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singillppl2023-10-09 11:52 pm
singmod) wrote in singillppl2023-10-09 11:52 pm
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October 2023 Test Drive Meme
OCTOBER 2023 TDM
PROMPT ONE — ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST: A new group of arrivals find themselves lost in the frozen wilds and vulnerable to the dangers of nature. With luck, they make it to the town of Milton, and to a friendly face offering food, warmth and shelter — not to mention the fact they are not the first to come here.
PROMPT TWO — GUILTY PARTY: Interlopers are kidnapped and held captive by a being and forced to confess their wrong doings, or face fatal consequences.
PROMPT THREE — OFF THE BEATEN TRACK: Interlopers get more than they bargained for when a mysterious albeit friendly dog comes across them and persuades them to follow them into the wilds.
ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST
WHEN: Mid-October.
WHERE: Milton, Milton Outskirts.
CONTENT WARNINGS: potential animal attacks, potential injuries, potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk.
'You are the Interloper. You are not part of nature’s design.'
It’s the last thing you hear. A dark, deep voice. Impossibly ancient. You feel afraid. Maybe you’re dreaming, maybe you’re wide awake. You saw the lights, and then your world went dark. But you hear it in the blackness, you won’t forget those words.
You awaken. You are not where you were before. It’s different for everyone, there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern in where you find yourself. You may open your eyes to find yourself in a cold, dim and dank cabin. The air is stale, dust hangs in the rays of weak sunlight that shine through the tiny windows. Someone lived here once, but they aren’t to be found. You look around, it seems like no one has been here in several weeks, maybe longer. The fire is stone cold, the dishes in the sink are mouldy — it's possible the place has been ransacked, as if they've gone through the drawers and cupboards looking for something. It is quiet. The wood creaks around you. Or perhaps you may awaken to find yourself shivering in the yawning maw of a cave, the freezing stone below you. Or maybe you’re unfortunate enough to sit up to find yourself lying in the snow, in the middle of the wilderness. Snow lies thick around you. It’s freezing out. You haven’t felt a cold like this before in your entire life. Cruel and biting. You have no idea where you are, and what’s worse — you are completely alone.
You may feel different, too. Any powers or magics you may have feel... absent. Disconnected. Things that may not have affected you previously now do. Something in you has changed.
You know you can’t stay where you are. You’ll need to move, try to work out where you are and how you came to be here. So you walk, head out into the unknown, in hope of finding a trail or a road. You’ll find one soon enough. It’s here you may find someone else in the same boat as yourself, equally freezing and confused. You’ll both need to keep going. It won’t be easy. You hear howls of wolves around you, and the terrain is difficult: slips and falls are likely. You’re completely vulnerable out here in the open.
Or it’s possible you may come across someone else here. Someone who looks far better prepared to deal with the freezing cold and frozen landscape, out hunting or gathering. They’ll likely offer help and get you into town. However, for the unlucky ones who don’t come across anyone, you’ll carry on until you see it: the lazy trail of smoke rising in the air. Fire. Not just one, but several. Civilization...?
Follow it, and soon enough the way you’ve taken will certainly become a path or road. Unfolding before you in the mountainous forests, you’ll see the most welcome of sights: a small mining town tucked up in the valley. Battered, rusted road signs will direct to “MILTON, POP. 947”. You’re almost there, you keep going, and it looks like other people have had the same idea as you. In fact, you’ll hear the muffled sounds of life. People! In the town!
As you head into the outskirts and then further into town, you’ll find it’s a little easier to walk but the cold has gripped you hard. You’ll find the buildings, both shops and homes, some are dark and lifeless, some of them are boarded up, some of them are occupied. People are going about their business, or stood watching from their tiny porches of their small, timber homes. For a town this big, there doesn’t seem to be many people. Several dozen at most, but no more.
Towards the center of town, you’ll find the building from which the biggest of the smoke trail rises: a school-house of sorts, or some kind of community hall. Perhaps both. You’ll find more and more people all drawn to this place, each and every one of them in the same position as yourself (and your companion, if you’ve found one). Some are in worse states than others: some are bloodied, nursing bite wounds or cuts; others might have some other kind of injury sustained in the journey here from falls. Others may look as if they could faint from the cold at any second.
The door opens, and you’re greeted by the gnarled, wizened face of an elderly man, dressed in thick furs. He has a kind face. He smiles warmly, and with pity, ushering you in with haste.
“Ah, more of you have come.” he nods, just as he suspected you might. “I am Methuselah. I welcome you Newcomer, although I’m sorry for how you’ve come to find yourself here. You are not the only one, the lights are changing things. Come. Mother Nature has not been kind to you, but there are plenty here to help.”
The room is dim, lit only by natural daylight through the windows. A roaring fire sits at one end of the huge hall. It crackles, bright and cheerful... and warm. Even as big as this place is, the room is pleasantly warm. You’ll also find basic cots set up down one side of the hall, and while it seems there's a few people already living here, there's enough space for those in need of them. There's places to rest for a moment and get your bearings, or just trying to recover from the cold. Down the other side are tables and chairs, and long tables laden with food, drinks and bottled water similar to one might find at a soup kitchen. Once again, Methuselah offers a feast, aided by some of the other Interlopers.
There are canisters with hot herbal teas and coffee, along with soup and stew and trays of charred deer and rabbit meats, plus some grilled fish, instant mashed potatoes, and tinned vegetables. It’s very basic, but it’s hot and filling. A feast. The old man has been busy. And Methuselah will continue to busy himself, still; there is plenty to do. He will fetch blankets, tend to wounds, serve food and drinks. He does not have much time to talk. More and more people seem to be coming in from the cold. He will not stop to sit and rest until everyone is seen to, taking up a place by the fire to gaze silently into its flames. He is troubled, thoughtful. The arrival of so many is not something that sits well with him. The others from town will eventually trail in too, to eat and warm themselves, and search amongst the new faces.
He will encourage newcomers to get warm and eat, and when they are ready to — they can explore the town and find one of the many empty homes to call their own. He will not speak much, but perhaps you might be able to get some answers from those fellow arrivals who’ve been in this place for some time now.
GUILTY PARTY
WHEN: Over the next month.
WHERE: Paradise Farm Outbuildings.
CONTENT WARNINGS: forced imprisonment; forced honesty; supernatural beings; confessional themes; threat of death; possible character death; possible death by throat injury.
You don’t remember how you came to be here. The air is cold and damp, the rot of wood is strong, and… blood. Why does it smell of so much blood? You can’t seem to see all that much in the gloom, but you think you’re in some kind of outbuilding of sorts. You find yourself chained to a chair, the metal is heavy and cold against you and no matter whatever you seem to do, you can’t seem to free yourself from them. No struggling can ease their hold, and there’s no lock to unpick or break. They weigh you down in your seat, you can't even seem to tip yourself over.
But you’re not the only one here. Across from you in the dark is someone else. One of your fellow Interlopers is trapped here with you, too. They too don’t remember anything either, they’re equally as confused and uncertain as you. Perhaps frightened. Not only this, they’re also sat chained up just as tightly. You have a little time to talk before you realise the two of you aren’t alone.
There's a glooming green light, the feeling of a presence. A huge figure steps into view, cloaked in black. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a man or a woman, and it’s difficult to make out much detail of them. Their face is obscured by a stone mask in the shape of a monstrous, horned and fanged Jackal. Green light glows from behind it, foreboding in the dark. It will not answer you if you try to speak with it.
“WICKEDNESS LIES WITHIN YOU.” The voice is a fierce chorus of whispers, but yet so loud. It sends a shiver down your spine. “I HAVE SEEN IT.”
... You can’t help but know it to be true. Something inside you knows what they speak of is true. Any misdeed or wrongdoing done by your hand, any cruel word you spoke, any life you took or heart you broke. You feel exposed, seen. The figure knows what you have done.
“CONFESS.” the figure demands. “UNBURDEN YOUR HEART AND BE FREE. BE SILENT AND CARRY IT TO THE GRAVE.”
The figure holds an item in its hand, something that glints in the light that glows from its mask. Now you realise why there’s so much blood in the air: it’s a sickle, dripping with blood. You are not the first to be brought here. You will not be the last.
Speak, unburden yourself, and if the figure is satisfied — you will, in fact, go free. Refuse, or not take the demand seriously, and the figure will deem you unworthy. They will move within the blink of an eye, striking you with the sickle in the neck — let it be a mercy that they kill you quickly.
OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
WHEN: Over the next month.
WHERE: Milton / Milton Outskirts.
CONTENT WARNINGS: supernatural creature; trickster creature; themes of peril; possible character injury; possible dead body discoveries; potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk; possible character death.
The weather will continue to prove difficult for all who try to navigate this world, but with the current footfall in and around Milton, it’s at least helped to keep paths and roads somewhat clear despite the snow’s best efforts to cover up these walkways. Still, it’s a pain to get around, especially on particularly snowy days. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes necessary to go out on such days — survival doesn’t stop for the weather to pass.
And so journeys must be made, hunting must be done, forageables must be collected. You try to keep to the paths and trails, where the terrain yields before you for an easier journey.
… Until you hear barking through the trees, the sound of paws through the snow. Given the recent wolf activity of the last month, it’s understandable to be on edge. However, it isn’t a wolf that comes into view: it’s a large dog, bigger than any dog you’ve seen before. Coated in thick and shaggy black fur, this animal doesn’t seem to be like the wolves that have been found so far in this world. While the wildlife has certainly been altered, this dog remains very much like anyone would expect a dog to act in terms of behaviour. It’s playful with some, certainly friendly, constantly trying to play chase with you as it loops around in circles with a wagging tail.
However, there’s an insistence with this dog. It wants you to follow it. It will bark incessantly, trying to pull you from the path to go after it into the woods. It wants to show you something, take you somewhere. It will even try to gently pull at a coat-sleeve or trouser-leg to coax your forwards before heading off, keeping just in sight for you to go after it.
You’ll find it increasingly difficult to keep up, even if you pick up the pace as you head further into the woods. There’s less snow here, but the forest floor is filled with holes and tree roots that will trip you up. Falls are likely. But even worse is when before you know it, the ground simply gives way beneath you, sending you tumbling into a small valley or getting you stuck deep into soft, muddy earth. With it, perhaps, twisted ankles or worse. Or perhaps simply battered and bruised and unable to climb out of trench of earth. Maybe you come face to face with the body of some other poor Interloper who'd met their own end in similar manner — trapped and injured in the ditch.
Or worse still, the dog might just have you stumbling over a cliff face and tumbling into the Basin. Whatever fate befalls you, it’s as if the dog simply led you into it. And said dog, however, will be nowhere to be seen. It will have left you stuck, hurt, lost in the woods.
You’re sure you can hear some dark chuckling on the wind. Maybe it’s just the trees.
FAQs
1. Arrival threads can be treated as game canon.
2. Items characters have brought from home can be found either strewn around them when they awaken, or in the community hall — as if someone left them out for them to collect. Methuselah will not know how they got there, and will be quite bemused by the happenings.
3. Reminder that all characters are now depowered upon arrival. They can choose not to notice it at first, or can immediately sense something is different about them.
4. If asked any personal questions, Methuselah will smile and say "Oh, you don't want to know about an old man like me. But I have lived all over in these parts for all my life." He will be more concerned with trying to help Newcomers, and is genuinely concerned for them and their well-being. Other Interlopers will say much of the same — there's little to know about him.
5. More information about Milton can be found here.
1. Characters will find that once they have confessed, they will pass out. When they awaken, they will find themselves lying or sitting on the floor — the being, chairs and chains have gone. They are free to leave.
2. Attempts to search the outbuildings at later dates will prove fruitless. There is no sign of the being, nor the chairs or chains that held characters, but there will be blood on the floor that can be found.
3. One character can confess, or both. Player choice! As long as someone's doing some confessing.
1. Gyests, sometimes called Ghests or Bargyests are evil creatures from Northumberland, UK folklore. They seek to lure travelers away from a known and safe road to their miry and marshy demise, or perhaps lead them to walk in the darkness of a Cheviot night over the edge of a precipice. Often taking the shape of horses, donkeys or large dogs, Gyests could also shape-shift to appear as men, or even stacks of hay. But always their intention was to trick humans, for their own amusement, and lure them to their doom.
2. Attempts to lure or trap the Gyest will not work.
no subject
Louis has to faintly wonder if he only thought of the good times because Lestat's usually mobile face looked so peaceful at rest. Is not the Devil a fallen angel, one of God's brightest stars? Are not the small hairs on the back of Lestat's neck the softest most sublime of feathers? Lestat might be Blake's Woman Clothed with the Sun... or the Great Red Dragon.
Louis stiffens as if a leech has convulsed against his skin, not because he finds Lestat disgusting to look upon, but because he finds him beautiful. And like a leech, Louis is unable to safely separate himself from it, except perhaps by fire, which he has already proven he cannot bring himself to do. To know and love himself is terrifying, and to be known and loved is worse. All this is plain in the quickened pulse under his skin.
"You goin' get up, or do I have to drag you over every hill and valley?"
He suspected Lestat would spoil the quiet, so Louis elected to do it first. It's very easy to hide in brusqueness, but not so easy to divest his voice from the thickness of hurt and the fanged softness of something he dare not indulge.
no subject
Beneath Louis' gaze, Lestat is no more than a gilded insect. Perhaps Louis would prefer him stuck on a glittering pin and entombed in a glass coffin, fair and frigid for eternity. A vision to behold, but one never to touch or be touched by, lest the curse of him catch hold in Louis once again.
And the shame in him is that he cannot hate the idea of it as completely as he should.
"It depends on where you intend to drag me," he says, waspishly, "I've yet to tour the local dump. I'm not sure if it is up to standard."
But he brings his free hand beneath him and presses up, coming to his feet with his fingers still a loose but stubborn bracelet on Louis' wrist. He does not lean on Louis' steadiness. He does not want to be reminded of it. Only when standing does he cocks his head and smile bitterly, making a fluidly graceful show of release.
Then he is standing, and so is Louis, and there is no excuse of chains to prevent either of them from falling on the other. Minutes ago he would have been certain as the grave that his next act would be be to seize Louis in his hands and reproach him, but in the wake of that coerced, wretched outburst -
Weakness. Damnable weakness, leaden and dull.
"Well." He says, with wounded flippancy. "So much for confession."
no subject
Louis has a whole tirade ready, something about Lestat never wanting to really talk about anything. Something prevents him from lapsing into the old sniping. What lies between them has broken more than habit. He'd like to stick Lestat with something, all right, but he hasn't got his knife with him. He's also not entirely sure they could heal from such a wound as easily as they might once have.
And to think he had steered Lestat towards confession because he didn't want to watch him die again--and it succeeded. Louis couldn't have done it in the manner of a master manipulator. It was a desperate thing.
At the risk of having a lion stalking behind him, he takes the first cold-stiffened step towards the door. A murder shack isn't his idea of a safe abode. He would no sooner bring Lestat to where he stashed his coffin than he would sleep in a nest of vipers, but they've got to go somewhere.
"Which is it? Doing it all again, or regret?"
His voice has the same thick hollowness. If Lestat won't talk about it, then he will. Today it doesn't matter what the answer is. Everything feels too raw. But tomorrow, the day after... He should have been glad to be rid of Lestat, but he kept thinking of him. He knows he will keep thinking of him.
no subject
The opera, even in that botched outing. Louis at his side, where he belongs, the unspoken understandings that music had carried between them. They had been happy, or so he imagined. He had not seen the seeds of disaster festering in the dark. Perhaps he had chosen not to see them, or to believe they could be coaxed to lie fallow if he lavished enough cultivation on the better blooms of their garden.
As Louis walks ahead, Lestat considers refusing to follow. It would be no less than Louis deserves. It is what Lestat's pride as a vampire, as his maker, demands.
He follows, observing a distance between them that measures the same as that offensive disparity that American sensibilities inflicted on them when Louis would play his valet. How it stung him, his sensitive Louis; how he endured it to share in Lestat's joy.
"What does it matter?" Lestat asks, with uncharacteristic quietness, reaching into his stolen greatcoat for his cigarettes. "What has that ever mattered?"
He taps two from the pack. The habit is not even one he can yet call old, but it still seems a relic of a bygone era.
"Of course I regret." He holds the pair between his fingers, contemplating them as they step out into the cold. "Did you imagine it pleased me to be so despised by those closest to my heart? But I've seen what you make of my contrition."
cw: alcoholism mention
The opera was ultimately selfish, a joy of Lestat's to flutter in front of his despondent Louis instead of addressing the roots that made him ache. Their savage garden... If Lestat left him here right now, the only surprise would be that he left him alive.
"Your heart's not in it. You loved the attention. You put your lover's voice on an apology record. Your response to being told you fucked up is to do even worse. Contrition don't mean nothin' if you're expectin' a reward."
He slows, both because Lestat following him only works when they've got a powerful white man to unsettle, and because he doesn't want to have to keep looking over his shoulder. Some part of him, the practical businesslike part, counsels him to tread lightly so that it will not become a nightly reality. Another part, the wounded heart, stumbles and blunders where it will.
Louis buries his hands in the pockets of his coat. They should probably be more careful out here, but they've spent decades moving through the world invulnerable to it. The only danger was from those who knew how to kill them, and New Orleans was ignorant in this. So, Louis stares at the cigarettes as if they and Lestat are the only things that exist.
"...I haven't got a light." He sounds his most tired and mournful, as if this is a tragedy on par with all the tragedies of the past days.
no subject
In worse ones, he would have leapt to impatience, construed it as an act of careless self-neglect, insinuated it as a reflection of Louis' disregard for anything but his melancholic mortification. If he did not care to attend to even this small pleasure without dependence on another, what happiness could he be counted on to take from anything?
On any night, he would have offered Louis his cigarette before he lit his own. He would have kissed the ember of his to the tip of Louis' and felt the draw of his breath coaxing fire from one to the other. He would have known it as a sacrament, as he always did, that tiny, frequent miracle.
Lestat places both cigarettes on his own lips. He produces his heavy silver lighter from his pocket, spins the wheel to its catch, and lights both with the same flame. He plucks one from his mouth to offer it to Louis, who has chosen to walk at his side as if in a funeral march, then removes the other to hold loosely in mid-air once his lighter is once more secreted away.
"Such impossible standards," he says, hollowly, "Even the saints and martyrs fall short, selfishly repenting themselves into the reward of Heaven."
cw: suicidal ideation
"Plenty of people do it, Lestat. Plenty of people love each other enough not to make their home a circle of Hell. Takes less effort than all the fuckery you performed."
He puts his lips to where Lestat's own tenderly held the cigarette, coaxing the ember to glow in the dim light. It makes his face look more alive than it is. He takes a drag. It's nice. Or, good enough. It's not the same cigarette they lit together on the balcony when they talked of the city, but it's more than Louis can ask for now.
"That's where your joy lies. Not with me. I should have accepted that sooner. I shouldn't've taken you back. I'm sorry I tried to kill you. I took no joy in it. I'm not sorry for leaving."
He stares straight ahead at the dim blue snow and dark shadowy trees and the orange mote of light he puts to his lips again. If he were to be struck down right now, he would welcome it. Then he would not have to wrestle with the temptation to seek Lestat's undeserving arms again, as well as all the other miseries this cold land surely has in store for him.
no subject
Only the last, new part of it deepens the wound. Lestat stiffens as if burned, the whole of his body drawing in on itself in a hundred minute ways until he is nearly a perfect fortress in form.
An argument is on his lips like arsenic. Even in his shattered delirium, shut up in his make-shift refuge among the filth, he had concocted a thousandfold arsenal of them for the occasion of their reunion. For they would be reunited. The tides of time and the bond between them made it an inevitability.
He takes a drag of his cigarette in silence. He exhales smoke he does not taste or savour.
"I'm sorry you took no joy in it," he says, and hopes against hope that this one small thing Louis will believe of him, the heartless, callous creature that he must be, "I did. Even knowing you deceived me, that you only pretended to care for me once more so you could destroy me...you did it beautifully, mon cœur. A perfect, tender cruelty."
no subject
"I took no joy in slitting your throat. The rest of it... that dance..." His voice breaks. "I wanted you like I hadn't in a long time. I was drowning in it."
Therein lies the unparalleled betrayal. Killing for need or out of wrath never felt so slow and exquisite as falling in step with Claudia's plan just as he fell in step with Lestat's quick feet. Now Lestat's usual smooth gait looks as leaden as his.
"You'd've held my head under," Louis continues bitterly. "You let it happen, hoping to catch us in the last second. That's your style. But Claudia was too smart for you. And I let it happen."
The self-loathing surges anew, and he hates himself more than Lestat in this moment. Louis always let things happen, and look where it got him. Yet another part of his humanity cut away.
no subject
And without any cruelty for anyone save himself, Louis slits it further. What a marvel it is that he is so much better at causing pain when he doesn't intend it, except perhaps in passing whim, the knife he cuts at himself with finding its purchase also in the chests of others.
"Perhaps I didn't want to spoil the party," Lestat says, a throb of unmistakable coiled hurt in his voice, "After all the trouble you took in arranging it."
He pulls at his cigarette like an artery, the ember flaring and quickening, a pillar of ash forming at its tip he taps away sharply.
"Foolish, but I am a fool. And what else?" He cocks his head, a show of gathering his memory. "The Devil's servant, a jailer, a fiend. A swamp in which you drown yourself, an inferior plaything you covet only when you think it might be lost to you, a shameful temptation from the path of righteousness. A heartless horror, indifferent to your suffering except when I delighted in it. And let us not forget, as our oleander blossom of a daughter insists we not, first and foremost an irredeemable liar. How could I blame you for wanting to be rid of such a hateful creature? I'd have done the same myself."
He stops at that. He imagines the words in the air like a fine mist of blood. He reaches into his greatcoat once more, and produces a plain white handkerchief. He extends it to Louis with a flourish of habit.
"There's blood on your face," he says, the tensed, dangerous anguish of his voice given way to sudden softness, "Clean yourself up before someone sees it."
cw: gore mention | the 🥺 face but at what cost
"You seemed to be having fun with the costumes," he murmurs wistfully before returning to bitterness. "Your lies only hurt so much because there's truth in them. Can't recall Claudia saying that... Maybe she thought it." An idle supposition.
He'd noticed the tears, and then didn't notice them, and then remembered them when they started freezing at the edges and gently but insistently tugging at his skin. He'd left them there like a stigmata. He'd like to say he has his own handkerchief, even if he doesn't have a lighter or his hat or his dignity, but the words don't form. He takes Lestat's without care for if his fingers brush soft as petals against his. Just another cruelty towards himself.
When the blood only smears and doesn't give, he bends and melts a thimble's worth of snow with what warmth his dead hand can coax from it. It's a shockingly human gesture. He feels the chill like he hadn't felt it in decades, therefore his body must be warm, right? He presses the handkerchief to the moisture as gently as a mother, as he would have Claudia's tears in the early days.
He coveted Lestat always, in the good times and the bad and the worse. When he would not allow Lestat in the house, when he dumped his coffin over the balcony, how could he not feel? He cared, he cared too much, and it's hard to hate someone he doesn't care about.
He turns to him, fresh tears on his face, and his heart may as well be flayed open. "You actually believe all that? Mr. 'Good and Evil are Nothing'? If I have a hard time believing you, it's because you've done nothing but revel in heartlessness." And he loved Louis, and took his life when he said yes, and saved him from the brink of oblivion while doing it.
no subject
Or perhaps Lestat only conjured that belief to harden his heart against them. He's prone to doing things like that.
These tears are not so easily defended against.
"Some of it," he says, his arm folded across his chest, hand curled over his elbow, the last paltry battlements of his resolve, "The part about the ball, certainly. It was..."
Sublime. Enchanting. Profoundly, deeply thoughtful, tailored to his tastes in every way, testament to an intimacy of understanding and attentiveness he hadn't had from either of them in years. All of that shows in his eyes, tenderness overcoming him as irresistibly as anger had.
"You know," he tells Louis, stepping in closer, his cigarette tossed carelessly into the snow, "No one had ever done anything like that for me before. Not even thought to do it."
He reaches for the handkerchief, alights his fingers on top of it. They're separated only by that little bit of damp cloth.
"I hate seeing you like this," he murmurs, "It makes it very difficult to stay angry with you."
cw: trauma
The creative design was Lestat's, but Louis did not balk at the expense and trouble it took to pull it off at such short notice. They had fun planning it, the three of them, perfect devious vampires luring the hypocritical to their deaths. Such cruel irony that it brought them together. Louis immersed himself in Lestat's world, from the perfectly coiffed wig to the buckled shoes.
"You said there was a cord between us, but you tore at it with your teeth. I only severed the last thread, mon cher," he whispers.
He can smell the ghost of tobacco on Lestat's breath, feel its burnt brushing flirt against his skin. Lestat's fingers are like a hot brand, and Louis can feel their tips resting in the crook between his thumb and forefinger as if they were made to fit together that way. Under the handkerchief, Louis's fingers curl around them. Poor little Lestat, Claudia's voice rings mockingly in his ears.
Louis thinks of couples he's seen walking in the snow, arms around each other in a way he and Lestat could never have done in public. His arm clutching his shoulders, Lestat's body pressed helplessly against him, the knife made strong in his hand as he--
Louis hardly knows what he is doing when he sticks the hot ember of his cigarette to Lestat's hand and pushes him with the other. He needs to leave, swiftly as only a vampire can, and that is his downfall. He trips in the unfamiliar snow and finds it rushing to meet him. Here I will die, he thinks, for Icarus cannot fly so close to the cruel sun, and he smells clouds and the courtyard garden and his own blood.
cw: cigarette burn, the toxicity that never left, lip biting
I only severed the last thread, he says, as if he did not admit in that gore-streaked confessional I couldn't burn you. As if he does not feel the inescapable bond of blood between them, as if his fingers do not curl around Lestat's as he speaks, as if he does not breathe endearment in the wake of denial. For a moment, Lestat wishes that the lie were so, if only so he could fall in love with him all over again for it.
The burn of the cigarette is, therefore, slightly surprising, which goes to show how beguiling Louis is even when he doesn't put his mind to it.
Lestat hisses at it, jerking his hand back even as he is pushed, and the force of his momentum combined with the impairments to his grace produce the astonishing effect of a stumble. Before Lestat knows it, he's struck the Earth, a hideous jar running from tailbone to the top of his spine culminating in his extended fangs slitting his bottom lip.
"Putain!" He snarls, making to draw his hand close to his chest, a flare of irritation igniting in him - one extinguished in the short span it takes for him to recognize Louis has had a fall of his own. Without a thought to dignity, Lestat lurches forward in the scrambling crawl of a boy whose roughhousing in the snow has gone too far.
"Louis!" He cries, alarmed before sense, because vampires do not stumble as common mortals do, forgetting entirely in his fright that Louis must be suffering the same affliction of weakness he is. His hands are nearly on Louis' shoulders before he remembers it, and all else that he ought to remember, and he stops them barely short of touch. It leaves him hovering, useless, his tongue darting out to lick the seeping blood from his lips in nervousness that becomes him not at all.
"Louis?" He calls to him, softly bewildered, more helpless in this than he was in chains.
cw: + suicidal ideation
Even in the maelstrom of despair and agony brought to the surface by the kidnapper, Louis has enough awareness to know that the jumble of feelings Lestat inspires in him must rest. He must rest. He was a fool to think he could simply walk into town with Lestat, safety in numbers, as if nothing happened.
He wants to crawl into his coffin and never leave it, but that is not immediately available. This feeling drowns out even the strange unidentifiable one when he hears Lestat's confused concern.
"Leave me here to die!" he cries, turning on him with bared fangs. "Or kill me, but make it quick! Don't play with me like you do your victims! Don't make me like one of them!"
cw: suicidal ideation
"Well, I'm certainly not going to kill you, quickly or otherwise," he says, as thought this should be obvious, "And leaving you to die is similarly out of the question."
The tenor of Louis' outrage seems to be different now, more wrathful than truly despairing. It's not a sign that Lestat would call promising, but he has subsisted on such scraps for some time.
And better to think of them as scraps, to take this as a disappointment, than to make anything else of it. He is more patient than he is often given credit for, when what he pursues is worth it.
"It'd be a terrible shame if all of Claudia's conniving came to nothing because you decided to make a rather distasteful snow angel of yourself, wouldn't you agree?" He prompts, as if it's nothing to invoke her name in this way.
cw: suicidal ideation, abuse we already mentioned but it bears repeating
Louis would murder Louis. Lestat is averse to the idea, even now after all that’s happened. A despondent Louis spells disaster—for everyone involved. A Louis with some fire in him has yet to quit this world, at least.
"Don’t. As if you cared what she wanted. You answered some questions she didn’t even ask, but never the ones that mattered. Don’t act like you don’t know what you done and why we can’t find somewhere to sleep together."
Louis doesn’t lie down in the snow. The longer he sits in it, the more uncomfortable its cold burn seeps into his clothes. He rises, not because he wants to, but because, for all that he had a hand in Louis’s troubles, Lestat’s words worked.
Louis hates this, but he hates himself more.
cw: toxicity, cigarette burns
One cannot look perfectly composed when brushing snow from their person, he thinks. It does give good reason to glance elsewhere, preoccupied with straightening the front of his coat.
"I don't remember asking for an invitation," he says, sugar-glaze brittle, "But have it as you like. I won't go where I'm not wanted."
He had been expecting to, of course. That had been the unthought, unreasoned motive for following Louis in the first place. The sting of the circle sear on the back of his hand is a welcome distraction as he drops his arms to his sides and regards Louis directly, observing him through the eyeholes of a mask of faint exasperation.
"So it's 'fuck off back to the woods, Lestat' after all?"
l'waughe! s1 finale spoilers
You can't stand to be alone, Louis wants to retort. Of course you would have asked. But he doesn't say it. Burning him with his cigarette took his energy, not because it was physically taxing, but because Louis could not enjoy burning him or poisoning him or slitting his throat or any of the other myriad things Claudia imagined doing to him. It was a desperate move, and once again Louis felt himself carried along by currents he did not control.
He didn't want to say those things to Lestat in that cold shack, but he did. He feels he doesn't deserve to regret them, because they're all true, or as true as he believes them to be.
"I don't care where you go," Louis forces himself to lie thickly, because he must go, or else lose himself to a dark river. He doesn't turn as smartly as he'd like, but he does turn, and he does find the road and begin a quick stride down it.
cw: toxicity
Yet as he turns his back to him, Lestat still finds himself briefly and terribly baffled. They aren't done with each other, not by halves. They cannot leave this conversation as it is, with so much poison left to spit, so much yet to repeat to each other as they have for a thousand such tiresome arguments.
He cannot leave him like this. Not so carelessly. Not as if it's nothing. Indignation claws at the meat of his ribs, ire rising in a swell of bile over the back of his tongue.
"Go on, then!" He calls after Louis, bitterly. "And see how you manage without me!"
His Louis, raised in the hothouse air of New Orleans, fending for himself in the frigid wilderness - a ridiculous thought, and one he has to laugh at, cut-glass scorn echoing cruelly in the night. What does he know of cold, of forests, of wolves? Nothing but what he's read, and yet he'd discard Lestat all the same, strut out like a frontiersman to conquer the unknown. The temerity of it is enough to bring the sting of tears to his sight, a welter of frustration strangling his breath.
Re: cw: toxicity