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Entry tags:
SUMMER TEST DRIVE MEME
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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?
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?
no subject
This word gets under his skin, where getting what he wants is consigned to the realm of possibility. Some restlessness has gotten in too, constant minute shifts liable to make rope redden his skin more than it might have before. It's a warm night on this summer festival, and exertion beads sweat on skin. No bloody tinge, anymore.
Lestat turns his head to brush a kiss against Louis, a little thrill for the ability to do so, a boundary silently dismantled between them.
"I can hold out," he says. "You want me to be the last one left here?"
He says this, but he is not really paying mind to those around him, focus winnowed right down to the man standing over him.
no subject
No, not really.
But all his desires are complicated. Tangled. Aches for things Lestat will perhaps not wish to give him.
Rather than answer, Louis soothes a palm up his chest, over the ropes, and down again. Chasing those shifts and squirms of movement, settling Lestat back into stillness. Or hoping to, anyway.
I want to keep you right here, with me.
An ideal state, if not location.
Bends further, so he might put his mouth to the pulse hammering in Lestat's throat. Drag his tongue across his skin, taste sweat. Marvel again at slight alterations, differences that Louis hadn't realized could be.
I got you. You believe me?
And Lestat could say no.
Louis' track record is not exactly stellar. Neither of theirs are.
no subject
a raw groan, wanton, Lestat's head tipping back once more, an unthinking exposing of his throat as Louis tastes him. He has, since arrival, bared his human teeth in moments of stress, and made note of people's movements and patterns as though he were a hunter still—maybe this is a forgetting moment again, a predator's ease with showing his throat to the warm mouth teasing his pulse.
'I do,' he says, which is more conscious by design.
no subject
What are they to each other?
Not as they were. Something new.
Lestat bares his throat and Louis feels his mouth watering, his fangs extending. Withholds, because Lestat is human and Louis wants too much.
Not yet, to the bared throat. Maybe never. Louis isn't sure, and neither of them are capable of deciding now. Louis isn't sure is capable of the necessary restraint right now. But this—
Fingers straying lower, following the twitch of muscle, the flow of blood. Not quite where Lestat would want, but a promising trajectory.
Soon, yeah?
Soon, like Lestat hasn't been dangling for some time. Like Louis hasn't been winding him up for some time.
no subject
and he clears his thoughts with a sigh, fingers curling into his palms. Lets his attention run like a stream from the tingling aftermath of neck kisses to the tickling direction of Louis' fingers.
Soon. That evokes a disbelieving, breathless sound from him.
"Now," he counters, just to try it.
no subject
A flinch from the sense memory of the heavy weight of Lestat in his arms, the yielding tip of his head.
It stills Louis' hand. A long moment of stillness, before the sound Lestat makes draws him back to the moment. Here, in this strange place. Here, Lestat naked with Louis' hands on him. Held by him, whether they began that way or not.
Louis kisses his throat once more, a gesture now loaded where it wasn't before, and then lifts his head. Pecks a softer kiss to Lestat's mouth, tells him, "No."
His fingers skate along the delicate, exposed skin of Lestat's inner thigh.
no subject
—murmured against a kiss, this little complaining piece of profanity.
Lestat's leg twitches along with this touch, bounced against the ropes before forcing himself to go still again. A sensitive spot, but then, Louis knows them all. His thighs, his throat, the slope from belly to hip now decorated in drying blood, all set to tingling under gentle fingers, gentle kisses.
He might suggest that he beg, but perhaps Louis would take him up on it. Words nevertheless, his only weapons if his own body cannot get him what he wants soon enough.
'I was thinking about what I would do if you left me here,' he says, voice whisper-soft in Louis' head as he lets his head roll back on his neck, body shifting as much as it can to encourage touch. 'I would have to find somewhere private for myself, and imagine your pretty hand around my cock. Try to recall how soft your palm, how sensitive your fingers. Or perhaps I would find another.'
Lestat turns his head, pursuit of a kiss, or a nudge against a hand, or a thigh, anything. 'Someone with your elegance. I could close my eyes. Whisper your name.'
no subject
If Louis touches him, it stands to reason that yes, Lestat will move just as Louis remembers he once had.
Presently, he is swinging in his bindings and Louis is moving his hands along with him so as not to interrupt. Lestat turns and Louis permits a brush of lips, the best that can be done while Lestat is in motion and Louis not in the mood to steady him.
Trying to pretend he is not affected, but they both know better.
A light scrape of claws up one thigh as Lestat sways, raising marks on pale skin.
Show me how, Louis coaxes. How would you say my name?
Pretending, perhaps, that Louis does not wish to bite him all over. Chase anyone who would put a hand on Lestat's skin out into the forest into the welcoming jaws of the spiders.
no subject
Another rush of heat, prickling coolness, at this instruction. A bid for him to perform.
Lestat wrings the rope in his hands, as if to introduce another sensation, the neutral itch of fibres against his palms. Distract him from the ways he is not being touched, from the ways he can't otherwise move.
But then he has to imagine it anyway, Louis' hands on him, and he hopes those memories are leaking out too, little flashes of brown hands on his pink-flushed thighs, or his own palm sweeping up Louis' naked back to grip him at the nape and direct him downwards, or the way he might lean in or surge up or murmur against sweat-damp skin, against a pulse point or over his heart or against his lips, or nestled into the crook of his thigh, panting and warm,
"Louis," he says, a swooning breath out, a needful tension strung through each syllable.
no subject
Sometimes, Louis had dreamed—
No. Unwelcome, these memories.
Lestat treats him to an array of sensations and impression. Memory. The ways they'd touched each other. The way Lestat had touched him. Images like a tug on a hook tangled in Louis' chest, the familiar notes in Lestat's voice as he says Louis' name and Louis feels like he's going to burn to ash, wanting him.
Having him like this isn't enough. But then, what is?
"Say it again," is immediately derailed by Louis leaning down and kissing him. Claws press down into his thigh, Louis holding too tight there as they kiss to keep himself from simply folding and touching Lestat with real intent and bringing the game to an end.
no subject
And Lestat is kissed and he kisses back, blunt human teeth that are nevertheless hungry where he dares to scrape a bite against Louis' lip. He gives a muffled, still sharp groan as claws dig into his skin, a twitch upwards against nothing and a pulse of heat that starts at this harsh grip, courses through his veins, hits all the vitals. New bruises, new cuts.
Into the kiss, Louis will be able to feel a smile, sharp and blissful. "Louis," murmured there, quieter, near-whispered, but no less ardent.
(Wishes to put his fingers in Louis' hair. Wishes to roll his weight onto him. Wishes to drag him down into another breathless kiss, or find out for himself how hard his fledgling is for him, still, after all this time. Tells himself the ropes are doing them both a favour.)
no subject
Maybe.
Louis must also consider what else might have passed between them. Maybe the negative would have carried more weight than anything else.
"Keep on that way," Louis murmurs against his mouth, and turns from their kiss.
A wrench to do so.
But it is only so he might lean down to the fresh droplets of blood at Lestat's thigh and drag his tongue along the skin. As much as he will allow himself, nothing more.
no subject
silken French obscenities, abused flesh soothed and aggravated by a wet, warm mouth. He goes boneless in his ropes with exception to another tug at his wrists, for all that he has no idea what he would do with his hands, anymore, if he were given them back. With any part of himself. The ropes that lash closed his bent leg strain, lay down new bruises before he manages to force himself to relax.
"Louis," he says again, under instruction, a softly breaking quality to this latest repetition. "Chéri," and he would like to say more, all the sweet nothings that still rise like instinct in his throat, but he strangles them in favour of, "please, your mouth, your hand, Louis," this is begging, he realises too late, "or I'll finish before you have the privilege of doing it yourself," is a deliberate swerve.
'Is it different?' flung out quietly between them. His taste, perhaps. His everything.
no subject
Unclear, even to Louis.
Something in the blood that is so human but unmistakably, disorientingly, Lestat. Louis remembers.
He might have a clearer explanation if he were not so occupied with the task at hand. (Keeping attention winnowed down to just this, just Lestat beneath his hands and his mouth and none of the rest, the heavy burden of long decades of separation, the why of it, what they become in the wake of it. It's too much for the moment.) Lestat asks and Louis can give him this muddled answer. Yes, it's different. No, it's the same.
Lestat, hums soft between them. Raises his head, trace amount of blood at his mouth. Struggles with all the questions he cannot ask, but feels catching at the back of his throat anyway.
Louis rubs a thumb along rope-reddened skin. Soothes, Just a little longer, okay?
cw ref to past dubcon
Games that became scorched earth, at a certain point. But he summons them now, feels them in his muscles, a frustrated growl emanating from him under the torment of these long licks, inches from where he would like them to be.
But Louis touches him this way, is sweet to him, and he remembers: it's been a very long time since he ever thought he might experience it again. The thought brings tears to his eyes, but they stay unshed for now.
"Okay," whispered.
And yes, it is a muddle. The ways Louis is different, the ways he is perfectly familiar. But his body and heart and mind all respond the same.
no subject
Maybe there's no distance no years no amount of strife that can change the way they come together.
And Louis is laughing into the damp skin of Lestat's thigh, pleased with himself. Pleased with the frustrated sounds Lestat is making and his capitulation in spite of it.
Which do you want more, my hand or my mouth? manages to seem conversational, blasé about Louis' own preference. (Quiet trepidation of making himself so vulnerable in front of a crowd.)
no subject
But that is what he wants, a tangle of want, of wanting Louis to kiss him during, of wanting the satisfaction of his hand after much has already been made of it, of needing him close which is where Lestat can see him. If he is being generous about selecting the less exposing, servile act,
well, it does not come up in his scattered thoughts and impulses at all. Maybe it would later, if he'd chosen differently.
"Your hand," out loud, voice a more broken thing than his psychic words. "Bring it up here to me."
Let him do something to help.
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Instead, he makes his way upwards.
Hand and mouth, trading off on Lestat's skin as he winds his way towards Lestat's mouth. A prick of nails here, a kiss laid there, on skin exposed between the cinch of rope. Teases of contact as Louis levers his way up to Lestat's mouth, and cups his face in one hand.
"Should've made you say please," is a little rueful, but they're dancing around so many different blurry boundaries. Maybe it's better not to test all of them at once.
His thumb catches at Lestat's lower lip. Maybe not quite where his hand has been requested but Louis likes touching him, indulges himself while he has opportunity.
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It's close enough.
Lestat purses his lips to kiss the pad of Louis' thumb, and then tips his head. Directs a look upwards at his face before he sets about running the flat of his tongue from this point to the base of Louis' thumb. A near mimic to what he might have asked Louis to do.
But then a more dedicated task, laving his tongue across Louis' palm. Something too assertive and knowing about this action to translate as properly submissive, especially unasked for, especially the way he might try to catch Louis' eye. He wants his hand good and slick, and will see it done unless he is stopped.
'Next time,' he suggests. 'When you hang me up next time. Make me beg for it, mon cher.'
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Next time, after all their difficult conversations. After they manage what they are now, what they are not anymore.
The promise that they will do this again, in some form.
(Ways in which this is one of the better ways they could come together. But that too, a difficult, perhaps painful, conversation.)
You think it's too late to make you beg now?
Just curious.
Louis doesn't draw his hand back. Lestat is given free rein, as much attention as he wishes to lave over Louis' hand as Louis' breath comes quicker in his chest, as he feels his body flushing hot. (Fangs itch, wanting to bury themselves in all this bare skin, eager to leave a mark alongside the work of his claws.) Louis watches him, unwavering, as he slides his off hand back into Lestat's hair. Cradles the base of his skull, runs thumb back and forth behind his ear. Little touches, displacing the eagerness to touch elsewhere.
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He isn't thinking as much as he should about the people around them. There are onlookers as well as those who are having their own fun, and maybe he should balk harder than he does at the premise they've already spoken of together, being taken apart in a fashion he hasn't experienced in private for decades, let alone in public. But Louis is overwhelming. His presence a preoccupation. He'd beg for it.
Still. Lestat finishes off his task by giving a finger a hard, blunt-toothed nip, enough to lay in temporary marks without breaking the skin. Pleased with himself for doing so.
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Yes, Louis sees.
And leaves it, for the moment.
Because Louis is of a similar mind: there are aspects of their reunion that should be private. That Louis wishes to keep for himself.
The absence of answer would be an answer anyway. Louis is smiling, a little smug. Lifts his hand to examine Lestat's handiwork, the indents of teeth.
"Alright," releases Lestat from the threat of denial, begging. "We'll just—"
A pause. Louis' gaze lifts, observing the ropes. Which one he need tug on to raise Lestat's head by a few degrees. Just enough to ease the way Louis must bend to kiss him, to make it easier to do so while he reaches down to take Lestat in hand.
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Lestat would have begged, and perhaps there are contexts he would enjoy doing so. Perhaps this is one. But in the moment, relief floods him too fast and sure for him to miss the prospect. He wets his lips, an anticipatory gesture, and then looks up as Louis does, as the ropes are adjusted.
A breath out as he adjusts himself to this altered configuration. There is a slightly harsher bite to a rope, but the muscles and bone along back and neck relax in relief as the stress is alleviated.
"So you could do that the whole time," he says, complaining to complain. He didn't ask. There is a small smile in his voice, on his mouth.
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A minor threat, softened by a kiss. A slow twist of his palm. Just acclimating. Trying not to come apart thinking of how long it's been. How much time they'd lost. How much Louis wishes they were doing this some other way.
They are here. There is no changing the location or the circumstances. The only alternative is to allow Lestat to fill his mind, his senses, to be everything to Louis as he once was. Sink into kissing him as his hand twists so, so slowly upwards, slides back down again. Teasing, still.
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Lestat's lips part, both to accept these kisses as well as to draw in an off-rhythm breath. A magnetic quality to this touch where it feels like his blood is drawn to the surface heat of Louis' palm, a slight creak and sway to ropes as Lestat reflexively tests its configuration for leverage, where he might be able to push up to meet Louis' hand.
More, more, a thought that pulses through his mind hard enough that he doesn't need to make an effort at all for Louis to hear it, as passively available as his own thrumming heartbeat.
(A first for him, actually, being touched this blatantly in the public forum of Rubilyk, his pleasure on such clear display. The one other time, he had been too in control of it to allow such a freedom to the other person. Here, it is given to Louis, hasty handed and eager.)
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