𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐙𝐄 ▣ AUGUST TDM

[saltburntmods]

AUGUST 2025 TDM: BALANCE

Welcome to SALTBURNT, a panfandom smut/thriller game based off the film Saltburn, where characters are encouraged to indulge their deepest desires. The money never runs out and the liquor never stops pouring, so you may as well indulge from the bounty. Of course, things are rarely what they seem, and the manor itself seems to have a consciousness of its own. Throw parties, trash the house, engage in youthful merriment, but remember — dangers come out at night, and no one, no matter how rich you are, is safe from demons lurking in the shadows.

Threads can be considered game canon, provided the players agree. Players can also start fresh upon acceptance into the game. In game characters can post to the TDM directly, using « NEW CHARACTER/IN GAME» in the header. There will be a spot below for new characters to link their toplevels for easy access. Alternatively, prompts on the Test Drive can be used for in game logs.

GOODBYE TO SALTBURNT

CONTENT WARNINGS: house fire.

The day starts much like any other — at least in the first few moments of consciousness, chased to morning light by the pounding of a hangover, the sweaty night terrors soaking your sheets, or the scent of breakfast on the rise through the house. Well, it seems someone must've burnt the bacon, now that your nose wakes you up, which is highly unusual for the skilled chefs here at Saltburnt. Flutter your eyes open and see a pillowy cloud of smoke filtering under your door, something that manages to finally alert you to the danger you're in. Out in the hallway, flames lick up the walls, smoke and ash burning your eyes. The next move is obvious: grab whatever you can carry and get out, as quick as you can. It seems that place you've called home for a day or a year is going up in flames.

Outside, flames engulf one wing of the huge manor, invaluable trinkets laid out on the lawn from the help, usually invisible, running in and out to grab what they can spare from the flames. Of course, people offer their helpful services — tending to burns and smoke inhalation, trying to put out the fire from whatever means they have, be it buckets of water stolen from the lake, or magical prowess from the population of guests. Regardless, the fire rages, and only manages to cease when about half of the house has been burnt down to structurally questionable bones, ashy remains, and the occasional falling cinder of burnt wood.

Before the mess, the Balfours stand in a range of different emotions — irritation from Bunny, paranoia from Rosie. The only one who manages to attempt to find a silver lining is Portia, whose plastic smile twitches around her watery eyes, hand cinched in an iron grip around Jonty's. There's a pleading look in her eyes for all of a moment before the patriarch of the family springs (more, dustily sways) into action, calling forth, "Giles!"

The man in question appears, soot-coated and harrowed, yet still immaculately well put together, bowing slightly at the waist. "Sir?"

"The —" he starts, somewhat unsure of himself, before solidifying his resolve. "The camping gear. In the shed."

A firm nod, manners impeccable. "At once, sir."

LIVING OFF THE LAND

CONTENT WARNINGS: nsfw themes.

By mid-morning, you'll find Portia Balfour has taken … liberties with the lawn decor. Aside from a brief intermission spent sobbing at the manor's scorched stonework, the lady of the manor does what she does best (in Portia's very modest opinion): she beautifies. Gone is the sad, sad state of all that empty sprawling green; what stands in its place is an encampment of tents stretching from the gardens to the forest boundary. And not your mother's backyard camping equipment, either — that would be so terribly basic and blase, darling. They're much more exciting than that. Fresh out of the imagination of someone who clearly consolidated ideas from flipping through a Martha Stewart Magazine and browsing Coachella's website, the bell tents (100% cotton, Portia is too happy to share with you) come in a lovely selection of colors. Beige, buff, biscuit, oatmeal, fawn. And Portia's personal favorites: the chartreuse, and a shade that closely resembles bile.

At your look of confusion, or distress, or perhaps distinct horror, Portia announces, with a stiff smile to rival a fresh dosage of Botox: "It's fine. It's fine! I wanted an excuse to finally redecorate, anyway. We'll just— we'll make a retreat out of it, my lovelies."

Well, where else are you going to go? Outside of each tent, Giles and his fellow staff have taken the time to generously assign you and your former suitemate to a shared tent, your names scribbled together in obnoxiously joyful cursive on a bright chalkboard. Just in case your amateur eyes can't distinguish between beige and oatmeal. Of course, mistakes are made. You can't possibly expect the housestaff to remember all of your names, or who you've shared space with before the "Little Setback", as Portia has taken to calling it. Some of you might find yourselves paired up with the wrong partner in the mix-up and reshuffling of housing arrangements, while others — without suitemates, or freshly arrived — find themselves shoved together by Giles' subpar matchmaking skills.

Whoever the two of you happen to be, you'll find that — while the interior is positively spacious — some concessions had to be made. Namely: there is, in fact, only one bed. Or, in your case, only one sleeping bag. Designed to lovingly cradle two bodies in disturbingly close proximity, your organic, artisan cashmere sleeping bag comes with only a narrowed zipper for entry and one built-in memory foam pillow, so you can meditate by listening to your partner's breathing at all times. Portia's private DJ turned ex-fling turned self-proclaimed intimacy coach, Ezio, insists it helps you and your partner connect to the same emotional frequency for maximum bonding. Whatever that means.

Luckily, not all of your belongings were unsalvageable. Giles has painstakingly begun the process of transferring supplies into your tent, from changes of clothes to personal effects to underwear you're 70% sure belong to another resident. Among them, you'll find both a camp counselor uniform that looks like it was pulled off the rack from an adult novelty shop, and a pair of athletic short-shorts and white tank tops for your scheduled summertime activities.

The generosity doesn't end there — with Ezio's advice, Portia has arranged a gift bag for each tent, meant to strengthen ties amongst the House's residents. What better time to connect than in the wake of such a tragedy? Inside, guests will find: a guided erotic meditation track, mood-boosting meditative candles in scents such as Nag Champa and Afternoon Scrapbooking, a set of silk ribbons with slogans reading Surrender and Trust, heated massage oils marked for tension release, an ergonomically-shaped crystal pleasure wand sculpted from Rose Quartz meant for "grounding and release", silicone bands for your, ahem, instrument to help harness your "root chakra", and a guided positions manual for Kama Sutra with Portia's favorites meticulously circled. Happy healing!

No summer camp trip would be complete without activities. Ezio, allergic to wearing anything that isn't a breathable speedo, leads a series of trust-building exercises. A blindfolded obstacle course, set up with chairs hauled down from the attic as well as pool noodles and cardboard boxes, requires one partner to lead the other successfully to the end. Ezio's twist? You can only direct your partner through sincere, heartfelt compliments in the vein of, "you look so pretty when you're confused." If you lose patience and swear, you're forced to mandatorily hug each other — medically effective to reduce your blood pressure! For the detail-oriented, there's the Human Scavenger Hunt. Sitting in meditative circles, you're given a list of clues to find on your partner's body, ranging from locating the part of their skin that's softest to finding their ticklish points. That birthmark on your buttcheek will come to light. For the more athletically inclined, there's the honeyspoon race — with your mouth as the spoon. It's your job to transfer as much honey as you can into your partner's mouth without spilling. Or perhaps you'd prefer less mouth-to-mouth contact in the piggyback race, or a vanilla and traditional game of Tug of War, or even Bunny Balfour's strange rendition of Jason at Camp Crystal Lake. Those of you who can't outrun the killer get helped to a nice dousing of red food coloring you can cleanse off in the communal showers positioned at the treeline, with nothing blocking the rest of the camp's view of your natural assets.

Mealtimes are rigidly run as scheduled by Giles' demand, though the Balfours' menu is rather limited to simpler cuisine this month. Toad in a Hole, Angels on Horseback, Bubbles and Squeak, and what looks to be a charming attempt at S'mores served on digestive biscuits — all dutifully charred over a campfire and served with a variety of fine vintages spared from the worst of the flames. And if you come underdressed for the occasion? "We dress for dinner," Portia remarks from her place at the head of a honey-oaked picnic bench, overlage sunglasses shielding her eyes. You get the impression she's looking down her nose at your choice of wardrobe, anyway. "Black tie. No exceptions."

Eat up, gather your energy; you'll need it for what comes next.

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK

CONTENT WARNINGS: emeto, slight body horror, potential character death, fuck or die.

While you were all asleep in your spacious tents and unspacious sleeping bags, the maze has shifted form, spreading its sections along the entire grounds of the house. You wake from what should be the end of your glamping spree already lost in a part of the sprawling labyrinth, maybe with your tent-mate, or the person you spent the night with, or someone completely new. You’re only sure of one thing — it seems like you’ve suddenly developed a pesky case of allergies. It starts with an uncomfortable pins and needles sensation that crawls over your entire body as you start to move. Sweat dampens your clothes despite the towering blossoms offering a rather pleasant shade from the sun, and soon your teeth are chattering with chills. So maybe you’ve caught a summer cold, or some of you might be spreading mono from having a pair of too-loose lips. In any case, it’s probably nothing you haven’t dealt with before, and it won’t stop you from finding your way out of the maze.

The natural thought would be to utilize your own skillset to escape, but you quickly realize that using any magical abilities yields no results upon the thick foliage — or at least you think there’s no effect. If you try to use fire to burn down a part of the maze, not only does it not work for you, but now, in a part of the maze opposite to you, there are burning flames that other house guests will have to get past. Being big and bad, in this case, means you’re probably just an asshole now. As you stumble through the maze, you encounter more and more magical obstacles that you might begin to recognize as coming from your own friends. Looks like everyone’s desperate to get out, and you’re only making things worse. (If your character tries to use their magic, please submit it here, so others can play with it!)

Speaking of worse, those allergies are swiftly advancing into a full blown infection from — you guessed it — the foliage of the maze itself. The constant reproducing and shifting is caused by THE BOGWOOD BLIGHT, evident by the dark lesions spotting the plant stems, and white, fuzzy spores clinging to the undersides of the leaves. Your symptoms progress into searing pain as flowers, branches, and thorns begin to grow inside of you, your vomit coming up bloody and thick with masses of dead leaves. Young vines and tiny flowers seem to spool out from your own hair, curling around your throat if you don’t keep up with tearing them out. Hallucinations plague your mind, sharp desire both violent and sexual permeating your senses and threatening to push all other reasonable thoughts out.

It would be easy to succumb to this sickness, to let your base instincts fight or fuck one another until you’re all hopelessly lost and doomed to a certain death in the labyrinth. But there is a way out, for those who can hold on to their sanity and bear through the pain: participate in the trials, and earn your freedom.

These trials? Nothing like the fun and games of a night camping beneath the stars. The verdant landscape of the neatly trimmed maze has become flush with deadly obstacles, and it’s up to you to get past them all. Naturally, your first instinct is to grab your trusty iPhone and reach out to your closest and most trusted companions — but everything you send reaches the recipient in a way that utterly twists your intentions. A simple are you okay? turns into I’m glad to finally be rid of you. Trying to reunite with a loved one throws you for another loop when you finally do find them — three loops, in fact, because you encounter three identical copies of your love, all trying to convince you they’re the real one. In order to reveal the truth and continue your journey along the maze, drive a thorn into one of their hearts. Hope you know your lovers well. Maybe a little physical touch will help?

The maze might break into a small clearing for you, a wide open space with checkerboarded grass filling from one edge of the field to the other — two different tones of the same haunted green pervasive through the labyrinth. Certain spaces are occupied by expertly crafted hedges to resemble all the familiar pieces to a chess board, while the Kings are left empty, awaiting you and an opponent. Take your positions, or wait for a stranger to stumble upon you, if you were unlucky enough to face the maze by yourself, and play the game according to all ordinary rules of chess. Following a checkmate, you have the option of how you’ll claim dominion over the opposite side, or how they’ll claim it over you — a slap or a kiss will suffice, to earn your win. Strangely, physical touch seems to relieve the worst of your allergies. These things do have a way of escalating, don’t they? Best to keep your wits about you.

For those of you prone to clumsiness, you’re probably doomed already, but the viper pits are an easy trap for even the most seasoned of the bunch. Take one step, and the ground gives way beneath your feet, plunging you into a dark, flinty hole in the earth. The injuries you might have sustained on the way down are the least of your worries. Inside the pervasive darkness of the pit, it’s time to face your vipers — that is, your worst fears seem to press in on you, terror blooming in your very bones until your own nauseating dread is all you can feel. Maybe it's actual vipers, or rough waters pulling you down, or a thousand razors cutting your skin — the mystery of the dark is that anything can be inside it, waiting. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have a friend risk it all to help you out, but you can always just save yourself, clawing to the top while your greatest fears weigh you down.

If you manage to avoid the pits, they’re not the only deadly thing on the ground. Step close enough to smell the honeysuckle and you’ll feel a sharp clamp around your ankle. Vines, slithering out from the foliage, wrap themselves around your body in near shibari style — and these vines like to fondle and grope, ramping up the sexual side of your infection symptoms. The only way to get free? Turn to someone else struggling in the vine trap and get frisky — or let the vines turn from pleasure to true pain as they slowly squeeze the life out of you. Orgasm or die. It's a pretty easy choice, isn't it?

Just when you think it’s the dehydration of too many long days and nights scrambling through the maze that will kill you, you’re lucky enough to happen upon a water source — one of the many beautiful fountains, shimmering ponds, or rustic bird baths dotting the path of the maze. Whichever it is, you’re parched enough to drink deep despite the possibility of bird shit floating around. As you crouch over the water, your reflection stares back at you — only it’s either your most perfect self that you wish you could be, or the worst version of you that you fear you’ve already become. Once you catch your reflection’s eye, you’re caught, unable to stop yourself from being pulled into the water’s depths. The bird bath overflows, the pond turns dark and bottomless, and the gilded fountain statues laugh at your plight as you struggle to keep yourself from drowning. Time to face those ugly truths about yourself — fast.

After your harrowing ordeals, you reach what can only be the end — a narrow pathway lined with thorn-filled hedges, too thick and solid to pry through. The only way forward is onto the path. Luckily, a piece of bright hope shimmers before you — a single strand of golden thread, hopefully leading you out into the world once more. You step onto the path, following the glimmering thread, and it seems like all is well until the moment someone enters the path behind you. The hedges rush toward you, brutally narrowing the space as thorns dig into your flesh and rip fresh wounds across your body. Looks like only one of you can complete this painfully claustrophobic trial at a time, and the other has to watch your slow and bloody suffering, waiting for the moment the walls part and you can rejoin your love without consequence. Better hurry to get there. They’re going to need some patching up once they’re done.

As you escape the stifling thorns, finally emerging on the other side and collapsing with relief to be free and hopefully to get some help for your worsening illness, you realize with a sick drop of your stomach that you haven’t made it out after all. The golden thread has led you into the heart of the maze, where you know the Balfour’s beloved Minotaur statue should be… only it’s nowhere to be found. Instead, there are two statues towering over your pathetic form: Medusa cast in gold, and Midas carved in stone.

MATERIAL GIRLS

CONTENT WARNINGS: potential character death, loss of limbs.

It's been a long, harrowing journey, but you're here now, likely with some friendships or trauma-bonds made along the way, which is what summer camp is all about. Each of the statues before you is decorated with a marble slab at the base, detailing EYE TO EYE below Medusa and HAND IN HAND below Midas. Curiosity eventually wins out against wariness — or maybe the charms of the maze have worn thin on you through the days, frustration guiding your motion. Whatever the case, you weigh your options and choose accordingly between the two, stepping forward and sealing your fate.

EYE TO EYE — Look to Medusa for a few seconds, and a door will appear beside her, granting you free exit from the maze. However, for the following days, you begin to change. It starts at your fingertips, gradually spreading from arm to shoulder to neck, and so on, transmuting your body from flesh and blood to cold, icy stone. Those affected start to lean into their darker side, turning from the hero to the villain, the kind to the cruel. To stop your gravelly fate, amends must be made — forgive someone who wronged you, love someone you hate, clear up a misunderstanding you've let fester inside, make up for some injustice you've committed in your life. Give them the knife and let them start cutting. Beg for penance, and whether or not you receive it is beside the point — the begging is enough to redeem you in Medusa's eye.

HAND IN HAND — Alternatively, hold the hand Midas extends for a few seconds, and a door will appear beside him, granting you free exit from the maze. However, for the following days, you too start to change, following the same pattern of those more Medusa inclined — but gilt instead of stony, turning gold from the outside in. Those affected lean further into their brighter, more pleasant sides, cheer replacing sorrow, your mood uplifted to a potentially overbearing degree. To stop your gilded fate, sacrifices must be made — reveal a deep rooted secret, let go of something you're insecure about, give away something of important value to you. Material good are nice, yes, but do you know what Midas would like even more? Limbs, eyes, flesh, blood, something you're really going to miss.

Regardless of your choice, you're out of the maze, congrats! Act swiftly and all will be fine. Dither and, well — you'll make a beautiful, statue-corpse eventually, and the maze would be happy to have you. Of course, even a successful solution will take time to settle in. Your stony, golden limbs revert as slowly as they crawled up on you, any severed body parts taking days to reform but eventually coming back as good as new, with a small memorializing token — a hand or an eye shaped birthmark to remember what you've lost.

Out of the maze, you can see the work being done on the house, renovations well underway while you were busy messing around. It was so kind of you to give the Balfours the chance to start working on the house — and while it's unlivable for the next while, there are always the tents to keep you warm.

DIRECTORY

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good stab - the buffalo hunter hunter

[pikuni]

WELCOME TO SALTBURNT

BEFORE THE BURNING

⇒ OPEN WOUNDS

[The first dissonance: a bed that is not his own, and a man who has not really had a bed of his own for a long time. There have been beds in places where he sleeps after a real good feed, sure. Beds harder than this, made more like brick than pillowy foam. The second: a pikuni, spirited away. This is not supposed to happen. He knows this instinctively, the way he knows a man by his smell on the air. He is not supposed to be here, and he does not want to be here, and perhaps childlike, he makes it known by taking the covers from his soft bed and shredding them. He picks up the most expensive looking ornament from the side cabinets and dressing table, and he destroys those too.

Into the silk, many-threaded pillow cases he screams his frustration and sinks his teeth in like a boy into his mothers forearms. He does not cry, because he needs all the blood inside of him. He needs it to last the summer - and it is summer, he realises later, when he goes to the window to look outside. No longer winter, no longer anywhere close to what he knows. When the staff come to clean up his mess, they leave the door open, exposed wound to the air. He looks outside at you, too, and knows that you don't belong here either. This is on the air; it's in every particle, the smell of wrongness.

His nose scrunches, dark eyes squinting against the morning light. Half-way exhausted, he calls out, not sorry at all: ] Sorry about the noise.

AS IT BURNS DOWN
⇒ THE LAST GOOD DREAM

[No matter how much he wishes it weren't so, he realises Arthur Beaucarne might have been right: there is a hell. The old man's white-god has put him straight in it, cut him off from his people, his home. There's no other word for it: what else would hell be for him if not an English estate, with it's well-trimmed lawns and it's old-money iron-gold decoration.

It's a hollow shell; it wants to hollow him out too. He won't let it. He tells himself this on the first day, then the second, and so on. He won't let it destroy him, even if eventually he will have to drink from the inhabitants. Even if eventually his might go blue again, his skin pallid, his chin scruff with hair. He won't let it.

He spends the early evenings out by where the growth can't be tamed. He should be inside, he knows, at the very least to know the house and its tricks. He just doesn't want to be. He wants his hard rock bed, he wants his construction work, he wants the lazy, conspicuous life he's made for himself. On bad days, he thinks he might be glad to see Etsy Beaucarne. On worse days, he thinks he misses her grandfather and his great big ugly face.

And then, like an answered prayer: the house burns down. In its wake, you find him standing on the lawn as the tents are pitched, arms folded over his chest, sunglasses perched on his nose. He grins, he nods, he says, as he glances to you: ] This is a good welcome. I think this was just for me.

[Or, later, you find him carving his name into the bark. If he has to stay, he'll leave a mark. Old debts, old grudges; there's a mark inside him, so he'll leave one here too. He glances up at you, over the dark sunglasses, and nods, as though it's right you're here. It is, actually, because: ] If you move a little to the left - thanks. The glasses help, but the sun still hurts my eyes.

LIVING OFF THE LAND

⇒ BED MANNERS

[He has not shared a bed with someone in a long time, a century at least. They give him a tent, which is funny. The tell him he will share it, and this is not funny. He thinks he might sleep out on the grass instead, where the moon can touch him and the stars can tell him their stories.

He does take the time to inspect it, though. He also finds himself amidst the chaos of camp crystal lake, handed a fake machete and doused in red. It's funny, for a while, the chasing. If he catches you, however, there is a moment - a long moment - where his eyes seem very black, his gaze holding, longing, like he doesn't want to let go. But he does, with a grin, and a parting: ] Go, before I eat you. [There is a sense, perhaps, if you hold his gaze, that you know he isn't lying.]

[Later, as he returns to his tent to change, he strips off his clothes and half way through, you find him naked, riffling through the goody-bag with a head-tilt and idle curiosity and easily distracted. He asks, head-tilted, mouth curving as he tries not to laugh: ] Are these yours?

[The silicone beads, specifically. He won't judge - well, he will. ]

⇒ HOW TO STARVE

[Portia says black tie, and Good Stab wants nothing more than to wear anything but. So there is a dark pair of jeans, a darker pair of boots and a shirt that says SLAYER that he finds in someone else's tent, and he takes as is own. This is karma, too, he thinks. Besides, it's one shirt.

He does not eat the food, and he thinks he will not eat at all until a glass is handed to him and he knows the smell. He knows the smell and it surprises him, because blood should only smell like this while in a vein, with a heart pumping it. He stares at it, long and hard, and then turns the glass upside down and says, tight: ] I'm not thirsty, [like a liar, and folds his arms over his chest.

He knows how to starve. He knows how to hold onto his last meal, and worse than that, he knows how to be stubborn. ]

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK

cw: dubcon, nsfw
⇒ MY BODY IS YOUR BODY

[For the second time since opening his eyes, Good Stab knows he is in Hell. He knows this as the vines wrap around him, stronger than the strength he's so used to, and stronger still than the strength given to him by the Cat Man. They take his legs, they take his arms - one takes his throat, and another winds itself around his cock.

He thinks: stupid vine, don't you know that doesn't work anymore?

The vine says: stupid pikuni, you don't know a fucking thing about anything.

The last person to touch him had been his wife. Perhaps it had been both of his wives, and he had been a little high - except, no, that isn't quite right. The real last person to touch him had been Napi in his cave. It hadn't been like the touch of his wives, but the blood had been the purest kind of ecstasy you can get. Or maybe it had been a napikwan soldier with a gun, and the bullet. Maybe it had been the Cat Man, and his blood, and his curse.

The last person to touch him like this, to get him hard - had been himself, before he died. It feels like being a boy again, except all wrong. His cock fills up, leaks pearlescent pink, and Good Stab is sluggish with the realisation of it. Slow to thrash, to hiss like the Cat Man had in his cage, but he's quick to blink fat, red tears and buck his traitor hips up. He's quicker to turn, big brown eyes wet and desperate, filled with a need he hasn't felt since 1870, and he looks at you with the kind of look that says i'm sorry. A vine loosens on his wrists, and he's faster than all of that to reach out to grab you by the throat with one hand, the other in your hair.

What he does isn't a kiss: it's an open mouthed plea against your mouth, grown man desperate all over. ] Where do you want it? [He says, because it's been so fucking long he doesn't remember how to do this anymore. He hasn't needed release like this in so long, but need and wanting are two different things, and he wants, he thinks. He wants, and he needs, and he wishes it were home, or with his wives, and that it wasn't here. But he wants it anyway, like he had wanted it as a boy. Juvenile chasing pleasure like a gasping wolf.

He squeezes tighter, asks again: ] Where do you want it?

Open Wounds; i googled the title, read the synopsis, and immediately bought this book so thank u

[honorism]

[It's not the first time someone's reacted badly to waking up here. It serves as a reminder that new people must be arriving, actually, though startling. Time just keeps on passing on, huh.

She pauses as the door opens, one hand on the door to her own room and she peers back at the man, purple eyes blinking slowly as she tilts her head and takes him in before she averts her gaze.]

It's no bother. You must be new?

oh my god ENJOYYYYYYY

[pikuni]

[There is a moment where he is just as startled, where he thinks he has never seen a person whiter than Helaena. White all over, skin into hair, and for a moment he's thinking of Peasy, back on the Back Bone, and the promise of a white god. He thinks Peasy would be the kind of awe that's slack-jawed, staring in the way that is impolite.

Good Stab shrugs, though, because he isn't Peasy, and he's too old to be staring slack-jawed at women who look like ghosts. ] Not new, no. But I did just get here.

[He isn't, however, old enough not to be pedantic and funny. Then, like he hasn't just thrown a tantrum: ] You didn't just get here, no? I was hoping that they were lying, when the maids said people had been - [a beat, the word in his throat and feeling wrong,] guests for a long time.

[honorism]

[She tilts her head, amused, but then shakes her head sympathetically]

I've been here for eight moons now. It gets easier the longer you're here. [She pauses to consider, as if trying to think of something that might be enticingAnd then, perking up a bit, she adds:] And I've found many interesting insects on the grounds. It's a very big place. The people are generally good.

[Helaena rubs her hands together, twisting them around each other as she thinks] But it's still a cage, even if gilded.

[pikuni]

[In the air, he smells the threads that hold Helaena together. They smell like earth, like the way gold sometimes smells after it's been melted hot, and under all of that, a little like ozone. Sometimes people all smell like one another; they all live similar enough lives. He hasn't paid attention in a long time, but today he does.

He tilts his head too, mirroring, curious. ] Eight moons must feel very long when there's nowhere else to go. Maybe less so if the bugs are very big?

bed manners.

[temporicide]

[ Roza is fast on her feet, boots hitting hard against ground, but more specifically, she is unnatural in her balance, her flexibility. She jolts up fenceworks and balances along low stone with nary a thought to her own potential for falling, long bare legs strong and sure. A sense of vibrant, fleshy pleasure accompanies her every movement, as though she were simply happy to have them. Her is body intact and doing what she wants it to, no longer betrayed by the lobotomy that was two months ago and the subsequent resection of her brain's halves. Now her nerves are shiny and new and regrown, and all her muscles tell her she's living the way the spirits want her to live.

Sometimes she betrays her own status as pursued, not pursuer, by laughing, a fizzy-soft sound like champagne spilling.

But the actual pursuer, now that he is close, he has a strange way about him. Her lower lip catches between her teeth, and she looks right back at him, also black-eyed, a gleam dancing somewhere in the dark reflection of her iris and pupil. ]

You'd get sick.

[ Not you can't, or another laugh like it's a joke that landed wrong. Only her reasonably gentle warning in regards to her own toxicity. ]

But you won, anyway. I'm dead now. Is it my turn?

[ Now she is kidding. Probably. ]

[pikuni]

[Secretly, he takes small pleasures in the chase. Real pleasures, not the half-hearted attempts at feeling, or enjoying, or just going through the motions of existing in a place like this. Here, he's surrounded by the kind of wealth that he thinks probably came here from bodies that look like him, or who look like the bodies of other men from other places. The chase is a nice distraction from knowing this, and from the rebuilding of the house, which less secretly, he has thought about taking a match to again. Call it catharsis, or karmic debt, or that it would just be really funny.

More secretly, and with a strange ache, chasing Roza reminds him of being seventeen and chasing the girl that became his first wife. He hadn't known what his first wife smelled like beyond what his human nose knew, but he knows that she wouldn't have smelled like Roza. He doubts very few things smell like this: like snow and stardust; like how electricity smells when lightening hits the ground. Everyone smells alive, but not like this, and when she says she would make him sick, he believes her. The best poison - the most effective poison - smells sweet, almost the same way blood smells sweet when it's fresh and the heart is still beating.

He wonders stupidly, like a boy, if she would make him sick like a dead man would, or if she would make him sick like his fathers tabacco had all those winters ago. Like - a child, eating too much birthday cake, or the way the trappers used to drink so much moonshine and whisky they'd turn green and slip over on their sides. Or, if she'd make him sick the way that a man can get sick; real sick, the kind that can't be fixed by blood and sleep.

His grin doesn't waver, but there is a shift in his eyes, where the flatness sparks to life, alive with curiosity. ] Do you think you could catch me?

[Over a century since that first chase, and this is the line he comes back to. Tried and true. ]

[temporicide]

[ A little ting of satisfaction rings through her, a crystal bell rung; she likes when there are commonalities, here, making her distinctions less obvious, especially in this place, where The Hierarchy still exists no matter how nice people are to her. She knows about The Hierarchy because her sisters and girl cousins taught her about outsider ways, and has never found a place outside of her village where it isn't the law of the land. At least she thinks they'd say so, and they understand it better than she does.

Where scent rules his senses, Roza receives mostly through her mouth. She tastes copper, she thinks — not like real metal, but like blood, like when she digs her teeth into the side of her cheek and spends weeks moving her tongue against the welts, playing sensation games with her own injury. This is in opposition to the sticky-warm slowness pinning down the surrounding late-summer air. This time of year, nature's last faunal and floral vestiges try to suspend themselves in time before autumn and her mean cool hands push them back down into their graves until spring. It would be easy to fall into indolence. This is a good cure. ]

There's only one way to find out.

[ Roza's heel grinds back into dirt and grass, readying her posture. Her expression is smilingly intent, but she has the bouncy thrum of excitement jangling through her veins. The flush in her face is more felt than seen. She fixes him with her attention, and looks nowhere else.

Generously, or mischievously, or maybe both: ]

You want fair, or not too fair?

my body is your body

[feralpixie]

[ How did they get here? Kimiko doesn't know, she doesn't care. From the fire in the estate to an angry stony glare over the campfire, she hasn't made much effort to coexist with the various types drawn into the same circumstances.

She'd skipped dinner, happy enough with the marshmallows and what was available for snacks, and her knuckles were bloody from angrily pounding her fist into the wood of a tree. Over and over and over, until she was certain that this was real. It was happening.

Kimiko doesn't verbally respond; her only answer is a cloying gasp when his fist tangles in her hair. The hand at her throat only serves as a reminder, and rather than give a verbal response, Kimiko tightens her legs over his lap a grits her teeth in determination.

This was release too, and pent up was an understatement. Better to get it out of her system this way than through murder. ]

[pikuni]

[This is a language he understands. For a while, before he knew to eat people and had been feeding on mice and prairie dogs, this was how he communicated too. Through his hands, through the animal part that sits in the back of his throat.

He knows better than to do this, but he does it anyway: he loosens his hand and ducks down, pressing his open mouth against Kimiko's throat, nose against the jut of her jaw. He inhales deep, tastes sweat and and rushing blood under the skin. It's a kiss full of blunt teeth, a playful nip as his hand slips between them. He shreds blindly at the fabric, hand desperate to feel his cock out, to weigh it in his palm like an old friend.

He hasn't fucked in so long everything feels new: the wet slip of her cunt under his fingertips, the way it feels like heaven when presses the head of his cock against it. He wonders if fucking is all muscle memory: if his limbs and dick have just been waiting, sleeper-agent traitors biding their time. He gasps against her throat as he sinks in, damp hand against her ass, pelvis flush to hers. ] You don't speak, [he breathes out, ragged, rutting shallowly.] So you'll scream with your hands instead. [like a promise, like he's full of himself. Over two hundred years, he thinks he'll be lucky if he doesn't come in six seconds. He drags his hips back anyway and fucks forward, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks, breath hot where it lands on Kimiko's throat. ]

[feralpixie]

[ Well, he's cocky, but he's not unkind — animal in a way that she understands well. Survival becomes something different when circumstances shift to kill or be killed. Kimiko might have been human once, but now she was something different. Something uglier, but more powerful.

She lets her body do the speaking for her, but his acceptance of that, not bordering on the same insistence she gets from others, is not only noted but appreciated. Her dark eyes meet his in the low light, and she dips the mound of her hips toward his guiding hand with an impatient insolence that defies his grip on her throat and now her rear end.

As if to say: Less plumage, you're not a peacock, and she didn't need to see the span of his colors. This wasn't that kind of meeting.

Her hands find purchase in his shoulders, but Kimiko is careful, cautious about her touch, worried she may break him if she gives into her baser instincts. When he does something she likes, her toes curl in the foliage beneath them, but kept from doing much more than what she is now, she strains to roll her body to meet his ministrations.

His filling her distracts from how empty she feels inside, what she can recall of the moments before waking up in the mansion, and the fire that pushed her out into the wilds of this new world. That hunger has her chasing his desire, and his remark about screaming with her hands earns him an insolent grin, showing her teeth and then running her tongue over them like an animal about to lock its jaw around its prey. ]

how to starve.

[loan]

You're wearing my shirt, slick.

[ Her mouth curls like a wound. Painted red, pigment crisp at the corners. Portia says black tie and he isn't the only one who hasn't fallen in line. Jane's boots are muddy in their heels and treads, jeans dirt-stained, white shirt threadbare enough that it shows off the black cups of her bra. Her nails are blunt, short; she carries her smoke between forefinger and thumb like a joint, already halfway down to the filter.

Jury's out, whether it's true. Whether it is her shirt. Her feet step into the bloody pool on the ground. His own neat and tidy crime scene that came right from a glass.

She offers him the other half of her cigarette, as replacement. Jane couldn't give a fuck if he eats. Or what he eats. It's not a companionable offer — her smile is the same smile someone with a magnifying glass wears, when the sun's angling just right over a row of tiny creatures.

Her heart doesn't beat. Her shoulders don't move, minutely, the way bodies do when their lungs work. Inhales and exhales only happen around yellowy tar and smoke. She does that now, exhaling second-hand poison like a period at the end of a sentence. ]

Let me guess. You don't trust charity?

[pikuni]

No.

[The jury's out on whether he means the charity or the shirt. There's a crinkle at the edges of his eyes, laugh lines spiking outwards, frozen in place. There is also a twitch of his nose, nostrils flared as he inhales by the nicotine and then blood on the ground. He smells stillness. He can hear it too.

His tongue wets over dried lips, lingers at the corner where they've turned upwards into a grin. He shakes his head, empathetic. He clarifies:] I don't smoke. The last time - you don't want to know what I coughed up.

[Black tar, black blood. He sniffs again and tries to be polite about; sniffs the way the boys sniff on work sites, when the cold hits or they've done too much coke on Saturday and have spent Sunday and Monday paying for it. The stillness persists, and under it he smells - decay, in an abstract kind of way.

Not like him, then. One less thing to compete with later.

He nods, vaguely, to where the dinner festivities have begun wrapping up.] Did they let you eat?

[loan]

[ A shrug, meaning: Your loss. A smile that doesn't reach her eyes, meaning: If you say so. Keystones to ambivalence because her cells don't work and her blood doesn't move and it's only one feeling that sparks her into movement. Animation through unnatural means, all sour magic and someone else's purpose. She blinks, at least. She inhales and exhales the smoke right into his face. ]

Pussy.

[ It sounds approving. Like a joke between long standing friends. She fixes her gaze onto the faces at the nearest picnic table, a row of sharp jaws and bright eyes, dolls in dresses, little marching soldiers in penguin suits. Cute. Childish. Playacting at a picnic in the park. ]

No. But I don't eat. [ Like she's some Upper East Side mom who loves two hardboiled eggs and a bottle of chardonnay a day and is happy to have an excuse to skip mealtimes. Jane hums, taps some ashes mindlessly. Turns her head to swivel her attention back towards him, her laugh a bite more than a bark, and taps a finger against the center of her chest. As if that's a wink, too. ]

We both have bigger problems than that, baby.

my body is your qurl what is this tldr even i'm sorry (cw: blood play? idk)

[wicka]

[ His senses have been muted — scent, hearing — the boy who shares a body with a werewolf forced to wander completely on his own, without any magic or enhancements to rely on. He'd be more desperate if he thought this was permanent; if he couldn't already count on one hand the number of times that the things that make him Dom hadn't been suppressed in one way or another, only to be handed back without warning or apology.

What's really worrying him are the things that the maze is offering — forcing upon him, rather than what it's taking away. A brand new disease, a curse on a countdown waiting to punish those who had no choice but to dwell, to keep sinking into the hole, to keep getting sucked in by the spiral until it finally spits them back out, bruised and some new kind of unrecognizable.

He'd like to think, after hours of wandering, feeling sick and fighting for his life with no tools in hand or anyone on his side, that what comes next couldn't shock him in any reality. Good Stab's noises make him uneasy before he's even faced with the horror scene, a brown wide-eyed stare fixed on the man when the dreaded turn puts an image he can't look away from right there. A nightmare called and he foolishly listened, rewarded with a hand around his throat and short pink hair.

Turns out his senses haven't entirely left him: he smells the blood, smells the type of monster this maze has ensnared, and that alone riles up the beast caged up until the moon draws another perfect circle in the night sky. Grunting, baring teeth, Dom tenses up like that'll do him any good, like he can magically summon walls or burn Good Stab the way Julian's silver ring once burned the inside of Dom's mouth. They'd been desperate, too, him and Jules, wrestling each other in the woods, lustful and enraged by the spell cast with the coming of Sping and its call to hunt. They'd both been chasing the same prey that day, but now — he immediately knows where he stands and it makes his too-warm blood run cold. If only that were enough to stop the Blight from taking over.

One sharp breath and he's kissing back, telling himself he's still fighting if he doesn't just take it. Every wolf fights, even the ones they love — especially the ones they love, because claiming victory is the sweetest gift. He felt guilty about that until Theo let him see what it'd be like. He can think of nothing else now — that and the blood. Another confession he'd bottled up then finally shared with his boyfriend: he needed to taste his blood so he could love it, too.

Crazy, defiant, he makes a desperate noise of his own, eyes shut and tongue flat on Good Stab's cheek to lick up a blood-tear. He's squeezed tighter, asked the same question a second time, frustration in every word when he blurts out, ]

I-I don't know, just — anywhere.

[pikuni]

[An unfortunate truth: it takes him longer than it should to smell the difference between Dom and a person. He's losing blood from his eyes, though, and maybe that's why. It takes the taste of his spit on his tongue, and then the scent of desperation, the smell of fight, to make him inhale deeper.

The other unfortunate truth: Dom smells like wet dog after the rain. He smells like loyalty and neediness; he doesn't smell anything like Na'pi, though, and that's a relief. There is a duality, though, to what he picks up. Duality in everything, right down to the soul. Shapeshifter, in every sense of the word.

Blithely, he thinks me too, and drags Dom's head back to kiss him harder, after a nod, after an understanding. ] Do you bite?

[It's grunted into his mouth, right before Good Stab's tongue feel out the edges of Dom's teeth for himself. ] I'd prefer if you didn't.

[wicka]

[ There's a noise; a whine of an animal mixed with the protests of a young man too intoxicated to rationalize, only act. Dom is taken by the smell of the maze's every enchantment and curse, wrapped around warped thoughts; all of them start with want and need, and every single one ends in now.

Easily distracted by the kiss, he seeks Good Stab's tongue, sighing into his mouth just so he can take more of his scent on the next inhale. He does bite, and the question only serves to kickstart another series of I wants. ]

Why not? You're got — [ So much skin, so much blood. ] You're already bleeding.

[ As if that's the same as asking what difference does it make. ]

my body is your body / cw: period-typical racial ignorance / repression in general

[extramuralise]

[ It's like a scene from out of a nightmare, one of those kinds which always have Irving waking suddenly from a fitful sleep, heart racing and drenched through in sweat, his body gone stiff with fear and shame; to be entangled now, as he is, in the obscenely constricting embrace of so many accursed vines just there right off the path, to be seen (possibly even interfered with) by anyone who may happen to pass by as the foliage holds him there bound and trapped like an insect in a spider's web.

It surely can't be real, yet the sensations — such as they are — quickly reduce Irving to some kind of mindless, heat-maddened animal, panting and whining and groaning in ways so far beyond all dignity that the very shame of it seems to have its own intoxicating and erotic power over him— that he could be seen like this, be touched in ways God would surely never approve of, and still feel some kind of base, demented thrill from it rather than be reduced to hysterical shrieks and wails. Can there be a sort of dignity in that, at least? ]

I-I...

[ His pale, glassy-eyed gaze finally finds the bloodshot eyes of the man similarly trapped beside him, having been previously almost too overwhelmed by the vines increasingly exploratory fondling to truly notice he was in company.

This man — indigenous, Irving can tell, though judging by the lack of furs and heavy skins, not likely one of any close relation to either Koveyook or Silence's tribes — is of course not familiar outright, but comes somehow close enough that Irving nonetheless finds more comfort in his handsome weathered face, his impossibly dark eyes that are so bloodshot they seem almost without sclera at all, than not, as if Koveyook himself might have somehow directed this man to jimout of all possible strangers it could have been instead, communicating beyond language that Irving and his pleasures will be safe in this man's hands, and so too will this man be in Irving's.

And where? Where? Where doesn't he want it? but words and reason are failing him, erection all the more stiff and full of blood thanks to hands gripping him aggressively by the hair and at the throat. ]

W-wherever you'd like, but— quickly, please, oh do it quickly.

[pikuni]

[His senses are slow. They must be, otherwise he would have sniffed a napikwan like this out from the get go. He smells him now, though: he can smell the grease on that beard, can smell the sweat, the lingering damp-freeze of snow and ice. He can smell the others like him on his skin too, so many that he has to try and filter through it all to find John Irving's smell and hold onto it.

He hasn't smelled a man like this since 1912, 1913, 1914 and so on. He hasn't seen a man look like this since then either. For a brief and strange moment he's back in that old church dressed in his black robes, and he's telling a story.

When he inhales deep again, he can smell the desperation and the shame, too. Familiar friends, back to see him. His mouth smiles real slow, thumb gentle on the jut of Irving's throat; his smile is all teeth. He purrs, just as slow, nose to nose: ] Your people have a word for when they want things, don't they?

[extramuralise]

P-please—

[ If there's anything to be said about rigorously puritanical, God-fearing men, it's that they're rarely ever too proud to kneel or to beg— to plead desperately down upon their knees for mercy and love and absolution, if not always in so many words.

But prayer can always simply be about intention, too.

And if Irving were the sort of man to be practiced enough with ever actually vocalizing such desires, let alone acting on them, perhaps then he'd have more of a vocabulary to know what it is he must instead ask for now with clutching fingers and keening gasps rather than his own voice, but this is a man who still, at 33 years old, has never once married— a man who has known no other intimate, carnal touch apart from what he has endured inside the few dimly lit pleasure houses his fellow seamen have succeeded in dragging him along to.

Whereas this—

This is something else entirely different altogether, something so unspeakably, unthinkably forbidden, yet somehow not at all unknown to him— something he could recognize even in darkness merely by its sound, smell, and silhouette, if not truly by any proper name. It is strangely almost a blessing not to feel clear-headed or rational in this moment, to for once barely have to think at all.

Irving's head rocks forward as if held in place merely by ball-joints and springs rather than flesh and bone, his face flushed and eyes shining wide like marbles as they meet Good Stab's gaze with a feverish, awe-struck intensity straight out of a classical religious painting featuring men and women overwhelmed by sights either too fearsome or too beautiful — or else perhaps even some unholy combination thereof — for mere mortals to behold. ]

M-may I, your... y-your hair?

[ Damn the vines for binding his arms so that every touch he gives is another hard-won battle unto itself, when all he wants is to feel that rich fall of inky silk against his skin like cool water, to run his hands and fingers through it and marvel at the texture and volume. ]

my body is your body cw: lots of cultural displacement baggage

[ghostface]

( Danny spots him on the lawn first.

Behind him, the great house blazes like a great sacred fire. He looks taller than the flames from where Danny's standing — downhill, facing north and the wrath of the smoke blowing south, blanketing this man's toothy grin in an ashy haze. Danny snaps one picture that turns out like shit, but as he stares down at the tiny digital screen and the equally tiny, smoke-distorted face staring back at him, he thinks, small and boyish and dumbstruck: Oh, you are real.

Then, more confidently: You definitely set the house on fire.

In his dreams, this goes different. Men who look like his grandfather or his grandfather's grandfather or his uncles or uncles' friends who were also his uncles don't belong here, just like Danny never did and still doesn't. White man territory. White man county lines. White man borders and rules and none-for-yous, all-for-mes, eat-you-ups, take-you-for-all-you're-fucking-worths. In his dreams, Danny shakes the hand of the man wearing the face of his grandfather or his grandfather's grandfather or his uncles or uncles' friends who were also his uncles and tells him, prophetically, wisely, Go back the way you came.

In reality, Danny snaps one picture that turns out like shit, and when this man turns to look at him, he flinches back, half-tripping into the crowd behind him, engulfed in white man territory again.

He spends two days tracking him through the camp instead, always at a distance. He watches him enter someone's tent. He watches him leave someone's tent, too, thirty seconds later, ushered out by a shout and a balled-up t-shirt hurled at the bullseye middle of his back. He learns his name from his own mouth: Good Stab. His luck runs out on day three. Danny figures this might be karma or something like it: his thighs held spread eagle by twin vines encircling his ankles, face-to-face and mouth-to-mouth with the man he's only known at a distance, at every distance. )

Uncle, ( irreverent, cheeky. His lashes snap down like a dark switchblade, eyes cutting to his weeping cock, pointed but not disinterested. He tilts his chin against the clench of Good Stab's hand, heart thumping steadily. ) I can do that, too.

( Move fast. Cry. His hand matches Good Stab's hand, cuffing him under his jaw. )

[pikuni]

[Danny spots him on the lawn, and Good Stab smells him sixteen hours before it, and two hours after he turned his room upside down. He had left the wreckage of his anger to seek out something else to be angry about, or something else to put his anger into, and there, on the air, snake-person. Under the smell of everyone else, it had been muddied and uncertain, but Good Stab's nose doesn't lie to him. What he found, that first afternoon, was Danny Johnson, unsuspecting beacon amidst a flood, and then the fire had come.

On the lawn, while the house burns, he feels his eyes on him. Later, he gets used to the feeling of being watched, learns what it feels like when Danny's attention shifts elsewhere. In the two days that Danny tracks him, Good Stab knows this about him: he is snake-person and napikwan both, but this far away it's hard to tell which half came from where. He knows that there is blood on him, raw-iron smell caught deep under his fingernails, engrained straight into the grooves of his palms. It's the kind of blood you don't wash away, because you can't. Good Stab knows this, because he has the same hands.

He knows this too: Danny smells of other people, like sex, like anger, like twenty-something years of both. He can smell this on him close up, nose to nose, teeth to teeth. Under that, he smells like a hollow-well, all emptiness waiting to be filled up. You pour enough love into something, you think you can fill in the cracks. Danny Johnson smells like you could pour the love of sixteen men into him and it might never be enough. Good Stab understands this too; he has a hole in him that will never be filled again.

He inhales again; smells too much to decipher in one go, like there's a hundred years of history imprinted on Danny's skin, and he really doesn't have the time to start picking through it now. Not when his dick is hard for the first time in over two centuries, and not when Danny moves just as fast, just as strong, and just as cocky.

He says, on a tut:] Uncle, is it, snake-person?

[He shoves a knee between Danny's legs, hikes his thigh up against his cock. ] You're a long way from home, Nephew.

bed manners

[dwelt]

[Blue eyes dart up to meet black, chest heaving, skin and hair stained with splotches of red from washing food coloring off and having it splashed over him, then cleaned again in one day. August is a great runner, better chaser. Good Stab exceeds 'better', the type that he didn't expect to try and outrun because the by the time he noticed, it was too late. Magic is in the air like lightning about to strike, buzzing and vibrant, trees rustling – shivering - as his energy radiates around them. A playful warning met with a greeting. I see you / you see me.

Past the food coloring and sweat and lake water, August has a lingering scent of iron and fire, one that clings to him as if he were born from something unnatural. This is not the case, of course, but the mystery remains.]

I don't know how I'd taste. [A lopsided smile,] Did you miss breakfast?

['Breakfast' is left up for interpretation.]

[pikuni]

[There's a lot of that here: white boys who smell strange under the meat and the sinew, like they've got sherbet instead of blood, or like they're made up of fire, lightning, all old-world tastes on his tongue and nose. He knows now that this is magic, and that not all magic smells the same.

The Good Stab in him wants to taste it every time he smells it; cocky-boy curiosity, the same kind he had when he was thirteen and reached out to swat his hand through an open flame. He's too damn old for it, but some shit never changes.

Cheeky:] I missed the last few breakfasts. I'll miss the next too, most of the food here is - bland. [This is also up for interpretation. ]

[dwelt]

[August is a grounded being, energy drawn up from below the earth and funneled from one source to the next, broken by rules of space-time that Saltburnt makes. It's part of what soothes the blood pumping in his veins and fuels his heart. He's expressive through his eyes and mouth, muscles confidently still in the rest of his body, no moves to step forward or back or around, gazing at Good Stab like he's seeing inside of him, past the chase and the haphazard jokes, almost taunting.]

You'd be surprised. [He likes the dance.] Since you caught me, what about lunch? Nothing I make is bland.