10. Vlad V (1/1)

so we're off to a good start here (still 4am by the way, hello future-people!) as i have just tried to label this document with the same label i just labelled the last one with. smooooth. hmm, i wonder if people will start reviewing my author's notes instead of the smits? i hope they review the smits as well, i totally stayed up all night writing them. also i'm totally gonna have to come back and edit once i realise these are still on here because they kind of ruin the emotional integrity of the oh shut up woman and let the lovely people read about angst.

...and then i also tried to put the previous installment in the box. it's like i'm trying to clone the thing i just posted. ok shutting up now.

disclaimer: i am totally not gonna wake up til like teatime tomorrow. and i don't own young dracula. maybe by then i will? but i wouldn't count on it. sadface.

vlad didn't know much about bertrand, really, when it came down to it.

oh, he knew how he took his blood, and he had a vague idea of some of his hobbies – hitting the punchbag with a stick was a hobby, right? he knew that there were some things bertrand felt strongly about – apparently, slayings were on that list – and that he could be a little intense. he knew the tells that told the careful observer that the tutor was feeling threatened or nervous; he knew that he could have a wicked sense of humour; he knew that sometimes he put on a show of being less confident than he was, and that sometimes he felt insecure and pretended it was an act.

but when it came down to it, vlad had to admit, he knew far less about bertrand than bertrand did about him. part of him was afraid to find out more, because the older vampire had made allusions to things in his past, and perhaps even his present, that vlad really didn't care to dwell on. besides, while there were such huge gaps in his knowledge, his

ain could fill in those gaps with assumptions that his tutor had secret annoying habits, flaws he couldn't possibly forgive. he could pretend that there was some way bertrand could stop making him feel this way.

there was so much about his tutor that he had still to discover, so much he would never understand, even if he had centuries to think about it. he would never find out everything there was to know about bertrand.

no matter how much it hurt.