open post 2025

[impractical]

leave a starter or prompt; happy to plot first via pm or plurk.
muselist here.
spoilers and nsfw possible, will mark in tls.


wip list of tropes and stuff i pretty much always want to play:

• lotus-eater situation, aka "you're living your perfect life and don't realize it's killing you!"
• pining! you know the hand flex gif from p&p? of course you do
• vampires...
• misunderstandings between people who have feelings for each other, i.e. thinking one of them is interested in someone else and it comes to a head in heated admissions of Feelings
• slow burn over a psl
• ALL the h/c, whether one or two-sided
• fwiw some of my favorite bstreet memes are morning after, train to the afterlife, drunk meme, find them dying, and insomnia
• text is always going to be a yes from me dawg
• classics: only one bed, huddle for warmth
• amnesia???

 

Comments

[lendemains]

[Just a taste.

Clea tries to keep focused on the woman's face, because her curiosity is piqued now. One doesn't offer oneself as a meal to a vampire out of mere curiosity, and she doubts the woman is purely self-sacrificing, or why would she bother playing at seduction? But her blood is singing a symphony that Clea can't ignore, that she wants to lose herself in, and every time she manages to fix her eyes on the woman's face, they are drawn inexorably back to her throat.

Just a taste.

She leans forward again, crowding even closer, pressing the woman between her own body and the wall. Her lips ghost gently across the pulse thrumming beneath the woman's skin, one brief moment to savour the anticipation, before her fangs suddenly, hard and fast, sink into the woman's throat. As she bites down, she catches another hint of that scent, familiar but forgotten. Where has she smelled that before?

But all her questions are soon wiped away by the rushing in her head and the heat blossoming in her chest and in her belly. A soft, satisfied groan breaks out of her before she can stop it, and she curses inwardly at the open need, the desire, on display.

She was right about this woman. She burns. And, if only for a few fleeting seconds, Clea feels very nearly alive.

Just a taste, remember.

The woman is lucky that Clea has a will of iron, or she might not be able to tear herself away.

Her fangs ease out of the woman's neck, and Clea licks a hard line up the strong column of her throat, catching any stray droplets of blood.]

Who are you? [she hisses into the woman's ear.] And what are you really doing here?

[searingbond]

[ Ironically, as it turns out, vampirism is not very dissimilar from sex. There's some discomfort initially, but she's surprised how quickly the pain vanishes. Transforms, almost, into something that is so surprisingly pleasurable that she doesn't think twice about the needy sound that the woman makes against her throat. This is to placate their prey, to make you stupid, she hears in her mind, but it's so otherwise flooded with explosively alluring chemicals that any logic or instinct of self-preservation is carried away as if it'd been a leaf against a hurricane.

Time becomes muddy. When her mind is able to clear again, she'll realize with another dose of chilling fear that she could have been completely drained in that moment and wouldn't have lifted a finger to stop it. In the present, though, she's dimly aware that she's trapped between the woman and the wall, utterly at the other's mercy, but all she knows is the unnatural bliss that she feels, which courses through her and makes her blood sing as it's liberated from her body.

Yes, she's lucky. In this, at least: that the vampire does stop feeding, tongue catching any lingering beads that had trailed down after the wound. And Sciel crashes back into herself with a start, nearly shaking with the realization of what'd just happened.

Then comes the question. Cursing inwardly, she thinks that the feeding would've been one of her better opportunities to try something. ...Except, if she's honest with herself, she knows it'd have been impossible, with her enthralled so intensely. And now, with the Dessendre woman still holding her pinned in place and suspicious, she knows that her time is already up.

Even when she tries to summon her weapon -- the tool she'd once used for farming, with its twin deadly edges -- Sciel realizes another awful truth: wherever they are, she has no connection to the ability to draw the scythe into existence from nothing. She is alone, unarmed, and found out.

Her reaction is to tip her head back, cracking a strained smile. Putain de merde. ]

Sciel. [ She offers, sighing. ] I came to kill the monster that took my husband five years ago.

[ Deceit doesn't suit her anyway. So there's almost a relaxed ease to the way she admits the truth, faced with the near-certainty that she's about to be rent asunder by this powerful creature and join Pierre in death.

She'll at least get some of the things she wanted, in the end. ]

[lendemains]

[The warmth flooding through Clea turns to ice. That's where the smell comes from. That dark flat, five years ago, the young man who had asked only one thing of her. Clea had been weak enough and tired enough that she'd agreed to his only demand, as long as he came quietly. She'd been starving, a dull ache behind her eyes and a lethargy in her muscles that was growing worse after weeks with nothing to eat. Lumière had volunteered a man so old and frail he'd hardly had any blood in him, and Alicia – poor Alicia, smaller and weaker than her siblings, and recently injured – needed every drop. So Clea had stolen into the city and found someone with enough blood to satisfy her and Verso. He hadn't begged for his life, as most do. All he'd asked of her was that she spare his wife.

He'd tasted sweet. And he'd died in much the same position that Sciel is in now: pinned against the wall, his hands clutching at her in a mockery of a lover's embrace. She'd given what was left of him to Verso to drain.

And, true to her word, Clea has never returned to that flat, though she has idly wondered what sort of woman could inspire such devotion. And, she must admit, she understands now. One can tell a lot about a person by their blood, and this woman blazes like the sun.]

I'd be a hypocrite to blame you. [Given what she's done to two of the vampire hunters who killed Simon, and what she plans to do to the rest.] But there's nothing in this place you can use to hurt me. [It's not a brag, or a threat, merely a simple statement of fact.

She pulls back enough to look at Sciel, allowing the woman a little more space. But her hand tightens even further on Sciel's wrist, causing all those little bones to grind harshly together, a warning that a moment of leniency is not a stay of execution. She doesn't intend to break the bones, but she will leave an ugly bruise and a painful ache.

Her jaw tenses.]

All he asked of me was that I let you live.

[But she's had a taste now, and her body aches to feel that heat again, to take and take of this woman until there's nothing left, to feel the thrash of a heart in its dying throes, so intense Clea might imagine it were her own heart beating. And so the question becomes: does she honour her word to a man long dead, or does she take what she craves?]

[searingbond]

[ And there it is. The impact of those words is akin to an unexpected punch to her gut, and Sciel feels all of the wind leave her lungs with the imagined blow. The pain of what the vampire says specifically is so keen that there is no keeping it from her face; Sciel shows a blatant grief that is deep as a chasm, with old wounds being opened violently with a ragged, hateful blade. She slackens against Clea's grip as if there had been some hope that Pierre had been alive before now (there hadn't), not caring a whit if this fucking animal breaks her wrist or not.

This is the one responsible for her husband's death. Sciel has her right here, in front of her. Clea is more beautiful and more horrible than the formless figure Sciel had imagined when she'd lay awake at night picturing her revenge, because that idea had been the only thing that'd kept her going lately. ...But she has no weapon, and there obviously won't be something lying around nearby that she can use to end it. That would be too easy, and life isn't easy: it's cruel.

(Briefly, insanely, she wonders if she should've ingested poison beforehand. Something that would flow through her blood and into the vampire's mouth. But, of course, she has no idea what does and doesn't kill a vampire, and it's just a consideration in hindsight anyway.)

Sciel is shaking with rage, which Clea will plainly see when she draws back, though it's otherwise clear from the hammering of her heart. The puncture marks at her neck still bloom a little with fresh blood, and the pinned woman swoons slightly, intensely lightheaded from the feeding and the revelation that followed.

There is no thought. There is only the instinct of the animal she's supposed to be. And so Sciel uses that little space she'd been afforded to throw herself to the side with the intent of biting down hard on the arm that holds her own in its grasp. ]

You're honourable now, are you? What do you care about a promise to a dead human, connasse? [ Whether or not she's successful in her spiteful, fruitless attack, Sciel will bare her teeth at Clea at the first opportunity, seething. ] I don't care what you say: I will find a way to make you suffer. And if you kill me, I will haunt you forever.

[lendemains]

[For a few moments, Clea thinks all the fight has gone out of the woman, all that fire reduced to a shivering, fainting mess held up only by Clea's hand pinning her wrist to the wall. It's a shame, she thinks, until she realises the shivering isn't fear or cold, but rage. Of course it's rage, that same rage that Clea is all too familiar with. But she realises too late to stop Sciel's teeth rending her arm, drawing blood thicker and darker than a living person's.

She wrenches her arm away, grabs the front of Sciel's shirt with both hands, and slams her into the wall hard enough to knock the breath out of her. There's blood flecked on the woman's lips as she vows her revenge. Not much, but it only takes a drop.

Putain. Putain de bordel de merde. How could she have been stupid enough, slow enough, to have allowed this? How could she have— Putain.

It's in their natures, of course: Sciel runs hot, Clea is ice cold. Her rage is not loud, not screaming death threats and attacking wildly like a cornered beast. Her rage is still, a tempest seething beneath a placid surface. She can still feel the heat of Sciel's body against her as she closes the distance between them, glaring from beneath a fringe that's become increasingly disheveled, every muscle in her body wound tight as steel as she tries to work through what to do now. Her promise is forgotten, and whether she intends to keep it no longer matters. They've shared each other's blood, she and this woman, and that means, if she kills her now, Sciel will become a vampire.

That's not something she can allow.]

Listen to me, [she says, her voice as icy as her demeanour, as icy as the hands pinning Sciel in place.] I'm going to send you home, and you will forget that any of this happened.

[She's still hungry, she still wants, every animal instinct screaming at her to bite, to take what's hers, take all that heat and fire for her own, but, even if she were willing to go back on her word, she can't. Tonight must end with Clea unsatisfied.]

He's dead. [Just as Simon is dead, and there is, perhaps, a thickness to her voice that shouldn't be there, that belies a weakness, a grief, she would never willingly acknowledge.] Throwing your life away after his won't change that. [Nothing can change that. And Clea has to keep moving, can't pause to tear the whole world apart for what it's dared to take from her, because the war in which her family is embroiled won't wait for her to catch up. Her knuckles turn an even paler shade of white as she clenches her fists harder, fingernails digging into her own palms through Sciel's shirt.] Take this one chance to walk away.

[searingbond]

[ Sciel is slammed back into the wall with a harsh thud, her head cracking a little with the impact. Already woozy from the feeding, her vision swims in and out for a moment during which, honestly, she expects this woman to finish her off. ...But time drags on and Sciel absently licks her lips, inadvertently taking in the tainted blood, completely unaware of any possible implications.

When her sight drifts back into focus, she fixes it again on the vampire. ]

"You're going to send me home?" [ She repeats, and then she laughs, lolling her head back and baring her teeth again in a mocking grin. ] That's what you say to a student who's been naughty, not someone who wants to kill you. Where is all that fear that the Dessendre family has inspired for so long?

[ Yes: she's goading. Sciel has no desire, no intention, to return home. There's nothing waiting for her there, since she's made up her mind about enacting violence on her way out of this life, and there will be no reasoning with her.

Distantly, perhaps, the ever-insightful woman notes the way that her captor talks about Pierre...as if she isn't talking about him at all. Her eyes alight as she reaches for this possibility, yanking it up into the light to be exploited. ]

Speaking from experience? [ She can't, won't, think of Pierre. How he'd died, how this monster had been the last thing he'd seen. How he'd bargained for his wife's life. Instead, she adopts what might otherwise be a pleasant smile, cocking her head curiously. ] If you haven't, I'd be happy to show you what it's like to lose someone you love. If you're capable of feeling anything but hunger, of course.

[lendemains]

[The barb about her family doesn't bother Clea; whatever reputation they have in Lumière is not her concern, as long as the Lumièrians continue to cooperate with them. But the insight Sciel gleans about her, the shattering of the facade she's so meticulously built and the exposure of the raw grief beneath, that burns. A weaker woman might rip out Sciel's throat for it. It takes every ounce of Clea's ironclad self-control not to react, though there is, perhaps, a telltale twitch in her jaw and her neck as her muscles tense with the effort of restraining herself.

When she speaks, her voice is still ice cold, still a little too thick, strained from the effort to keep it from breaking.]

Don't presume there is anything you can do that would hurt me.

[Not after what's already been taken from her. Not when Simon's screams still ring in her ears and she can't close her eyes for fear of seeing his last moments, forever seared onto the backs of her eyelids.

She releases Sciel's shirt with one hand so that she can run her thumb across the woman's bottom lip, wiping away a stray drop of blood. Hell, a weaker woman might rip Sciel's throat out just to taste her again. Even now, woozy and seemingly desperate to die chasing after her revenge, she is all but irresistible. The drops of fresh red blood beading on her neck are screaming out to Clea, and she can't help but yearn to run her tongue over Sciel's throat again.]

And I'm not going to hurt you, either. If you die now, you'll become what you'd call a monster. Just like me.

[Clea wouldn't consider herself a monster, of course. She's an animal, feeding on other animals to survive. No different from humans raising cattle for the slaughter, really; vampires are just higher up on the food chain. But Sciel has made her own opinion clear.]

You don't want that.

[searingbond]

[ Naturally, Clea wouldn't betray any weakness, if it exists. And not the 'weakness' of her past loss, which is beyond them both. There isn't anything there to exploit, and though she has no issue trying to make this woman suffer in any way possible, she has to prioritize. The vampire says she won't hurt Sciel, but that isn't an assurance that the Lumieran can count on.

There must be something, though. Everything has a weakness. Would they not fall with enough violence? If you stabbed them through the heart, or cut off their head? There's not exactly time to experiment, and she doesn't have a weapon besides, but...

Her dark musing is interrupted by what Clea says next, which has Sciel frowning slightly.

What? ]

What're you talking about? [ That hawk-like gaze is fixed on Clea, studying every twitch of her features. ] "If I die, I'll become like you?"

[ Her tone is highly dubious, given how absurd an idea it is, and her own lack of knowledge related to anything vampiric. Besides, it's more likely that this thing is playing games with her, for...whatever twisted reason. Maybe fear changes the taste of the blood, she thinks, with another pang of loathing. ]

Right, fine, I'll go back. I'll go back and recommend to the Council that we no longer honour this agreement. You've been taking more than your share anyway, so if the threat was to open us up to attack from the Nevrons, then we'll prepare for that instead. You and your family would probably kill us all eventually with the excuse of this deal hanging over our heads, and, well...I'd rather go down fighting, knowing you're not getting what you want.

[ What they need, maybe. Because the frequency with which people had been requested, or were stolen away, had increased over time. And something about the way Clea has been looking at her tonight, as if she's starving...

What Sciel doesn't know, of course, is where she and the others in the city had come from in the first place. ]

[lendemains]

[It seems to Clea that Sciel wants to die. She came here tonight with no weapon, no apparent plan, simply threw herself into the jaws of a predator in the vague hope that Clea that would choke on her. And now she's goading her, trying to strike wherever it might hurt or provoke ire: Clea's family, her losses, and now their agreement with Lumière.

(Not that the agreement matters much. If the Lumièrians become too unruly, they can always be erased and new livestock painted in their stead. But that would mean more time, more energy, when there's a war to fight and not enough time or energy to spare.)

She can't help but roll her eyes in frustration.]

You want to die, then, I take it? I'm offering you the rest of your life, for whatever that's worth. But if you're that adamant to refuse it...

[She gave her word.

What does honour mean here? Her word won't feed her, won't give her the strength she needs to keep her family safe.

Sciel's ingested Clea's blood. She'll become a vampire if she dies now.

Clea can destroy the body before she rises. It'll take time, time that's wasted here instead of in the outside world where she's needed, where there's a war to fight and where her family is relying on her. But if it means she won't go hungry tonight, perhaps it's worth it.]

I'll grant your wish.

[Her hand slips around to cup Sciel's cheek, fingertips pressing insistently against the side of her head, holding her in place, as her other hand releases its death grip on Sciel's shirt to trace downwards to Sciel's waist, grabbing on and holding the woman flush against her body. Were she not a predator and Sciel her prey, it might seem as though she were about to kiss her. And for a moment, her lips against Sciel's throat are almost tender.]

[searingbond]

[ Sciel does want to die. She's wanted to stop having to live after Pierre disappeared, though she went on for years after in a reckless haze. And though it took a while for her to decide that dying in the course of getting her revenge was the way she wanted it to end, she'd managed to make it here.

...Of course, the revenge piece has already gone up in flames. But the vampire's teeth are at her neck, those hands pinning her in place, and to do nothing now would mean she could finally just fall into the inky blackness of whatever comes after and not feel this way anymore.

Just as she resolves herself (with some bitterness) to this, her eyes starting to flutter shut, she starts suddenly and those eyes snap open again. Because she sees her husband standing just over Clea's shoulder, exactly the kind, handsome visage she remembered from the last time she'd ever seen him.

Mon coeur, he says, and there's a plea in the term of endearment. Please. You know this isn't right.

And it isn't fair, of course, to see his ghost now. The frustrating, grief-stricken tide of it wells up in her throat, and she tries to turn her head so she can't see him, but Clea has her frozen in place. So she swallows roughly, trying to keep the emotion from welling up further and stinging her eyes. ]

I know, [ Sciel mutters, curling her hands into fists so the nails bite into her palms. ] but I...

[ Putain. It'd be so easy to give in, and then she could be with him again. But he's also here, staring at her with gently-begging eyes, and she wants to scream, she's so frustrated.

But she doesn't have a lot of time to debate it. So, with a rough, overwhelmed sound, she tries to pull back from the other woman as much as she can, teeth grit. ]

Wait. [ Now her attention is on the vampire again, face clearly lined with the anguish of an impossible situation. ] ...You can't kill me, fine, but consider what I said before: I can last. Make it so you don't have to take anyone else for a while. Maybe I can help your family, too, depending on how...much you need.

[ Is this the best scenario that remains to her? Not become a vampire, and also not have failed in being the sacrifice she intended such that someone else from home will need to be sent immediately?

Sciel stares hard at Clea, face a fresh mask of resolve. ]

Is that enough to satisfy you?