swim through the fires to stay in this world

Title: 5 Times Alucard Interfered In Sir Integra’s Love Life (And One Time He Lost Control Of The Situation)

Author: redbrunja
Fandom: Hellsing
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Integra & Alucard.
Author’s Note: Written for nimblnymph. Sorry this took so long. Much thanks torenegadekitsune for the beta.
Summary: “Alucard apparently harbors the delusion that my personal affairs are his business.”
 

If the party hadn’t been so excruciatingly dull, Integra wouldn’t have left.

You’d think that a party at the headquarters of the most important military organization would have better stories being told, Integra thought to herself. Instead, everyone was complaining about the budget.

There was one other person who was almost her age at the soiree and when he actually spoke to her, asking if she wanted to go outside, she said yes. Anything to get away from the reek of cigar smoke and people talking and talking and talking about the dullest subjects imaginable.

She followed Ashton down the steps. When someone exited the mansion behind her, she ducked under the balcony, pressing back against the house, desperate not to be caught shirking her duty.

She heard Walter’s voice above her.

“If she doesn’t know about him, it’s not a very effective contingency plan,” he was saying in a low, serious voice.

“Oh, Walter, let her be a girl for a-” a fit of coughing interrupted her father’s words.

“Sir Hellsing,” Walter said, and Integra could hear the naked worry in his voice, “I don’t believe we have time to let her be a child.”

There was a pause, and Integra clenched her fists, worried.

“Do you think he’ll hurt her?” her father asked, and she’d never heard him sound so unsure. It made her want to press her hands over her ears.

Walter inhaled. “If she’s strong enough....” he started and then trailed off.

“She’ll be strong enough,” Integra’s father said. “She’s a Hellsing, after all.”

The two men spoke of less dire things for a few minute, and then reentered the house.

A little while after that, Ashton stomped back into the house, cursing under his breath about ditzy slags.

Integra stayed in the shadows under the balcony for a long time.

~2~

 
Davin Trafford wrote the most ridiculous poetry that she had ever heard in her life, gothic, garish stanzas fat with vampiric imagery that made Integra want to giggle.

Walter didn’t like him.

Intergra did.

She had come to Oxford because she was a Hellsing, and Hellsings went to Oxford and came back with high marks, and she did both. She managed top scores in her classes while her nights were filled with the management of her estate and the Hellsing Agency, arrived at lectures halls after nights so blood-soaked she expected her fingers to leave tainted prints on the neat white lined paper she wrote her notes in. She managed Oxford with guns under her pillows, a cross about her neck, and her nights filled with logistics and payrolls and death.

At that time in her life, still missing her father like a amputated limb and drowning in the responsibilities he’d left her, Integra would have given up far more than the few hours Davin asked of her for the chance to pretend to be a normal woman.

Integra had no illusions; she knew she was play-acting. But it was so nice to sit in a warm coffee house and listen to the boy who she was going to seduce later ramble on about the occult like it was something to revel in.

“So what did you think?” Davin asked as they walked back towards her flat. It was autumn, and the wind was icy, cutting through their coats and blowing leaves about their feet.

“I liked it,” Integra lied. “Your diction was very admirable.” That last was the truth.

“You inspired ‘Vampiress’,” he said at her door.

Integra raised her eyebrows, pulling open the door of her flat. She stepped into her dark apartment and held the door open wide; Davin obediently followed.

“You know, ‘hair like spun silver / eyes of icy blue / just counting crosses / and dreaming of you,” he recited, voice low and husky.

“Oh, that,” Integra said, and tried to blush. “That was....”

Tripe, ran through her mind in Alucard’s sardonic tones.

Davin leaned forward expectantly, and she kissed him. She always tried to be coy and seductive, but had the feeling that her kisses were more brusque and businesslike. However, Davin hadn’t complained yet.

He kissed her back, lips tame against hers. She pressed close, and started tugging him backward.

Devin made a pleased sound in his throat and followed, as obedient as a lamb.

Integra had her eyes open as she moved toward her bed and noticed that the shadows surrounding her room were more plentiful than they should be.

She sat down on the edge of her bed and Devin followed, his hands at her waist. She put her arms around his shoulders and with her hand made a shooing gesture at the figure lounging on her window seat.

Her boyfriend was being still being frustratingly tractable as he kissed her. Over his shoulder, she watched the shadows around her room deepen and darken, until it looked like her walls were bleeding India ink.

The hand behind Devin’s head gestured with increased emphasis.

Devin pulled his head back and started to look behind him.

Integra caught his chin in her hand before he could do so and kissed him harder.

He made a startled sound in the back of his throat.

A hand ran up her spine, strong and sure.

Finally, she thought, arching into Devin’s touch and then realized that both of his hands were still on her waist.

Integra reached behind her to slap at the ephemeral hand on her back.

It shifted to a finger running up and down the back of her calf, flicking with the edge of her skirt and Integra started to breath harder.

“Integra, are you all right?” Devin asked. She hadn’t even noticed that he’d stopped kissing her.

“Oh, I just... had a feather on my ankle,” she lied, casually swiping a hand at her lower leg.

“Oh,” Devin said looking at her oddly. Now one of Alucard’s many hands was running its fingers along the waist band of her skirt.

His eyes gleamed at her over Devin’s shoulder.

“Is there something-” Devin asked, turning to look behind him and Integra jumped him, desperate to keep him from seeing what was currently observing them.

Devin made a happy noise as she pushed him back on the bed and pulled off her blouse, the sliver cross she wore bouncing on her chest as she yanked her shirt off.

“My God,” Devin breathed, “I had no idea you were so ...forceful.”

“You should see her with a pistol in her hand,” Alucard commented. “That is truly a sight to behold.”

Devin froze against her.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“No,” Integra said firmly, as if her tone alone could will Alucard into invisibility. Unfortunately, that was a power he controlled, and ordering him into invisibility would rather destroy the point of having him invisible in the first place.

She watched Devin’s head turn in slow motion, watched him twist around to gaze at Alucard. For one moment she saw him as Devin would, red velvet coat dripping across the fabric of her window seat, hair blacker than the shadows around him, blood-red eyes glowing, teeth glinting.

Devin’s eyes widened.

“Devin,” Integra said calmly, into the dead silence that followed, listening to his frantic breathing and feeling his heart race. “Allow me to introduce you to the family pet.”

Alucard’s typical wolfish grin widened. “Woof,” he said, and Devin’s nerve broke.

He shrieked and threw Integra off him. She hit the floor hard, the back of her head cracking against the floor and the rug scouring her bare shoulders. She paused for a moment, listening to the slap of his footsteps as he raced through her flat.

She sense Alucard moving after him.

“Stop,” she said. She rolled her head and stared at his motionless boots. The bottom of his coat swayed half a meter from the tip of her nose.

The door of her flat slammed open and, satisfied that Alucard would obey her in this, Integra rolled her head back to stare at the dark ceiling and try and decide on an appropriate emotion.

Well, being upset about this would be a waste of energy.... Getting annoyed with Alucard was only worth the effort about the important things.... Integra decided being amused was the proper Helling thing to do, and attempted a casual laugh.

It sounded rather weak and un-Hellsing-like to her ears.

Alucard’s hand appeared in front of her face and she reached out and let him pull her to her feet, the fabric of his gloves cool and slippery against her skin. Integra remembered the way his hands had felt against her legs and back, sure and confidant, and shivered.

“Put on a shirt, master,” he said.

Integra looked at him and her gaze sharpened. He knew quite well she wasn’t cold and watching him watch her over his amber glasses, she felt a flash of power that had very little to do with the mutual bounds of servitude that bound them together.

“I don’t take orders from you,” she said calmly, walking toward him. She flicked her cross over her shoulder, felt skin warmed metal against her back as the chain tightened along her throat.

Alucard watched her, watched the links of her necklace press into her flesh.

The walls of her room had teeth, and there was a monster in her bedroom, and all Integra could feel was heat, heat filling up her body until it seemed like all her skin was glowing.

Alucard reached over and she stared at him with wide eyes.

He ran one finger up her arm, tracing her veins from wrist to elbow to shoulder. Her eyes fluttered closed as his finger toyed with the strap of her bra and ran up her neck, tilting her head back.

Then nothing.

Integra opened her eyes, and she was alone. Her room very empty, and looked too bright, lights from the street outside spilling in the windows.

The eighteen-year-old director of the most elite force in the world set her teeth together and wanted to scream.

Instead she took three deep breaths, turned on her bedside lamp, and did the next two fortnights worth of Economics homework.

Then she took a shower, standing under the water until it ran cold, until she was shivering, waterlogged hair sticking to her back, until the skin of her fingers and toes wrinkled.

She still dreamed of Alucard, sensual, searing dreams, and she thrashed herself awake, panting, remembering the feel of silk-gloved hands pushing her thighs apart, and a hot, distended tongue licking shamelessly into her.

Integra stared at the ceiling until she saw the light of dawn creep in, and then rolled over and tried to get back to sleep.

She was still trying when her alarm clock when off, informing her that it was time to play the collegiate youth again.

A lesser woman would have sighed; Integra merely rolled out of bed and went to dress, her mind already focused on scheduling and what needed to be done before nightfall.

~3~

“I want to thank you,” a low voice said and Integra turned away from the window, returning her focus from the night outside to the glittering gala going on around her.

The speaker was a tall man of Indian descent. His teeth were gleaming white, and he had a infectious smile.

Integra nodded back.

“Aaron Harcourt,” he introduced himself and held out a hand.

“Integra Hellsing,” she responded, shaking his.

“You were magnificent,” he informed her, still keeping a hold of her hand.

She raised an eyebrow.

“I witnessed your masterful verbal evisceration of the Treasury agents,” he continued, “by the time they got to me they were quite accommodating. I may not need to start holding bake sales to pay my men for their time.”

Integra looked pleased. She was dressed in a severe Prussian blue suit, hair tightly wound back in a chignon, her only nods to her sex the silver studs in her ears and the ruby lipstick she’d applied on a whim. The color on her lips exaggerated her slight smile, making her look rather more predatory than she’d intended.

“Thank you,” she said coolly. Taking the agents of the Treasury to task after multiple attempts to slash her budget had been the high point of the past week, and little enough repayment for the hours of her life they’d wasted with their nattering.

“I was wonder if you would like–” Aaron started.

Something with red eyes and black fur bolted past the window and there was a faint howl.

“Sounds like someone’s dog got loose,” Aaron commented, and returned to the subject he wanted to pursue, “but I was wondering–”

“Excuse me,” Integra said. “I think I need a breath of fresh air.”

“I’ll join you,” Aaron offered.

“No,” Integra said firmly, “I need to get some air alone.”

She walked calmly across the patio and down to the garden, picking up her pace when she reached the gravel paths. “Alucard,” she said, voice commanding, “report.”

She caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye.

A canine figure lunged for her; burning eyes, but just two of them, and it was howling fit to raise the dead–

Integra dove out from under its teeth, rolling back to her feet in a smooth motion. Security had stripped her of her pistol, and she cursed the fatuous fools who thought she was a threat to the country -men and -women she’d devoted her life to-

A second dog-like shape appeared, and ripped out the throat of the Hellhound. It pranced a little in triumph, and started to swallow the first beat in earnest.

“Alucard,” Integra said in a low voice. “What. Is. Going. On.”

“Oh, one of Crowley’s disciples decided he wanted a spot of anarchy, and has found he bit off too much,” Alucard said, manifesting behind her.

She opened in mouth to ask further questions and then caught the reek of blood - far more than just the faint scent that always clung to her vampire. There were bodies nearby.

“I will take care of it,” her vampire said haughtily. “Go back to your soirée, master - leave the cleaning to the servants.”

Integra balanced the politicking she still needed to do against the help she could offer in whatever situation was developing out here.

“Very well,” she said, “I expect a full report before I retire tonight.”

“As my master orders,” Alucard said with a bow, and some distance away, Integra heard something wearing the shape of a dog scream in agony.

She turned to go.

“Oh, and Integra?”

She pivoted back, eyes narrowed.

Alucard brushed his fingers over her lips, and her lipstick left streaks like blood on the white fabric of his gloves.

“In the moonlight, you look positively delicious.”

His voice was heavy with something dark and hungry.

Integra said nothing, and returned to the party, which was glittering and inane and necessary.

Aaron was nowhere to be found.

~4~

Despite the bloody history, to Intergra, her time at Serra Leone was the closest thing to a holiday she’d had in years.

Her hotel room had a lovely balcony looked out over the a turquoise ocean and, since she was on the top floor, was actually defensible, the rooms surrounding her filled with Hellsing agents.

If only she wasn’t forced to spend fifteen hours a day in government buildings, trying to convince the President to allow Hellsing to create a branch of their company in this country, and the rest making sure that Hellsing was running smoothly in her absence, it would have approached enjoyable.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, Sir Hellsing,” Lieutenant McKenzie told her as he checked her room for booby traps and bugs, “I’m sure tomorrow they’ll crack.”

Keir McKenzie was Commander Ferguson’s protégé; snagged out of some elite military prep school, he was even younger than she was, with bright hair and freckles. He seemed utterly unfazed by vampires, her sex, and time spent in the surveillance van instead of the field, facing all the them with a quick joke and viciously accurate tactics.

Integra wanted the chance to play chess with him, had developed what she could only describe as a ‘crush.’ It was quiet embarrassing, and she responded by ignoring him as much as possible. However, she was quite aware that Alucard knew she fancied McKenzie, just from the way he started looking at the Lieutenant like a cat watching a mouse hole.

Integra pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose and went to stare out the glass windows, automatically looking to see where would be the most likely places to put snipers. There were only two dubious rooftops, and those had already been cleared by Hellsing before she entered her room.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Integra said dryly, and McKenzie grinned at her.

Integra didn’t smile back.

“Well,” McKenzie said slowly, “unless they’re anything else I can do...”

“No, that’s quite alright,” Integra said

There was a pause and she heard him inhale.

“That will be all,” she said briskly, not looking away from the window.

There was the barest pause, and then in the glass Integra saw him salute.

“Yes, sir,” he said and left.

Integra rubbed the bridge of her nose and then went to get aspirin for her headache.

At 03:28 am, out of a dead sleep, her eyes snapped open.

The door to her balcony was open, and she rolled out of her bed without conscious thought, the gun she kept under her pillow in her hand.

Freckles below bright, blood-colored eyes.

Not Alucard, she thought at the same time as, Vampire, and she fired.

The plate glass doors shattered, ghouls spilling into her room, and she didn’t let her attention leave McKenzie; he was the true freak, he was the threat.

It took the entire magazine of her Walther to sever his spine, and he was new enough that just destroying his cranium caused him to start dissolving to dust and ash.

It took time, however, time that meant that the freaks were able to reach her. The first one was grabbing at her throat already, and Integra pivoted around, slow, too slow, he was going to–

An arm wrapped itself around her waist and pulled her out of the reach of the freaks.

Alucard, she thought, inhaling the scent of gunpowder and blood and old velvet, even before she heard the familiar bang of the Casull.

“Having fun without me, master?” he asked, decimating the first wave of ghouls like targets at the range.

He was certainly being restrained this evening.

Integra extracted herself from his grip (his hand slid possessively across her waist and lingered at her hip, and she ignored it) walking to the bedside table and getting a fresh clip.

The snick on the pistol as she reloaded was soothing, and her pulse started steadying, until she caught a burst of motion out of the corner of her eye, and Alucard threw her on to the bed. He was heavy on top of her, seeming too solid, he should be insubstantial, he shouldn’t feel like someone real.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked coolly face centimeters from his and the walls exploded. Integra flinched, burying her face in his shoulder as dust and debris pattered across Alucard’s back like rain. “I told you to stay in England.”

“You were in danger, master,” he responded, and rolled her off the bed. They landed on the floor, Integra straddling him, which put her in the perfect position to take care of the ghouls shoving their way through the hole that had been created in the wall. They lacked all subtely, and Integra couldn’t understand why they hadn’t just come in through the door if they were going to be so blatant.

“I couldn’t stay away,” he continued, shifting under her in a way that made his words sing with double entendre. Integra continued shooting, heat flaming up into her cheeks.

When the freaks stopped pushing their way into her room, it almost startled her.

There was the sound of clapping, and then a lovely, red-eyed vampirina manifested.

“You’re very entertaining,” she said. “But I did give you some great motivation - how did you like seeing your little boy-toy all drained dry and murderous? I have to admit, I was thrilled - it’s not often I find someone who’s both so pure and so ...ripe.”

Integra rose to her feet, and in the bare second that took a number of things ran through her mind, thoughts crisp and clear with an overlay of rage. She thought about who was holding this freak’s leash, McKenzie and his freckles, and how many bullets she had left.

“Servant,” she said clearly, speaking to Alucard, but not looking away from the enemy in front of her. “I have orders for you.”

~5~

 
Outside, the wind was howling, driving freezing drops of rain onto London’s streets.

Inside the Penny Peacock, Integra sipped at a dry sherry and slowly read through a collection of Sylvia Plath’s poetry.

There was a handsome older man slowly sipping a brandy at the bar.

When she set her empty glass down, he motioned to the bartender and then started towards her with an extra drink in his hand. Integra was peripherally aware of him, but even when he started towards her, he moved with a mundane awkwardness - nothing like the readiness of a soldier or a freak’s unholy grace.

Halfway across the room, Integra’s mobile rang.

“Hellsing,” she said briskly, spine straightening automatically. There was a pause. “He did WHAT?” she snarled into the cell phone and then rose from her seat. She tossed down money on the table, shoved her book into her briefcase, and stalked out of the pub.

She brushed past the man on her way out, and didn’t notice that he turned to watch her leave, pale hair floating from her movement.

~Finis~

After three days of staring at the stone walls of the prison her countrymen had locked her in, Integra tapped her cigarillo into the ashtray that she’d set on her bed and came to a decision.

“Alucard,” she said calmly to the empty room.

“Ready to leave these sub par accommodations, my master?” a voice asked, staring at the table on which her uneaten dinner rested.

She didn’t even bother debating with him the reasons she wasn’t going to turn rogue.

Integra rose from the bed and walked toward him.

He leaned close, and whispered in her ear. “Decided which of those fatuous English worms should pay for this outrage?” He reached out and snapped the cloth manacles the Tower Guards had bound her with.

“Give me a name,” he breathed in her ear, “and they’ll pay.”

Integra rose on her toes, fingers sliding along and velvet of his coat and brushed her lips across his in one smooth motion.

Alucard stepped away from her and then laughed haughtily. He was gone from her grip before she’d even registered the motion.

“Teasing dogs, Integra, in a good way to get bit,” Alucard drawled.

She drew herself up and matched the arrogance in his tone.

“I do not play games,” she said icily and between blinks he was standing before her, too close. She refused to lean back.

“I plan on having you forever, my Hellsing,” he informed her, his teeth glinting in the low light. Integra had known that, and like so much about Alucard, she couldn’t tell if it was comforting or terrifying. Regardless, she would never allow her line to be turned in that manner.

He turned away, figure starting to dissolve into shadows and Integra grabbed the lapel of his coat. He whirled to face her, inhumanly fast, the skirts of his jacket and the tips of his hair flaring about him.

With her other hand she unbuttoned her blouse. Shrugging it back, she bared the line of her body, from the curve of her scarred neck down through the valley between her breasts to her belly button. Her skin was pale, the creamy complexion marking her as an Englishwomen just as much as her accent.

Alucard’s eyes were fixed on her face, glasses low on his nose, but that meant nothing.

He knew what she was offering.

Integra’s voice was husky when she spoke: “You can have me right now.”