“Uh, yeah,” Oscar taps his sunglasses. They’re huge and so dark they’re almost opaque, but they’re the thing in Paris this season, so he won’t take them off. Not for this nonsense. –Even if he did it wouldn’t make much difference. The lights are so dim and the fog of dope smoke so thick that he can barely see her.
“Babe, you know some of us work, right?” He gestures himself up and down, his sparkly suit and unravelling tie, as if to illustrate the fact. “I have three galas to decorate next month. –I don’t have time to keep up-to-the-minute on the Delphine-Brigitte-Mick drama…Nobody has time for that, frankly. Give me the cliffnotes. And a drink.”
“Well none of mine fit,” Lux’s voice is distant now, coming from somewhere deep inside the walk-in wardrobe and almost drowned out by the clink-clanking of hangers and the slamming of drawers. A t-shirt flies out of the closet., pulled back over her head and tossed over her shoulder in frustration. A pair of shorts. A sundress. A bra. A single shoe. A hat lands almost on Dominic’s head. She appears behind it, wearing a tent dress that’s just a dress, now, a woolly scarf, and a broken pair of flip flops. She leans against the door frame, posing like he’s taking a photo of her - she’ll strangle him with the scarf if he touches the camera now - but doesn’t smile. “Still want me back in bed with you? –This is all that fits. Come on, if this isn’t enough to get you up and drive you off…”
Slowly, she sits herself down on the edge of the bed. It creaks under her weight and she just about mimics the noise, hand pressed into the small of her back. She pokes where she thinks Dom’s toes are under the blankets, “what kind of meeting? Business? Or..?”
She lies back down, propped up on an elbow to look at him properly. “You know we could always just…not?”
in her awkward preteen years, bella considered herself lucky that she had, in a way, a built-in boyfriend; he was handsome and well cultured, and as they grew older, she wisely learned to tune out all whispers that he had been caught with other girls in common rooms and corridors. now that she’d come into her own, growing into those gangly legs and freckled features, other potential suitors were beginning to make themselves known. she adored dacey, and he felt familiar — but she knew a ring was supposed to go on her finger soon, and if it didn’t … well, what harm could there be in exploring other options?
“perhaps,” she answers coyly, graciously accepting the champagne with a slight bow. “i’ve been asked to tea by a swedish duke, and i see no reason why i should decline.” her pointed gaze finds his, daring him to challenge the notion, mirroring his sentiment, “—- no?”
“Oh?” Dacey didn’t sound particularly surprised, just curious. Her father was well connected, whatever that meant, and her mother was a grasping social climber. –Which was almost enough to put him off the family entirely, but for other men it was a lure…And Bella was beautiful. Even in a stiff ballgown and sensible heels. Looking at her over his shoulder, brow quirked, he asked, “you know the Swedes make tea with raisins?
“Me,” he sighed heavily, leaning back against an intricate stone pillar which ,conveniently, blocked her uncle’s view, “I don’t really do tea. I do champagne.”
“Anyway,” he downed his drink much quicker than was really acceptable and set the glass aside, in the open palm of a marble Venus,. Peeking around the pillar to see her uncle still staring in their direction over the rim of his empty glass, he continued, “if you’re going to be running off to the frozen north with Von Whatever, I think we should have some fun while we can.” He pulled Bella’s glass from her fingers, and placed it beside his own. “Don’t you?”
–He didn’t wait for her to answer before he pushed the statue, sending it toppling to the ground with a crash. There was a chorus of high-pitched shrieks and one of his nervy great-aunts crumpled to the floor in shock. Dacey grabbed Bella’s hand and pulled her away, stepping over Aunt Bernice and into the sudden fluffy of activity before her distracted uncle noticed them.
orumad whispered:
‘ the only one he truly loved. ’
Dacey scoffed around the rim of his drink, then downed it in one. He slammed the glass back on the counter harder than was strictly necessary, and poured himself another before he answered. “You say that as though it’s a failing. As though I was wrong. –But Cécile was the only woman I’ve ever known who didn’t…” He waved a hand around, groping for the right word and spilling most of his drink as he did so. He didn’t know how to finish that sentence. She was the only woman he’d ever known who didn’t fuck him over? Maybe true, but they’d only ever done so after he’d started it. The only one who’d never stopped loving him? Sometimes he caught something in Em’s gaze which said she still might. The only one who’d never left him? She’d been the first.
“You don’t understand,” he snapped finally, “you couldn’t”
“No?” Dacey smiled indulgently at Bella, but wasn’t entirely convinced. They’d known one another almost since before he could remember, and she’d never once surprised him. Never deviated form the plan. Never even seemed to question it…But then, he supposed vaguely, she might think the same of him. They didn’t really know one another. They only ever met at events and around conference tables, and always under strict supervision. –Her uncle was watching them now, from the other end of the buffet table. Dacey took an appropriate step back from Bella, and busied himself with pouring a couple of - pointedly small - glasses of champagne.
“Should I be worried?” He glanced at her over his shoulder, brow quirked. –But he didn’t sound worried. He sounded excited.
supsets whispered:
❛ a very upsetting thing to hear, yes? ❜
James winced. Rome was right. ‘You’re a vampire’ was a very upsetting thing to hear, not least of all because of the sheer deafening volume at which he now heard it. He pressed a hand against his throbbing temple, and felt dried blood…How long had he been unconscious? The last thing he remembered was Rome’s mouth on his neck. Her teeth in his throat. He’d been out before he could even scream…Although he wouldn’t have been able to, anyway. Rome had ripped his throat clean out.
–Would he be able to speak, now? He touched the spot Rome had bitten him. Nothing felt amiss, except he was cold. He cleared his throat to test it. It felt dry and gravelly, as though he hadn’t had water in days. “I don’t –” He coughed into his bloody fist. “I don’t know…Should I be? I don’t remember.”
basicbitchwrites whispered:
[ swat ] your muse swatting mine’s hand away from something they’re not supposed to touch . (gimme something witchy please!)
Temperance is usually the first to seek Esme for a second opinion on any spell or potion, but this is a rare case; what she’s working on is particularly potent, and she can’t risk her beloved sister falling victim to that. “Careful, take a few steps back. Don’t touch anything.” Lest she come off as too prudish of her own work, she inhales sharply and turns to Esme with a wry smile, “It’s a love potion. For Gideon and his … friends? Look, the more they fight and break up or whatever it is the lot of them do, the more trouble it brings. A love potion brings peace. At least long enough to get them out of here and off to a honeymoon phase somewhere else.”
A bubbling pink cauldron signaled a nearly prepared concoction, earning a delighted squeal. “So you can’t touch, or else you’ll be smitten with the first thing you lay your eyes on. And that could very well be a werewolf.”
Esme snatched her hand back as though she’d touched the flames, hiding it under the billowing sleeves of her blouse. “It might be a werewolf,” she agreed, waving one hand over the other in a scrubbing spell so strong it took her dark nail polish clean off. “Or it might be Gideon.”
“Are they his friends?” She approached her sister cautiously, giving the still-spitting cauldron a wary look as she passed. A dollop of bubblegum pink goo landed on the pointed toe of her shoe; had she been wearing her enchanted red dancing shoes, they’d have been in trouble –Lefty was already so jealous of Harold…The shoes had chosen their own names. Esme set a handkerchief to work on her shoes with a flick of her wrist, balancing on the other foot so it could do its job. “Hasn’t he been telling us for millennia that he doesn’t have friends?”
“–Which I still think was rather a rude thing to say, in the middle of my fondue party.”
floralege whispered:
❛ i think about that every goddamn day. ❜
“Woooow.” Claudia breathed, blowing out a pink bubblegum bubble as she did so. She let it pop and pulled it back in, chewing it while she digested Gideon’s sticky tale. His human wife. The mortal infant they’d buried. The not quite mortal child he’d never met. Rome’s eternal mind games. Viv’s painful naivety. –The very fact that Claudia was now the only person he could talk to.
Sighing heavily, Claudia stuck her gum behind her ear and pushed her novelty sunglasses up on top of her head to look at him properly. “Giddy,” she leaned across to pat his shoulder, “that is all so freaking lame.”
“Grady despises you smoking inside,” Cecile chides, but creates a flame all the same. A smile pinches her cheeks. Small rebellions are her bread and butter. Still, she scrunches her nose at the cigar, waves the smoke dramatically. “I’m fine with it. The sooner you expire from cancer, the better off I’ll be.”
“Oh, gosh, does he?” Dacey asked, tone concerned but hands fumbling in his pocket for a second, and third, cigar. He lit them off of the first, and set them on the edge of an expensive-looking - but gaudy; that was the problem with new money - porcelain bowl. “You have to let them breathe. Like wine…Or the women I’m sure Grady has chained in his cellar.”
“Listen, Cece,” he leaned in, blowing smoke deliberately into her pale face, “we need to speak about Tea. You know father’s threatening to send her away…somewhere?” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. Their father had been threatening to send
Thérèse to an institution for years, and he’d gone into more detail than either of them had ever needed; screaming about shock therapy, and sedatives, and surgeries….He shuddered. “You know she’s not mad. Not really….Or not in that way, anyway. –I mean, out of the three of us, she’s the sane one.”
