AN: This is a re-upload of an old story.

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, of course it was, Dante thought as he turned away from the window. He was holed up in some damp-smelling tower at the top of the Hellsing mansion, rain beating at the windows while an almighty storm rolled and stamped around the ominous skies above.

His weapons had been confiscated. Little Miss Hellsing thought it unwise to let a powerful, heavily armed demon roam about her house unchecked, so not only had she taken his beloved guns and blade, but she had given him a chaperone in the form of... well. Dante liked to think of him as her pet.

Alucard watched him from across the round, tower room. Unlike Dante, Alucard still had his guns. Dante wasn't sure if it was even possible to separate the weapons from the vampire - he suspected the former were merely a literal extension of the latter.

Alucard watched him with the lazy, languid attitude of a big cat. Dante wasn't sure if he was prey or rival. He hooked his thumbs into his belt and fixed the vampire with a disarming grin.

"So the old lady wants us to play happy families, huh?" Alucard nodded, and didn't speak. "...Well that's just fine with me," Dante said. He didn't know how long the storm would last, but figured that Alucard's unresponsive silence would make for a long night. "So why don't you tell me something about yourself?"

He perched on the edge of a creaking old table. It was covered with dust, as was everything in this tower. The chair Alucard had chosen as his throne was veiled with cobwebs, but he didn't look out of place in it.

The vampire took a slow, dry intake of breath and spoke. It was the first time Dante had heard his voice since their initial meeting, if their battle could really be called a meeting. "What do you want to know, demon?"

Dante shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. Why don't we start with the obvious. Why is a monster like you kept prisoner by a mortal human?"

Alucard only rolled his eyes, as if this was a tired and utterly boring question. "I have my reasons."

"Sure..."

"See those?" Alucard lifted an arm and gestured toward the door. It was heavy, dark metal, stained across the surface, frame, and surrounding wall with scrawling lines of black and dark red. They marked out a sigil, an ancient seal similar to the markings on the vampire's gloves. Ultimately, it meant that neither of them could escape until Integra Hellsing decided to let them go. "Those are reasons enough for you to know."

Dante grunted. There was silence for several minutes more. Dante wasn't sure how long. He studied the vampire for a while – Alucard had closed his eyes and appeared dead to the world. Or just dead. When he got bored of that, Dante turned back to the window. Instead of easing up, the storm was growing more powerful.

He let out a frustrated cry and sprang from the table. He paced several times, easing an imaginary crick in his shoulder. Pretty soon he would break his way out of this prison, magical bindings or not. He doubted they could truly hold him. Very little could.

"You can't get out," Alucard said smoothly. Dante started and stared at him.

"Reading my thoughts now, bloodsucker?"

Alucard opened his eyes a slit and regarded the devil with an impassive ruby gaze. His stillness was driving Dante crazy, even more than the confinement. When they had first met, Alucard had been a living, writhing mass of death and blood and shadow, bullets flying, teeth snapping-... In short, he had been a glorious fight. Now he was... tame.

"Your mind is an open book. You could do the same if you bothered to try." Alucard tilted his head back and gave a slow, crooked smile that showed off his ferocious teeth.

Dante snarled and reached for Alucard's collar. The response was immediate and bestial. A growl better suited to a hellhound than anything human-shaped, and Dante had to dance back to avoid getting a chunk taken out of him. Alucard had his teeth bared now. Dante couldn't help laughing.

"That's better!"

Alucard only responded by rising from his chair and slamming Dante back onto the dusty table. He pressed his elbow into Dante's chest and grabbed a handful of white hair with his other hand. He wrenched the demon's head back so hard it would have hurt a normal man. Dante felt a warm, stale expulsion of air against his throat. His heart was hammering fast, but there was a gleeful grin on his face.

"And I thought getting grounded up here was gonna be boring."

Alucard snarled again, more quietly this time. Dante felt the needle-like graze of fang-tips graze across his throat. The vampire's tension was palpable; Dante didn't understand the monumental restraint he was showing. He couldn't believe that such a powerful creature could be so completely in a human's thrall.

Dante sucked a hissing intake of breath and held very still. In a quiet, hoarse voice, he said, "What's holding you back?"

Alucard's lips closed on Dante's throat before his teeth pressed in, and for that moment there was the pleasant thrill of a soft kiss. Then the vampire's fangs drove into Dante's flesh. He winced at the sting. A deep and bestial rumble issued from Alucard's throat and his jaw closed tighter on Dante's neck. The demon hunter twitched; a human would be dead. He reached up as he felt the first pull of blood from his jugular, and grabbed at Alucard's hair. It had grown longer. It slid over his fingers like water, and coiled around his wrist like rope. He pulled, but Alucard didn't seem to feel it. He felt Alucard swallow. A full-body shiver ran through the vampire's spindly, powerful frame.

Dante chuckled breathlessly. "Taste that good, huh?"

Alucard replied only by giving him a shake, like a dog with a prey animal.

"Okay, that's enough," Dante said. He yanked on Alucard's hair again, this time really using his demonic strength, and managed to pull the monster's teeth from his neck. Alucard's mouth was bloody, and his eyes held a slight glazed-over sheen. "You think that's good, you should try a pure-blood," Dante said, before punching Alucard in the jaw.

If Dante had been human, Alucard would never have felt it. However, the strength of the blow was sufficient enough to knock the vampire back a step. Enough to let Dante get to his feet, grab Alucard's coat, and swiftly and brutally reverse their positions.

Far from being enraged, Alucard was smiling – although a smile with that mouth was terrifying enough on its own. He reached for Dante, gloved hands finding his hair and the back of his neck and pulling him back down. His hair looped around his arms like vines and drew him close. A hand snaked under his shirt, pushing it up. Alucard was practically purring. Dante couldn't help but smirk.

"Sweet? Tell me Drac, how do I taste?" He took a chance and slid a thigh between the vampire's as he leaned over him on the table.

"Find out for yourself." Well okay, he walked into that one. Alucard pulled him down and claimed his mouth, and Dante almost pulled away immediately at the taste of blood. He was no vampire, after all.

He hadn't kissed a guy in a long, long time, but then, this didn't really compare. The vampire's teeth were jarring, and he was sure he was nicking and cutting his lips and tongue with every movement; Alucard's tongue was like a serpent, longer than a human's and hungry; and throughout, the coppery, potent taste and slippery slicknessof blood. Beneath the fresh blood taste was something older and fouler, the taste of hundreds of years of death and carnage dried up to dust. He should have pulled away and devil triggered out of that tower. Instead he kissed him back.