#camille.

-🌷

Wh

@gildedthorn​

He hadn’t slept or eaten all week, at this point he was fairly certain that he was more coffee than man with the amount he’d been consuming in order to stay awake. Ever since the night of the fire, Raphael had devoted every waking moment to not just the reparations so desperately needed for the grand ballroom that had all but gone up in flames but to hunting down the arsonists responsible as well. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that the blaze had been committed purposefully, which meant that somebody in his manor was there under false pretenses, for all he knew they could have even been encroaching upon his inner circle. It might not have seemed it to most but at heart, Raphael was a family man, as dysfunctional as his little found family might have been, it was still entirely his own, and the fact that somebody had threatened them was enough to have his blood on the verge boiling deep within his veins. 

But they were safe. Baby, Tatiana, Luca, and Camille---not a single hair on their heads had been harmed, he’d take a thousand burnt ballrooms over so much as a scratch being laid on any one of them, marble floors and spiral staircases were easily replaceable, but the only people he’d ever ... loved? He’d sooner kill himself than allow one of them to perish. “Camille.” Raphael’s voice came out sounding brisk and distracted as he let himself into the side-suite he’d had designed specifically for his personal assistant, pushing his glasses higher up upon the bridge of his nose as he furrowed his brow into the dossier he had open in front of him. What time was it? Day or night, he had no idea, just that Tatiana was sleeping peacefully in his bed after he’d tucked her in and Baby was staying with Luca for safe-keeping---thank god for his brother-in-arms. Where was his Camille, though?

ángel et camille

-🌷

Oh, yeah, I do! Her name is December =)

They won't lie: that one had hurt their feelings a bit! They'd snorted and said whatever little jokey statement to brush it off, but they'd done it to seem on-form. Is it their fault that the last few parties they'd been to (and, really, 'parties' was stretching the label. They were lures for blood with emotionally unavailable old people who all look like they are aspiring librarians. Camille is maybe the exception) they'd wound up explaining attachment theory to an old-as-fuck vamp who started crying tears of blood. They'd probably overshared about their father, too. They can't remember, but they know they do that.

When, hours later, the party indeed is rapt and quiet and listening to Sam detail a system for communal green living among vampires and their harems or "blood brood", Sam has a sudden moment of self-awareness. "Does anyone else have an economic system for living?" They ask, mid-thought, trying to be casual. There's some pale Romanian lady with a hat and a short girlfriend who seems particularly prissy, who answers that yes, she liked to rule. Sam nods, as if there's anything in the world they could say to make this conversation normal again. "Yeah, that's cool. I'm very open to alternate lifestyles."