#evilanew

𝙿𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚊𝚝𝚎  &  𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎  𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚎  𝚛𝚙  𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚜  𝚏𝚘𝚛  𝚝𝚑𝚎  𝚄𝚗𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚢 𝙵𝚊𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚢.  

𝙱𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚍  𝚘𝚗  𝙰𝙼𝙲'𝚜  𝙸𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚎𝚠  𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑  𝚝𝚑𝚎  𝚅𝚊𝚖𝚙𝚒𝚛𝚎  𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑  𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚟𝚢  𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛  &  𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍𝚋𝚞𝚒𝚕𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐  𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚙𝚒𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗  𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚗  𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖  𝚃𝚑𝚎  𝚅𝚊𝚖𝚙𝚒𝚛𝚎  𝙲𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚕𝚎𝚜,  𝚋𝚢  𝙰𝚗𝚗𝚎  𝚁𝚒𝚌𝚎. ©

- 𝙰𝚜  𝚋𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚍  𝚋𝚢  𝙽𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚊,  𝙰𝚌𝚎,  &  𝚂𝚊𝚖.

“𝒲𝑒 𝒹𝑜 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝓂𝑜𝓇𝓉𝒶𝓁𝓈 𝒹𝑜. 𝒲𝑒 𝒻𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉, 𝓌𝑒 𝑒𝒶𝓉, 𝓌𝑒 𝓁𝒶𝓊𝑔𝒽, 𝓌𝑒 𝓈𝓁𝑒𝑒𝓅, 𝓌𝑒 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒.”

chests heaving, the silence between them still vibrating with the last shreds of fury. the room looked as though a summer storm had torn through it. the bed lay in ruin beneath them, nothing left but a haphazard mound of wood and fabric and tangled legs beneath the sheets. antoinette’s perfume, still faint in the corners like a ghost refusing to leave. the songbird had long since scampered onto the balcony, her heartbeat quick and trembling. 

let her rot there. let her soak in her humiliation. let her catch a cold and shiver her way to an early grave.

lestat, beneath him, wore triumph like jewelry. already, in the slant of his mouth, in the bright, wicked shine of his eyes, louis had seen it: that deep, incurable smugness blooming the instant he’d kicked down the damn door and dragged his maker out from under that vile woman’s hands. he’d wanted to carve that look off lestat’s face. kiss it away, tear it away, fuck it away. each breathless laugh had only stoked him further, until rage had folded in on itself, collapsing once more into needwantlove.

nigh on seven years of silence, brittle and cold, had cracked open all at once.

vicious and petty, louis bit down hard on a familiar collarbone, a beloved architecture of bone and sinew.

“my heart beats in spite of you. not because of you.”

there, one last twist of the knife, a lie bundled up in a nice gift box with a satin bow. his grip tightened in angel-bright curls, stained mouths hoovering mere inches from one another. a lifetime away.

claudia was going to be furious with him. 

@evilanew

Nicolas would have been content to remain in this moment. Bare skin sticky with summer heat and heart pounding with the evenings vigor, Nicolas could only smile. A thousand and one reasons for why his ears burned and cheeks felt plum. Were he to list every which way Lestat had seduced him they would grow old in this room (such a fate sounded sweeter than an apple freshly plucked from its tree): 'It's the way your tongue moves against your lips. The sound of your voice traveling across a room. Your jaw going slack as you finally doze off. The smell of your neck in the morning and the feeling of your hands, strong from cutting wood, gently traveling my body as though it's a new road each time.'

a maddening truth to swallow, that one. silence has never made a difference between them, words have only ever been cover for the calamity that goes on under it. carefully plucked for those that couldn't catch the underlying conversation, made to blossom and ooze poison lest those around them think them affectionate. god forbid, armand muses with something of a look of restrained pleasure, what would lestat do if there were witnesses to the tenderness that grows with abandon when they're alone to their own devices? who were they when the only performance was the forbearance that comes in their dire collapse inwards? armand quietly regards his swinging feet over the edge of the stone terrace, the city as it twinkles and winks, bright splashes of oranges and reds that only bring a haze of it to the stars. ❝ i can't hide from you. ❞ is what he says, having to clear his throat after, to make room for more. armand turns half his body so that he can glance back, overcome with the old imprint of his affections. in his eyes, a reflection of the moon behind lestat. ❝ thank you for not telling them where i am. it's better this way. ❞

starter for @evilanew

He asks about Armand, and Molloy tells him to fuck off. Jesus, is being an asshole the only quality preserved by immortality?

Later that evening, he studies the only photo he has of his mom until his eyes burn, his mind drifting in and out of what he doesn't yet know. What had happened in the years after their shared memory was severed? Had she tried to look for him? Probably not, with T. J. fucking Eckleburg always watching. Page 227 says she was killed in Vienna in 2008, the year she went missing from his life. The photo he'd been AirDropped shows her in more recent years, in London, sporting a wrist tattoo of the Talamasca symbol.

It's almost a little too obvious to be true, isn't it? The British flag on the reflection. Big ol' Ben. It could very well be a setup, a shitty Photoshop job, but right now it's all he's got.

His tongue grows gently numb with the familiar bitterness of the benzo as he waits for it to wash away the swell of emotion that threatens to engulf him. He shuts his laptop, folding his arms over it and resting his head in their cradle until not even the racket of the city can dam his exhaustion any longer.

****

Mr. Molloy's taste for fame makes him easy to track down again. If he won't tell him where to find this Armand guy, then maybe the book's problematic diva will. Guy gives himself a couple of headaches trying to fine comb through the Interview, all the while digesting everything Helen had shared with him, the upcoming flight to London next week, and whatever tricks Burton had pulled on him at the penthouse. So they're real. Maybe. He hasn't seen any bloodsucking yet, just a lot of wide-eyed staring, manipulation and circus tricks. Some parts of the book are incredibly hard to read and he forces himself to skip ahead, searching for structural clues instead: timeline, locations, names.

If he's going to sniff out Lestat, he needs to do a little homework.

The studio is easy enough to get into. He jumps in to help with a delivery through the back door, his repurposed NYU library access card dangling from a nondescript lanyard, jeans and hoodie, nobody bats an eye. James Leamas, it's my first day. Here to help with wardrobe. He takes the lift up to where they're shooting, follows the jittery crowd. It hasn't started, they're sorting out the set. Lestat is not here yet but everyone's already on edge, an undercurrent of excitement and fearful anticipation keeping the whole place abuzz. Someone yanks him back out into the corridors, thrusts a clipboard into his hands.

"What the hell are you doing? Get the outfits ready."

𝖆𝖋𝖋𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖙𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖒𝖕𝖙𝖘.

first, rhea's blessed with a rare stroke of luck to be one of the few fortunate fans ( or “ fangs, ” to get technical ) to have scored a ticket to the vampire lestat's first ever show tomorrow night – her head had spun so hard, the dizziness has yet to recede – then, she bumps into the frontman, himself on the eve of said debut. not literally, thank fuck for that.

she'd ventured to find a park bench, guitar in tow, simply to play. the air is fresh, albeit chilly, but giddy energy had forced them from the cramped space they call home. it's a lot of mindless strumming at first, to find a chord, the proper tuning . . . laughs through her nose as the song that's become a deeply embedded earworm over the past five days takes over her hands, now ; back to the tuning pegs, then to settle upon the instrument's neck. a deep breath.

a. c sharp minor. f sharp minor. d. repeat.

the opening is simple, no fumbles thus far, nodding along in time. it's difficult not to sing, & so they do – low, quiet, warm, like the occasional summer breeze through the trees – barely above the music.     ❝    you really caught my eye. i think you're somethin' special, babe. i wanna take you out tonight, i think we got --       ❞    

all at once, everything stops. their voice. their hands, resting over guitar strings. their breath. her heart, for a moment or two. & for a stretch longer, time. she is stone cold sober, & unless rhea has really, truly, completely lost herself to her delusions, that's lestat, himself in the dim evening light standing right in front of her fucking face. nope. he's still there when she blinks. in fact it's only when he speaks that she'd rather dumbly frozen in disbelief, grin & all.