneath it, and it was not the wrist he wanted at all. Childermass took note of it. There was a vague flicker of apprehension in his eyes for all of half a second, before calm confidence overtook it once more. He moved his hand, brought his fingers to the knot instead, in steady acceptance of Jonathan's choice.
Jonathan forestalled him. He reached up, his mind still distant and his actions governed by something else entirely, and blocked Childermass' hand. He moved it gently aside, while the man's eyebrow reached for his hairline once again, and rested his own fingers questioningly on the cloth. "May I?" he asked, with an odd hollowness in his voice, and Childermass nodded warily. There was a darkness in his eyes now, though too steady to be a fear, and he watched Jonathan very carefully indeed.
Jonathan did not regard this. He was focused, instead, on the sight of his own hands as they carefully undid the knot at the man's throat. He watched them weave in and out of white cloth with fascination, and then with hunger as they unwound it gently, leaving only the fragile shield of a shirt collar between him and Childermass' skin. He peeled that away in turn, very gently. Slowly, in spite of all his hunger, distantly savouring the anticipation of so pale and strong a thing as this man's throat must surely be.
It was. Childermass swallowed as it was bared, only the once, and then breathed steadily through his nose, leaving only the steady, rapid pulsing of his blood to move beneath the skin. His heart had sped, a little, but not much. He denied fear, even now. Even with a vampire at his very throat, he denied any hint of fear. It was intoxicating.
It was not, however, the only thing revealed beneath the shield of cloth. There were scars here too, and they were of an order of magnitude greater than the ones on his arm. They looked nearly deep and ragged enough to have killed, had someone not stanched them in time. Something in Jonathan flinched at the sight of them. Something that remembered humanity actually staggered him, and pushed him back from his hunger just a little bit. A bitterness twisted through him, a pain and a distant anger, and he ran his fingers lightly across the scars, the marring lines of them that disturbed the skin of that handsome throat.
"What is this?" he asked quietly, with that humming, otherworldly thing still in his voice. Childermass went still beneath his hands. His eyes were very dark when Jonathan met them, and there was a sudden hardness to them that had not been there before.
"That is none of your business, sir," he said coldly, and as laughable a thought as it was there was a threat in his voice. There was a warning, calm and clear, as if Childermass might have any hope of acting against him. Jonathan blinked at him, an odd tangle of several instincts warring inside him, and he did not quite retain enough reason to pick his way through them. One of them tightened his hand about the man's neck, a warning in return, while another, more human one softened his expression in question. And anger, too. There was only one other vampire in England. There was only one other creature who might have done this.
"When did Norrell almost kill you?" he asked harshly, feeling an unlawful echo of that possessive, protective instinct he had seen in the other vampire. Childermass was not his, to feel such a thing towards him. Childermass, from the look on his face now, would never be his. Yet Jonathan held the man's throat beneath his hand, and his instinct would not be denied. The sight of that near-fatal scar drew a surge of fury through him, a maddened instinct that wished to challenge the other vampire suddenly, wished to master him and win this fragile human from him. Childermass was nothing that should be marked like this. There was too much self-possession to the man, too much sly and fascinating confidence for Jonathan to tolerate the idea of him being ravaged by anyone or anything else. The scar infuriated him, and he had no higher reasoning right now to keep from letting it show.
It stuttered, a little bit, when Childermass seized his arm abruptly. His fury faltered as the man's hand closed demandingly about his wrist, for all it had not the strength to truly damage or imprison, and dragged it angrily away from the man's throat. Jonathan did not fight this. In truth, he was too surprised to manage it. Childermass leaned close, a fierce and angry expression on his face.
"As I said," he growled lowly. "That is none of your business, Mr Strange. What lies between my master and me is none of yours. You do not get to demand it from me, do you understand that?" He even tried to shake Jonathan, perhaps more from instinct than from thought, for it did not work very well. Jonathan remained immovable with all a vampire's strength, and Childermass remained unmoved with all a human's stubbornness.
He blinked after a moment, though. He looked away, his mouth pinched and tight with anger, and seemed to consider something for a moment. Jonathan, too mired in conflicting impulses, only watched him and waited. After a long moment, Childermass looked back at him, something softer and less angry in his eyes.
"It was an accident," he said at last, as grudging as Norrell ever was when it came to revelations. "I do not want you to think wrongly of him. It was not meant to kill me. Any man who has been starved for twenty years may lose the run of himself when suddenly granted a meal." He laughed harshly when Jonathan's eyebrows shot up, naked shock rolling through him, and Childermass nodded sharply. "Oh yes. You think a few weeks has been difficult, sir? I found him sealed in a ruined house, his maker long since dead, and only animals for company or sustenance. He did not mean to kill me, and with that length of hunger he should have done. We survived it, he and I, and I will not hear a word about it from you. It is not your business. Do we understand each other?"
He held Jonathan's gaze, a dark, fierce light in his eyes, and Jonathan found himself nodding mutely. He remembered thinking earlier that Childermass was no-one's thrall. He found himself thinking it again now. The magic of enthrallment lay in the gaze, the vampire's will bending the other to it by the force of his stare, but no foreign will could hope to contest the one glaring out at him now. Even the greatest of the ancient vampires would surely have faltered and failed in the attempt. The Raven King himself could not have managed it.
"... Is that why he did not want to allow this?" he heard himself ask distantly. He turned his wrist in Childermass' grip, working it inexorably free, and reached back to touch lightly at the man's throat once again. "He did not wish me to see this? Or to remind you of it?"
Childermass blinked at him. He leaned back against the bookshelves behind him, let them take his weight as he considered this. He shook his head, that ever-present amusement at the world filtering back through him again.
"No," he said at last. "Perhaps a little, but I think that was mostly possessiveness. I have never been given to anyone else before. And as well, he does not feed from anyone but me. Once you have done so, he must wait again until I recover." He smiled, a little crookedly. "He has given you bread from his own mouth, sir. Not very willingly, but he has. You might remember that, I think. It might be worth thinking on."
Jonathan stared at him. In truth, the words made little sense to him now, though he sensed the weight of them enough to know that they would do so later. They might alter many things, when he had sense to remember them later. For now, though, it was only the word 'feed' that had caught him once again, and a strange sense of transgression. Possessiveness and transgression, filtered out from some vague understanding of Childermass' words. He was being granted a forbidden thing. He had stolen a forbidden thing, held it flesh and blood beneath his hand, and the thought excited something next to a madness in him. He was hungry, he was so hungry, and he had never been a shy thing. He wanted forbidden things. He always had. He had never done well at being denied.
His hand had tightened, while he thought this. It had curled close about the man's neck once again, and now there was a darkness in Childermass' eyes once more. There was tension, his body straightening against the shelves, his eyes going hard and lidded as he met Jonathan's gaze. He looked lower, to Jonathan's teeth, and his mouth twisted in understanding. His heart jumped, only once. He breathed again through his nose, that trick he had to keep himself calm, and he looked back to Jonathan's eyes with something that was the very opposite of surrender. Acceptance, yes, understanding of what was coming, but not surrender. When he turned his head sideways to bare his throat more fully, the gesture was almost a challenge instead.
Jonathan had not entirely forgotten himself, however. He was not wholly a monster yet. He reached up his other hand, brought Childermass' face back around. Held him, lightly, by the chin, and asked him carefully:
"Do you wish me to take your wrist? I can spare the throat, if you wish it. Let me have your arm instead."
That broke something. For no reason at all, that actually wrung a startled flinch from the man, a full-bodied jerk against the shelves. Childermass stared at him, a flash of genuine shock and wonder in his face. He glanced down, as if to check the teeth that remained on display, to be sure that this was still a vampire that held him, and when he looked back up there was an entirely uninterpretable expression on his face. He studied Jonathan for the longest second, inscrutable, and then ... then he drew his chin back from Jonathan's hand, and turned his head once again. Then he bared his throat, his lips curled in a faint smile, and demurred.
"Have your pleasure, sir," he said softly, letting his body deliberately fall limp against the shelves. A dare and an enticement, all at once. A challenge most definitely, and not out of fear, and there was not a single instinct left in Jonathan that could resist it. There were none that wanted to. He monstered close, muscled the man back against the bookshelf with implacable, supernatural strength, and brought his teeth to unresisting flesh. He did not break the skin. Not just yet. The throat spasmed briefly beneath them as Childermass swallowed. The man's hands gripped helplessly at a shelf. For a moment, Jonathan did nothing, the vampire inside him simply revelling in this heady, forbidden sensation of power, in letting Childermass know beyond doubt what manner of creature it was that held him.
And then, at long last, Jonathan bit down, and tasted the man's blood as it rushed into his mouth and down his throat.
God. God, oh god. A blasphemy, a thousand times a blasphemy, and yet the only thing worth thinking. The taste was an intoxication, the very definition of all that was profane and yet divine. Childermass' blood was a revelation. Only because Jonathan was starving, perhaps, only because at the rush of it after so long he could not quite remember Arabella's, but because of the power of it too. Because of what it was, what it meant, how he had stolen it from someone else. Because it was Norrell's, not his, and yet he was tasting it anyway. It was incredible.
Childermass made no sound, as Jonathan drank from him. No grunts, no whimpers, no moans. He breathed through his nose, calmly and steadily, the rhythm of it only hitching briefly at the first tearing. He held himself up, braced himself against the shelving, and endured so pointedly that it could not help but be a challenge in itself. It was a statement, a line drawn in the sand, and Jonathan couldn't help but delight in that too. In the strength of the thing he held in his power, and how it denied him even with his teeth buried in its throat. That was a heady thing, surely. That was a triumph and a hunger in itself.
It faded, though, as Jonathan drank deeply enough. Strength fled from Childermass, drawn away by the teeth at his throat and the pouring of his blood, and he could not hold himself up before long. Jonathan took him in his arms, then. He bore him up, held him as he drank from him, and Childermass made no move to draw himself away. Defiantly, even still, he bared his throat to Jonathan. He dared him to drain him dry if he wished it, to take his pleasure in defiance of all his promises to Norrell and to Childermass himself.
Jonathan had an inkling, then, of how the reins of power between this man and his masters could be so twisted. He made even his surrender into an act of power, a dare and a test of the other's will, so that even conquered he might still remain the victor. It was a lovely thing. Jonathan nearly laughed, with his teeth still fastened around the man's neck. It was a truly perfect defiance, and he loved it with every contrary bone in his body. There was nothing like Childermass, truly. Not in all the world. Jonathan thought he would never suffer anyone to ravage him again, save that Childermass himself should wish it.
He pulled away, after a shuddering eternity, when Childermass began to grow truly limp and fragile in his arms. He would not kill him. Never in life or unlife. He sealed his mouth back across the wound, now without the teeth, and laved it gently with his tongue to begin to seal it. Childermass moved, then. He reached up weakly with his hand and pushed Jonathan's face away, trying to prevent this. Jonathan, somewhat bewildered, let him. He picked him up, letting the man hold his own hand weakly and protectively across the seeping wound, and carried him across to the nearest chair. Childermass gave a little groan as he was settled into it. Now that the challenge was finished, now that Jonathan had effectively conceded, he allowed himself the luxury of making a sound. Jonathan stared at him in base admiration.
"I think you may well be the most stubborn creature I have ever seen," he said in amazement, standing powerful and strong above the man once again. His mind had awoken, now that he had fed. He had the presence of mind to grasp the meaning of things once again. "I've never seen such contrariness, not even in a mirror, and my wife will tell you what a thing that is. You are amazing, Childermass. Without doubt."
Childermass blinked languidly at him, dazed and bemused and as weak or weaker than Jonathan had been before they started. His hand was very pale against the stains on his neck, though it did not shake.
"... Thank you, sir?" he hazarded after a moment, his voice soft and weak and wryly bemused. "I am sure I have never been called that before, most certainly not for that reason, but thank you, I suppose."
Jonathan laughed at him. He felt ecstatic, suddenly. He felt fierce and powerful and capable of facing anything. It was like the first rush of sensation he had felt when he had become a vampire, and he wondered vaguely if that was only because this had been the longest he had ever gone before feeding. He wondered if there might be something about Childermass' blood itself, some latent power in it that was absent from Jeremy or Arabella. It made him feel ... effervescent. It made him practically giddy with power.
"You are welcome!" he said, perhaps too strongly. He grinned anyway, because he could not help it. The darkness of the library seemed like the brightest lights all of sudden. "Do you need anything? Your wound, can I help with it? What do you need?"
Childermass eyed him warily, bemused and perhaps a little amused by the rush of power and good humour. He shrugged, slowly and carefully around the leaking at his hand, and nodded vaguely towards the door.
"Break the ward," he said quietly. "It will summon Norrell. He'll have been waiting. Break the ward and let him come to me, sir. If it pleases you."
That last was a challenge too, but only a small one, a taunt towards Jonathan's possessive instincts and delight in his transgression. Jonathan allowed it, and with good grace. He was too madly cheerful right now to care. He moved to the door with the best will in the world, and snapped out a little of his newly-restored power to break Norrell's ward. He felt the magic snap back to its master, not having to travel very far at all, and true to Childermass' word Norrell appeared at the door in very little time at all. He glared suspiciously at Jonathan, his power and his aura bristling briefly around him, but then Childermass made a soft sound inside the room and Norrell had no more time for Jonathan at all.
Jonathan watched them, silently, from near the door. He wanted to see them. His mind was active now, piecing together all that Childermass had revealed and implied, and he wanted nothing more than to see them together in light of it. Curiosity was the very oldest of his instincts, after all. It was the last of them to be denied.
Norrell hesitated, briefly, at the sight of Childermass limp and pale in the chair. He checked himself, his steps faltering, and when they continued again they were hesitant, almost wary. He reached out a hand towards his servant, clucking agitatedly to himself over the state of him. Childermass watched him approach. He looked up with eyes that were dark and calm as his master came. It was only when Norrell was close enough to touch that Childermass held out his own hand, and Jonathan realised abruptly why Childermass had stopped him from sealing his wound. The hand was covered in blood, though the flow was not great any longer, and he turned it palm up to offer said blood to Norrell. A gesture of fealty, Jonathan thought distantly. An offer to show who had first and last claim to his blood and his life. Norrell made a sound of pain at the sight of it.
"Oh," the elder vampire said, sounding very small and upset. "Childermass, you ..."
"Hush, sir," Childermass overrode him, the smallest of smiles on his lips. He gestured vaguely with his red-stained hand, beckoning Norrell to him. "I'll need a day or so for this. Have a taste now, to tide you over, and then perhaps you might close the wound for me. It is not leaking much still, but I should like to have it sealed, if you wouldn't mind it."
Norrell obeyed him. It was not a master granting a request. Norrell obeyed, taking Childermass' stained hand between his own shaking ones, licking it delicately clean without ever once taking his eyes from Childermass' face. His servant did not mock him for it. He looked steadily instead, that fierce dark thing in his eyes. He made sure Norrell tasted every drop, and then turned his face into the chair. Closing his eyes, baring his throat. Not a challenge, as it had been to Jonathan, but an offer and a request. Norrell made a strangled little sound, and leaned down to press his mouth across the bleeding, sealing it viciously and possessively shut. Childermass went limp beneath him. He surrendered, and let Norrell happen. On his face, just visible above Norrell's head, there was still a smile.
Jonathan stared at them. It was not his business, Childermass had said. He had not experienced it, and so it was beyond his understanding. Childermass would not hear a word about it. Yet he did understand, suddenly. The edges of it at least. He understood something of blood and sacrifice, of an almost-death that had been unwished for, and a loyalty that had been offered in spite of it. He understood how the balance of power had been tipped, somewhat irrevocably, and how the servant might now command the master. Not out of defiance, but out of love. He understood, at least a little bit. He could see it, played out in front of him.
Norrell belonged to Childermass. As much as the other way around, and in defiance of all convention, the vampire belonged to his servant. Childermass had claimed him, and he did not mean to let him go. Human or not, the man was no-one's thrall.
Indeed, Jonathan thought, feeling with amusement the possessiveness left in his own chest, one could argue quite the opposite.
