o2 👼🏼 With loving eyes, no longer loving,

[kidsmenu]

WHO: Claudia & Lestat
WHERE: Heropa
WHEN: August 2018
WHAT: II-I'm missing youuuuuuu.
WARNINGS: PG-13+ for probable gore/injury, themes of violence, nudity, etc.



Mon pere, I have brought you dinner.

[is the message that pops into his phone, this fine Monday evening. Shortly after, the address ribbons onto the screen, words of happy promise under the thick, Heropan humidity forming condensation over the surface. She got them a suite. Candy store salary money does add up, especially when your father is a man of resources.

When he arrives at the hotel, it's a ludicrous affair. Marble floors, carpets like you're standing on a lamb, elevators trimmed in curlicues and machined flowers minted and polished like a new penny, a chandelier that looks to be of indigo quartz. They're all the way up on the twenty-second floor, a keycard left discreetly at the concierge for a man matching Lestat's inimitable description.

By the time he gets upstairs, it smells pungently of wine and sloppy male mortal-- in his early twenties, likely. Cologne and deodorant. Not a vegetarian. His laughter rings around the ceiling. To an ordinary person, of course, the room would smell only of detergent and potpourri.]

Comments

[youresovein]

[ Claudia knows what he likes almost too well, sometimes. The hotel — good god! Lestat had been in a near-trance in the lobby, hypnotized by the delicate play of light on ornate crystal. Only his daughter's sly promise of dinner and fresh mortal blood had roused him from it with any haste.

There's an ever-present element of wariness when it comes to his cherubic little fledgling, and Lestat suspects there always will be, for whatever time they have together. His own infinite paranoia is probably as much to blame for that as her attempted patricide. He's musing over her intentions as he enters the suite — is tonight the night? — but it isn't a fully-formed thought at all, really. Only a distant, obsessive caution, like a storm in the air.

The soft whirr and beep of the electronic lock announces his presence, and Lestat huffs to himself. It's a detail of life in the twenty-first century that he hasn't gotten used to; even he can't go entirely unnoticed now. So he abandons stealth for a lost cause and strolls in like a rock star, like the whole ridiculous building belongs to him. His hair is tied back in a careless ponytail, violet sunglasses shading his eyes. His dark jeans and leather jacket don't seem to match the August humidity at all, but some people are just very, very cool. ]

Bonsoir.

[kidsmenu]

Is that him? [the stranger asks, with something approximating the right amount of hype/reverence in his voice.]

Yes. [Claudia. Slightly older, as he has come to know her in this world.] But would you mind sounding a bit more sullen and disaffected? The effect isn't quite right otherwise, you see. Mon pere, nous somme ici!

[There's some trick to the glass doors of the opulent bathroom, that when they slide open to admit Lestat, their dewy poisoned milk shade of jade green suddenly turns transparent. And there in the tub is a young, mortal man, as expected.

But perhaps unexpected, except for Claudia's tendency to do the unexpected: the young man has long, dark hair, a square jaw. A jeweled depth to his maudlin human eyes. Ignore the tattoos, the paint on his nails, and he'd be the spitting image of --

Well, who else could bring such a smile to Claudia's face? She's smirking over the edge of the tub, a towel over one arm.]

[youresovein]

[ It doesn't take the preternatural senses of a vampire to see something come over Lestat. He's keenly aware of it, the way his own pulse quickens to a pounding need in his throat, his useless breath stilling in his chest. It could be mistaken for a simple keen appreciation, if one didn't know him: his mouth falling open, his tongue running over the back of one sharp fang. The curl of his lip into a hungry smile. Harder to see the uglier thing, like an animal tearing at his ribs to get at his beating heart. ]

Oh, my darlings. This has certainly exceeded my wildest expectations.

[ If Lestat tries, he can keep himself from peering into the stranger's thoughts for a moment. His eyes slip between this mortal and Claudia, Claudia who truly does know him far better than he's comfortable with, Claudia who is most certainly nothing like a human child right now, this brilliant little monster he'd made... And Lestat wonders, how much can he can bear to pretend? ]

[kidsmenu]

[Human flesh is such a strange disguise. Claudia likes it like she likes having ribbons in her hair and satin tied around her waist. Likes. Liked? You're allowed to like new things. In this new world, human flesh is as exciting and different as wearing shorts. Trousers. Her hair will never stay short, but she can look the part of an eighty-year-old woman if she wants.

Right now, she just looks like a cat, smiling at the older vampire from over the rim of a bathtub, around a naked man.]

'Darlings,' [the man echoes. He sits up, making the bubbly water seize back and forth against the porcelain walls. Interest kindles in his eyes. His skin is flushed, his fingers gripping the side of the tub tighter than he needs to.] When are you ImPorts from, anyway? You should come over here and tell me about it. Monsieur. [His accent is terrible.]

[youresovein]

[ That accent is terrible. Lestat wishes he could find it endearing instead of irritating. Claudia's inscrutably lovely little smile digs into him, and he looks to her, seeking answers he knows better than to expect. Everything about her is calculated now, isn't it? This deceptively delicate little creature wearing human flesh like it belongs to her, poised against the porcelain, studying him. Or at least, he feels that way: like he's being observed. ]

Is that what you came for? A story? [ He shrugs off his jacket and lets it drop in the doorway. ] I thought Claudia might have told you one already, to entice you all the way up here. What did you promise him?

[ It's a slow approach. The heels of his shoes click on the tiles; the echoes sound so loud to him. He would like to believe that he's savoring the moment, this strange, irresistible, utterly wrong spectacle Claudia has laid out for him. He would like very much to believe that's all he's feeling, but the truth is, deep down at the miserable rotten core of him, he's a little bit terrified. Now, why in the hell is that?

But he's a good actor, and he doesn't let it show, not for some handsome-for-a-mortal nobody who's about to be his dinner, and certainly not for his very own child. So he drops to one knee by the tub, and traces the man's fingers with his own, wrist to fingertip, playful. Looks into green eyes that aren't green enough, and wonders how many pretty dark haired men didn't quite make Claudia's cut. As they say. ]

I could describe New Orleans by gaslamp, how grand and untamed it all was in those days. The savage heart of the jungle beating right outside the edge of the city. Magnificent balls, and pickpockets at the waterfront. Are those the sorts of things you'd like to hear about, my handsome friend?

finally gets to read this pose and screeches so good

[kidsmenu]

You know what the most difficult tradeoff to balance was? [Claudia says, reaching to tug dark locks of hair back from the human's neck. There's an awkward little tattoo flowering at the base of his head, visible, when he twists his head to look at her.] A wide jaw and those poofy pillow lips. So hard to find a man who has both, you know?

[She opens her forefinger and middle finger like a pair of scissors. Brings it around in front of the man's head, and sets the scissors around his chin, to illustrate what she means. She means: his face isn't as strikingly broad as Louis' was. His lips maybe a little too wide. Louis hadn't looked like he ought to be such a morose character, but the drama sits well on this person's face.

Even as he leans forward at Lestat again, extending a damp hand. Claudia's fingers leave damp trails on his face.]

I'd rather feel your savage heart beating outside the edge of my skin, [he says.]

What do you think I promised him? [she asks, with a little laugh.] You are as handsome as you look, de Lioncourt. And you were the one who told me first about the groupies, weren't you?

no u

[youresovein]

[ Lestat hums in vague acknowledgement, hearing without truly listening. For all his secrets and all his lies, he's always been an open book when it comes to his desires — and his hungry appreciation for Claudia's gift is writ large clear in the bright, predatory gleam in his eyes, wandering across the planes of the man's face. The angle at the far corner of his jaw, the damp shining trails left in the wake of Claudia's fingers, begging for Lestat to draw his lips across it—

The pulse beating hot in his throat. ]

Out of the goodness of your heart, mon chaton? Proof of your always tender affections?

[ Read: bullshit. Or at least the suspicion of bullshit. And yet! Lestat tangles this hapless mortal man's fingers with his (a little wider than his own, rougher, naturally, disorienting only because of who and what he isn't) and lifts the delicate inside of that tempting wrist to his lips. He's prey, he's warm blood, he's nothing.

Oh, but if that were true, he wouldn't be here. He's something to Claudia, or he's something to Claudia in the context of Lestat, and that is what has Lestat's eyes seeking hers even as he fights the pounding need to tear into warm flesh. ]

feel free to drop if this is too late

[kidsmenu]

[At least there's no chance that this boy has dead blood this time. Or whatever they did to Rice because Rice wasn't Rice enough.]

Only the tenderest for you, my love.

[She sits back on her heels, the tendrily blonde halo around her head swaying slightly with her movements. There's an eerie greed to her eyes, moving between the mortal and Lestat. Being human is overrated-- food never tastes so good. But truthfully, the imagination of humans, in their slow, dull bodies has its own lovely flavor. In its absence, she can imagine the taste of blood, the thrill of drinking it, of feeling the struggle of the heart.]

You should show him the trick. [She ghosts a hand up the back of the human's head, touching his hair very gently on the bowl of his skull. He stares at Lestat, rapt, sweating despite the water all around him; anticipation. Lestat wasn't wrong. VAMPIRE JUNKIESSSS] See in his thoughts. Pick and choose before you drink them from him.