𝖘𝖆𝖑𝖙𝖇𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖙 𝖒𝖔𝖉𝖘. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
saltburnmods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
draino2024-05-13 07:36 am
saltburnmods) wrote in draino2024-05-13 07:36 am
Entry tags:
"𝐓𝐇𝐔𝐒" ▣ MAY TDM
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."
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.
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?
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
no subject
Maybe it's the open air, the expansive grounds, but though it feels like another cage, it feels different from any other he's somehow been in. Louisiana. France. Dubai...
"It didn't want us to find one another, but we did. We always do." A soft squeeze of fingers, a thumb skirting over the other's. "Something about this place gets under my skin. Full to the brim of tricks and deceptions. We wake up safe, fed the way we are meant to be fed, and for what?"
Louis tilts his head, eyes turning to the older vampire at his side, honing in on the sound of his heart beating, the flicker of concern.
"Daniel is here, too. Makes you wonder who else they've brought to this place."
It goes unsaid between them, as heavy and dense as the cake from the party looked - Lestat.
no subject
He avoids Louis' gaze, for once, though he holds his hand tight, as if clinging to a lifeline. The old feelings claw at his insides, dangerously sharp.
To refocus, he concentrates on the pulse of the young man in the maze, letting the drumbeat of his mortal heart fill his senses, the tidal throb of his blood moving through his veins. The young man, who has committed no crime except being drunk and young and in the wrong place at the right time. Lestat, Armand recalls, enjoyed hunting such prey.
Armand stops walking, turning to look at Louis.
"You've seen him," he says, not meaning Daniel.
no subject
Simple, calm, controlled in all the ways that he knows Armand can be, and in all the ways he knows that he isn't at the same time. His love doesn't meet his eyes and something heavy and cold sinks into his gut and he knows the pause in their midnight stroll is coming long before they both stop on the lawn.
In a different time, Louis would not look the Armand in the eye to confess this, would not even utter the name Lestat aloud for everything that could come roaring back with it. He's said it a thousand times, sitting nestled into Armand's side while giving his interview, but saying now feels different. Perched on the couch in Dubai, Lestat could be a ghost, still. A very real one, perhaps, but a ghost all the same.
Louis doesn't turn to see where the drunken boy has wandered, but he'd not been particularly interested from the start. Instead, he tilts his head, meeting the eyes of the other across from him, squeezing his hand tighter as he speaks.
"I have." A beat, a shaky exhale, then: "He doesn't know."
That Louis killed him. That he died. That he and Armand are what they are now, however broken. Again, a different version of him might shrug it off, might scoff and cant his nose in the air at the very idea of Lestat, but the reality of this place caging them in, with Lestat waiting around any corner has shaken him.
"He's hunting, somewhere - left him to it, said I'd find him after. He says Claudia just left." And there it is - his voice breaks a tiny bit but he sucks in another breath. "You saw him, too, didn't you?"
It's pathetic how much hope is in the statement. Hope that he didn't imagine it, that his mind isn't playing damnable tricks on him again. There's another sliver of hope (one he doesn't recognize, doesn't acknowledge) that if someone else saw him? Then Lestat is real.
no subject
"Yes, I have." No need to elaborate on that meeting, fraught and pointless as it was. A confirmation that old scars have not fully healed, and that Armand's position is far more precarious than he thought. The idea that Lestat is unaware of their future makes more sense, now, given that encounter.
For now, Armand is focused wholly on Louis. Worried about him and for what they've built together. His grip on Louis' hands is a tight, desperate thing. Hating that little hopeful note in Louis' voice, the vestigial remains of his love.
"He doesn't know.. what you did, you and Claudia." Wary of speaking it aloud, in case it can be overheard. His expression is intense, focused. "Louis. He cannot be allowed to discover it."
no subject
Louis squeezes the hands that take his own, holding on just as desperately, like the other is a buoy in the torrential storm of their lives.
“No, he can’t. He’ll kill me, or try to. He didn’t know that time had passed - couldn’t tell him. I don’t know how to be that man anymore.”
The Louisiana smooth talker, the confident businessman, the angry, fiery human hell bent on righting the arbitrary laws passed by crueler men.
One step brings him closer to Armand, enough that their foreheads can touch and in that contact he shares the deep pit of unease he feels. There’s hope, sure, that Lestat as he knew him is back, that he doesn’t know. But there’s hope, too, that Louis hasn’t lost control of himself again and Armand’s affirmation seems to ease a tiny bit of the tension in his brow.
“I didn’t know if he was real. If it was in my head again and this place was just running me around.”
There it is - the hint of an old world warmth, a tongue awoken after decades of rest.
no subject
And knowing, in that same moment, that he will never have it.
He leans in when Louis comes close, resting against him, eyes shuttering briefly closed as he takes in the feeling of having his love back again.
"He is real," he says, after a moment. He pulls back a little and tugs his hands free so he can reach up and take Louis' face between them instead, thumbs brushing tender arcs over his cheeks. In a low voice, he makes his vow:
"I will not let him take you from me."
no subject
Louis' eyes flutter shut, the soft brush of thumbs across his cheekbones somehow finding the heaviness that feels like it's been settling behind his eyes for a century.
"I know we aren't always perfect, you and me," he murmurs, eyes opening slowly as he gently tugs Armand a little closer. "But I'm glad you're here. That I found you."
That I'm not alone in this place, goes unsaid, especially considering all the skeletons that have come from the closets.
no subject
"We found each other," he says, into their mental connection. Kisses him, just two men kissing on the lawn outside a party. He winds his arms up around Louis' neck and flattens his body against him, hips to chest.
"In Paris. In San Francisco. We will find each other again, and again."
no subject
One hand slides up the plane of Armand’s back, fingers settling at his nape, tangling in the dark waves, possessive and soft all at once. His lips part on a huff of air, enough to kiss him open mouthed and needy, licking hot against his lipstongueteeth, the very taste of Armand on his tongue enough to elicit a low hum.
“I’ve missed you,” he says across their mental connection, voice tentative yet earnest. “My world is too quiet without you.”
Armand, steadfast and stalwart, if not downright infuriating and insufferable, always a presence. A warm pull at the back of his mind, a heartbeat that brings Louis’ back into tune when it matters most.
no subject
"For all of three days." Teasing, fond, glad to hear it. Glad, always, to have Louis all to himself, to bask in the warmth of his affection. He digs the sharp points of his fingernails into Louis' back in the way he knows Louis enjoys, a flare of pain to sweeten the pleasure.
"Louis," Armand murmurs into his mind, just for the joy of saying his name. Out loud, he groans softly, chasing kisses, pulling himself up hard against Louis' body as the tension rises between them. If he is the safe place for Louis, the quiet within the noise, let it be so, let him sink into his body and be lost for a while. Armand can think of no better reason to surrender.
"Louis." He shudders, increasingly desperate. "Take me here on the lawn."
no subject
He wastes no time tugging at Armand's shirt, pulling it free from the waistband and with little regard for closures and buttons he pulls, letting them spring free so that he may push it off his shoulders altogether, one palm sliding hard and heavy up his chest and the other? Slides down to grip his ass, squeezing the muscle there to drag them in together, hip to hip, where his own cock thickens with want.
"Three days was enough, don't you see?" A haughty little laugh, a roll of his hips, but he sees red at the demand almost immediately. "I can't deny you."
It's unnatural how quickly he moves, drawing back from the kiss and tangling their legs enough so that they tumble easily into the grass where they stand. No time to waste with gentleness, not when Louis braces himself atop Armand, shucks his own shirt off with little regard for the remaining buttons, and drags his mouth along the line of his throat, his chest, fangs leaving angry little pricks in his skin the whole way both devotional and starved all at once.
"Let me find you, Arun. Commit you to memory."
no subject
"I am here, Maître. I am here." Their old names, their old roles, no less intoxicating with time. The boy he never was, the role he never wanted. Both taken by Louis and made into something new, something better.
He hitches out a soft cry as teeth puncture skin and kicks off shoes and pants, lifting his legs to wrap them around Louis' hips, ankles crossed behind him. Wanton and naked in the grass where any mortal could see them, two wild beasts coupling. He arches up against Louis, putting his arms around his neck to hold him close.
"Please. All of you. Inside me, at once. I need it."
cw: bloodplay
His hands fall to his own pants, undoing buttons and shucking them down round his hips with one hand while his mouth continues to traverse Armand's body, biting down again just above the pert rise of a nipple, drawing blood with fangs and giving a lewd suck, loud and wet, head falling back as the blood hits his tongue hot and sticky and sweet.
"Don't leave me," his mind answers in desperate response, without sense or logic even as he licks an easy stripe of two fingers at the feeling of Armand's legs wrapping his waist. There's little time to bother slicking himself up but he makes an attempt, smearing the heated blood of his lover across his aching dick, freed now from the confines of his clothes. What's left he rubs carefully between the supple globes of Armand's ass, finding the perfect, winking pucker he's spent decades admiring and lavishing with affection.
Louis leans his chest down into Armand, bearing his weight into his chest and kissing him hot and hard, the blood on his tongue mingling between them as he lines himself up carefully and thrust forward, pressing inch by inch until he's buried to the hilt where he stills, merely grinding his hips in place against him, a heady moan tumbling from his lips.
"You take me so well," he murmurs hot against Armand's lips, and with that, his hips begin to move. "You're beautiful."