"𝐓𝐇𝐔𝐒" ▣ MAY TDM

[saltburnmods]

MAY 2024 TDM

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. Prompts on the Test Drive can be used for in game logs.

WELCOME TO SALTBURNT

It's the hangover more than the light streaming in through half drawn curtains that wakes you up, your brain rattling in your skull, your mouth dry and cottony, your stomach churning with whatever it is you drank last night. If self preservation is your strong suit, you might turn over in bed and see a few painkillers laid out for you on a silver dish, accompanied by a glass of water. If it isn’t, stay in bed and wallow — eventually a maid will be in to tear your curtains open, saying, "Breakfast is served," and scurrying out quietly, invisibly. Breakfast? Maybe it’s normal for you. Maybe it isn’t.

You're drawn from the room, either by the mystery, or an undefinable urge that could be supernatural in origin, or could be your hunger catching up to you. It's almost nostalgic, the walk to the dining room — have you been here before? Were you drawn up to this estate in a car? Haven’t you done all this already? Maybe you mosey around a library, maybe you run into your suite mate in your adjoining bathroom. Regardless, seemingly all hallways, covered in priceless artworks and ancient relics from times long past, lead to the dining room, where a comically long table houses the Balfours and their many guests, who seem just as disgruntled and confused as you. No matter. "The breakfast is self-serve," they say. But not the eggs.

If you want to leave, you’ll have to tell Giles, the housekeeper, who will arrange a car for you that mysteriously, or perhaps suspiciously, never arrives. Unfortunately, confronting Giles about it is near impossible, as he’s as good at being invisible as the rest of the house staff. Of course, there’s no reason why you can’t just walk out. The front gates are easy enough to jump over, even if the walk towards them gives you a strange sense of foreboding, or just outright discomfort, as if the ground itself doesn’t want you to leave. Those more sensitive or fragile might find they can’t make the jump, no matter how physically able, or desperately wanting. Still, a strong person could continue on, over the fence and into the lush English countryside. The feeling doesn’t dissipate, though — this sense of wrongness, almost sickness, like a weight on your back. Walk into the evergreen, carry on, but the strongest will make it perhaps a mile or so before the weight of dread and paranoia brings you to your knees, and then to your face, flat in the middle of a dirt road. What were you thinking? Is this really better?

Wake up with a hangover, in a bed, the curtains drawn, the maid saying, "Breakfast is served," before scurrying out. The painkillers are there, just like you remember. In fact, it’s all exactly how you remember, as if you never left an imprint the first time, or any mess you made was cleared away while your back was turned. Walk to the dining room, find everyone there eating away at their breakfast. It’s self serve, naturally. Just not the eggs.

"We dress for dinner," says Portia, with a kind, if discerning smile. "Black tie."

LET THEM EAT CAKE

CONTENT WARNINGS: sex, drugs, alcohol.

Up until now, the outdoors of Saltburnt have seemed immaculately well groomed, landscaped until not a leaf is out of line. However, on the night of a planned party you were all informed of, the grounds have transformed into a psychedelic fever dream before your eyes, with very little resembling the polished exterior you’ve become acquainted with. Large fixtures have been erected around the grounds in a paid homage to Roman architecture, huge columns set up in invitation to the party beyond. Everything is bathed in pastel colors of pink, blue, yellow and green, opulent and gaudy in equal measures, everything decorated with golden filigree. The theme? Rococo. And yes, you’re expected to arrive in costume. (0 points awarded for historical accuracy — this isn’t school, you aren’t being graded on anything but your appearance.)

Vanilla flavored cocktails line elaborately decorated banquet tables, and while alcohol seems readily in supply, any food other than snacking Doritos and caviar with mother-of-pearl spoons is hard to find. Of course, that’s other than the dessert table, which is sorted with an arrangement of confections: macaroons of all colors, cupcakes, cookies, and of course, cakes. Some are imperially designed, with frilly icing decorations and sprinkle pearls on top, but the real showstopper cakes are the anatomically correct ones, shaped in the imagine of naked bodies. On first glance, the lifelike realness of them makes the bodies look like peaceful corpses laid flat against the sugary delights — some, potentially, with an appearance uncannily like a guest like you, currently residing in Saltburnt. But, when someone cuts into one, it's plain to see the flesh is just fondant, the insides all cake and cream and jam. There is enough detail on the inside of the cakes that gives the impression, if you were to cut one horizontally down from head to toe, you'd see the perfect snapshot of the inside of a human body, organs, bones, and all.

Seeking other entertainment? In homage to the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, small diamonds have been hidden around the party, in red solo cups, in full liquor bottles, in plain sight, in trees and bushes. Collect, steal, and pickpocket as many as you can — anyone with diamonds at the end of the party has been guaranteed a special prize from Portia herself, but you'll have to win to figure out what it is. (A replica of the Queen's necklace, lucky you!)

In addition, on the grounds there is a lifesize version chess, alternating colors between light and hot pink. Anyone interested will quickly be informed, this is SlapKiss Chess, where the rules are simple enough to follow. Chess as usual, only when one piece steps on the square of another piece, the first person to step off the square loses the ground and is kicked from the game. You can knock your opponent off however you like, through whatever means available to you. Naturally, things get pretty bloody and pretty PDA, depending on your poison of choice — with the name of the game comes two very frequent weapons against your opponent.

Of course, the night does come to an end eventually. Pass out where you are or drunkenly make your way up to you room in a drug-induced stupor. Either way, you'll wake up hungover, in bed, trying to fill in all the blanks from last night.

A MIDNIGHT'S DREAM

CONTENT WARNINGS: body horror, cannibalism, sex.

Things feel normal, for awhile. The first day after the party anything brewing inside feels like the byproduct of intoxicants ingested, so it's likely you're expecting to feel a little off. The next day, you wonder just how long this hangover is supposed to last. By the third day, something feels indefinably wrong, and you ache down to your bones.

Did you eat the cake? Probably, yes — but did you find it a little… addictive?

There's an urge inside you, to taste it again. What part of the body did you eat before? The fingers? Suddenly, you need to sink teeth into whoever has fingers closest to you, even though you know what'll happen. You'll find flesh, blood, and bone, hardly any of it appetizing. And yet. The compulsion is undeniable, and once you get what you want, you bite down on someone's body where you feel the need and, shockingly, it tastes good. Sweet. Moreover, it feels good to be consumed. Eater and eaten alike, all of you want some more, gluttonous down to your core.

It seems a curse has overtaken Saltburnt, turning everyone who ate cake into cake. Bones turn to cracked caramel, blood into loose icing. Oddly, it seems the only people safe from the curse, other than the people who didn’t eat anything, are the ones who won and wear their gifted diamond necklace, though that doesn't necessarily mean people won't try to take a bite out of them anyway, and it doesn't mean they wouldn't like being eaten too, depending on what they're into. It's all a frenzy, a fever dream. You eat and eat and eat and are eaten, shocked by how much flesh — well, cake — someone can lose.

On the fourth day, you wake up in your room again, as you have every other day, whole and unblemished, offended by the scent coming from outside your windows. Look, and find the sight of rotting cake abandoned in heaps, taking the form of errant limbs, spotted with mold and decorated with buzzing flies. Look for long enough, and you might once again find some weirdly similar to your own body, feeding hornets that flock to your sugary sweet flesh.

Weird dream, right?

DIRECTORY

taken
activity check
setting

reserves
rewards
rules

applications
hiatus & drop
faq

Comments

[unconscionable]

[ Just like the time after the castle, something vile and necessary purges from John at the sight of Danny choking on his own upset mucus. Pitifully human, raging against his own helplessness. It makes John feel a strange tenderness in contrast to his inner wasteland.

He bends and takes Danny's jaw in his hand, thumbs along the bone to the hinge. Turns down the pain as easily as any dial, so that even if he's still crumpled wetly and losing dangerous amounts of blood, he can focus on what John is trying to say to him: ]

You were supposed to look after them, kitten. Should I even need to tell you that? If I can't be there for your dad and your sister then you need to be.

[ The idea that House tried to follow him and Danny didn't stop him sounds a deep and upsetting bell inside John's chest, and all his personhood is coming back to him, all the disgusting adoration and insecurity and anger and anxiety, loving his family and worrying about them all at the same time, the kinds of feelings he's done his best to simply repress.

The household staff have come to try and separate them; John allows it, aware he's made a scene, his hands lifting off Danny and into the air. ]

It's fine, it's fine, we're fine. He's my kid. I'll fix him up.

[ The Butler is trying to encourage them to at least take their disagreement to a private room, as other servants get to work righting the table and cleaning the spillage of food and blood with unnerving quiet and focus. John remembers belatedly to heal his own wounds. ]

cw: self-harm, fanaticism, pseudo incest

[ghostface]

( he's my kid shouldn't hit like a bomb, but it does somehow, little missiles air-dropped directly over the wrinkled fold of his auditory cortex again and again, he's my kid, he's my kid, he's my kid. daddy nukes. daddy shrapnel shreds his insides. daddy magic sputters another fresh gush of blood from his nose, sticking thin and slippery to his gums.

as john falls back and the servants descend, danny wheezes and doubles forward, dribbling pinkish saliva onto his skinned knees. )

I'm sorry, apa. ( not i won't disappoint you again, because danny johnson is a chronic sinner. not cowed, either, but submissive the only way john's ever stripped out of him, blood by blood, flesh by flesh, because danny johnson's only ever knelt for one man.

he sucks blood-clotted saliva to the fronts of his teeth and spits again, edging into delirium, chin lolling up and eyes fixing on john's wrist, bare and pretty. his pinky skims the heel of his palm. that he doesn't have danny's rib around his wrist anymore feels worse than danny not having john around his throat. in the middle of this tentative stalemate, a servant gingerly picks up the jagged piece of china danny had used to pummel john's throat into mangled meat; danny takes it back with a snarl and greedily shoves the bloodied edge into his mouth, licking it clean.

hiking up his shirt to his tits, he slants the spit-shiny shiv into his ribs, one little dot of pressure crowning john's j, his silvery signature. )

Let me give you another.

( right here, in front of everyone. he pushes in, all his doe-eyed, reverent focus on john's face, john's eyes, adam at his feet, ready to give him every rib. )

Daddy, I wanna do it. Let me do it, please.

[unconscionable]

[ Fucked up for that to be what melts the rime around John's heart, but hey. He is what he is. He looks at Danny, horny and desperate and bleeding and John's, kneeling with such aggressive yielding, and feels the same old fondness that had him trashing his reputation over this little murder machine back in Rubilyk. ]

At least let's do the other side, so you can suck your own dick.

[ It's hard to tell if he's joking. There are still servants hovering — if sir would perhaps like to move his conversation to a sitting room?

Sir would not. Sir can't stop thinking about them all split up, House trying to find him and Jem left behind alone, the kind of thoughts that rise bile up his worthless throat. ]

Maybe I want another bone this time.

[ He emphasises this by straightening Danny's wrist with sick wet crunches, realigning it to be knit back together, a cursory patch-job that he'll fix better later. Right now he's just proving a point, that Danny's body is his. ]

cw: vomit again sorry

[ghostface]

Not a —

( rib would've been the last word tacked onto that sentence, question mark, all bleary-eyed confusion, but john molds his soft playdoh wrist back together without a single touch or warning and danny vomits again. fuck. fuck. more blood he can't afford to lose, sloshing out black and thick onto the feet of the servants who scuffle back, a muddy rainbow oil slick punctuated with fat lotus petals that sit like lily-pads, pink and perfect and untouched, at the top of the slop. fuck. for real? still? danny groans, knees skidding wide, and bends to touch his forehead to the floor.

he stares at his hands crisscrossed at the wrists, the shiv clenched in one fist, and then lifts a lotus petal from the filthy puddle onto one shaky pinky-tip, depositing it to the toe of john's shoe and ironing it flat with the blunt edge of his nail. could be an offering or another apology, but really danny just thinks it looks cute, like a little hat.

he sniffles. )

They're your bones, John, ( back up again like any good boy taught to look his father in the eyes, blood-soaked wobbling doll on his knees, mouth wiped raw on his sleeve for at least the third time in ten minutes. your bones, your body, your dick, your little murder machine, sex kitten, disgraceful worshiper, amateur cav. it's his vision, his word. john's word is the only word. )

Tell me where.

( he'll cut it out. )

[unconscionable]

[ This kind of wretched behaviour leaves John feeling tender, and he reaches down and brushes a benediction through Danny's hair, wipes tears and snot from his face with one black sleeve. ]

Messy.

[ Ruining his rep in front of all these people just to appease a god he hates. Danny's blood and vomit is loud around him, and John's anger is abruptly external to their little confrontation. How dare anybody else see this, or touch any part of it, including the servants already trying to get blood out of the soaked carpet along with the spilled drinks.

John takes a deep breath in, closing his eyes. Draws a little thalergy from Danny - just a little, given his blood loss, just enough to remind him what he's for. Exhales, and dissipates all bodily fluids that aren't where they should be. Opens his eyes again. ]

Come on. Not here.

[ He's done making a scene; he's taking Danny back to his room. Belatedly, he fixes the ruin of his throat a little better, lifting fingers to the jagged wound with a fond smile. ]

[ghostface]

( there was a time, once, when danny would have made john follow him, but he hasn't done that since the night they first met. back then, one hundred years ago or it might as well have been, he'd refused to give him the courtesy of his name or even his back in full focus, retreating backward from the sex-stinking alleyway, all his trust issues and john's toga gone with him. today, one hundred and one years later: he follows at john's heels, too big to be a reprimanded dog so he must be a big cat, leggy and prowling, properly chastised, temporarily defanged — and stuffed full of locus petals, apparently.

the gathered crowd, servants and guests alike, part for them in uncomfortable silence. on their way out the door, danny thieves a mimosa from a servant's platter, slams it back, returns the empty glass, and snags a cigarette sticking out filter-end from the man's breast pocket with a thank you, for the nicotine, for the champagne.

they must make a sight: danny as this beautiful man's looming shadow, sulky little boy trailing behind his daddy, already inches taller and wider than him. they wind through the hallways, up a staircase and another staircase. danny smokes and stares at john's hand, his naked wrist. he wants to hold his hand, but he can't do it, won't do it, too old and too stubborn to hold his daddy's hand; instead he reaches out, timidly stroking his pinky down the heel of john's palm )

I wouldn't have cared, ( he tries not to sound insufferably pouty as he says it, but he does anyway. he hooks john's pinky in his pinky, almost hand-holding. ) We could've done it there.

( they've done worse in more public places. )

[unconscionable]

[ John's missed it, the smell of second-hand smoke. He hooks his pinkie in Danny's, glances over. For a moment down this bland corridor walking alongside each other they're mistakeable as equals. There's still so much noise and pressure happening in John's head, but he has a better handle on it than he did. ]

I care.

[ Eternal control freak, wants to control what they see, wants to control his surroundings — he pauses on a step to look Danny in the eye. Nightmare child. Best beloved. John studies the way tears have left his long lashes all spidery. Remembers when he let Danny have him on the ground outside the blacksmiths, remembers standing for him at the moot hall in front of everyone's judgemental gaze, the times he's been violently jealous and the times he hasn't . Decides to explain: ]

They don't deserve to see you like that. To touch any part of you.

[ A brief beat and he adds, less intense, linking their fingers together further. ]

Plus you're gonna fuck me, so it seemed polite.

[ghostface]

( you're gonna fuck me, so casually, like he hadn't been half a temper tantrum away from wreathing the halls in danny's bright red guts. but danny nods as if this is the most natural order of things, of course, obviously he'll fuck him, and thumbs at his teary eyelashes spitefully when he notices john looking a little too long. )

Yeah, I'm gonna, ( stubbing out his cigarette in the soil of a potted plant he finds particularly ugly. they're hooked by three fingers now: pinky, ring, and middle. danny lifts his hand to his mouth, kissing his knuckles. ) In the shower? Can we shower?

( but also, )

After I give you a bone.

( it's imperative — to danny, at least — that the bone-giving happens before everything else. )

[unconscionable]

Give me a bone, and then give me a bone.

[ Exaggerated innuendo. A pleased with himself wink. Danny should probably just kill him, actually. ]

[ghostface]

( ugh, christ. danny's brow crinkles in disgust, though his mouth twitches at the corner slightly, a minuscule betrayal. he untangles his hand from john's and serves him a small shove between the shoulder blades, herding him deeper down the halls. )

You still ain't funny, John. ( he's a little funny. danny missed the dad jokes, a little. ) Which room?

[unconscionable]

This one.

[ John leads him in - is this actually his room? Does it matter? It is now, for this. He hasn't been here long enough for it to look lived in, not when the invisible servants tidy while he sleeps. He keeps thinking he should stay up and catch them, like a kid planning to see Santa.

Regardless: it's a room, with a bed and a bathroom, and the door hasn't even closed before John kisses him, slow and deep, chasing the taste of blood. Hands tight on Danny's torso, sliding down to his hips. Thinking about all the muscle and bone of him, how it belongs to him.

None of those people at the party deserved to see this, either.

He pulls Danny's lip with his teeth. ]

Rib's the easiest for a bracelet, but there's only so many bones you can lose, kitten.

[ghostface]

( danny's back hits the door, closing it soundly. his hand scruffs john's curls down to the scalp and reins him in, sinking his teeth into the plump meat of his bottom lip and doesn't let go until his blood films his canines. teeth for teeth, blood for blood, hungry void for hungriest void; it's been a while since his last eucharist.

he hooks john's bottom lip with his thumb and watches as it heals in real-time, his oldest magic trick. )

I don't care, ( stubbornly. the wrist john snapped like a toothpick aches in an unfamiliar way, and he wonders if this is how his daddy felt toward the end, a lifetime of injuries that never healed correctly set off by an aggressive sneeze or the weather dropping or raising half a degree. he eases up on john's hair, shaking out the needle-prick static of his hand the same way his daddy used to do, but with his bad leg.

he strips off his blood-soaked t-shirt by the collar, slopping it on the ground. in the two months they've been apart, danny hasn't changed at all: still a solid and broad piece of meat, john's moody slut with his tattoos and piercings and chubbed-up dick behind his denim fly, ready to fuck or kill on command. he kisses john again, harder. sticks his bloodied front to john's front, stamping his shirt possessively, naughtily. like all of danny's bones are his, so is all his blood. take it. he can't bear the thought that no one here knows who he really belongs to. )

I kept the knife and collar, even when I was so fuckin' mad at you for leaving us. ( he's still mad, he thinks. sometimes danny can't tell where his rage ends and the rest of him starts. he greedily palms john's hips, his firm ass. ) So I don't give a fuck. I don't care. I'm yours, ain't I?

[unconscionable]

[ John's still angry too, hates that implicit accusation, that he left them, like it was something he chose. But there's more important shit right now: Danny's muscle and ink, the gore of him, the idle way he shakes his hand out - hm.

John takes it, grabs that wrist out of the air and studies it. Rush job. Sloppy. He should know better than to sheathe a knife chipped; he smooths his thumb over the greenish vein, taps it on a flare of ink near the wristband, and heals it up properly, brow furrowing briefly in concentration.

One injury fixed and he can start a new one fresh; he'd joked but he's kind of hot for the idea of Danny on his back with his legs folded up over him, slut hole exposed so he can drop his own cock down his throat. He'll take the opposite rib. His baby gives twice as much as Adam ever did.

There's something else he should ask about but he's pretty sure if he did he'd just white out again and flay Danny's whole chest fatally open, so it's better to pretend he doesn't see any difference in his heart and focus a little down and to the left instead. ]

You're mine.

[ Certain of it. Fond. He hadn't left Danny a note because what the fuck did Danny need to hear from him? John expects him to simply know without being told. Protect my interests. Take care of your family. I'm not here but you are, and that's the same as if I was here, because you're my voice, my knife, my son. He slips his fingers lovingly into Danny's side, parting slick muscle. Thumbs the top of this brand new slit like he's fingering a pussy, but this time there's no corresponding pleasure, no new nerves grown like a prostate, just a violation of meat where there shouldn't be and John reaching for the bone. ]

[ghostface]

( there are things danny knows he needs to confess, and things that he's sure john already knows as he glides his fingers into danny's meat, butcherer and protector and keeper of danny's body. still, a rotten temptation: what if he just never confessed? always that slithering snake in god's garden, believing he can pull one over on his father; not because he can because he certainly can't, but because danny might take a knife to his throat all over again right in front of him if he rejects him, turns him away for his sins.

he missed him. living in a universe where john doesn't love or want him is an unbearable thought, as close as anyone has ever come to torturing him. god's most wicked son has nightmares, too, but they only take one shape, and it's not the grotesque horror of john's hand being where john's hand should never be. john's hand should always be inside him. john's hand should always love him just like this, by gutting out his ugly insides and growing them into something prettier.

instead of a scream, smothered into the cradle of john's shoulder closest to his neck: ) I love you.

( his fist scrunches john's shirt, clenched tight over the small of his back. he latches mouth and teeth onto his throat and nurses the skin like he's milking a tit, through the trembling shock of this intrusion. danny's brain knows it belongs to him, but the body is a slow learner. )

I'm sorry. I — fuck ( strangled, lodged in his throat ), I really am, John, I'm sorry.

( for all the ways he continued to disappoint him after he left, for not having house and jem in tow. he scrubs his weepy eyes over john's beard and licks away what sparkles in the prickly thatch, hips riding up john's thigh for support, draped over him close but not so close that he can't spy on everything john is doing. he prods a few fingers at his new hole and resists a second rotten temptation to slide them in there next to john's fingers, letting his daddy do his good work uninhibited. )

[unconscionable]

[ Such a good boy, needy-squirmy and apologetic and on his best behaviour for daddy. It doesn't help the emptiness, the rage, the violent sense of defeat, but it helps him stop finding reasons to put Danny in their line of fire. He'll punish and pleasure him as a kind of exoneration, but it won't go further than that. ]

I know, baby.

[ That he's sorry. That he's loved. ]

Deep breaths. I've got you.

[ He's gonna snap it, merciless. Pops the bone off and it slides mercurial into his hand, blood rushing to fill the void it leaves behind. John is a precision surgeon in how he drains it, how he stitches Danny up and makes his meat think there was never a bone there in the first place.

This time he doesn't leave a scar - the hook of his erotic J is still where it is and he'd rather leave it so completely healed that Danny has to wonder. There's a wet noise as he draws the bone out, strong as sturdy. Trails it up to Danny's nipple, painting a red line in its wake, to trace circles while he focuses on fixing what he fucked up. Then higher, higher still, pulling Danny off his neck and tapping this to his lips instead. ]

I love you too.