SUMMER TEST DRIVE MEME

[rubimods]

⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:

Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE – a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. This test drive meme provides a medley of prompts evoking the game's general tone.

THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.

CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, D/S mechanics, public sex, aphro, bondage, free use, death, missing persons, snakes.

If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.

FAQ ✧ SETTING ✧ CALENDAR ✧ RESERVES ✧ APPLICATIONS

IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE

The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest daylight. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the light has taken on a sickly green. You lie amongst the damp mosses and ferns, the balmy summer air warm and sticking on your bare skin.

Wherever you were before this moment, whatever you were doing or wearing, when you awaken in this forest, you find yourself naked and helpless as the day you were born. As you sit up and get your bearings, aside from a brief wave of disoriented nausea, you seem to be no worse for wear than you last remember.

You seem to be alone. The gnarled oaks and moss suggest no sign of civilization or sentient life. Just flickers of movement from curious squirrels or brave lizards emerging from their hiding places. With your feet under you, you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees, though much of the fruit has been picked clean. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, is knee-deep and surprisingly chilly. Here and there, dotting the verdant forest, are strange, massive white trees extending into the sky, surrounded by a circle of dead soil. Their sides are smooth and cool to the touch – like bone, for those who know its texture – and they creak alarmingly, threateningly at the press of warm hands.

As you explore, you may encounter caches of clothing left in painted crates or placed in hollow tree trunks. They contain loose shirts and trousers, perhaps even a moth-eaten coat, along with a note that includes a bare-bones explanation for your arrival and a sketched map toward town. You may also run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist groups, others may still be processing their confusion, with no memory of how they got here. Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty; it's going to be a long hike to find civilization.

Turn your back to the darker, shadowy parts of the forest and eventually the glow of manmade lights and the curve of a dirt road may come into view. At the edge of the wood, you'll find a town surrounded by a fifty-foot wall of beige stone. The only entrance is an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people inside.

This quaint, historic town of five-thousand has cobbled street and signs lit by gas lamp. Wooden shutters protect otherwise open-air windows on the buildings, which are all under three stories with gabled roofs. A number of businesses hug the main street – a clockmaker, a cobbler, a grocer – while residential homes sprawl outwards towards the wall. Above the town, drifting like a low hanging cloud over the tops of the buildings, is a pavilion swathed in deep red cloth, and to the north, past the end of the main street, are several large blockades barring further exploration. Somewhat strangely, the whole town seems to be in a state of slight disrepair– workers bustle around, filling in a large hole in the town wall, a woman curses and fiddles with the crank mechanism of a well, and children splash through muddy potholes in the cobblestone, chasing a malnourished looking dog. Here, the bone trees have taken root as well, a few rising through buildings, branches extending through cracked roofs, others rooted in the middle of the street.

When you enter, the streets are full of people, but despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, they don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. Those determined to find proper clothing regardless will find that modern clothing stores aren't available – the closest this town has is a tailor's shop and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.

BREAKING AND ENTERING

If you intend to have your character break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry, please review the info about game laws on the FAQ and give the mods a heads up HERE.

SETTING: CRIME

Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! Anyone who ask the locals will be directed to the boarding house for both clothes and a place to stay. Accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines, beyond an overgrown yard in the residential sprawl of the town is a bright-red door, which opens to a spacious cottage of several stories. Parts of the house still bear the dust of disuse, gathered on various furnishings – bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. However, it's already full of people! Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, some scorch marks still linger from a fire about a year back, and the place seems somewhat in disrepair

Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner of parsnips, pheasant, and squash. During dinner, they (and those outsiders who've already begun to settle) sit down at the enormous wooden dining room table and help orient the newcomers and answer their questions. The town has recently been through some upheaval, and its people have suffered a great loss, newcomers are told. Everyone is doing their part now to restore it to its former glory.

finding roommates

Don't spend too much time in the dining room going for seconds, though. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. The last people upstairs will need to double up to squeeze in. Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements.

Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with breakfast. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal – at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. As you find your way around town to get your bearings, folks are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.

WRITER'S BLOCK?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing or other inventory items, asking questions at dinner/orientation, or staking your claim on a bedroom!

THE FESTIVAL OF SUMMER'S EVE

Despite the repair efforts around town, summer is in full swing, which means it's time to take advantage of the warm weather! Colorful tents have been set up, stages and spaces for "games" to be played, many involving intimacy, playfulness, sex, or "fun". In fact, there's a great deal of emphasis on fun being had all around. Each round begins with a prayer to the Duchess. Not bowing your head in prayer may get you a stares from locals, or worse, opponents may be extra motivated to defeat someone so disrespectful to her Grace.

Each Thursday, buildings are festooned with wreaths of wildflowers, tables are laden with food and drink, and everyone is given colored sashes to wear over their clothes. Festival goers are not allowed to enter the main events unless they wear a sash, and to get a sash they must reveal their curse marks. Those marked with the curse of Wilk receive blue sashes, Diabel get red, Skala receive green and Niez are adorned with grey.

FAQ: CURSE MARKS

This summer's eve, the locals are eager to explain, is a festival about giving trust to one another, taking pleasure in the present and acceptance in things as they are. What perhaps isn't explained nearly so well is that everyone is expected to demonstrate enthusiasm for the festival activities, lest they catch the eye of the Duchess' watchful stewards. There's a strange energy in the air, furtive, sorrowful looks and forced smiles, but a sense of relief lingers in the festival crowds as they set to celebrating their hearts out.

Tables overflow with refreshments, especially iced drinks and chilled fruit to cool the summer heat. Rubeans traditionally spice their foods with aphrodisiacs, something that is so culturally normal to them that they don't feel the need to mention it.

• An outdoor feast starts the festivities, with commanders, who are expected to give orders, and followers, who must follow the whims of commanders, whatever they decree. Who commands and who follows is decided by the curse-marked sash participants wear. But there's a twist – every three hours, a horn blows, and the roles switch at random; commanders become followers and vice versa. Many festival-goers, now in a position of command, are eager to get petty revenge on the followers now at their mercy. And if you should be seen disobeying or disregarding a command, or refusing to issue commands when your turn has come around, well, that doesn't seem like proper active participation at all!


• Rope Tying Contest! Riggers from all around town are eager to show off their rope-tying skills, with contests taking place judging both in their ability to weave an intricate web of knotwork over another's body, and to suspend them artfully for all to admire. And of course, those who are tied up will have to stay in place until the judging is complete! There's a public voting element to the contest as well, as festivalgoers "enjoy" these community pieces of art. Everyone who participates is given ample water, praise, and force-fed an herbal draught to calm their nerves if they seem to be getting a bit too agitated.


• Prison Bars & Glory Holes! Human-sized cages have been dragged out into the festival grounds and draped with heavy cloth. People may enter and leave them freely, taking advantage of the gaps in the bars to indulge in sexual acts with the veneer of anonymity. Sometimes, more than one person might find themselves in the same cage, or pranksters might close and lock the door behind them – oops!


• Spooky Story Telling! As evening falls, gather 'round in a crowded tent as a pair of story-tellers share and reenact tales of monsters and horrors past before opening the floor to the audience to share their own. Ten candles have been lit for the occasion, and one is snuffed out for every new story told. The air in the tent gets stuffy, made stuffier with the musky incense burning in the fire stoking the animalistic instincts of the participants until they give into fear and their more primal urges.


• A game going on throughout the town, regardless of whether someone consents to participation, is something the locals call Lock and Key. The rules are explained after you are grabbed and tied by your wrist (or ankle, whatever was available) to someone else: the locked binding tying you two together is blessed to be unbreakable until you each draw enough blood to soak through the binding... or find the key, stashed someplace on the festival grounds. Good luck!


• However, those who refuse to get in the community spirit of shared trust and pleasure may find themselves singled out by the Duchess' stewards for some personal, mandatory education on Rubean culture and traditions. They may be forcibly dosed with potent aphrodisiacs, locked into the cages or tied against the bars until they plead for Her Grace's mercy... or have satisfied enough of the sexual or sadistic desires of any passer-bys.

Throughout all of this, the general attitude from the local townsfolk may occasionally come across as strangely admiring or overtly hostile. While many of the common people of Rubilykskoye hold mixed personal opinions toward the newcomers to their town, two extremist groups have emerged with opposing viewpoints: some think you are benevolent, beneficent beings with nascent powers sent to lead and guide them and solve their woes. These people, called Blackguards, will do their best to make sure your participation in the festival is one of joy and pleasure. But others, called the Zlatniki, believe that the outsiders coming into their land have corrupted their fellows and seduced their Goddess, and will do their best to twist their native traditions toward cruelty and vindictive sadism when it comes to the Void-touched.

WRITER'S BLOCK?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try partaking in refreshments, give or follow commands, participate in events, be drafted into games against their will, or suffer the consequences of disobedience!

FOREST DEPTHS

Rumor moves through town quickly: two nights ago, a group of loggers went out into the wood and no one has seen them since. Anyone who wants to prove their worth to the community is encouraged to join the search parties going out to look for them and bring them back home.

As you and your fellow searchers venture deeper into the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. The white trunks of the bone trees stand out starkly in the darkness, though you will be warned away from coming too close. Though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset, the wood darkens. Birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs. Anyone who ventures out this way will soon find it difficult to see before them, even in the middle of the day – eventually, even the brightest magical light source or darkvision cannot stretch further than a few inches.

Many peel off, going back to the town proper. The searchers become fewer and fewer. Maybe some of them are going back home, but maybe they're getting lost. Eventually, you walk around a large tree, and you're alone. It's just you and the Void.

The air feels heavy, as if it were not air at all but some more solid mass. Almost like liquid-smoke, it presses down upon you. Slowing your movements. Characters who push too far into the void may stop being able to move at all, and find themselves given over to insanity if they collapse, unable to draw themselves out. This is just one of many dangers.

Monsters thrive this far out. Huge, blood-red spiders the size of hunting dogs drop from the treetops. In addition to their venomous bite, which contains a fast-acting paralytic, these creatures are clever: they attempt to use their webbing to entangle any trespassers, binding limbs together or to trees. If you're unfortunate to become fully cocooned, you don't have long before this forest will be the last thing you see.

FAQ: DEATH RULES

Those who seem lucky enough not to run afoul of the monsters here are in for a worse fate. The void can play tricks on your senses. As madness sets in and you lose all sense of direction, you may also lose control of your body – what is that steers your hands to turn against your friends? Why does it sound like your own voice whispering?

Yet the further you go, the more convinced you become that the missing loggers are near by. You're sure you can hear them on the wind, their voices calling out between the trees. Did you just see something out of the corner of your eye? You have to find them. You have to make all this darkness worth it.

WRITER'S BLOCK?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try fighting a monster, hallucinating your worst nightmares, and/or attacking a friend or stranger! Feel free to find the bodies of the missing logging party – or hallucinate that you did.

RELEASE YOUR INNER BEAST

Something's wrong here.

The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.

FAQ: MONSTER CURSES & TIMELINES

Alas, its emergence is inevitable – sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.

Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back – sate the beast.

SOMEONE ELSE TRANSFORMS

Early one morning, alarm bells are rung. The people of Rubilykskoye are quick to explain while boarding up their windows and locking their doors: Cvetanya has transformed after a lover's quarrel turned into heartbreak. Her inner beast – duchozweirz, the natives call it – take the form of a giant snake propelled by hundreds of human-like arms that extend to seize its prey so it might swallow it whole.

Those who are lucky enough to escape Cvetanya's grasp will find that the red scratches left by her monster's hands darken to black and fill them with an icy chill. Warm compresses, hot baths, or some skin-to-skin contact might be necessary for those suffering from her attack.

(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson – feel free to invent your own NPC monsters and scenarios!)

YOU WAITED TOO LONG

At first, as you hide yourself from your darker impulses, a subtle itch develops under your skin. An irritability that makes you snap at the person who bumps into you on the stairs because all those fleeting emotions that you've been repressing bubble to the surface. Every dark thought you've had about being here, all the fears of never getting home, of being surrounded by ticking time bombs, the anxiety of wondering who you might hurt or what relationships you might betray by doing what you have to do. The anger. Oh, the anger.

Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.

As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?

RULES: CONTENT WARNINGS

Comments

[damnedest]

He will tell himself it is amusing and charming, Louis moving him so, appearing in his vision like the moon from the clouds, so as not to fret that he will pass the fuck out from the surge of desire this and his words evoke, the rush of blood in a specific direction when he is already partially tipped with his head towards the ground. Lestat has not been here for so long, not enough to be used to what it's like to be at the mercy of others, or to enjoy it when it has nearly occurred, to have thought about it with anything but trepidation.

But, he would argue, he has always been under Louis' power. It is only now that the physical reflects the truth.

Fondness, in Lestat's expression. An odd, pleased curl of warmth low in his belly for what feels like praise. Lifting his head enough to look at him, resigned to the burn of his muscles to do so. He splays and flexes his fingers as Louis' touch wanders up his arm, as if imagining returning the gesture.

"I would like to see it," he says, out loud, as if to show he can. Voice even, clear. "What knots you know."

Has it been an exciting seventy-seven years, with Armand? And this is not a thought he projects, intends, but slithers unstoppably beneath the surface.

[divorcing]

A dark shape. A cloud passing over the sun. Lestat doesn't ask the question, but the muted whisper of it floats between them. Louis can make it out.

It is a little like Lestat has reached out and pressed down on a wound.

(Is that what Armand is? A wound?)

Louis is quiet, for a moment. Feels the question in Lestat's mind. It doesn't materialize. Louis holds it in a hand, and puts it away. His thumb draws down the inside of Lestat's wrist, passing over rope and skin, delicate veins. Maybe Louis shouldn't be touching him this way. Nothing is defined. Lestat is human, and that is—complicated. Disorienting.

"Too bad I wasn't here at the start. We could've won the Lamborghini together."

Louis du Lac, barred from entry on account of daylight.

Next time, it'll be me who hangs you up, passed between them like a secret. A promise.

[damnedest]

Fingers curl around empty air. If Louis' touch was a few inches higher—

Another deep, deliberate breath. It would take only a quick glance to note the effect Louis' attention has on him, but again, for Lestat, this is no revelation, and he has nothing to be ashamed about. More secretive, the fierce way his heart closes around this promise, dog jaws on a bone.

'Bon,' in return, as he chuckles out loud at this regret. Warm all over. Glad Louis is here, despite how complicated the sentiment. 'This is practice, then.'

Easier for Louis to see, when someone else approaches. A Rubean adorned in the festival's blue sash, paying no mind to Louis but letting their eye trawl over the displays. Nearing Lestat as this private exchange occurs, and close enough to brush fingertips along his stretched, raised calf.

Lestat startles, an unbidden jerk in his ropes, like when seaweed brushes an unsuspecting ankle at the beach.

[divorcing]

Words already forming in Lestat's mind, the tenor of them coming across clearly even if the words themselves scatter as Lestat startles and Louis tenses, straightening, one hand tightening on the rope, the other palm flattening across Lestat's back between his shoulder blades. No bared teeth, but it's a near thing. Affront is so near the surface, despite the nature of this place, this festival.

(Temper flaring red hot in his chest. Doesn't matter that he's entitled to nothing. It's still—

Galling.)

"He's engaged," Louis says coolly, to the polite tune of Fuck off.

It can't be helped. Lestat is beautiful. He was made to be admired. As critical as Louis has been, he is aware that whoever it was that tied him did so with the intent to show him off.

Louis had been carefully putting aside the reality of what had been happening outside of this moment. How many people had appraised Lestat before he arrived. How many will come after, when Louis departs.

If Louis departs.

But now there is a Rubean curling fingers around Lestat's ankle, and Louis must decide whether or not to eat them for it.

[damnedest]

Heart beating a little harder, faster, a heady mixture of being taken by surprise and the circumstance in which it is occurring. Feels Louis' steadying hand, uses its presence to hang his head back and relax in the ropes, willing tension to leave him. To stop himself from trying to jerk a bound leg from the hand touching it, now holding it.

'Careful, chéri,' a psychic whisper.

And beneath that: no, he does not want Louis to leave, the same selfish impulse that is glad Louis is here in this world with him.

But as if to appease this newcomer: Lestat points his toe like a dancer, draws muscle hard and elegant up through to his hip. A Lamborghini is on the line, after all. And a show of willing participation is sometimes enough to dissuade further interference.

In this case, the Rubean continues along on the other side of where Louis is standing, smoothing palm along the underside of Lestat's leg, makes a dry comment about a congratulations to their union being in order. Out of view, Lestat rolls his eyes.

[divorcing]

Very funny.

Louis should control his temper. Lestat puts a warning right into his head. Louis is not unaware of the rules here, something that amounts to share and share alike. (They have not been so good at sharing, in the past. A poor track record between them.)

But this stranger is running hands up Lestat's leg, uninvited.

"You mind?" Is what he says aloud. Brisk, chilly. Still to the same tune. Fuck off. "We got plans to make for the wedding night."

If someone wants to make jokes, fine. Louis can commit to the bit.

Do you want...?

A question trailing into nonspecifics. Louis isn't sure what Lestat wants. They have been apart for so long.

Louis does not let himself think of Armand. Of their life together, their habits.

Lestat arches, obliging, and Louis' fingers set the ropes swaying again, even as his own fingers slip beneath the tie running across Lestat's waist. Proprietary where he has no right to be.

[damnedest]

'Yes.'

Swift, this answer, to this unknown question. Lestat does want, whatever it is.

The stranger's hand has come to rest at his hip, where it rests light as a feather. Judging Louis, taking his measure with even finer attention to detail, now, than any evaluation they had given Lestat. There is a mutual sense: yes, territory will be seceded to the happy couple, fingertips drawing back.

And maybe some conclusion carried with it.

It is not the whole reason that Lestat says, 'Touch me,' but it is in part. Demonstrations of willing. But his voice comes through warm, encouraging, a familiar statement, something he has whispered into Louis' ear or against his skin a thousand times before.

[divorcing]

Victory.

Louis feels satisfaction burn in his chest, before practicality catches up. Considers what he has just done. What is now expected.

The Rubean goes only a short distance away. Their conversation has carried. Louis is aware of how others have been comporting themselves at this festival.

Whatever feelings he has about being on display are less complicated than they would be were Lestat not factored into the equation.

They have been apart for so long.

"Lestat," Louis says out loud, hands traveling over his skin. Petty, smoothing the path the strangers hand has taken as if to erase the touch entirely. Leaving Lestat's eyeline to accomplish it, maybe to give himself some space to think. Grip him by the ankle, then follow the strain of muscle up his calf.

To hold the Yes in his mind, turn it over, find the edges of it. Try to understand what it means, how much in Louis is still liable to fall into him.

"Like this?" He asks, then murmurs, You want me to touch you this way?

[damnedest]

They likely need to have a conversation or two.

Lestat does not want their union, if they should have one, to be dictated by the Rubean laws they labour beneath. How awful would a first time be when it is not made with a perfect heart and a clear mind? He had thought: the matter of zadza and participation should be their business alone, and only intercept once they understand each other perfectly, as perfectly as they are capable.

But he had summoned Louis to his side. He wants very much to be touched, knowing an ache when his name is spoken, when Louis' hand travels. Lestat's fingers twitch with restless desire, head turning to watch Louis disappear from view. He is soothed by the replacement of sensation, a stranger's touch replaced by a known one.

'Yes,' he says, because it's true. Maybe this is alright. It's only his body.

He engages with his bound pose again, arching his back, muscles pulling taut. It feels good to do, ropes creaking, engaging in what movement is permitted where he had begun to tingle from immobility, like a good stretch.

[divorcing]

This is not the right moment for the conversation they've failed to have. Louis has arrived. They have had other things to consider. Louis sleeps during the day and Lestat is free to roam. There was a feast earlier, and Lestat could partake of it, while Louis is negotiating the difficulty of eating in such a small, contained space.

There is much to discuss. (What else is there to discuss but their maybe union, the time spent apart, decades of missing time and the strangeness of who they are now? What they want now?)

Misalignments.

But Louis doesn't think he could walk away. He never could. He barely managed it in New Orleans.

It don't need to be anything else, softly, a whisper along the surface of Lestat's mind. His desire comes away like ink on Louis' fingers, like handling a newly-painted item. I could do like this, until they lose interest.

Just Louis' fingers roaming Lestat's skin. Never straying anywhere intimate, as if it is not intimate to curl fingers around his ankle, set Lestat swaying in his bindings.

[damnedest]

Very reasonable. Utility.

Lestat closes his eyes again. Breathes. Feels the sway of the ropes as a soothing element, and the subtle shift of the air as an exposing one, emphasising bare skin between firm ropes. Necessary, these measuring moments, or he will remember he can't move under his own power, and it will all stop being as pleasant as it is now.

Particularly in this, with Louis' touches and his own empty hands. Resigns himself to what their interaction will be, what it must be, when everything is so new and delicate and frail. (He will jerk off so enthusiastically about this later, he promises himself.)

'Yes,' a third time, but then more, finally, 'Like that. So they don't come near.'

Does he mind strangers touching him, or does he simply like the excuse of Louis' protection?

Yes.

'When someone comes by with that draught, will you hail them for me?'

[divorcing]

Yeah, traded back to him, as Louis' fingers slide up his calf, thumb at the ropes lashed around Lestat's knee. Lingers there, before following the caught bend of muscle, sharp nails teasing skin as a counterpoint to Louis' fingertips.

Lestat's eyes are closed. Louis is so—

The reality of it is inescapable. Lestat, human.

If Louis thinks too much on it now, he'll lose all grasp on his composure. His ability to move through the space of this festival and play along with what's required of him.

Tell me how it feels, is ostensibly about Lestat's well being. His comfort. He is human. He is less durable than he ever was in all the years Louis has known him.

Around them, other dangling contestants are admired. Muted conversations, some critical, some admiring. Louis disregards all of it.

He can hear Lestat's heartbeat. His twin, still.

[damnedest]

A little twinge of muscle in response to sharp nails, knee lifting incrementally, relaxing again. It could be a disaster if Lestat were to discover new tickle spots.

He opens his eyes again, lets his head hang, regarding the upside down world before him. He can see a woman tied with her legs apart, and another gently stroking her tenderest flesh. A man tied in a deep bowing posture, and a woman ducked down and murmuring praise or cruelties, whatever must soothe. It is all a decadence beyond the kind he has ever known, and he had always believed he knew decadence.

'Like flying,' he offers, and then doesn't really know where such a thought came from, then decides it's true. 'Like a greater power has me, and wants me to be safe and well. How gentle it is, if I allow it.'

A shift of shoulders, taking some of his own weight in his wrists. 'And also not that way. I am working hard. My neck is a little sore.'

Amusing.

[divorcing]

How terrible, to feel some bitter note in this moment. To feel the intrusion of their worst night. To feel some ugly curl of feeling for it.

Louis has had much practice at withholding. He holds this aside too, cordoned off. Bad practice to let it bleed into what they are doing now. Louis knows that, knows the rules of the thing they are doing together, even as haphazardly as this.

His hand lifts, skipping from knee to nape. Presses down, firm drag of his thumb from base of the skull to the tops of his shoulders and up again, repeating as Louis tells him aloud, "You're doing well."

Continuing on, words private, for Lestat alone as Louis keeps him swaying, keeps his hand working in slow swipes over this minor ache: If you want to come down, we'll get you down. I'm not afraid of them.

Just an offer, while he is touching Lestat's bare skin. While they have been managing this development so effectively.

[damnedest]

This is rewarded with a sound, finally, a rough little groan of relief, eyes half-hooding.

Turns his head, tipping it against Louis' arm, absorbing this approval as if receiving a message from somewhere very remote instead of from the man standing so near to him now. The psychic message itself feels closer, and Lestat opens his eyes properly to look up at him. A fond cast to his expression, a smile that is small but reaches his eyes.

'I'm glad you're here,' he tells him. It's no hardship to be soft in this moment, while Louis is being kind and gentle. There will be time for scratching and biting and hard words, he's sure. 'I missed you.'

Never mind how short his stay so far, how long the decades previous.

'But no,' he asserts, and adds out loud, "I can do it."

[divorcing]

It takes Louis by surprise, this expression of sincerity.

A little painful. Seventy seven years away. Seventy seven years apart, suffering and enduring. And Lestat says this, as if the depth of what they felt can be contained in three words.

Louis' hand stills on the rope, watching Lestat's face. Drinks in his smile, the blue of his eyes.

I missed you too, Louis says. An understatement. Not prepared to explain the rest. But I wish we were doing this somewhere else.

Whether this means the activity at hand or simply the act of being together in a space. Doesn't matter. Either. Both.

A Rubean passed by. Louis reaches out to take a cup from their tray without asking, without even fully turning his head from Lestat. His fingers slip just so into his hair, nails pricking at the base of his skull. Old habit. Louis is surprised every time he recognizes one.

[damnedest]

Arousal has reached an oddly calm plateau, an ache he can live with, but it still feels like a strange balancing act. One slip in the wrong direction and there lies aggravation and fretting, and in the other, something like he is feeling now, drifting. The way Louis' fingers settle in a long familiar configuration—

Well, he might never have felt that again. Lestat closes his hands into fists, blunt nails finding soft palm flesh. He can press as hard as he wants without drawing any blood, so that's nice.

'Mmhm. The cages,' a joke. Obviously that is what Louis means.

A shift, then, accommodating the possibility of being fed the draught he'd requested. Hopefully they weren't lying about what it was for and it's not even more godforsaken sneaky aphrodisiac.

[divorcing]

Funny. Louis smiles, even as he wrinkles his nose, disapproving.

I don't want you in a cage, Louis tells him. Don't mind you like this.

A little more elaborate than anything they'd gotten up to in New Orleans. (Say nothing of what Louis had gotten up to in nearly eighty years since.) He rests the cool base of the cup on Lestat's stomach, watching the line of Lestat's throat, the fall of his hair.

Do you still want this? as Louis tips the edge firmly against the muscle of Lestat's stomach. Or do you want something else?

Something else. A broad sweeping kind of question. All the conversations they haven't had.

Louis has missed him for seventy-seven years.

[damnedest]

At being told what Louis doesn't mind, Lestat indulges in a preening shoulder wiggle. It is no hardship to be desired, even in some small way.

Maybe a not so small way. Difficult to gauge from here.

Lightness leaves him at that sense of cool at his stomach. His body is an easy and simple creature, cock twitching in interest at this new sense happening much closer to it than the other extremes, the bite of ropes and the scratch of nails. He swallows, tips his head to look up at Louis.

'Are you teasing me now?'

[divorcing]

I'm asking you, Louis reassures, rolling the base of the cup in a slow circle over Lestat's skin. No wrong answers. I just wanna know.

In this moment, with Lestat bound and dangling and his head resting on Louis' hand, what does he want?

[damnedest]

Silence, first. Considering the thing he's asked for. A drug to calm his nerves, to sink him entirely into the warm pool he feels he is floating upon, to not really mind what happens either way (including if Louis leaves, if he is compelled to leave, and some blurry shape in his periphery decides to take his place) including if what happens is nothing—

Disconnection, is what this cup holds. Lestat is certain this is how most of them stay sane.

'I want you,' is at least not difficult to admit. It's true. 'I want you to touch me more. I want that to be alright between us.'

A little shake of his head against Louis' hand.

'I don't care who sees.'

[divorcing]

And anyone could see. Everything about this place, this festival, invites exhibition. Voyeurism.

Louis bristles against the idea of anyone else watching. Seeing them. Seeing them, something Louis feels to be so intimate. He's been looked at before, yes. It hadn't mattered then. It matters now, to be looked at touching Lestat this way, after all their years apart. Touching Lestat, who is human.

"Lestat," Louis says, echoes, Lestat between their minds.

Fond. Quiet.

There are bigger conversations. Ones they are maybe equipped for, maybe not. Louis had intended to try, but they are here now, and Lestat is looking at him.

Louis had wondered about his eyes in those early days, after his own had changed. Lestat's shade of blue, his own, is such a sight to behold.

I got you, he promises. Easy enough. They can be this for each other. Anchors. Life lines. Louis' thumb grazes the shell of his ear as he reassures, We can figure the rest out when you're standing on two feet again.

[damnedest]

'Louis.'

Teasing. Fond as well.

Twists his wrists ever so in his ropes. The impossible desire to reach his hands up, cradle Louis' face. There is some kind of tangled metaphor with the binds holding his wrists fixed and the ideas he has about how unworthy he might feel about such a presumptive gesture, but what it comes down to is that Lestat physically can't do it and so it is safe to yearn for.

Which doesn't stop him from saying, out loud, "Kiss me," which isn't so bad. They have shared such tender exchanges more recently, those strange days after what he thinks of as his rescue in his own home, although he has not asked for it himself, has not solicited.

Or maybe it is bad. The corner of his mouth lifts, a dare to Louis to deny him.

[divorcing]

It is a small gesture, but it disturbs the whole rig, and Louis understands immediately the impulse in the movement. Can't give Lestat that, so Louis gives him what he asks for.

The world around them continues. Debauchery run across so many different entanglements, and amidst it all, there is Louis de Pointe du Lac leaning down to kiss Lestat de Lioncourt, a hand cradling his head.

Louis hadn't intended to kiss him. But Lestat asks, and Louis gives himself permission to want this too. Lets himself lean down and have it.

No frame of reference for kissing Lestat this way. Human. Still familiar. Like the way they speak in each others minds, the differences are present. Impossible to miss.

Louis kisses him. He lets the cup fall, spill into the grass, so he might lay his own hand across Lestat's stomach as they kiss, as Louis lingers. This too, familiar. Possessive as it ever was, the way Louis touches him. Lets his claws prick at skin, mindful of the possibility of breaking skin, drawing blood. Territory too complicated for this exact moment in time.

[damnedest]

He lifts his head a fraction of an inch at the last moment to meet this kiss, tensing shoulders and arms to permit it. Beneath the lay of Louis' hand, muscle twitch, both from engagement of his pose as well as the slightest sense of sharp, resting claws. More so, the warm and generous spread of his palm.

It is wrong. Lestat, by rights, should be able to put his arms around Louis, hold on tightly. It is correct that he can't, that yearning lashes tense through crisscrossing rope, the heavy pendulous swing of gravity.

'Now you make your demands,' a whisper between them as he parts his mouth for a deeper kiss. 'Yours, tonight.'

A teasing thing to say. A reminder that there will be nights that this is not so.