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Hunting the Hunter	By : DreadfulPenny Category: Hellsing > General Views: 6416 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Hellsing, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Walter opened his eyes to watery grey light seeping around the edges of the bedroom curtains. He could feel a weight behind him on the bed and knew without turning to look that Doru was lying there. This was the second time they had slept together and he thought he might almost get used to it.

Would he have time to?

He pushed that aside and slid out of bed. Doru was on his side facing away from Walter, legs drawn up to fit onto the bed. Sometimes it was hard being absurdly tall. Walter entertained a moment's speculation on what his coffin must look like - enormous - before he disappeared into the washroom to take care of calls of nature and to brush his teeth to kill the taste of morning breath and stale cigarettes.

He wasn't particularly surprised to be a bit sore, but in his life he had been more sore with less pleasure to show for it, and he judged it worth every twinge of discomfort. Still, it was good that the discomfort was minor as he was planning to track down the man supervising the renovations on Arthur's manor house and didn't want him taking one look at Walter's gait and knowing what he had been up to the night before.

When he returned to the bedroom, Doru had rolled to face the bathroom door. He looked tired and almost as cautious as he had looked when they had slept together before.

"Angel."

Walter slid back under the blankets and pressed a light kiss to Doru's lips. "Good morning."

The kiss melted most of the caution out of Doru's expression, which warmed Walter. When everything else was going to hell around him, Doru was becoming more and more someone he could turn to. He did not want to see Doru watching him as though waiting for him to turn on him or to turn away from him.

"Good morning." Doru drew Walter into his arms and kissed him again. "Are you feeling...?"

"I'm fine," Walter assured him. If the question was about his body after the night's activities, then it was an honest answer. If it was about anything else, it was a lie, but it was too early for dwelling on what he had learned about his heritage and his master; that could wait until after breakfast.

"You went out last night," he said instead.

Doru made a sound that was a cross between a laugh and a sigh and nodded. "Vampire hunter," he said as though to remind himself. "I thought you were asleep."

"Where did you go?" Walter asked, keeping his tone neutral to avoid sounding accusatory.

"The clouds cleared for a time," Doru said. "I went outside to see the stars and the moon. I am still a night dweller and I didn't want to disturb your rest."

"Ah." Yes, there was that about having a vampire as a lover, even if he could endure the sun. "Are you... do you..." Bloody hell, so much for keeping things simple until he had breakfast.. "Blood. Do you need blood?"

Doru smiled, despite looking even more tired. "Yes. I have left behind my normal resting place, I am awake during the day, and I have been through much recently. I will need blood soon, but you can trust me not to turn on you."

"I do trust you," Walter assured him. "I let you take my rings; I don't do that for anyone. Even when I've been in hospital I haven't let them take my rings." He pressed his forehead to Doru's. "How much do you take when you don't kill? You said before that you do that."

"How much?" Doru pulled back to see Walter's face, his own expression tight. "Not so much. Are you offering?"

"I don't know. Maybe." He ran a hand down Doru's bare side to rest on his hip, fingers brushing one of his buttocks. "I asked you to taste it for my own reasons. We're... close. I wouldn't offer to just anyone, but... probably. I mean, probably yes. I mean yes, just yes."

Walter grimaced at his own flailing through that line of thought. It would certainly never go down in the annals of smooth propositions made to one's lover.

Doru, however, only smiled more warmly and kissed Walter. "Later, Angel, after the sun goes down. I'm tired now. I can feel the sun like a weight pushing me into the earth and I want to rest. Go have some tea, smoke a cigarette, make your telephone calls, see your workmen if that is how you wish to spend your holiday. The days are short at this time of year, and I will come to you soon for your time and attention."

•••

Arthur was rather uncharacteristically intoxicated. He was not far enough gone to quite qualify as drunk to his mind, although Hugh Islands disagreed, but he was definitely intoxicated.

Three men were gathered in Arthur's study, Arthur with his feet up on his desk working his way through both a bottle of whiskey and the cigars in his humidor, Hugh Islands sitting ramrod straight in an overstuffed leather chair smoking those horrid French cigarettes he affected, and Shelby Penwood perched on the edge of the couch watching his two friends nervously. Usually they enjoyed their gatherings, but not today.

"You're pissed," Hugh said sourly. Arthur sometimes thought Hugh practiced that sour expression in the mirror, but he had been sour from their first introduction when they were just children, so perhaps he was being unfair. "And it's not even time for tea."

"Not pissed yet," Arthur disagreed, looking at the bottom of his whiskey glass and contemplating a refill. That would only be his third, or was it his fourth? Fifth? "But if a man can't get piss drunk when his brother's trying to stage a coup and he hears his most trusted man has been shagging a vampire, when can he get pissed?"

"Arthur..." This from Shelby. Sometimes Arthur thought Shelby looked like a sad guinea pig. In this case he did not think he was being unfair.

"Arthur, maybe what Hugh means to say is that you've had enough. What if Richard were to come in now? You'd just be giving him more ammunition."

"If my brother had any more ammunition, he could just put the gun to my head himself." Arthur said and decided that yes, he did need a refill, thank you very much. If it was good enough for Churchill, then by God, it was good enough for him. "Instead of getting you all to vote on it."

"Don't be melodramatic," Islands chided. "You know we won't shoot you if you're ousted."

Arthur gave him a long chilly look. "You should take lessons from Aubrey, tell me what I want to hear instead of pointing out that I won't be shot, just put under my brother's thumb or forced to go find something else to do with myself."

He thumped his tumbler down on his desk and watched whiskey slosh out onto the blotter and onto the folder holding the last report from Gerard Bernadette. The mercenary had dropped it off before he and his men left England for warmer climes. That was one thing to be said for mercenaries, he supposed - they moved fast.

"What will I do if he succeeds? What does a man who was raised to hunt monsters do with himself when that's gone?"

Hugh snorted and shook his head. "Arthur, this is why I didn't want you drinking. Listen to yourself. You're maudlin and self-pitying when you should be working on your counterattack. You should be on the phone with other Round Table members, you should be digging up information about Richard, you should be deciding what to do about your man Walter and his... poor decisions."

He stood up and went to pluck the whiskey bottle off of Arthur's desk. "You should not be indulging yourself like this."

Arthur looked as though he was going to snatch the bottle back from Hugh, but after a moment, he settled back in his chair and sighed. "You're right. You know, I hate that about your sometimes, Hugh."

Hugh picked up Arthur's tumbler and took it and the bottle with him when he sat down again. "I know," he assured his old friend. "But you need me, and England needs you running Hellsing."

Arthur made a rude noise and crumpled an ammunition invoice to throw it at Hugh. He might have been drunk, but it still hit him in the forehead before bouncing away to roll under a table. "I wonder if you would be so icy if you were the one caught in a Cain and Abel drama."

Before Hugh could answer the question, Arthur murmured to himself. "Which am I? Am I Abel or Cain?"

Shelby answered, "Abel. You're Abel, Arthur."

Both Hugh and Arthur frowned at him as though they had forgotten he was in the room.

"Abel?" Arthur put his feet down turned his body toward Shelby. "You think I'm Abel?"

"Well, yes," Shelby stammered, and then apparently realizing the implication of what he had just said, he hurried to clarify. "I don't mean Richard is going to kill you. I mean you're the good son that Cain - Richard - is jealous of."

Arthur forced a laugh and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Then why has my mind been full of thoughts of killing my brother?"

•••

Richard put the folder back on the table and smiled. It was a smile full of teeth and very little real humor.

"One day you must tell me how you manage to work so quickly. I doubt my brother has had this report in his hands for more than a few hours."

Richard and his guest were enjoying an early evening meeting at Richard's favorite gentleman's club. No one would notice him because he would be doing them the same favor of not noticing them. He would not notice the prostitutes - female or male - that other members of the club might be entertaining. He would not notice the absinthe or the exotic smoke that might waft from a corner. It was the perfect venue to display one's vices and still stay invisible. Or to have a truly private meeting.

Across from him the portly blond man shook his head and said in German-accented English, "No. You don't need to know that."

Richard would have bristled, but a stare from his patron's bodyguard silenced him before he could say a thing. In all the years he had been dealing with the man who refused to give a name, he had never heard the bodyguard say a word. Perhaps he was mute. Given their dealings, that was probably a benefit.

"Right." Richard folded his hands across his knee. "Enough of that. Things are moving forward. With this information, I should be able to hamstring Arthur in front of the Round Table. They'll see that he can't even keep his most trusted man under control and that our father would never have tolerated this betrayal and the vote will have to swing my way. Once it does and I have replaced Arthur, I can see to having certain items in the Hellsing collection relocated for safekeeping. You will get your item, I will get Hellsing, and our arrangement will be concluded."

"Don't you want to know what we will do with the item?" the man asked.

"What do I care what you do with a corpse?" Richard asked contemptuously. "She was just a woman who was once part of a legend. Once. What I care about is whether you can trust your man to keep Walter busy up in Aberdeen. I don't want him back here muddying the waters with his kill record and family pedigree."

"We have contingency plans in Aberdeen," his patron assured him. "We are moving to provide him with distractions."

•••

By the time the sun had gone down in Aberdeen, Walter had been to the market, the butcher's the baker's, the tobacconist's, and the pub. He had made telephone calls and smoked most of a pack of cigarettes.

And he had spent far too much time thinking - in the car, in the shops, while listening to the phone ring until the person on the other end of the line picked up.

Eventually he had sat down on the lumpy couch in the front room and let himself sink into the unfamiliar luxury of doing nothing but thinking and smoking one cigarette after another. In that manner, the day passed, leaving Walter no happier.

He had just stretched out an arm to turn on a lamp when he heard movement from the bedroom. He fixed his attention on the darkened door while he listened to the rustle and creak of the bed and then the whisper of cloth on skin.

Doru emerged into the front room shirtless and still buttoning his trousers. For all his gloom, Walter felt something lighten at the sight of Doru with his long black hair falling forward over his shoulder and onto his chest while he looked down to avoid zipping himself in an uncomfortable place. He made Walter think of a drawing defined as much by gleaming white negative space as by pools and lines of black ink.

When Doru looked up and smiled, Walter found a smile to answer him with and patted the couch cushion next to him.

"Good morning."

Doru settled next to him and brushed a kiss on his cheek before replying. "Good evening."

A kiss on the cheek. Walter touched where Doru's lips had just been. It was real, this was all real. He had a vampire lover, he wasn't fully human, and his master didn't trust him.

Doru seemed to understand what was going through his head; he looked almost sympathetic, but not indulgent.

"Tell me what you did while I slept. You haven't been here all day, have you?"

"No," Walter shook his head. "I went to the shops, and rang Mickey Andrews, Arthur's foreman on the manor work. I had to talk to two of his brothers before I could talk to him. His mother took ill this morning and is in hospital. Until they get that sorted, the work has stopped."

"No work?" Doru said.

"No. No work. And I don't really know how to take a holiday, so I might wear a hole in the floor turning circles in this house."

Doru shook his head and chuckled silently. "Ah, Angel, what shall I do with you? Most men would be happy to have a holiday with a new lover. This is the time when infatuation burns hottest... among other things."

Walter grimaced. "I'm not infatuated."

"Oh?" Doru turned his body toward Walter, drawing a leg up onto the couch. "Then what are you?"

Walter rubbed his face and tugged uncomfortably on his ponytail before shaking his head. "I don't know, but I'm not infatuated. Schoolchildren are infatuated. So this is something else."

"Something else," Doru echoed. He tilted his head and seemed to taste the words before nodding. "Yes. You're right. This is something else."

Walter met his eyes and tried to read something from Doru's face. Were lovers supposed to know each other's thoughts? No, he didn't think sex bestowed some magical understanding, more the pity.

He nodded to himself. "Yes, something else. I don't think I would offer my blood to someone I'm only infatuated with."

Doru raised an eyebrow. "I thought you would change your mind. I wasn't going to press you on it."

"Do you really think I am the kind of man to make a serious offer and then withdraw it?" Walter asked while he unbuttoned a sleeve and began to roll it up. He smiled half-grimly when he saw Doru look down and watch his every movement.

"No, Angel, I have never taken you for frivolous," Doru replied, still looking down as Walter rolled back his sleeve to expose his forearm.

His skin was pale, although only by human standards. It was hard to consider oneself pale when side by side with Doru's perfect white skin. His forearm was corded in lean muscle, as befitted his rigorous training and weapons. The skin was crisscrossed with fine lines of scars from his earliest years of practice.

"I've never done this," he said quite unnecessarily. "Will it be enough if I make a cut here?"

"Yes." Doru sounded hoarse and he kept his eyes down, staring at Walter's arm as though he could see the blood moving through his veins.

Walter twitched a finger and held his arm up to Doru as a thin red line of blood welled up on his skin and began to run down his arm toward his elbow. Doru grasped his arm at wrist and elbow and licked away the blood before it could stain Walter's sleeve, then fastened his mouth over the cut.

He could feel Doru's tongue working the cut while he sucked Walter's blood out of it. It was an unsettling sensation and it ran counter to everything he had ever been taught. Everything. Here was a vampire latched onto him, drinking him, and instead of destroying him... he reached up with his free hand and petted Doru's hair. It didn't arouse him, the feeling of his lover sucking on his arm, but it did make him feel unaccountably tender toward Doru.

When Doru raised his face from Walter's arm, lips barely smudged with blood and eyes glowing red, it was Walter who pulled him in for a hard kiss.
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Hunting the Hunter