Chapter Text
After over two thousand years as a vampire, Scott would consider himself an expert on vampiric instincts. He would even say that he was such an expert on it that controlling himself was not difficult at all.
When his mind screamed at him for letting fledglings wander around Oakhurst instead of locking them in a nest, he was able to ignore it.
When he started traveling the world with Shelby and Drift, he was able to ignore the instinct tugging him back towards his other alive fledglings.
When they finally settled down in New York, Scott should have been able to ignore his nesting instincts. Shelby and Drift were nearly two centuries old, so they shouldn't have triggered the sire side of his mind so much. Yet, when his two fledglings were on a long trip to Oakhurst to visit Cleo and Pearl (Scott only went once a year to visit Avid’s grave while the girls went every few months), Scott found himself turning one of the rooms in their shared apartment into a nest.
It was a well built nest, that was undeniable. A Goldsmith wouldn't dare be caught with a nest that was too small or made of poor quality materials. The mattresses he ordered to cover the entire floor were expensive (although they didn't dent his hoard of wealth), the pillows were meticulously chosen, and the blankets were the softest he could find. Really, the internet was a wonderful invention to allow him to order such high quality necessities in such a short period of time.
Scott could admit that letting himself indulge in the instinct was illogical. Both his fledglings were old enough to not need a nest. Obviously they could sleep in it if they liked, but he had no new fledglings that would require such a space. A newly turned fledgling would need a space that dark and quiet to avoid stressing their mind and allow them to properly develop. He still felt guilt about causing Shelby and Drift to take more than one century to mature due to the stress of Oakhurst, but there was nothing he could have done to reverse that once they were free, especially not now when they were adult vampires. A nest was not necessary.
Scott closed the door to the nest room and promised himself that he'd take it apart later, before the girls got back to witness his embarrassing lapse in control.
Three days later, when Shelby and Drift came back, Scott had not gotten rid of the nest. Every time his mind wandered to destroying it, he'd get an overwhelming feeling of wrongness from his instincts. It almost felt like he had a newly turned fledgling with him that his instincts were demanding he had to take care of.
Eventually, he gave up on getting rid of it and showed it to his coven. They loved it and started sleeping in the nest whenever they got the rare need to sleep. It could at least serve some purpose that way — without being as ancient as Scott, Shelby and Drift still occasionally felt the need to sleep.
Even as the two girls added their own things to the nest and treated it like a slumber party whenever both of them got tired around the same time, Scott never stepped foot in the room. He had no logical reason to need to. He did not need to sleep, nor did he have a newly turned fledgling to look after.
His instincts only got worse over the next few weeks. His mind constantly insisted that there was a fledgling in need nearby. He started observing Shelby and Drift closer. They were both technically adult vampires, but maybe their developmental delay caused his instincts to still see them as babies. Was one of them not eating enough? Did one of them spend too long in the sun? Were they worried about something? Try as he might, Scott could see nothing wrong with his covenmates.
After a while of this instinct nonsense, he pushed down his pride and asked them what was going on, explaining his instincts in hopes that if either of them were hiding something, they'd tell him (thank goodness that neither of them understood how embarrassing it was for an ancient vampire to be bothered so much by such things). Yet, both insisted they were fine and they appeared fine.
Scott felt like he was going insane, and that was not helped when he started hearing things. About a month after he made the nest, he started hearing a nearly inaudible cry of a newly turned fledgling. It was too high pitched for a human to hear and too faint for a less experienced vampire to hear. Any time he was near the apartment, he'd occasionally hear the cry for help from an abandoned fledgling. He knew it had to be a hallucination. No sire would dare neglect a fledgling, especially not in modern times when hunters were so much more advanced.
He felt stupid as he left the apartment as a bat one night to scour the city. It was just one night, he told himself. One night to confirm that there was no fledgling. Then maybe his mind would shut up and give him some rest.
He searched for hours, occasionally hearing the cry again come from different directions. It sounded like it was coming from different rooftops, so the fledgling had to be moving somehow. But Scott couldn't see anyone! It wasn't like a fledgling could go invisible at such a young age unless they were like Owen or Pyro or Shelby or Drift or any other fledgling he let get so stressed that they developed those powers as an instinctual way to ensure survival. Scott paused as the thought hit him. Surely not, right? He hovered where he was, listening for the cry again.
There.
The near-silent cry came again from the rooftop he was above. He transformed back and dropped down to the roof.
He took a breath and released a few bat-like clicking sounds, the sound of a sire calling for a fledgling. He heard a whimper to his right, muffled like the fledgling was trying to silence themselves. Scott's instincts hit him like a truck. He couldn't think of anything other than the fact that a fledgling was here and scared and trying to silence themselves because they had no protection and they were obviously abandoned. Scott cooed soothingly, slowly moving towards where he had heard the whimper. His eyes scanned the empty air, trying to figure out where the fledgling was.
Inexperienced vampires usually could not hold perfect invisibility, and this fledgling was no exception. The image in front of Scott wavered a bit, the outline of a person visible before fading into nothingness again. He did not waste his chance. Scott darted forward, grabbing the fledgling and pulling their body against his.
An elbow slammed into Scott's gut as the fledgling made a terrified screech, calling out for a sire. Scott listened for a response and frowned when he heard none. This fledgling was definitely abandoned; no sire would refuse to respond to a distressed fledgling. At least, no respectable sire would.
Scott didn't let go of the thrashing fledgling even as they kept kicking and elbowing him. He purred soothingly, trying to get the fledgling to drop their invisibility. He needed to see what he was dealing with. An abandoned fledgling was almost certainly starving and on the brink of going feral, and if they were hurt they wouldn't have enough blood in their system to heal fully.
The fledgling went limp in his arms. Scott waited. If they had tired themselves out, they likely didn't have the energy to keep themselves invisible for much longer.
A few minutes later, Scott was proven right. The air shimmered as the invisibility shattered, leaving an exhausted fledgling in Scott's arms with short, black hair. Scott gently tilted their face up and froze.
Abolish.