frostbitten-written reblogged
Oh dear oh dear
@justthehiddleswrites This is me with Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries. I’m guessing this is you with Adam from OLLA?
frostbitten-written reblogged
beautiful cover art by @dianamolloy
18 + only
can’t tell you how weird it felt to be out in the world.
I suppose if you were alive then, alive and an adult which would make you quite old indeed, you probably remember those first days when the US believed itself to be safe enough to open the doors and let a little air inside.
There was a book about that time, the title was a quote from the end of Dante’s Inferno when Virgil leads Dante out of hell. “And we came outside and saw the stars again.”
Laufeyson led me outside, and that was what it was. I saw the stars again and I realized that it had been since long before Covid that I had seen them. I had stopped looking.
Though the world was cracked the littlest bit open, the sky was darker, and the air quieter, than it would normally be. There was a velvety feel to the damp air. I had learned that my body being still inside somehow made me more sensitive to what was happening outside of it.
Not able to help it, I shuddered a little at its touch.
Not in revulsion, though it was unsettling.
For whatever reason, Loki continually side-eyed me as we walked out into the garden, to go to his car. As if he was afraid I were a skittish doe that would bolt away, breaking a leg so he would be further inconvenienced, or was just going to collapse in a heap and crush his newly blossoming azaleas.
Or maybe he was waiting to see if I rebelled again.
I had been less than happy with the outfit he had picked for me to wear for our grocery run. Partly because it was shiny, but mostly because it came from the standing closet where he kept the items of clothing left behind by his various one-night snacks.
“So this woman left without her entire dress?” I asked, holding the thing at arm’s length. It wasn’t that it was ugly or cheap. Made of fine, silvery mesh slip dress with a silk lining, and had obviously cost someone more than a reasonable person would spend on something that they were planning on having ripped off of them anyway.
He shrugged, “It was growing early and I wanted her to leave, and I believe she had some manner of a jacket. By the time Zofia found it I had lost her number. Do not fear, the likelihood we shall run into her is rather slim.”
“Not really what I was worried about. I don’t want to wear it,” I thrust it back at him. “It’s not … I don’t dress like that. Like someone who has a stylist instead of a personality.”
He thrust it back, “And I have no doubt that you have nothing suitable for where we are going.”
“Where is that?”
“No place you would have heard of.”
That was probably true. I hadn’t gone out much since moving to town, and then the world got sick, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant. “Go fuck yourself.”
Rather than answering me, or getting angry, Laufeyson draped the dress over a chair, “I am going to see if you have any shoes that won’t look ridiculous with it. Do you have makeup?”
When you are a vampire your stomach doesn’t growl when you are hungry, it aches. Like it has been crumpled like an old piece of paper, like it is giving itself papercuts. That won the argument for him, and nothing else.
His car was as beautiful on the inside as it was on the out, with wooden panels and leather seats and all sorts of other, impressive looking things that I didn’t understand. Laufeyson drove with the careless grace and speed of someone who had been driving since the first automobile was built. And who didn’t fear death. In other circumstances I might have been excited and exhilarated by it, but instead I felt-
Raw.
Exposed.
Naked.
I looked over at him, in his suit, his hair out of its braid but obeying his will. He was fine.
It had been so long since I had been outside of his house and even longer since I had been outside of mine and now here I was riding through the whipping air, dressed in not much more than a net, with bare arms, my tits all but hanging out, without even a heartbeat to protect me.
I grabbed the seat at either side of my thighs to keep from wrapping my arms around myself to hide. The leather groaned in complaint as I squeezed harder and harder until my fingers popped through it in several places.
Laufeyson heard it happen, and I heard the gritting of his teeth.
We pulled up in front of a nondescript building with what at first looked like a boarded-up storefront. Closer up, after we left the car in the parking lot of the abandoned mini-mall next to it, I could see the boards were oak, with a faint mural carved into it, and a door that was flush enough to be nearly invisible. Only a key card reader glowing faintly next to it gave anything away.
He had a keycard, of course. “What is this place?”
“The Club Hush, it’s semi-private.”
“I hate it already.”
The door opened and we walked into the belly of the haute bourgeoisie. Dark, shining, thumping with bass overlaid with swooning, droning vocals, smelling like incense and high-end booze, too crowded and too convinced it was interesting.
And I hated it more.
I was miserable. I wanted to go home.
