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

[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.

[divorcing]

Nights where this will not be so.

A clench of jealousy digging in around his chest, nothing Louis is entitled to but feels anyway.

He doesn't like it. The idea of sharing.

(Companion enough for himself. What are they to each other? Who is Louis to Lestat, to insist upon laying a claim?)

Lestat is whispering in his mind and Louis feels it like an ache, fingers pressing on a bruise. Thirty years and they had never been able to speak to each other like this. Seventy-seven years where Armand's voice slipped in alongside his thoughts so easily that it became easy harmony with Louis' own internal working.

His fingers curl in where they have settled over Lestat's stomach. Light scrape of claws against skin, fingers between the cinch of rope, possessive.

I want to take you apart, is all Louis can say. Withholds the invocation carried by Like I used to, keeps those words well away from the surface of his mind.

[damnedest]

Louis' fingers slip beneath rope and it feels like it tightens everything else, felt through the zigzag intersections. Like the whole rig is Louis' hold of him, and he can only be deliriously happy to be caught by him.

Not so simple as that, but perhaps they can be a dream to one another, one where they get everything they immediately want. Lestat answers this psychic whisper with a quiet vocalisation from deep in his chest, hummed into the kiss. It should occur to him that this is good for them, a public show of willing, a kind of social credit that may last them through the next few weeks, and certainly tonight.

He's not thinking about any of that shit. "Do it," he says, and adds, 'And put me back together.'

[divorcing]

Has Lestat done this before? Here, elsewhere?

It's the kind of question that must be banished.

Maybe they'll talk about it. Maybe not. Louis would have to say so many things in return, explain so much about choices made and what kind of vices he'd indulged. Maybe he doesn't wish to share them.

Louis lets these things slide away from him.

They are kissing. It feels like a dream, yes. Almost a century, and Louis had missed him, and missed him, and missed him, and now he is kissing Lestat, caught up in ropes, and the rest of the world doesn't matter at all.

Yeah, whispers between them. The absurdity of craving the end point, the moment where he will take Lestat down from these ropes. Covetous of what that moment will be, what it will be like to undo ropes and find marks and bruises and scratches that aren't already fading.

You look so pretty, Louis tells him, turning his fingers up to twist the ropes more deliberately. Intent. Like a piece of art. Even with the wrong color rope holding you here.

Minor quibbles. Louis is trying to persuade himself to take his hand from Lestat's hair.

[damnedest]

This flattery feels like a match set to fuel-soaked logs, a sudden heat but also a brightness. Charmed, pleased. On their best days, would Louis have called him pretty? Lestat can't remember if he ever has, or perhaps used other words, less precise words. Murky memories, conservative expressions of desire mingled with moments beyond language, beyond articulation. It feels different, either way. New.

Lestat's next breath hitches at this twist and pull of rope, chin tipping up, a twitch through his posture as if he would like to seek out something. The not-close-enough quality of what is otherwise an intimate touch.

'Would you have me in one of your showrooms?' Lifting his head, chasing another kiss. 'Monsieur art dealer.'

[divorcing]

"Yeah," Louis says into his mouth. Noses brush, Louis twists the ropes tighter, harder. His fingers curl into Lestat's

Just like this, settles into Lestat's mind. In my private collection.

All these sweet words. Variations on things Louis dreamed, dreamed and dreamed and dreamed for decades. Words that come easier now than they did then. Changes in him, in what he is capable of saying aloud.

Familiar limitations, waiting to be broached.

Tell me again what it feels like, Louis coaxes. Is it different?

Different now that it's them, that Louis' hand is tangled in the rope, that they're kissing and Lestat's heartbeat has gone haywire underneath his palm.

[damnedest]

The ropes pull harsher across his skin, and Lestat groans, head falling back away from kisses as a result, the ends of his hair inches from the ground. Pulls his wrists against the loops they're trapped in, something satisfying in making the fibres creak, in forcing the set up to force his capture in turn.

'Like they're yours, these knots,' is certainly more sober and articulate than if he were to use his own voice. 'Like you're touching me everywhere, and you won't let me go. No matter what I do.'

And like Louis is the one who is flying, but he has the presence of mind not to consciously voice this. Beneath the surface, maybe, a terrible and romantic sentiment. He would let Louis take him to the sky. He would let him do whatever he wants.

[divorcing]

Wise, not to invoke this

(Louis cannot fly.)

(Louis was dropped, fell to earth. Shattered.)

(Louis lived long years in a cage, every book he owned bolted to the ceiling overhead. Out of reach.)

Lestat says these things and Louis wishes—

Is it different here? Louis has to consider it, while they are having all the discussions they have put off. The curl of satisfaction in his chest, wanting. Aching. Suppose he never lets Lestat go.

(He will have to.)

Keep going, Louis encourages. Indulges in a drag of fingers through Lestat's hair, a small intimacy that feels just a little too much, while he disentangles his fingers from the ropes at his chest. Louis runs his fingers over skin, over the ties at Lestat's hips, teasing lower as they kiss. A telegraphed trajectory, but Louis is in no hurry.

[damnedest]

Louis is in no hurry.

Now, a complaining sound is muffled into this next kiss. As if after a seventy-seven year absence, and an even longer time than that since they were truly happy with one another, Lestat deserves more than just Louis' kisses, his teasing, wandering hands. A twitch of a knee makes the rest of his configuration sway, in no way that is helpful to him.

But he's been asked to continue. 'Like being human,' is offered. 'A constant tether, a constant labour. Helpless and bare to the greater predators that covet it. And stupid,' a quirk of a smile in this kiss. 'Stupidly enamored with its betters. Aching for claws and teeth.'

If he has nothing else, he has words.

[divorcing]

Like being human.

Lestat is human. Louis can taste it. Hind brain instinct that hears the rush of blood and wants to open up a vein. Desire that is not unique to Lestat, though it runs alongside the way Louis has wanted him, drank from him, wished to drown in him.

It is a new thread. Louis can ignore it, push it out of his mind, but it is still present.

And in the moment—

Claws, scraping skin. Raising thin lines across Lestat's hip. The catch of teeth, just this side of too sharp. A hint of fang.

Like these?

While they're playing dangerous games.

[damnedest]

A full bodied jerk at the feeling of claws brush his skin follows a roughly panted out affirming sound. Lestat has not yet decided if pain is different now, as a human. It isn't exactly, but his body has more acute instincts—subconsciously attuned to the fact he will damage more easily, he will scar, he can die from the slightest of injuries.

But also: a warm flush of blood through his arteries, an ardent return of a kiss with knives hidden inside. Thrill and flinch in one.

'Exactly so,' he assures. Muscles in his back and neck fixed and straining to meet this kiss, to tease the possibility of a deeper kind as he tastes fang with tongue.

cw blood, dubious consent

[divorcing]

Light pressure, applied low to Lestat's belly. Beneath ropes, above where perhaps Lestat would prefer Louis' hand to be. Claws bear down on the skin, just enough to bring blood welling up around each point.

Maybe Louis should have asked permission. It's been nearly a century, and Lestat is tied and dangling and he is human. The marks will linger.

They'd never asked permission before.

Does it feel different?

A strange moment for curiosity. To consider that Louis no longer truly remembers what it was like to be injured and have it matter in any substantial way. He is old. Not as old as Lestat, but old. Certain things have been left behind.

[damnedest]

It's an intrusion, each pointed nail breaking the skin. A presumption, and it floods heat through him with force enough his skin prickles cool in its wake. Fine droplets of blood rise, a couple break into slick little ribbons coursing down his side, another towards the dip of his groin and hip.

This, and then Louis' little question, calm and curious, and Lestat feels himself accept the animal reality of being comparatively powerless in a way he has only been teasing himself with until now. A higher colour rises in his face and his vision swims and he is harder than he's been in literal decades. Maybe he should be frightened, maybe he would be if it was another.

But it's Louis.

"Yes," he whispers.

How? Louis will want to know. But he is occupied with want. "Touch me," a fitful demand.

[divorcing]

Ways in which this is disorienting, trickling chill amidst the heat of this moment.

Such a subtle thing, the shifts in scent. Lestat but not quite. This thread of scent that registers prey, this scent that Louis has never thought to associate with Lestat.

"I am touching you," Louis soothes, smiling around sharp teeth.

It all snaps into place. All of it. Their intimacy, here as if it had never been gone. Louis had tortured himself for so long fearing this, and now—

It is a relief. A relief to be touching him, that no matter what changes have come to them, this is unchanged.

Louis leaves bloody fingerprints on Lestat's stomach, light touches, smearing the droplets as he goes.

Tell me how it is different.

Maybe conditional. Lestat is free to think so.

[damnedest]

This assurance is denial, and the request is a command, and Lestat's nervous system can be told nothing different. The next sound he makes is full of longing, another shift of muscle setting him to sway, mitigated by where Louis maintains points of contact. Any sense of being held in the claws of an apex predator is—well, not pushed aside by, but mingled with how satisfying it is to behold.

After all, Lestat is still his maker. His put those fangs in his smile, that light in his eyes.

But now he is being asked for more poetry and all he wants to do is squirm in his ropes as fingertips trace patterns across his belly.

"You know you are not," out loud, as he says, 'The pain is deeper. My mind knows it. It holds onto it, obsesses over it. I still like it,' feels necessary to add. 'I feel naked the way Adam and Eve learned they were the first time. Not shame. Softer in nature than all other creatures.'

And other more complex feelings, of being chained to a system, moral and ecological and societal, but that is a discussion beyond him in this moment.

[divorcing]

No, Louis is not. Not the way Lestat would like. He is grinning about it, pleased with himself, laughing low into the next kiss he puts to Lestat's mouth.

They hadn't been laughing with each other by the end, when it came in New Orleans.

Louis and Armand had not been laughing with each other in Dubai, in San Francisco, in Paris.

What a gift, to laugh into a kiss, feeling Lestat shifting beneath his palm. To feel anything at all, and to feel something like this.

Louis lets his fingers dip lower, tracing flushed skin, familiar twitches of muscles. Breathes Lestat in and marks what is familiar here too; what is changed.

Humming acknowledgement. Pretty words, enticing picture painted. Louis' claws press down again, raise fresh pinpricks of blood.

You like this?

[damnedest]

If he was not enjoying himself as much as he is now, Lestat might say it was worth it to hear Louis laugh again, to smile down at him. It catches him unexpectedly, enough that his eyes sting, a fraught little twinge of tension at his brow despite the way he smiles back, greets kisses eagerly.

Takes a steadying breath. One that gets expelled with force at the next series of sharp little piercing wounds.

He nods at this question, letting his shoulders and neck relax again, hanging for a moment, as if there is a choice.

'Is that strange?'

[divorcing]

No, immediate reassurance, warding against any possible implication of judgement. The cause of that pinch of tension in Lestat's expression, perhaps, something Louis wards against with a fervent, No, it's not strange.

Say less of how intimately Louis knows this truth. How certain he is.

Louis is thinking of putting his mouth to these welling wounds. He is thinking of putting his fangs into Lestat's skin.

It is too much. Too much to allow himself.

Nosing in at the corner of Lestat's mouth, lips brushing the scar there. Murmurs to him, soft, "How long you think you can hold out if I give you what you're asking for?"