21st Century | z.p l.s

I.

They live in a castle.

Actually, scratch that.

They are supposed to live in a castle. In a place where the world can't see them, with cold stone walls, freezing stone floor (try to walk there barefoot and say goodbye to your toes) and black and yellow candles dripping wax from heavy chandeliers. All over the walls there are portraits of their ancestors, all looking dangerous and... hungry. That's the thing about vampires, get them to smile and you'll practically crap your pants in fear. Especially when you see their teeth. Nothing says I want to drink your blood like two very large canines as the front piece of a white smile.

They're the reason why Zayn seldom smiles, that and the fact that he has a hard time finding things worthy of a smile. They're also the reason why Louis can never seem to keep his mouth shut, that and the fact that he's deeply in love with his own voice.

Zayn and Louis are very, very different in almost every aspect but three:
They're both vampires.
They're both best friends with a vampire (and it's not very hard guessing who when the vampire population is so dreadfully small and anti-social).
They're both extremely open-minded as long as their nights are pleasing and the mornings non-existent.
​The boys have known each  all their lives and no matter how they may look don't you ever, not even for a second, think their lives aren't at least thrice as long as yours. They've also been best friends for a very long time, mostly because there had been no one else around. That's the thing about living in a huge mansion whose closest neighbor is also a huge mansion a couple of miles away and the nearest village is a five-hour trip into the mountains. You learn to make do, and if this 'make do' meant Zayn was best friends with someone who smiled too much when he really shouldn't, well, there really wasn't much of a choice, was there?

Unfortunately, the time had come, and what 'time' exactly that was Zayn didn't know, he just knew it was the time for him and Louis to leave their comfortable mansions and go live together in a very big, smelly castle.

It was tradition see, they even had it written down in an old piece of parchment that got buried alongside Throat-Lover Isaguel Tomlinson II.

Basically, tradition said the eldest child of both the families should take over the castle together when the time comes, while their families continue living comfortably in their respective mansions.

It had been built by Louis' and Zayn's great-great-great-great-great-great grandfathers a long time ago, who also happened to be vampires, best friends with a vampire and quite open-minded.

How this tradition came to be, nobody knew. The truth about vampires is that they live for an awful long time unless somebody decides to shove a stake through their heart, and over the years things like how really do lose their importance.

So in the end, everybody knew that what really mattered was that Zayn and Louis went to the castle and lived there together for god knows how long. What they did with their free time was their own business, although from the looks Zayn's younger sister kept giving him when she thought he wasn't looking suggested everybody thought they were going to be very busy.

Their fathers had told them it was a job of great importance for their community and both wiped a fake tear from their eyes. Neither had lived in the castle since they weren't the eldest, and neither really knew anything about their older brothers except that they weren't in the castle anymore, which meant it was free, which meant there was soon going to be an empty bedroom in their mansions.

Their mothers had promised to visit once every twenty years, which was quite reasonable, all things taken into account like weather and transport and vampires not being very big on family love.