alette,

Everything you heard is true. I was the senator. I was the woman. I was the murderer. I was the wife. And now I'm everything on that list and more. Kiss me, and you will see how important I am. sc_online_t(234002,"nightmare(s)","#f5dcdc"); Free Tumblr Online User Counter

[ross-wallace-deactivated2013011]

[pm]

Young willing blood isn’t your type? There’s no harm in it. You’re actually giving them pleasure. But whatever floats your fancy.

I do hope you’ll at least go out with me again sometime. 

[small-winged-one-blog]

[pm] Pleasure? How so? I don't understand.

I--I don't know. Perhaps.

[sinkinginboiledbrains-blog-deac]

[ross-wallace-deactivated2013011]

[pm] And there’s plenty of ways of feeding without killing the sponsor. I know, Alette. I’ve got a few… control… problems in that area. Took me decades to learn how to feed without killing. But it’s doable. And it’s a better way of living.

There’s so many more tender morsels /begging/ us to bite them, Alette. There’s no reason to live on the blood of cats or cold stale stuff.

Let me show you some night.

[small-winged-one-blog]

[pm]

Absolutely not. I've tried that before, and I--I, no. No.

I am not interested in anything more than discourse, Mr. Wallace.

[ross-wallace-deactivated2013011]

[pm] I don’t eat from gypsies. Just like I don’t steal or lie to them. Because they will fuck you up.

And if you’ve fed from a human, how can you give that up? Animal blood just isn’t the same. I’ve tried it. Had to back when crossings by ships took longer. Rats are just plain unhygienic. 

How do you manage to thrive on animal blood? Or are you using cold blood? That donation stuff?

[small-winged-one-blog]

[pm] I try to dine on cats. I have a hope the nine lives will rub off.

I have been out of the area for some time, though I hope to contact a local hospital soon for their blood donation packets. Having orchestrated quite a few blood drives in Cleveland back in my day, I am sure they'll have no problem once they hear Alette Dupont is asking.

Plenty of vampires do this, I've heard. Plenty. I'm not a freak.

[small-winged-one-blog]

fairfax-for-the-greater-good replied to your post: fairfax-for-the-greater-good replied to your post:...

Yes. May I ask what you’ve heard?

You are a beautiful woman with exquisite taste in both wine and gourmet, who my desolate friend is lucky to have a friend in.

[small-winged-one-blog]

fairfax-for-the-greater-good replied to your post: fairfax-for-the-greater-good replied to your post:...

I was merely attempting to be respectful. How you chose to answer is entirely your prerogative, Ms. Dupont.

I'm appreciative of your respect.

I'm afraid I haven't had the chance to meet you, though I've heard small bits and pieces from Rup. You must be the one and only Ms. Fairfax, from the Council, yes?

[ross-wallace-deactivated2013011]

[pm] Soon as the Romani stop spitting in my general direction, I’ll think about taking away the term gypsy. Have you been to Romania? Or Italy? They call ‘em a hell of a lot worse there.

And I’m hoping this isn’t too personal for you… but have you ever fed on a human?

[small-winged-one-blog]

[pm] I have been to Italy. As such, I don't always do as the Romans do. A people's prejudices shouldn't be adopted simply because of a history or a proximity to the other people. The Romani have a rich culture and are a generous people.

Don't eat them and perhaps they would refrain from spitting on you?

I have.

[small-winged-one-blog]

fairfax-for-the-greater-good replied to your post: You should have stayed away. No one missed you or wanted you to come back. You’re only going to hurt Spike again and make him fall.

[pm] And how did you come to be ensouled, Ms. Dupont?

When the sire is ensouled, so is the sired.

I see no reason to reply to this privately. The world should know I'm no threat.

[small-winged-one-blog]

[pm]

Do I not seem ensouled enough to you, Mr. Wallace? 

There are only two others like me. Don’t fret. It isn’t catching.

[ross-wallace-deactivated2013011]

[pm] There’s a THIRD?

Before I got to town I hadn’t heard of a single one. Okay, I might have heard about a curse, but I was pretty sure that was just gypsy lying scum. That’s what gypsies do. Lie, steal, and curse. … Guess I should have believed the gypsy thing.

But you too? 

What do you feed on?

[small-winged-one-blog]

[pm] Mr. Wallace, please refrain from using such derogatory language about the Romani people around me. Thank you.

The one you've heard of is named Angel, who was cursed with it, from my knowledge. My sire is ensouled, and so I am as well. That makes three. 

I feed on anything but other people. It isn't... awful.

[small-winged-one-blog]

ross-wallace replied to your post: You should have stayed away. No one missed you or wanted you to come back. You’re only going to hurt Spike again and make him fall.

[pm] You’re /ensouled/? What is it with this town? Is it like some catching disease? …Sorry, that was rude of me. I just… didn’t get that impression the other night.

[pm]

Do I not seem ensouled enough to you, Mr. Wallace? 

There are only two others like me. Don't fret. It isn't catching.

[small-winged-one-blog]

You should have stayed away. No one missed you or wanted you to come back. You're only going to hurt Spike again and make him fall.

I'm not going to hurt anyone. I am ensouled and domesticated. I'm a person, I'm clean.

[small-winged-one-blog]

you do not do || spike & alette

[lovetobrag-blog]

Dru wore red to parties and white to bed.

He’d pulled himself together.  He could go to bars now, hit the pavements, buy blood, without comin’ out of it with fingernail shapes in his palms.  Call it what you’d like: rehab, detox, incarceration.  Call it what you’d like, but it had worked well enough.  His skin wasn’t twitching when he woke up half-through morning.  All those folks he’d done in weren’t showing up in the patterns behind closed eyes.  Spike was starting to remember what having a soul was supposed to be like, if you did it right — there was a dullness to it, and now his hours alone were quiet again.  Well, they were mostly quiet.  They were quiet when they weren’t spotted with early fanmail.  But hell, that came with the territory, didn’t it? Silly little slip with Angel’s name, sure, but it wasn’t wrong.  Souled up doesn’t mean boring.  He’d see to it that it didn’t mean boring.

Part of that meant staying presentable.  Spike’s definition of presentable was a little different than MBA school; it mostly involved expressive eyebrows and shirts that stretched just tight enough over a few defined parts.  The usual, right? Keep your hair white, keep your smile sarcastic, and don’t you ever ever let those eyes brim wet.  He’d spent too much time out of commission these last few years.  He’d been stagnant far too long.

The shaving cream was a little thinner this time around.  It didn’t sit still, but shifted slightly every time the straight razor made his face flinch.  Spike had slept in tonight.  He’d woken up yawning and he’d taken a good half hour to get dressed.  These nights by himself, he didn’t reach for his black tees so quickly.  Startin’ to get cold out there for a bloke who was only ever, at best, lukewarm.  When the cotton of the grey thermal had brushed against his cheeks on the way down, it’d scratched and pulled.  How long had it been since he’d gotten apricot-smooth? Couldn’t see the hair on the telly interview, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.  Slow to grow — he was dead, remember? Still.  It’d grow in dark.  Can’t have that.

So he ran a washcloth under the hose outside, sat in the armchair with folded towel on bent knee, and got to work.  He remembered well enough.  He’d done it by himself before.  No reflection, no guide but the shape of his bones and the lilt of his slow hand. This was the way he’d always done it.  This was the way his father had done.  This was the way Dru liked best, but she’d do it for him, and she’d cut him just under the adam’s apple every goddamn time.  I sliced you up again, she’d say.  Giggle, never lucid, neither of them fully there when blood showed.  Lick it ‘til it dried, cream and all.  

She wore white to bed.

Someone came in.  Someone always came in.  Spike knew before the door slammed shut behind her.  He was just on the tricky bit, careful up his throat, when her steady footsteps made his closed eyes swing open.  Slipped his wrist at an angle on the up-stroke.  The wet foam slid to cover the nick.  Stung.  ”Bloody hell,” he said.  He stood sudden, ran his thumb over the open skin, wiped the rest of the shaving cream off the mostly-done side of his face — he stood and ran and wiped clean all at once.  Could he stand and run and get clean? She was thinner and sadder.  He’d burnt her things so the smoke would flush her out and now she’d brought it all back in here, sawdust and baby’s breath.  She wasn’t allowed.  She wasn’t allowed.  

“You’re not allowed,” he said.  Alette.  Alette was walking, stepping here and here and here.  Her soles were clean but he could see her footprints.  He could see all the traces she’d left.  She was forbidden and she was white to bed.  ”I said — I said, damn it, I told you no.”  He wanted to step back, away from her, but he stayed instead.  He’d grown roots again.  She wasn’t gonna to tear them out.  ”I changed the locks.”

[small-winged-one-blog]

It didn't matter much to here if she was allowed or not. She had been here before. This was the place where they were supposed to be desecrated from existence in. Within these stone walls, their beings were going to be splashed up on the rocks. They'd holed up here, kissing and making love and painting Spike's nails a faint glitter as they waited for the Apocalypse to come. Then it had, and they'd been ripped apart. However, nothing but their separation had painted the walls.

Alette couldn't smell herself inside the crypt. She imagined Spike spilling his hair bleach over each stone, over the stone casket he sometimes slept on top of. It smelled clean--and jogged her mind back to the Glass Box, how she had kept the place this spotless smell, kept it in bleach and Bounty.

"Spike," she said. She was sad. She was happy. She had to keep talking. He couldn't turn her away like a dog begging for a bone from the dinner table, out into the cold again. They'd been in love up until she'd been displaced back into a past where she was happy with a beating heart. She'd seen the life she'd had, and yet he was here, telling her off because she had found it in herself to come back to him? Even after being human again, Alette was begging to be with the man who had cut her pulse short. And he was acting as if he was better than her, than this situation, their love. Like you could bleach it out of your own stone heart and wipe away the grime to make yourself whole again.

There was so much to say to him. That she'd been terrified when she'd been popped back into the present. It hurt her to feel the lack of pulse, and for days, she'd done nothing but wait and watch for it. Her bones had turned thin again. Alette hadn't fed. When she did, it was from rats in the streets. Alette couldn't recall where she was, who she was, or what she was supposed to do. Scatterbrained and spark-veined, Alette's mind had skipped like a torched John Lennon record: Paris. Sid. Death. Broken. Gin. Cherries. William.

She'd pieced together the parts and gone to France. It was there that she let herself breathe. It was there, in the city she'd been in before with Spike that Alette could start to let herself remember the painful parts and accept them. Surrounding herself, wrapping up in the city where he'd left her, Alette's mind repaired. She drank wine. There was a man named James. Blond and fair and angry, he helped her. When he went to kiss her, Alette turned him away with two fingers and five tears.

Once whole, Alette came back to Cleveland. And he had to understand that. If she had come back even a day sooner, there would be parts of her splashed on the crypt wall and she'd be broken and bleeding and making him drink it the broken blood. Alette couldn't do that to him. She remembered it all, and she knew he wanted that promise she'd never been able to full say: I won't hurt you.

So, she whispered it now, her fingers sliding around Spike's wrists. "I'm not going to hurt you, Spike," she said, her eyes glassy and trained onto his.

[ephemerallyscott-blog]

[small-winged-one-blog]

tête-à-tête || alette & ross

[ross-wallace-deactivated2013011]

Alette was a force of nature. He couldn’t fathom what had driven her out of town, but she certainly hadn’t come back ill-prepared. If he was going to keep up with her, he would need to start running.

“I don’t know about you, but nothing sounds better than a panini right now,” she stated as she stared him down.

Ross could recognize that she meant something by that stare. He couldn’t figure out what. Confusion spread across his features and he pushed them away under his usual careful mask. “I have to admit,” he said slowly, “they’re usually not my style.”

Actually, Ross tried to remember the last time he’d consumed human food. Alcohol was a constant substance in his life. But food? A sixties fondue party maybe? Before even that? Sometime in the nineteenth century, he was sure he had. Dinner parties were easier to avoid in the twentieth. All those reasons not to be seen eating.

As Alette led the way into the bistro, Ross realized that the woman was intent on eating. Human food. Why? What would be the point? They couldn’t receive any nourishment from it. He followed her inside and on to a table.

He tried to carry on their conversation from the vehicle. While he didn’t want to talk about vampire philosophies out in a human restaurant, Ross could talk about the stupid little blog some more. “Musical theater’s a passing interest of mine,” Ross admitted. He glanced at the menu and wondered at the different items on it. No wonder Americans struggled with obesity. After a second, he put the menu down. “Have you ever seen a production of Spring Awakening?”

[small-winged-one-blog]

Not his usual style? If Alette closed her eyes, she could almost smell the blood rubbed into Ross's clothes, his flipped hair, the way his eyes gleamed. It was temptation--maybe she was elaborating it into existence in her mind, wanting him to be some sort of dark horse who will throw her off the wagon and pummel her under the wheels. 

Alette nodded as the man prattled on about musical theater. She had a perfectly amused look on her face, even if she actually found the topic not desirable. There was so much about Ross that she was interested in that didn't involve men in ballet shoes or musicals about teen pregnancy. "I have," Alette said as she picked out a red wine for them to enjoy off the short but fantastic list. It was the most expensive bottle. Even if Alette didn't have blood or a beating heart or a successful social life, she had money. "I was impressed. Nothing can capture my heart quite like a good production of Phantom, though. 

After the waiter took her wine order, Alette turned to Ross. They were in a secluded part of the bistro. No one would be able to hear them, or no one worth noting. Alette wasn't afraid of being overheard anyway. Not with Spike on live TV, yammering about what a special snowflake he was. God bless that blonde boy. She loved him so.

"What brings you to Cleveland, Mr. Wallace?" Alette began.

[small-winged-one-blog]

Call @ Alette

Leslie: [stares at the phone for a moment, uncertain about her own reluctance to make this call. Scoffs finally, coming to a decision as she dials] Ms. Dupont? I'm terribly sorry for the delay and now short notice, but I am free this evening, should you still wish to meet up.

Alette: Why, hello there, Ms. Elsberry. I would love meeting up tonight. Where would you like to dine? [You can hear the smile in her voice.]

Leslie: Are you familiar with Crave? Excellent place, good sushi. Extensive wine list as well, if I remember correctly. [a slight pause] If you don't mind my asking, however, why is our meeting so urgent?

Alette: I am always in favor for raw and wine. And my dear, I'll answer that question when we meet. See you soon. [click]

[small-winged-one-blog]

Call @ Alette

Leslie: [stares at the phone for a moment, uncertain about her own reluctance to make this call. Scoffs finally, coming to a decision as she dials] Ms. Dupont? I'm terribly sorry for the delay and now short notice, but I am free this evening, should you still wish to meet up.

Alette: Why, hello there, Ms. Elsberry. I would love meeting up tonight. Where would you like to dine? [You can hear the smile in her voice.]

[hanna-hunts-deactivated20150404]