#Orleans Hotel and Casino | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

harleybeaumont · 2 years

Text

Cordonian Ghost Hunters

Episode 1 - The Decuir Hotel: New Orleans, LA

Book - TRR AU

Pairings - none so far

Synopsis - Three lifelong friends have a terrifying encounter with the paranormal that changes the course of their lives. Determined to find answers, they travel the world, investigating unexplained phenomena and documenting their findings. Drake, the unapologetic skeptic, Max the true believer, and Liam the analytical linchpin that holds the team together become the worldwide sensation known as.. The Cordonian Ghost Hunters.

A/N - This fic started with me and @angelasscribbles discussing how we wanted to write something with a ‘horror feel’ to it, and we both came up with different ideas. Go read hers, if you haven't! Thanks to Angela and @txemrn for brainstorming with me and helping me come up with ideas to get this started! And thank you Angela for literally writing the synopsis for me when I finished this fic and couldn’t get my brain to form another coherent thought. Lol

A/N 2- I plan on having several more chapters as the guys go to different haunted locations across the world. I’m open to location suggestions if you have them. I’m tagging those who are on my perma tag list and a couple others who have asked, but if anyone wants on or off the list let me know! <3

Chapter Warnings - supernatural creepiness, hauntings, language, mentions of death

Word Count - 7,300 (Sorry! This first chapter is long because it explains the backstory of how everything came to be. The next chapters won't be this long!)

Episode 1 - The Decuir Hotel: New Orleans, LA

The air was thick and damp with humidity as they stepped out of the car. The sounds of cicadas and crickets played a melody that filled the warm night air around them. South Louisiana. This was stop number three on their tour of historical locations around America.

Liam was given permission to take a break from his royal duties after he convinced his father that he needed to travel the world and “find himself.” His older brother Leo had already gone through his social season and was engaged to a gorgeous woman from Monterisso named Katalina. Liam actually liked her, and it was nice seeing his brother happy. He knew they would make a great king and queen for Cordonia someday.

Liam convinced Drake and Maxwell to travel with him, telling them they could choose the first two stops on their tour of America.

Their first stop was chosen by Maxwell- Las Vegas. The ‘entertainment capital of the world’ had proven to be just that. During their stay the guys visited several clubs, bars, casinos, shows, and even went skydiving.

The second stop was chosen by Drake - Tennessee. First they went to Nashville, so Drake could visit where his mother was born. The next stop was the Jack Daniels whiskey tasting tour, which the guys figured was the real reason Drake wanted to go to Tennessee in the first place.

Liam’s choice surprised everyone - New Orleans, Louisiana. When Maxwell and Drake asked why, he said he always wanted to visit during Mardi Gras. Fortunately for him, the guys had no idea that Mardi Gras was months away, so they didn’t suspect the real reason he wanted to go. Growing up, Liam was always interested in ghost stories and haunted houses, and the rich history in Southern Louisiana intrigued him. He loved watching documentaries about voodoo, haunted old buildings, creepy tombs and graveyards, ghosts and witchcraft. Louisiana had it all.

Liam grinned as he stepped onto the enormous wrap around porch of the three hundred year old building. “The Decuir Hotel.” He looked up at the imposing structure in awe. “This place is gorgeous, right?”

“It’s something.” Drake said, peering into a window. “I can’t believe they let you rent out this entire hotel for the night. They must think you’re a pompous ass, needing a whole hotel for yourself!” Drake chuckled, adjusting his backpack on his shoulder.

Liam laughed. “Well, they were more than happy to accommodate my request after I gave the staff compensation for missing a night of work. Not to mention paying to rent out every room.”

“Wait..” Max looked at him incredulously. “You sent all the staff home? So.. it’s just us staying here? Not another single person inside?!”

“Nope. We’re just waiting for Bastien’s guys to finish doing a sweep of the building, so we can head inside.” Liam smirked, turning back to the door.

“Why did you send all the employees home?” Drake arched an eyebrow.

Liam grinned and shrugged. “To see if it’s really haunted.”

Max and Drake both turned to Liam in surprise. “Li, you can’t be serious.”

Liam ignored Drake, running his hand across the wooden banister. “Wouldn’t that be fascinating though? This hotel is three hundred years old! Can you imagine how many people stayed here over the years?”

“I think it’s creepy.” Max couldn’t help but shiver as he stepped close behind Drake and Liam in front of the old hotel. He wasn’t sure why, but something about this place sent a chill down his spine. He couldn’t help but be curious about the amount of people who probably died here, hell, who were probably killed here. After all, certain parts of the south held a dark history of contemptible injustice and mistreatment. If there were any malevolent spirits, this is probably the place they would hang out at.

Drake clapped Maxwell on the back with a chuckle. “Dude, you don't really believe in ghosts, do you?”

Max glared at him. “Of course I believe in ghosts! And if you knew what was good for you, you would too! Haven’t you seen Poltergeist?!”

Liam gestured behind them toward the two palace guards who had ridden with them in the car. “Max, there is a guard stationed at every door, and-” he checked the text he just got from Bastien. “-they are done with their sweep and it’s completely empty. It’s safe.”

Max rolled his eyes. “Oh ya, I’m sure the fucking undead give a shit about ‘palace guards.’ Dammit Liam, get with the program! They can walk through walls! What makes you think they are going to be intimidated by our meager, mortal forms! We’re just pathetic sacks of flesh to them!”

The loud laugh that burst out of Drake made Maxwell jump in surprise. “What the actual fuck are you talking about, Beaumont?”

“I don’t know!” Max shuddered as he stepped closer to Liam. “I just want to get through this night as quickly as possible.”

Liam paused before opening the door. “You can always sleep in the car if you want.”

“Oh ya, so the Rougarou can bust out the windows and drag me into the night before devouring the flesh from my bones? No thank you.”

Liam shook his head with a smile and pushed open the heavy, ornate door.

The first thing he noticed when stepping into the grand entryway was the smell. It wasn’t a bad smell, just.. old. Slightly musty. Liam was used to being in old places. After all, he lived in a palace with literally hundreds of years of history in it, but something about this place was just different. It was like you were breathing in the life and memories of the building.

The next thing he noticed was how dark it was. Being that this hotel was built in the 1700’s, of course it originally had no electricity, but renovators had put in lights, plumbing, and (thankfully) air conditioning. Noting that they wanted to keep the historic feel of the building, each room was usually only lit by artificial candles and lanterns.

The third thing Liam noticed when they entered the foyer was the overall feeling of the building. Something that warmed and chilled him at the same time. It was quiet and empty, yet somehow it felt like the hotel was full of life. Liam couldn’t help but feel a thrill go through him, as this was the exact reason he wanted to come here in the first place. He knew the history here, although he didn’t dare mention it to Maxwell. He couldn’t wait to explore each room further.

“Your Highness.” Bastien nodded to Liam as he made his way over. “A guard will be stationed outside of your room and at each entrance throughout the night to ensure your safety.”

Liam smiled. “You know what.. That won’t be necessary.”

“But, your father insisted-”

“You can set up a perimeter outside if you want, but tonight I just want the three of us to be inside.”

Bastien opened and closed his mouth a couple times, trying to decide whether to obey Constantine or Liam in this situation. “Are you sure, sir?”

Liam clapped Bastien on the back. “It’s ok, Bas. I trust that your guys checked this place out thoroughly. It’ll be fine.”

Basien gave the orders for the guards to go outside and once the place was empty, Maxwell looked at him wide eyed. “Liam! What the hell? You said the guards were here and we were gonna be safe from ghosts!”

Drake laughed. “And you said that the guards wouldn’t help anyway. Something about them hating our fleshy sacks or something..” Drake couldn’t help but laugh harder at Maxwell’s indignant expression.

“You know how much I want to laugh at the fact that you just said ‘fleshy sacks’? But I can't! That’s how fucking creeped out I am by this place.”

“If you’re gonna bitch all night, then I’ll lock your ass in a closet.” Drake said as he tossed his bag into a corner of the foyer and plopped down in an antique chair.

“You wouldn’t dare!” Maxwell glared at Drake. “Liam, do you hear what this asshole is-” Max stopped as he realized Liam was removing several different items from his backpack and placing them on the front desk. “What's all that?”

Liam shot a quick glance to Maxwell, then continued unloading his bag. “Just some stuff I thought we could use to maximize our experience here.”

Drake made his way over and picked up what looked like a small camera. “What’s this for?”

“It’s a thermal camera.” Liam grinned. “It can detect the presence of heat energy and can measure thermal changes wherever you point it.”

Drake groaned. “Oh Li, not you too. You really believe in all this haunted shit?”

“Of course I do!” Liam pulled out three walkie talkies and digital recorders. “Get ready boys. Tonight we’re going ghost hunting.”

________________________________________________________

“You can't be serious!” Maxwell backed away, heading toward the front door. “You know what.. I think I’ll take my chances outside with the Rougarou.”

“Go ahead.” Drake gestured to the door. “I know you’re a coward. Go sleep in the car.”

“Coward?” Maxwell glared at Drake with his hands on his hips.

Drake shrugged. “It’s ok, man. I won’t tell anyone that you practically pissed your pants as soon as we got inside.”

“I didn’t! No.. you know what? I’m not sleeping in the car while you post a pic on insta of you and Liam living it up in this hotel with the hashtag ‘max is a pussy.’ Nope. Sorry Drake, I'm staying here.”

Drake shared an amused look with Liam, who turned away to hide his laughter. They knew Max too well and that trick always worked on him. Liam handed Maxwell a walkie talkie and winked. “Ok then. Welcome to the team.”

“Right.” Maxwell took it nervously. “Well, I hardly doubt there will be any ghosts anyway with the Mardi Gras parade coming by. When does it start anyway? I thought there’d be more people outside by now.”

“Errr.. about that..”

_________________________________________________

Liam decided to set up their ghost hunting headquarters in the grand ballroom since it was in the center of the hotel. It had been remodeled slightly, but the ornate artwork, decorations, and sparkling crystal chandelier were authentic to the original design.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Drake asked as he looked around the room. “Did you tell them to keep the lights off to make it extra creepy?”

Liam chuckled as he handed each of them a flashlight. “Something like that.”

Drake picked up several pieces of expensive looking equipment from the table. “How’d you get your old man to let you buy all this stuff? I know he’s not the type to condone ‘ghost hunting’.”

Liam smirked. “Travel expenses.”

“Right.” Drake couldn’t help but chuckle. If Liam was going to waste his fathers money on this, he was all for it. Constantine spent enough of Cordonia’s money on balls and parades and other useless bullshit to promote his image.

Maxwell sighed defeatedly, only slightly resolved to the fact that he was not going to get to party during Mardi Gras. “What does this do?” Max hesitantly held up something that looked like a walkie talkie with several small buttons on it.

“That’s what they call a ‘spirit box’. It continuously sweeps through different radio frequencies, and entities can manipulate it to talk to us. In real time!” Liam giggled with glee as he turned it on, holding it out so they could hear the radio static and white noise. “It kind of.. Gives them the energy they need to communicate. Hopefully someone will talk to us tonight! Wouldn’t that be awesome!?”

“No, it would not be awesome.” Maxwell shuddered at the thought, and picked up another device from the table. “Don’t tell me ghosts can use a digital recorder to talk to us. Bertrand uses these all the time, then gives them to me to upload to his computer. I told him he could use an app that translates voice to text, but you know he likes the sound of his own voice.”

“Oh ya.” Liam grinned. “We’re each gonna have one of these tonight. We can ask questions, and once we play back the digital recorder, we’ll see if they answered! Might need to upload them to the computer and use a program to sharpen them up or enhance the sound. Think you could do that, Max?”

“Me?” Maxwell’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Ya. You said you do it for Bert all the time.” Liam grinned broadly and clapped Maxwell on the back. “Hey, you can be our tech guy tonight!”

Despite the fear of possibly hearing a voice from ‘the beyond’, Maxwell felt a swell of pride inside that he could actually be useful for once. “O-okay. Ya. Ya, I can do that!” Maxwell grinned, nodding his head enthusiastically.

“Who’s ready to get started?!” Liam clapped his hands together in excitement and Max jumped back, startled.

“Shit, Liam.” Maxwell ran his shaking hands through his hair and sat in a chair. “If we’re doing this.. At least tell us what to expect. Like.. What kind of paranormal stuff goes on here?”

Liam sat across from Drake and Maxwell with his hands steepled, trying to look as dramatic as possible. “Let me tell you about Sally. You see, she was the daughter of the former owners of this hotel back in the 1800’s. She was very mischievous, constantly playing tricks on the other guests in the hotel. Well.. unfortunately that led to her untimely demise. She, uh-”

“Don’t.” Maxwell shook his head. “Nope, nope, nope. Don’t wanna hear about the creepy child ghost anymore. Next, please.”

Liam thumbed through some of the papers he had printed out. “Well, there have been various sightings believed to be former guests who perished in the hotel over the years. People have seen a lady in a Victorian dress pass through the halls. Um.. a man in a top hat seems to hang out around the front desk occasionally. But room 413 is the one with the most activity. A woman is said to have died in that very room, and often makes her presence known to the guests who dare to sleep there. Many have even reported finding mysterious scratch marks on their body when they awoke the next morning. It’s where we’re staying tonight.”

“Of course it is.” Maxwell stood up and made his way across the ballroom, flashlight in hand. “Can we at least get a snack in the kitchen first? I’d like to have something sweet for my last meal.”

Drake rolled his eyes and followed Max across the room, heading toward the kitchen.

“Alright, we can eat first.” Liam chuckled and grabbed his own flashlight, preparing to follow them. The horrific sound of a man’s scream coming from their direction caused his blood to run cold.

“What the hell?” Liam took off after them, sprinting across the ballroom and down the hall toward the kitchen. He froze when he saw Maxwell standing a few feet away from a small girl wearing a white dress.

“Oh my god, it’s Sally!!” Maxwell shrieked before scrambling back across the room behind Drake.

Just then, the kitchen lights flicked on and Bastien and a man entered. “I apologize if we frightened you all.” The man said with a smile. “I’m the head chef here, Maurice, and this is my daughter Amelia. When she heard there was a real prince staying here, she insisted I bring her along to meet you.”

“Holy shit.” Maxwell whispered in relief, holding his hand over his pounding heart. Drake laughed hysterically and Liam gave Maurice an apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry Maurice.” Liam nodded politely to the man and crouched down to the little girl's level. “I hope my friends didn’t scare you.” Liam stage whispered to Amelia. “The one wearing the squid shirt is a bit of a chicken.” Amelia put her hand over her mouth and giggled as she looked at Maxwell.

“It’s quite alright.” Maurice smiled. “I just wanted to let you know that the kitchen is yours for the night. In the refrigerator, I have several Louisiana dishes prepared that you may not be familiar with. But anything you want is yours - Gumbo, etouffee, jambalaya, red beans and rice. Truly, help yourself.”

“Oh my god, yes.” Drake grinned, already helping himself to the contents of the large refrigerator.

“Thank you so much, Maurice. That’s very kind of you.” Liam chuckled. “We will definitely take you up on that offer.”

Maurice bowed. “Well, we’ll get out of your hair and let you enjoy your night, Your Highness.”

“Wait.” Liam stopped the man, who was following Bastien out of the room. “How long have you been working here?”

“Hmm. I’d say over twenty years.”

Liam nodded. “And have you ever seen anything.. Uh, paranormal here?”

Maurice’s face sobered as he shared a look with his daughter. “I should say so. Just.. don’t provoke them.”

Liam felt a chill run through his body. “What?”

“I’m sorry.” Maurice chuckled. “You must think I’m talking crazy.”

Maxwell and Drake were both listening intently now as well. “No, I don’t think that at all.” Liam said. “Please tell me what you mean.”

“There are several residual spirits here. They’re basically just stuck in time.. Going through the motions day after day, unaware of life carrying on around them.” Maurice lowered his voice, leaning closer to Liam. “And there are some.. Who are very much aware. Some who.. Play tricks, or make their presence known in other ways.”

“Like S-sally?” Maxwell’s voice trembled and he clung to Drake’s bicep tightly.

“Yes. However, she is one of the friendly ones.”

“And some are..” Maxwell gulped. “Unfriendly?”

Maurice forced a smile. “Like I said.. Just.. don’t provoke them and you’ll be fine.” With that, he took his daughter’s hand and followed Bastien out of the room and into the dark hallway. Liam, Drake, and Max stood unmoving in the empty kitchen, as they heard the men's footsteps grow fainter, then the sound of the main doors opening, closing, and locking once again.

“Ok, I changed my mind.” Max wrapped his arms around himself, rubbing them vigorously as if trying to get warm. “I’m not hungry. Definitely lost my appetite.”

“Well I’m not letting this go to waste.” Drake continued piling food onto a plate and put it in the microwave. “You know they’re just telling you what you want to hear. Trying to play into the whole ‘haunted hotel’ thing.”

Liam was still standing in place, while Maurice’s words echoed in his head. ‘Don't provoke them.’ When he bought all the ghost hunting equipment, he had just planned on talking to them.. That wasn’t provoking was it? Nah, he thought. “Drake, you can't seriously think that all the people who have had ghost encounters here and seen the same things are lying. And Maurice has been here for over twenty years! I think he’s telling the truth.”

Drake blew on a spoonful of steaming hot jambalaya. “Naw, man. That’s because you always wanna see the best in everyone. I’m telling you.. It’s all a bit.” Drake took a bite and closed his eyes, savoring the spicy dish. “Oh my god, you have to try this.”

Liam and Max fixed themselves a plate and the three friends sat at a small table in the kitchen discussing the food. Maxwell even seemed to start relaxing as they laughed and joked together. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long, and a loud clang echoing from the direction of the ballroom halted their conversation.

The guys looked toward the direction of the sound and then back at each other. Liam wiped his mouth and stood up, making his way toward the door.

“Liam!” Max grabbed his arm to stop his friend. “Don’t! It’s the ghosts! They want us gone!” Max looked frantically around the room, suddenly feeling like there was someone watching him that he couldn’t see.

Drake sighed. “No. It’s probably Bastien again. You gotta tell him to stop letting people in here or Beaumont is gonna shit himself.”

Drake clicked on his flashlight and pushed past Liam, heading down the hall toward the ballroom. There were only a few dim candelabras on the wall lighting his way, and Drake couldn’t help but feel a little creeped out by how dark it was. Not that he thought there were ghosts. No, Drake Walker did not believe in ghosts.. However, the darkness had him feeling like he was not in control of the situation. “Huh.” Drake stopped and furrowed his brow once he reached the table with their equipment. “Li, you must have left the spirit box thingy on the edge of the table.” He stooped down to pick it up.

“No.” Liam shook his head softly. “It was in the middle of the table, Drake.”

Drake rolled his eyes. “Or so you think.”

Liam felt chills go down his spine. He knew he put the spirit box directly in the center of the table. He took it from Drake and clicked it on. The static and random radio noise rang out, echoing through the ballroom. They saw a flashlight streaming into the room as Maxwell entered hurriedly.

Suddenly the spirit box let out a noise that sounded like different syllables being sounded out. Liam quickly gave Max a camera to start filming, while he held the spirit box out in front of him. “Um.. is, uh.. Anyone in here with us?”

The radio crackling stopped for a moment and the three of them heard a distinct “yes.”

Liam’s entire body erupted in goosebumps and he nearly dropped the spirit box in shock. Max was trembling and Drake was looking around wide eyed. Liam summoned all his courage and spoke again. “Um.. do you want to tell us your name?”

Again, static and crackling with just barely a hint of different syllables.

Liam waited with bated breath, but there was nothing. After five more minutes, he sat the spirit box back on the table. “Can you believe that?!” He grinned at Max and Drake.

Drake rolled his eyes. “That thing probably just picked up some trucker’s radio frequency or something.”

Liam and Max both started talking animatedly.

“No way!

It was definitely someone trying to contact us!”

Max shivered. “Or someone trying to tell us to get out!”

“There is a logical explanation for everything!” Drake raised his voice to talk over them.

“John.”

The men halted their conversation and spun back around to the noise that had come from the spirit box. Liam gulped and spoke to the dark, empty room in front of him, “W-what did you say?”

Once again the static crackled until a distorted, faint, male voice said, “John.”

______________________________________

After another hour of Liam trying to speak to ‘John’ and Maxwell trying not to cry, they decided to move on to a different room. Liam gave Drake the thermal camera, and he and Maxwell each took a night vision camera of their own.

Liam flipped the camera around to show his face and started talking into it. “Ok, so far we have footage of an EVP from a man named ‘John’-”

Drake cut him off with a smirk. “Unless Max forgot to hit record, or his hands shook so much the camera broke.”

“Hush.” Liam shot Drake a warning look before speaking to the camera again. “Now we're making our way to the front desk where people often see a man with a top hat.”

“I fucking hate this.” Max whispered as they made their way down a long hallway, and Liam turned the camera to focus on Maxwell.

“You’re on camera, Max.” Liam grinned. “Say hi!”

“Ya, hi everyone. Look, if you find my body in the morning, I need to make sure my conscience is clear so that I can move on to the afterlife. Tell Bertrand that a few years ago, I borrowed his toothbrush to get the gunk out of his watch.”

“What?” Drake’s face wrinkled in disgust. “Why would you do that?”

“I had to borrow Bert’s watch one time to impress a date, and by the end of the night we ended up wrestling in the mud. I took off my clothes but forgot about the watch, so of course it got dirty!”

“Mud wrestling? Who the hell did you go mud wrestling with? Surely not a noble!”

“Oh you’d be surprised.”

“Who was it!? Oh my god, don’t tell me it was-” Drake stopped himself. “You know what, I don’t wanna know.”

Maxwell sighed. “So anyway, I had to clean the dried dirt and whatever else out of the watch and I wasn't about to use my own toothbrush, because eww!”

Drake rubbed a hand down his face in exasperation. “Why didn’t you just get a new toothbrush to clean it? Surely there were extras in your house? Or why didn’t you use literally anything else to clean it besides your brother’s fucking toothbrush!?”

“Drake, if I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place!”

“Shut up, both of you.” Liam scolded them quietly, once they reached the lobby where the front desk was located. “Drake, turn on the thermal camera and look around.”

“Yes sir.” Drake mocked and fiddled with the camera until it was turned on.

“Let me know if you see anything.” Liam whispered.

Drake sighed and scanned the room, turning in a slow circle. He paused for a moment, and looked up from the camera, then back at it again. “Liam, what’s this purplish blue spot?” He asked in confusion.

Liam ran over to Drake and looked down at the camera where a tall form, resembling a human, appeared unmoving across the room. “That means there's something cold over there.” Liam whispered while chills once again ran down his spine.

Drake spoke quietly, desperately trying to keep a level head. “That must be like.. From the AC or something, right?”

Max scurried behind the two of them, glancing down at the thermal camera and wishing he hadn’t. “Oh shit. It’s gotta be the top hat guy. Oh shit, oh shit.”

Liam aimed his camera down at the thermal camera screen, then back up to the empty spot across the room. When he looked back down at the thermal camera, the image was gone. “Oh my god.” He whispered.

“Maybe.. Uh.” Drake stammered. “Maybe the AC shut off and that’s why it’s gone.”

Liam and Max both gave him a deadpan stare, and Drake looked away uncomfortably.

Liam grinned as a thrill ran through his body, then turned the camera to face himself once again. “So that’s TWO different paranormal encounters we’ve had so far in just a matter of hours! Agh, I can't wait to get to our room and communicate with the spirits in there!”

“Wait, what?!” Max whirled around to face his friend. “Maurice said don’t provoke them!”

“I'm not going to provoke them! Just.. talk to them a little. And see if they want to talk back.”

Drake remained silent as he followed the two of them up the stairs, still holding the thermal camera out in front of him, scanning as he walked. Once they reached the fourth floor, they made their way down the hallway, pausing at door number 413.

Liam entered first with his camera on night vision, scanning the room slowly. “Drake, you got anything on the thermal?”

Drake checked the room and shook his head. Liam flipped on the lights and saw that their bags had already been brought up for them. He dropped down on the bed. “Well it’s 2 am, we can go around the hotel with the spirit box and digital recorders, or stay in here and see if we get anything. What do you guys wanna do?”

“Sleep.” Drake said with a yawn.

“You can’t be serious!” Liam looked at him in dismay. “We’re not going to sleep yet! We have a whole haunted hotel to ourselves for the night, we have to make the most out of it!”

“Look, I’m tired as shit from all the traveling we’ve done lately. And I don’t want to stay up all night trying to talk to or video things that aren't there!”

“Fine! Go!” Liam waved him away. “But you can stay in another room. I have work to do.”

Drake rolled his eyes and grabbed his bag off the floor, slinging it over his shoulder. “I didn’t want to sleep in that little bed with the two of you anyway!”

Liam gave Drake the master keycard and he made his way a few doors down, opening a room for himself.

Liam lay back on the bed and sighed in exasperation. Why was Drake always so difficult? “Well Max, I guess it’s just the two of us.”

“I never thought I'd say this but.. I’m kinda with Drake.”

Liam bolted upright. “What?!”

“Not that I don’t believe in ghosts.. I’ve just kinda had my fill. I’d rather stay in a room that’s not haunted and get some sleep.”

“Max, not you too!”

“Sorry..” Maxwell gave him an apologetic glance before heading out and down the hallway to get the keycard from Drake. “I’ll take the room next to yours, ok Liam? Well.. maybe not right next to yours in case the ghost forgets which room is theirs and accidentally go into mine. I’ll be a couple doors down and across the hall.”

“Fine.” Liam waved him away with a sigh. He set up a camera on a tripod in the corner of the room and turned on the digital recorder. “Guess I’m doing this on my own.”

That night, Maxwell and Drake both lay in bed in different rooms of the Decuir Hotel preparing for a good night's sleep. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards.

_____________________________________________

Drake

After a long shower, Drake pulled on a tshirt and sweatpants, brushed his teeth, and climbed into the plush, queen sized bed. It was already 3 am, and he was exhausted. Tonight had been a ridiculous waste of time. Liam seemed to enjoy it, and Drake enjoyed laughing at Maxwell, but all this ghost and haunted business was just absurd. There was a logical explanation for everything. Everything! Sure the voice in the ballroom was.. weird. And the cold ‘figure’ across the room in the lobby was.. unusual, but that didn’t mean it was anything that couldn’t be explained. Drake pulled the blanket up to his chin and closed his eyes.

He lay in bed trying to relax, hoping that he could fall asleep, when a rush of cold air blew across his cheek. He opened his eyes and touched his face. Must be the air conditioner. Yep, that’s all. He rolled over on his side in the pitch black room, facing the door to the hallway. A faint but firm pressure on his leg caused him to bolt upright and kick off the blankets, certain that a rat or something was crawling on the bed. He threw on the lights and searched the entire room, but found nothing. Drake couldn’t help but feel a chill down his spine, but he reprimanded himself. He was just being stupid. Maxwell and Liam must have gotten to him. The room was quiet, the only sound coming from the occasional car driving past from the street below. A soft buzz filled his ears and the bedroom lights flickered slightly.

“What the fuck..” Drake reached up and tapped the lightbulb a few times and it stopped. He chuckled to himself. “See, theres a reasonable explanation for everything.”

“Drake.”

A blast of cold air against the back of his neck and the sound of his name uttered in an echoing whisper, caused him to dash across the room. He fumbled for the thermal camera that was on the dresser and clicked it on, pointing it to where he had just been standing. His breathing was erratic as he watched a cold figure move across the room and disappear completely.

_________________________________________________

Maxwell

The first thing Maxwell did when he entered his room was flip on every light: the bedroom, all the lamps, bathroom, and even the closet. Next was the television. He turned on a rerun of SNL so that he could lighten his mood and fill the room with some kind of happiness to cover the fact that everywhere in this hotel felt dark and creepy. He realized he still had the camera Liam had given him, and he turned the screen toward him and pushed record. “So, it is now exactly 3 am, aka the witching hour. I am officially resigning from this ghost hunting stuff that Liam was so kind to spring on me under the pretense of being able to party my ass off at Mardi Gras!” He shook his head in mock offense, speaking to the camera with a grin. “Thanks a lot, Liam! I could have tons of plastic beads around my neck right now, but noooo! I’m in the fucking Stanley hotel, feeling like any minute, someone is going to yell ‘REDRUM’ from out in the hallway! Like seriously-”

A noise from the hallway stopped him, and Max turned toward the door with a jerk.

He crawled to the edge of the bed slowly, trying not to make a sound as he listened intently. A distant childlike laugh from the other side of his door left his body frozen in terror. “What the-” Maxwell whispered and remembering he still had the camera in his hands, aimed it toward the door to the hallway. He muted the tv and climbed out of bed, nervously making his way across the room toward the door. Suddenly, he heard the heavy thumping of someone running down the hallway, and the jovial childlike laughter filled his ears once again.

Maxwell’s body was flooded with adrenaline and before he realized what he was doing, he threw open the door and stuck his head out into the hallway. Instead of seeing a child, he caught a quick glimpse of a man in the distance with brown hair turning the corner at the far end of the hallway. “Damn it, Drake! Fuck you, that’s not funny!”

Max went back inside his room and slammed the door closed in frustration. He tossed the camera onto the bed and stalked into the bathroom to wash his face. As he looked in the mirror, he heard the laughter once again outside of his door. He shook his head and yelled out, “I never knew you could make your voice that high pitched, Walker. Fuck off!”

Instead of another laugh, this time there was a knock at the door. Followed by another, louder series of knocks, that became more insistent. Max sighed and threw the door open. “Yes, Dra-”

No one.

Max peeked his head out but once again the long hallway was empty and completely silent. Then the heavy thumping of feet running across the floor echoed through the hallway, growing louder and louder as they seemed to get closer to his room. Max dashed back inside and slammed the door behind him, locking it and crawling under the blankets trembling as he pulled out his phone to call Liam. No signal. Of course.

_____________________________________________

Liam

With his friends abandoning him, Liam was determined to get more hard evidence by himself. He sat on the bed with a camera on a tripod across the room facing him, and the spirit box on the dresser beside him. “Ok.” He clapped his hands together. “Let’s see how haunted this room really is.”

Liam turned off the lights and closed his eyes. “Is there anyone here with me?”

Silence.

He chewed the inside of his cheek as he thought. “I know you’re here. Come talk to me.”

Silence.

Liam sighed. He wanted more evidence. No, he needed more evidence. He needed to show Drake and Max what they missed out on by not staying. Don’t provoke them. Nah, he wasn’t going to provoke them.. Just tease them a little to get them to respond. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and grabbed the digital recorder, pressing record. If the spirit box wasn’t picking anything up, maybe the digital recorder would show something when they reviewed it later. He checked the clock on the bedside table. 2:59 am.

“Come on, talk to me. Show yourself! I want to show my friends that you’re real.” Liam knew Max would hate him for saying this, but he needed results. “If you won’t talk to me, go talk to them! They’re just a few doors away. They’d love to meet you.”

Silence.

The spirit box still only crackled with the same old static, and not a single blip. “What, are you afraid of me?!” Liam raised his voice, trying to bait someone into responding. He decided to channel his inner Olivia.. If that didn’t work, he didn’t know what would. “Wow.. I thought the spirits here would be more impressive, but you are pathetic! This has really been a waste of my time.”

Liam waited for what seemed like an eternity, listening intently.

The spirit box made a few incoherent noises that sent shivers down his spine. Someone took the bait.

A robotic sounding female voice manifested over the static. “No.”

Liam’s breath quickened and his heart was beating a mile a minute. “No? What do you mean no? No, you don’t want to talk to me?”

The spirit box crackled again. “Go.”

Liam had goosebumps on top of his goosebumps. He tried to speak, but his voice cracked and his throat was dry. “A-are you telling me to go, or to not go?”

Silence.

Liam furrowed his brow, trying to make sense of this. Maybe Drake was right. Maybe this was just picking up someone's radio frequency or something. He turned on the lights and searched through his backpack for the thermal camera, then remembered Drake had it. Liam reached out for the doorknob when suddenly a stinging pain radiated down his forearms and the spirit box crackled with the same distorted female voice.

“Stay.”

_________________________________________________

“Never again!” Maxwell shook his head as he made his way out of the hotel and onto the sidewalk, where the sun shone brightly. “God, I can’t wait to get out of here and get back to my normal, boring, unhaunted home!”

Drake hadn’t spoken a word all morning, but followed behind Max. “Ya, I’m ready to get home too.”

Maxwell quirked an eyebrow. “Oh really?! Mr. I-don't-believe-in-ghosts! Something happened to you too last night, didn’t it?”

“Nah. I slept like a baby.” Drake looked away, trying to seem nonchalant. There was no way in hell he was going to speak a word about what happened in his room last night. He wasn’t even sure what had happened. “I just miss my whiskey cellar.”

“Of course.” Max chuckled as he sat his bag down on a bench on the street. The city was alive again and people hurried past on their way to work or wherever their busy lives took them. Faint jazz music poured out of a nearby cafe where patrons enjoyed coffee and beignets. A souvenir shop across the street with a display window full of alligator heads and tie dye t-shirts, flipped their sign to ‘open’. A man and woman busking outside of a nearby library sang zydeco music while playing the accordion.

Liam shook the hotel manager’s hand, thanking him, before following his friends out to the street. “Well, that was an experience we’ll never forget.”

Maxwell shuddered. “But my therapist will be working overtime to try and remedy that.”

They climbed into the back of the limo and Max checked his Instagram account. “Guys, oh my god.”

“What’s up?” Liam leaned over to view Maxwell’s phone.

“I put some of the footage on Instagram early this morning, because God knows I wasn’t sleeping. Hell, I may never sleep again.” Maxwell shook his head to clear the memories from the night before. “But anyway.. I uploaded some of the footage, and people are loving it!”

Drake scoffed. “Yes I’m sure dozens of people around Cordonia have liked it.”

“Try 3.3 million people around the world in the last 2 hours.” Max smirked, holding it out for Drake to see. “They’re calling us the Cordonian ghost hunters.”

Liam chuckled. “That’s cute.”

Maxwell scrolled through thousands of comments, in awe. “Guys.. we’re famous!”

Drake rolled his eyes, taking a bite of a croissant that Bastien had picked up for them that morning. “You know Liam is literally a prince. He doesn’t need this to make him famous.”

Maxwell grinned as he read. “Oh my god, Drake, you're famous! Listen to this. ‘Drake Walker is so hot! Like, can I die and come back as a ghost so I can haunt him?’”

Drake blushed and snatched the phone. “It doesn’t say that!”

“Does too!” Max grabbed the phone back, and soon they were all laughing and smiling at the comments.

“This was fun.” Liam grinned at his friends as they made their way down the road toward the airport, preparing to return to Cordonia.

“I mean..” Drake shrugged.

Max smiled. “If you overlook the paralyzing terror and traumatizing memories that will haunt me for the rest of my life.. Then ya, it was fun!”

Liam couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face as an idea brewed in his head. “What if.. We became the Cordonian ghost hunters? Like, for real.”

Drake and Max looked at Liam and back at each other. Liam spoke up again. “We could travel all around the world. People could send us recommendations for different haunted places and we could stay there and film it.”

“Seriously?” Drake arched an eyebrow and smirked. “This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that you don’t want to go back home and start training for a spot on the council, would it?”

Liam feigned offense. “Of course not!”

Max continued to scroll through his phone in awe. “We could make our own insta page for it! Ahh! Guys, let’s do it!”

“Really?!” Drake asked in disbelief. “You were scared shitless back there! You want to go to more ‘haunted’ places and do that all over again?”

“Not really!” Max shrugged. “But come on, we’re badass ghost hunters! How fucking cool is that?”

Liam laughed and the two of them stared at Drake hopefully. After a moment he threw his hands up and sighed. “Fine. Fine, let’s do it.”

“Yes!” Max began shimmying in his seat excitedly.

Liam knocked on the privacy window between the front and back seats, and Bastien rolled it down. “Bastien, change of plans. We’re not going back to Cordonia. We’re going to hunt more ghosts.”

“Sir?” Bastien looked at Liam incredulously.

Drake chuckled. “Ya, Bas, just don’t let any more random people into the hotel in the middle of the night and scare Max to death again.”

“I'm confused.” Bastien furrowed his brow as he looked between the three friends curiously. “Let random people into the hotel?”

“He means the chef and his daughter.” Max said as he chewed a croissant. “Which by the way, did he make these? They're freaking delicious!”

Bastien still looked utterly lost. “I didn’t let anyone into the hotel last night. Liam, you told me that no one was to enter, so not a soul passed through those doors until morning. Not even me.”

The three friends stared at each other in horror, as they made their way through the busy streets in South Louisiana. The air was thick and damp with humidity and the cicadas and crickets played a melody that filled the warm air.

Max took a deep breath and added a comment to the page. “Where should we go next?”

#the cordonian ghost hunters #trr fanfic #trr #the royal romance #the royal romance fanfic #maxwell beaumont #liam rys #drake walker #ghost hunting #cfwc #cfwc for the boys

41 notes · View notes

eric-the-bmo · 4 months

Text

The Neighborhood Watch S3 Ep2: Lost and Found

[Summary: John sees a familiar face, and Louis has a chat with Song's father. Someone from Markus's past makes a surprise visit.] @gr3y-plays-ttrpgs

This will be less formal today! Wanted to try out a more chill style again. Happy New Year btw!! <3

So, Last we left off: Shelby had gone missing.

John is trying So Hard to not panic because oh my god where's Shelby where did she go. He rolls well to Investigate, though he's visibly a bit more nervous than usual, and eventually finds a crowd! And screaming!!!

He pushes his way through and finds Shelby at the center- a crowd's gathered around her, taking pictures and selfies with her.

John is relieved- of course , everything's fine, she had just run into some fans of hers, he was overreacting- and then Shelby spots him and waves, and suddenly the crowd is looking at him!! He's a deer in the headlights as people recognize him; while he's never shown his face on camera, he's appeared in the background of Shelby's streams at times. Shelby eventually sees the attention is making him uncomfortable, so she gets the people to leave, pulls him aside, and- after they both go "hey where were you??"- she asks if he's okay, does he need some air?

John can tell that Shelby wants to stay, so he refuses the offer despite everything happening, and the two of them go to play blackjack.

But then, from the dealer's part of the table is a familiar voice: "John?" It's Clara. You know, the girl he's been avoiding for a whole month.

---

Meanwhile at the North Hotel, Song, her father, and Louis are continuing the tour. Song's father pays for lunch at one of the restaurants the hotels have; it's this New Orleans place, and it's kinda close to how Louis remembers food being back there.

Song's dad asks Louis how he likes Greenville, and our southern gentleman is all "well i was hoping it would a nice place to have an early retirement, but so far it's been... Well it's an interesting place with interesting people." He continues, and I'm counting this as another "this town is weird" rant. He says he works in personal security and finances when asked about his job, and Song's dad finds out Louis used to work for one of his branch companies.

The food arrives; they talk about Song's studies, her mom is mentioned (HELLO? IS SONG'S MOM DEAD??), and meanwhile Louis is trying so so hard to be chill and not freak out bc Man, his girlfriend's dad is really intimidating!!! Speaking of the man, he asks if they've got plans later and Song is all "yeah, cooking lessons"- which, btw: sometimes song and louis actually do cook, and sometimes they do... other stuff- howver her dad doesn't know this and is all "oh, nice! Anyway i should get going, work duties and all"

He pays for the lunch, gives Song some extra cash, and also finally introduces himself to Louis by name: Greyson. He goes to shake Louis' hand; it's a firm handshake, and Louis tries to match it. Greyson does that whole Scary Dad thing of "take care of my daughter now, ok?" and walks off.

Song tells Louis he did a great job talking to her dad! Meanwhile since Greyson left, Louis is able to show how nervous he was the whole time, holding his hurting hand like "aaa thanks darling :'-)"

Song asks Louis how he ended up here anyway- Louis said he had a lot of heat on him (his vampiric ex, a detective, etc), and when he found out he won a raffle he didn't even enter for a house, he took the chance and left. They have a whole conversation I unfortunately didn't catch, about fate and coincidences.

Song kisses Louis against the wall and heads into the casino to find Shelby and John. Louis is extremely flustered before he goes to follow.

Markus heads home to find a tourist couple waiting outside their house, asking if it's the bug museum that was listed on Google Maps, because they would like a tour! Markus is like "oh my god my house is a location on google maps now?? what the fuck???" but gives them the tour anyway.

They're very attentive, asking all sorts of questions- at first Markus is socially anxious about it, but eventually the joy of their special interest takes over, and they ramble about it ☆

But Markus only has enough social energy, and it turns out the tourists paid enough to come back The Next Day, and as they leave Markus leans against the wall, dreading more social interaction.

There's a knock on the door.

Markus goes to open it ("I swear if it's that rat-summoning creep again-") and upon seeing who it is they immediately slam it shut. After the shock wears off, they slowly open it again.

They ask their sister, Analetta, how she managed to find them.

She holds up her phone- Google maps. ("Do our parents know where I am?" "No, they don't.") She hugs them, crying, and while Markus hugs back they reassure her that everything is fine? There's no reason to cry?? ("I mean, I don't have a car but besides that everything's fine-")

Analette says Markus had just disappeared without telling anyone- Markus is like "Do you blame me?" They tell her they vanished because a way to leave home had suddenly appeared for them, and they didn't know if a chance like that would ever show up again; They didn't really have to take things or people with them.

Analetta tells them she managed to visit them by saying she's studying abroad ("oh thank god you didn't move here"), and Markus apologizes for slamming the door in her face. They ask if she'd like to meet their friends. Analetta's like "oh my god? you have friends??" and pokes fun at their sibling when they mention Shelby. Markus is all "No it's not like that, she's my friend," and the two argue over who's going to pay for the food they're going to get from the only DoorDash guy in town (who, btw, is also the only weed dealer in town- they get some of that too).

As they eat sushi Markus fills her in on everything, and while she knows about their bugs, they omit the rest of the supernatural stuff- they don't wanna drag her into all of this. Analetta says that life got harder back home when Markus left, and while she's trying to live the life her parents want her to live, it's killing her inside. She took an opportunity to leave, and wanted to visit Markus one last time. They say she can stay as long as she wants, and might take them up on it; She's actually supposed to be in Japan right now.

Markus sends a text to the group chat so the Main Cast can their sister.

In the hotel, Song and Louis finally get a text notif for the message, which reads: “PLEASE COME TO MY HOUSE ITS SUPER IMPORTANT PLEASE!!!!!”

Louis texts back like "Hey sorry we got this late, is it still possible to come over?"

“YES STILL AT HOUSE PLEASE HURRY”

Song and Louis are all "ok we should find shelby and john," and they bump into Sammy on the way over– he helps one of them up, since he accidentally knocked one of them onto the floor.

Meanwhile, John is in a social scenario hell- yes, Clara is here, being kinda cold and professional (and part of him wonders if she's making sure he keeps losing), but you wanna know who else is here? Harold, that little creep who was really rude to Shelby last season!! John hates this man- He manages to scare him off by Staring at him with his monster eyes.

At this point, Song and Louis show up like "hey, we got a text from Markus and they want us to come over, and we don't wanna disappoint them like last time." (John doesn't say anything about how he actually visited them last time they asked, so-)

(Shelby notices that hey, yeah, the cell service is shit here in this casino!)

Anyway, so John and Shelby get up to leave but Clara insists that John cash in his chips- as she's doing this for him, she discreetly hands him a small note. He catches the vibe he should look at it later, and leaves the Casino with the Main Cast. As they leave, everyone's phone clocks correct themselves to match the current time outside the casino- it's currently around 3pm. John trails behind the group as usual, and opens the note to read it.

"Meet me out front at 5:30 after my shift."

Notes/Commentary:

I forgot Shelby was lowkey a celebrity lmao

It's canon that every single photo of John is a little bit blurry! That's so funny <3

Hi. Something about John sacrificing small bits of comfort (ie not leaving the casino to chill out) bc he wants Shelby to be okay/not leave her.... he has issues

Hey Song. What's with your mom, did she leave? die? what's up??

The GM informed me later that casino workers are meant to be all formal and not show favoritism at their jobs, right, and Sir i think she was doing the Opposite of favoritism /lh

John being able to initimidate people is very cool, thank you GM

MARKUS LORE MARKUS LORE

I was? Not aware our guys had a group chat??

SAMMY?? SIR?? weren't u being kidnapped earlier whats going on /lh

My notes say "Song easily finds John bc he's tall as fuck"

The players are placing bets (/j) on if Clara is a secret monster hunter or not-

John is fully expecting to get yelled at by her btw :-(

I so badly want him to try and date her or somehting. please for the love of god can john actually kiss someone and be really nervous about it bc he's never done that before and wants to try it out, and maybe he'll have to roll for Hunger bc his teeth are So So close to human flesh and it'll just be Dramatic <3

#eric finally speaks #motw campaign #the neighborhood watch #motw #monster of the week #motw oc

2 notes · View notes

incandesang · 2 years

Text

four days prior

Lestat has a somewhat honest conversation with his father.

"Would Lazarus still be a man if it were not Jesus Christ who raised him?"

Fic under the cut for people who don't have ao3!

The nights in New Orleans were always far more lively than the days. The very culture there seemed to lend itself to socialisation, with the people spending all evening sitting in theatres, watching the Paris Opera, or whatever acting company had come over from Europe, or drinking themselves half to death in any manner of casino and tavern imaginable. Early evenings were dressed in diamonds, and pearl-studded dresses imported from France. Women leaned back against balcony railings, heads bowed together, speaking in rapid-fire French, or sometimes Spanish; never about their husbands, for there were far too many other things in the area to gossip about, and they could never be so impolite. The docks were flooded with sailors from sunset to sunrise. They spilled onto the streets slowly, pulling away from their ships and supplies to gamble their stolen goods away in the nearest casino. Sometimes they would bet money on races across the Mississippi, while Death himself watched in morbid amusement.

It was nothing like Paris. The architecture was mostly Spanish, especially in the French Quarter, ironically enough, and the buildings were all lower, having not been built upon by developers rushing to rake in funds to flee to a country house somewhere away from the damned stink of the city. It was hardly a city at all, rather a mismatched group of streets pulled from the swamps themselves. There was certainly no lack of charm, however.

The vampire hysteria of Europe seemed to have been left behind. There were new monsters lurking in the pitchy blackness beyond the city limits; things said to haunt the fields and the swamps that the citizens of New Orleans were seemingly safe from. Apparently, dim light shining from the windows of the rows of taverns, and the occasional crucifix in the illuminated window of a chemist was enough to ward off evil.

The man who fancied himself as the Devil appreciated the sentiment.

He wandered the streets, striking down gamblers and drunks as he saw fit. Evildoers. Cleansing the world of their sort was an act of goodness, or even heroism, depending on how removed from typical human morality he was feeling on any given night. He was unafraid, unyielding. There was no forethought once he found a victim, no calculation, fear, or trepidation: this was Death in its truest form.

Before dawn, he would trail the stragglers back to their hotels, and vanish into his own rooms without so much as a word to anyone. He didn’t think he was quite ready yet. He saw flashes of the young devil who had appeared to him, clad in jewels and lace, auburn hair a shock against the black of the night, and of Nicolas. He heard him in every high-end tavern, in the early hours of the night, when human musicians still played for cheap, and when patrons were plentiful. He would watch their deft hands fly along the strings, and study the delicate way they held the bow, as well as the focused, sombre expressions they so often wore when they played… so like his Nicki. The tall, looming statues being erected in the more lavish neighbourhoods unsettled him. Their unmoving, marble skin made him sick, and their carved eyes followed him wherever he wandered. They saw him kill night after night. He wanted to scream at them to do something about it, to report him to the police, or to the church… to do anything but stand there.

Young men were his brothers, or the rotting corpses from the tower. The older men, peering at him over their newspapers were the ancient one, Marius, who Lestat had failed so devastatingly.

He couldn’t bear the idea of connecting with any of this; not the people, nor the art of the oncoming century. He simply loved it all far too much, and it was his nature to destroy.

As soon as he entered his hotel room, he heard the usual pleas from his ailing father. It only served to set the scene, for the rooms were not of the standard he would’ve wanted to live in; they were mouldy, the bare walls were painted brown, and the thin curtains were full of holes. The Revolution had made it impossible to access his money. Nobody would accept the months-old proof he had, for there was a chance it didn’t even exist anymore, with the country being in the state it was. His family home had been ransacked, he was told every night, and his brothers paid for their poverty with their lives.

And he couldn’t help but blame the feeble old man lying in the single bedroom of their hotel for that.

“Lestat, my boy…” came the cry from the bedroom.

The old man always awoke when his son returned home from his nights out on the town, no matter the hour of his return. He would sometimes reappear at two or three in the morning, and he would somehow awaken at the sound of the door opening, or his son’s hushed curses in the hallway outside, as he fumbled for the key.

Lestat didn’t answer. He was too engrossed with untying the ribbon holding his hair back from his face, and then removing the key from around his neck to hang it on a peg beside the door. He didn’t want to risk someone needing it for something during the day, and for his fool of a father to tell them he had the key, that they just needed to wake him and he would give it over. His father couldn’t see well enough to find it himself, and, since Lestat had seen him last, he had deteriorated to the point where crossing the room used up all of his energy. There was no need to safeguard it at all hours. Nobody would leave this hotel room without his knowing about it.

The state of his father had terrified him.

Seeing his mother dying before him had left him reeling, and, in his desperation to finally act out the part of the hero, rather than Lelio, the lover, he had brought her into the darkness with him. It lacked the horror of his father’s fate, however. Lestat had grown used to dealing death, and after wandering under the moonlight for ten years, he assumed he had seen it in all of its forms. It wasn’t until he arrived in New Orleans that he realised he had unconsciously gone out of his way to avoid any indication that death was something that just happened to people, rather than something he brought about himself.

There was nowhere he could hide from this.

His usually sunburned skin would swell, and then peel off in a terribly grotesque way that made Lestat cringe when he saw it. When it wasn’t burned, it was thin and papery, crisscrossed with little blue ribbons, and deep-etched lines, with burst blood vessels that bloomed like roses scattered across his cheeks. His hands were spotted, and always cut or bleeding from an injury he couldn’t recall getting. His nailbeds were the colour of ash. He was dying. It wasn’t like Gabrielle, where Lestat had been able to feel the slow beat of her heart as though it was his own, and the warm gold of the candlelight hadn’t been able to disguise the chilly blue of her lips - where death was a wave looming over a stony shoreline. His father had months, maybe even years. He would remain suspended in this suffering, left to feel his body dying all around him with nobody left alive who had it in them to bring him any sort of comfort.

The fact he couldn’t made Lestat sick. That was his father, and no matter how much he hated him, there was something torturous about how he could do nothing more than watch him waste away before his eyes. Wasn’t a son meant to sit at their father’s bedside, read him books all evening, and play chess with him while chattering on idly about the weather? Were they meant to harbour such resentment? Was Lestat’s duty now, to forgive the frail old man who had been the orchestrator of his misery, and the catalyst for the events that led to his murder in Magnus’ tower, and then to care for him until his heart stopped? He spent a good deal of his time thinking about this. He talked himself in and out of being a monster for not being able to do such a thing, and for wanting to hurt the old man as much as he did.

“Lestat…” came the thin voice from the bedroom. “Lestat, please…”

He left the little foyer then.

The old man was sitting up in bed, head tipped back against the headboard. In the darkness, his unseeing eyes were fixed at the ceiling. His face was a mask of anguish, deepening the lines between his eyebrows, and at the corners of his mouth. It was hard to believe he had once been young; that he had perhaps looked something like Lestat did.

“I’m here, father,” he said. He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. Duty had always bothered him. He’d never had the stomach for it. “You’re awake too early. That’s why you sleep all afternoon on that damned balcony.”

The old man shook his head, before turning it in the direction he had heard Lestat’s voice from. “You’re awake too late. This schedule isn’t good for you, your brothers--”

“-- Are dead, you old fool.”

Lestat didn’t like how strained his voice had sounded when he’d said that. They had been the extensions of his father: his eyes and his fists, following his instruction without question, even if they later claimed to abhor being made to do the things they did.

Nobody in his family had ever been close when he looked back on it. They were all bound together by dependence. Lestat and his brothers were kept illiterate to make sure they could never leave their parents, Gabrielle herself had been trapped in Auvergne by a brood of children, who she had to stay and raise, despite her obvious hatred for every moment of it. The Marquis was his own victim, and then circumstance claimed his vision and the strength that he had as a young man, leaving him feeble and helpless. He was at the mercy of his sons, who loved him far too much to raise a hand against him. Lestat could only do so much to convince himself he had hated his father, or even his brothers. Power was positional. They could enjoy it because Lestat did not. If they hadn’t raised their hands against him, he would have been in their position himself; he knew that about himself now.

It was all very vampiric.

The Marquis let out a low moan. When Lestat looked over at him, his lips were mouthing what could only be a prayer. His shaking hands were pulled up to his chest, holding an old rosary - one that had belonged to Gabrielle, back before she had come to Paris to say her final goodbye to her youngest son.

Lestat, without thinking, crossed the room and snatched the blasted thing from his hands.

His father let out a sharp cry, and reached out a hand, clawing at the air, obviously desperate for his rosary back. He was obsessed with it, in Lestat’s opinion. He never let it go outside of his reach. Before he went to sleep, he carefully hung it over a snapped-off sconce on the wall beside his bed, and when he awoke he would put it in the front pocket of his threadbare waistcoat. If he lost it, he would wail until Lestat went and fetched it for him. He never thanked him for returning it.

“Lestat, give me back my rosary,” he demanded, his voice as pleading as a child’s.

Lestat didn’t miss a beat. “You’re terribly obsessed with it, aren’t you?” He asked, challenging the old man in a way he had never been able to do before. “Why? Do you think your God will spare you the suffering of what lies ahead if you cling to a string of beads and whisper your little poems to Him?”

“Yes,” he said, “my belief in Him… my belief that He will save my soul will alleviate the pain awaiting me.”

“You believe that if I was to return the rosary to you, it would absolve you of everything you did to me?” Lestat pressed. He was growing more agitated. His father only had interest in talking about things that annoyed Lestat at these hours. He found he would prod at his grief, searching for a reaction that wasn’t anger - he wanted comfort, and would deliberately try to upset his son in order to get it from him. Lestat wasn’t naive enough to fall for such a thing, and would find himself resorting to fits of grief-fuelled rage that ended with piles of broken furniture and trails of brutalised corpses dropped in the mud-slick streets.

As the night faded away, and weariness set in for the both of them, the old Marquis always tried to talk to Lestat about things that brought him comfort. God was easy, for it was God who had his children, and who, as far as he knew, had his wife. There was no such comfort there for Lestat. God was merely a shadow on the wall; an impassive watcher, if he was anything at all.

“Yes, my boy. I will be forgiven in the eyes of God. He will hear my prayers and He will absolve me of my sin.” The old man’s hand went slack, and his arm dropped onto his lap. His hand was still open, facing upwards, awaiting the return of the rosary.

Lestat approached his father’s bedside. His feet made no noise on the wooden floors, which creaked and groaned with every step that a mortal made. He dangled the beads above his father’s hand, letting them brush upon the skin of his fingers, before flinging them across the room. They hit a window and clattered to the wooden floor. The old man barely had time to flinch before Lestat leaned down, took ahold of the thin collar of his sleep shirt, and shook him roughly.

“Absolution!” He hissed, “You’re asking quite the wrong person for that, father. If you want forgiveness for what you did to me, I want you to beg me for it.”

There was a long silence. Neither of them moved. Lestat was frozen there, like a cat before it sprung out onto its victim, long nails digging into the palms of his hands, and his fangs bared in a pained grimace. The Marquis’ unseeing eyes appeared to have been fixed upon his son’s face. His expression was gentle, a sad smile on his face.

“I only did what He commanded of me. It is a son’s role to care for his father, as you do now. He protected you, for you were the gentlest of us all, Lestat. He knew you would care for us… as you have always done.”

Lestat let out a pained cry, and tipped his head forward onto his father’s chest. His fingers loosened on his collar and slipped away. He squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to let himself shed a tear over any of this. It was madness, to feel such agonising grief for people he supposedly detested with his whole heart. Perhaps he had just come to idealise the closeness of family, even if he could never experience such a thing, because the possibility for simple human relations had been stripped away from him. The pain was for Nicolas, and for Gabrielle, who had become a stranger to him the moment he had given her the Dark Gift. It was for Lelio, the man who had the choice to return to his family if he had wanted it.

He stayed there for a long while, a desperate child clinging to his father for comfort. It did nothing to calm him.

“If your God spared me, but took everyone else from me…” Lestat managed, “then He is evil. If He oversees such misery, such violence, at the hands of His own children, then He is evil. Humankind is lost, I fear, if they place their belief into a being that can excuse a father’s exploitation of his family… or the brutal slaughter of young men and their children in their beds.” He thought then of the boys in the tower. They had looked more like him than his own family had. Their glassy blue eyes had stared into nothingness the very same way the Marquis’ did, their hair turned dry and brittle; spun gold to straw. Lestat knew well enough he should have been rotting there with them. There was no reason for him to have been the one to survive.

“This is blasphemy, Lestat.”

Lestat let out a laugh. He doubted that, out of all the reasons God had to be upset with him, He would pick blasphemy.

“I am blasphemy,” he replied. With that, he got to his feet once again. He made sure that the floorboards creaked beneath the soles of his shoes, playing human for his father once again. The thin veneer he wore over his true nature had almost slipped perfectly back into place. In the low light, he almost looked how he did before he died. “You see, father, your God walks among us. He simply shrinks away from the daylight you cannot see anymore… for the sun was hung in the sky by the Devil, and he cannot bear to look upon the creation of his wayward son. It brings him terrible anguish, you see, as it reminds him of someone he loved but cannot ever have again.”

The old man was appalled. His mouth hung agape, and his eyebrows were knitted together above his unseeing eyes. Lestat found no small amount of morbid humour in tormenting him like this. It was revenge, at long last.

“Someone who brought him great pain,” uttered the Marquis, “someone who betrayed his trust… and his love.”

“Did I betray you, father?” Lestat asked, more leering than curious. “When I ran away, did I betray you?”

“Don’t ask me such a thing.”

“You would be dead now if it wasn’t for me, you’re not enough of a damned idiot to not know that.” The blatant refusal to answer his question had irritated Lestat further. His immediate reaction was, naturally, to resort to petty cruelty - something he would surely regret later, when sunrise began to approach. “Do you know how they died?” he asked. He finished his own question before his father had a chance to reply. “Beheading. I received letters from my lawyer who told me that the aristocracy — our family — were all publicly executed by beheading. Perhaps if they had anything to give to their assailants, they may have been spared… but we both know that you saw to that long before they were old enough to know that pushing you aside had always been an option. Did they drag my brothers up to the block in the square?” He asked, “The one I used to play in as a child, with my wooden sword, and my imaginary dogs.”

Only when Lestat fell silent did he realise the old man was crying.

“Did they kill their children before or after?”

He never expected an answer. He didn’t really expect the tears, either. Lestat didn’t think he remembered a time, before this, when he had seen his father cry in such a way. His decision to become a monk back when he was a child had roused nothing but anger in him, and it seemed his later choice to become an actor had done the same. There was a degree of morbid humour in the fact that his grief for Lestat seemed to come only when he had been faced with him again, not at the thought of losing him. He had lost him now, truely. There was nothing left of the boy from Auvergne; he had died in that tower alongside his other brothers - the ones who were related to him only in death - and the rats had picked his corpse bare.

“Why do you say these things?” the old man asked. His voice had been shaky, punctuated by a sob midway through his question. He wore the expression of a man betrayed, eyebrows pulled into a frown, lips pressed together in a firm line. The hand that had once laid on his lap, awaiting the return of his rosary, was pressed against his torso, as though he had been stabbed.

“Because I want—” to hurt you “— you to see that it wasn’t your beloved God who saved you from their fate. It was me. It was my people.” Lestat jabbed himself in the chest with his index finger. “You love Him so… and yet when you needed salvation it wasn’t Him who answered your prayers, it was me, father.” Very suddenly, he felt like a small child again. He wanted to collapse to his knees at his father’s bedside, to press his forehead against the straw mattress and cry until his jaw ached, and his tears had to cut new paths through the red riverbanks on his cheeks. “You misplaced your love. You poured it into a God who could give you nothing - we were all there, father. Tangible, ready to love you as you loved Him. We did.” Lestat sat down on the footboard, one of his legs propped up atop it, while the other rested on the floor. “I did.” He tipped his head back against the post that held up the moth-bitten canopy. “You think I betrayed you for leaving you, old man? You betrayed me first.” Lestat sighed. “Now you’re dying, and there isn’t a damned thing in this world that could convince me to do anything about it.”

The old man frowned again, confusion breaking through his grief. “What are you saying, Lestat?”

Lestat thought for a while… what was he saying? His father couldn’t know what he had become since he had left home all those years ago; it would break his heart, perhaps more than all of this already had. Despite his nature, both as a man, and as a vampire, Lestat had never found pleasure in hurting people, no matter how much he thought they deserved it. He had even recalled a certain degree of sorrow in the slaughter of the wolves. When he thought back to his time in isolation, he found he had grieved for them too. If his father knew, he would have to bring him into the darkness… or kill him, and Lestat didn’t think he could do either.

“I am saying that I have the power of Jesus Christ,” Lestat said. He turned his head to look squarely at his father’s prone form, half-propped up against the headboard. He didn’t know why he was saying this, or what was possessing him to continue. “I am Lazarus, risen after four days. I have been ever since I slaughtered those wolves in Auvergne. Do you understand my meaning?”

“You still sound like the boy who left.” The Marquis was silent for a moment, contemplative. One of his hands grasped for something that wasn’t there. “Why must you insist on being so cruel?”

That had been the wrong thing to say: a terrible misstep. Lestat’s jaw tensed, and the lazy, languid air he was holding himself with seemed to evaporate off him like water thrown atop hot coals. “Why did you insist on it with me?” He asked, his voice a low snarl. Lestat’s foot slipped off the footboard and hit the wooden floor with a dull thud. It had been intentional, and quite as Marius said; it was somehow much more satisfying to move about in their world as one of them, rather than a shadowy wraith. “Have you considered I am merely a product now of what you made me?” Lestat winced then, pressing the palms of his hands against his forehead, as though in great pain. “I tossed my boyhood away trying to find an escape from you, and then an escape from your beloved God, who let me endure such cruelty.”

He dropped his hands from his face and pushed himself back to his feet. His eyes prickled with tears, tinting his vision pink. Perhaps for the first time since his mortal death, he felt a familair tug in his chest, one he associated with his childhood, when he fell in the square and tore up the skin on the palms of his hands, or when his older brothers told him they didn’t want to play with him anymore. He was hurting, and in a way that he hadn’t remembered he could. His throat was tight, and his heart was hammering in his chest. With one hand, he tugged at the tie around his neck, slipping his fingers under his collar, and trying not to cringe when his fingernails brushed against his skin. They felt wrong. When he made to speak again, his tongue caught on his fangs, like it did when they were still new and awkward behind his lips, and the syllable came out a low whistle.

It was a while before he could continue, and when he did, he spoke with the voice of the man who had fled to Paris, not the vampire who had been born in Magnus’ tower. “I have only ever found the comfort and love I so craved in the theatre - when I could be Lelio, not Lestat - but that was torn away from me too.”

Lestat placed both of his hands atop the footboard of the bed. His fingers curled around the wood. The varnish was coming off in places, and he found himself tracing the grain of the wood with one of his fingers, dragging it back and forth. He tipped his head forward, so his chin almost rested against his chest, blond hair hanging like curtains around his face.

“And I should have known; for all theatre tragedies begin and end with God.”

The weariness was setting in. Dawn was approaching. Lestat could feel it, heavy in his chest, almost like he was being compressed. It didn’t bring with it mortal exhaustion, rather, it seemed to inflict upon him all the motions of death, though without the pain Lestat knew went along with it. His heart slowed, his thoughts began to run together, like a river flowing into the ocean, all direction lost, and his breath grew shallower and shallower until it stopped altogether. This had never worried him, not in the same way it would have had he still been mortal. He felt a strange, detached curiosity, nothing more. He still had an hour, at least, before he needed to bolt himself into the coffin in the other room.

Lestat drew away from his father’s bed, staggering backwards with the clumsiness of a mortal child. There was nothing more he wanted to say to the old man. They would only continue to argue, and Lestat couldn’t bear it anymore. He was, when he was honest with himself, aware that New Orleans was not working. There was too much he had to hide, and he couldn’t continue to remain in such close quarters with a mortal, even if it was his father. Like so many other things, the old man wouldn’t understand what had happened to his son, and would ultimately come to fear him for what he had become. Lestat knew he wouldn’t manage that well. He would become like those vampires he had met back in Paris… or like Nicolas: grief-stricken, and trapped in a time they no longer related to, distorted, broken reflections of a world long dead. Perhaps New Orleans would do that to him. Lestat already felt it sometimes; tiredness that seemed to settle in his very bones. He was growing weary of this place, and the strangers he was surrounded by. What was he doing here, so far away from everything and everyone he had ever loved?

When the old man spoke again, Lestat’s hand was wrapped around the handle of the door to the room where he kept his coffin.

“Get me my rosary. Where’s… where’s my rosary?”

Of course. Lestat threw a glance over his shoulder, and then down at the wooden floor, where the rosary lay. It had once been painted, but all traces of the colour were long gone. He wondered if his father knew that the once jewel-toned wooden beads had lost their colour, and if he even cared. Lestat stepped away from the door, his fingers slipping off the cool metal of the handle. He took two deliberate steps across the room and picked up the rosary. He held it close to his eyes, examining each bead, and then the cross. Lestat drew his hands in close to his chest then, holding the rosary so that it pulsed with each beat of his heart. This had once belonged to his mother. Not Gabrielle, his fledgling, who the Dark Gift had made a stranger, but his mother, who read to him, and sang him to sleep in Italian when he was still young enough to be afraid of the dark. Lestat remembered sitting on her lap as a child, playing with the rosary by twisting it around his fingers and tightening it until the tips went purple.

She never scolded him for such behaviour. Gabrielle had always regarded her children with a sense of detachment. She would be attentive to them, but only if they asked it of her; she wandered through motherhood like the shambling revenant mortals believed vampirism would make of her. Lestat knew that she had tried her best to love her children, and had grieved the ones she lost, but her resentment of her position cut deep. She hadn’t lived a day until she died.

“Damn you,” Lestat found himself saying. “Damn your rosary.” His fingers tightened around the beads. “I shall never forgive you, and you will die a miserable, guilty man. This is a truth forged from nature itself, not God, and no matter how much man struggles against it you will all fail.”

“You speak with such detachment! Are you not a man too?” The old man asked. His voice was thin, tired. He would soon fall asleep again, and would likely doze all morning like he always did, unless the sunrise kept him awake.

“Perhaps.” Lestat shrugged. “Would Lazarus still be a man if it were not Jesus Christ who raised him?” He raised an eyebrow. Lestat dropped one of his hands from his chest. His fingers curled into a fist at his side. He may have forgotten the prayers, and hymns sounded positively monstrous in his new voice, but after Magnus’ tower, this question had never ceased to haunt him. There was no Devil, not in the way that mortals believed… their idea of such a being came from creatures like Magnus, who preyed upon innocents simply because they could. If he was born of a monster, and then raised again by one what did that make him? “I am Lazarus, father.”

“You blaspheme.” It was all he could say. The old man didn’t know his son very well, but he did know that when he found his metaphorical fixation, he didn’t often stray from it. There was nothing anyone could do to keep Lestat from behaving exactly as he wanted to, and there never had been.

“And you lie there dying, unable to stop my blasphemy if you tried,” Lestat shot back. His silvery eyes seemed to flash with disgust when the old Marquis cringed in response. “I do not lie, father. I do not love you enough to lie to you.” The rosary suddenly felt heavy in his hand. Lestat uncurled his fingers, revealing the wooden beads once again. After a few moments of silent contemplation, he tossed them at his father, a look of contempt twisting his features. “I am Lazarus, four days after his end, and you are, and forever will be, Lazarus four days prior.”

Before the Marquis could respond, Lestat turned on his heel and fled the hotel, picking up his coat on the way out. He made sure to hang the key up before slamming the door behind him.

The sky was lightening. The horizon was bleeding, an open wound spilling red and purple onto the blackness overhead. He typically tried to be confined within his coffin by this hour, but there wasn’t a damn thing that could convince him to return to it. The hotel wasn’t safe, not after a row like that. Lestat couldn’t trust his father not to pry into his business, or try the door to the coffin room. If he grew concerned enough, he would have staff try to open the door, and Lestat knew that. The Marquis had always been obsessed with control, and for Lestat to slip out of it so often would have been infuriating. If he was beaten and starved as a child, he didn’t want to think about what would happen if his father decided to try his hand at his old punishments. Lestat would kill him while he slept, entirely unaware of what he was doing, and then the sun would burn him away to nothing. He had nobody to scatter his ashes to the wind, as he had done for Magnus.

The streets were nearly empty, spare the occasional sailor staggering back to the Mississippi before his ship departed. Lestat didn’t look at all out of place. He could have easily been mistaken for a drunk, with his loose hair, and the haphazard, crooked way his frock coat hung over his shoulders. His eyes were stuck to the horizon, drawn to it as though it was a river of blood. He wanted to squint - to draw his hand up to his face and hide away from it, stagger into the side of a building and curl up with his knees drawn up to his face, and his arms over his head to ward the sun away. He couldn’t look away, or do anything more than walk towards it, as entranced as any of his victims.

It was a mortal man that drew his attention away. In the brief moments in which Lestat’s eyes were torn from the horizon, he was overcome with anguish that he hadn’t felt since he had been mortal… but it wasn’t his. He was feeling what this mortal was. The man was one of extraordinary beauty, his dark eyes flecked with green and bronze set beneath a pair of furrowed eyebrows, with high cheekbones and full lips. The dark green of his own coat flattered him terribly, giving his skin a warm glow in the dim light of the early morning.

His shoulder connected with Lestat’s arm as he passed. He seemed to be more thrown off by this than Lestat was.

The name that almost slipped from Lestat’s lips did not belong to this stranger.

The man turned around to apologise, but was greeted by an empty street.

#interview with the vampire #lestat de lioncourt #character study #sort of #no beta we die like those rats louis eats #vampire chronicles

13 notes · View notes

ireallylovepuppies101 · 1 year

Text

Inky Mystery Audrey AU 5

Part Five!!!!

After the three siblings manage to get on the train to get back to Toon Town despite how Bendy and Boris having a wanted criminal status made that a bit, difficult, and after they realized the weird doll was a voodoo doll that turned into a little version of Bendy (if Audrey was at all tempted to mess with it before then she certainly isn’t now) they decide to head back to the casino where it was probably the best option to stay without getting arrested asap. While there Audrey notices a poster advertising Alice singing at the casino and tugs on Bendy’s arm to get his attention and point it out to him. “Bendy! The pretty lady that helped me is going to be singing!”

Bendy would be rather surprised to see the poster, and decide to take his two younger siblings to get a fizz-wizz while getting the chance to see Alice and ask her about it. Though with the two thugs at the bar pissing off Bendy and giving him hard core warning vibes, he’d tell Boris to take Audrey with him to go get his wallet from their hotel room. As she holds Boris’s hand and looks over her shoulder back at Bendy and the two other men, she’d look up at Boris and ask. “Bendy’s going to beat the snot out of those weirdos isn’t he?”

Boris sighs and picks up the pace to get Bendy’s wallet faster so they can get back to their brother. Thankfully they miss out on the two thugs lashing out at the bar, but Boris would quickly herd Audrey away when they see those idiots making a scene at the doors of the casino as they’re getting thrown out. While Bendy and Boris bicker over Bendy getting into fights with people at bars, Audrey notices Alice and smiles and waves while pulling out her note book. “Hi Ms. Alice! I drew a picture of you! You wanna see?”

Takes a minute for Alice to snap out of her shock over learning Boris is the other brother she heard Bendy and Audrey talk about before and that they’re all not blood related, she’d be very flattered seeing the cute drawing Audrey made of her and lets her keep it. After spending a few hours chatting with the three, Alice has to go to prepare for her singing performance. The three siblings come to watch and enjoy the show, Audrey thinking her voice is very pretty, and also being pleasantly surprised when Dot and Yakko show up.

She’s not pleasantly surprised when the two thugs from earlier come back with their mean buddies looking for her and her brothers because their boss wants to meet them. Bendy and Boris quickly take Audrey and get the hell out of there as Alice tries getting the men to leave before Dot and Yakko intervene and Alice can help the three siblings. Then someone tries taking the doll and they all have to deal with THAT situation on top of everything else. Audrey spends most of that event glued by Bendy’s side and holding his hand as he’s hurting from someone having the doll. The whole thing is rather scary, but she does her best to be brave just like when they were in New Orleans and whenever Bendy has an attack.

She had to be brave for her brothers.

Little hard to stay brave when she officially meets Black Hat for the first time. Clinging on tightly to Boris as Bendy stands protectively in front of them, feeling Hat’s angry energy scaring the ever living daylights out of her. Boris does his best to soothe her when he feels her shaking against him.

With them getting kicked out of the casino and Alice losing her job, Yakko and Dot take them to meet Xedo and Wiston at their place where they all spend the night and spend the next morning talking and explaining things to Xedo and Alice. When that’s done with, they head to Oddswell house, meet Avery, and get reunited with Granny. Audrey giggling happily as Granny hugs and fusses over them before bringing them inside and all of them catching up.

But then Audrey asks where Steven is, and Granny has to break the news. It breaks Alice’s heart watching Audrey openly cry as Boris pulls her into his lap and Bendy tries comforting the two of them. The three siblings decide to visit the cemetery to pay their respects to Steven, leaving flowers at the grave as Boris hugs Audrey and Bendy rests his hands on their shoulders. When they eventually leave, they get unpleasantly surprised by Cuphead and Mugman waiting for them.

Bendy runs for it as Cuphead chases him, while Boris protectively holds Audrey as the two watch Mugman carefully, before he pulls out a pack of cards and asks if they want to play. Boris plays go fish with him while Audrey sits in Boris’s lap and looks deep in thought. Mugman notices that as they’re playing, as well as her eyes look all teary. “Hey Little Lady, I don’t think I’ve seen you cry once since we first met. What’s wrong?”

Audrey glances back at the cemetery as Boris gives her a comforting squeeze while she’s in his arms. “We were visiting a friend…”

Understanding, Mugman offers his condolences, before asking Audrey if she has a blank piece of paper he can see real quick. A bit confused, she pulls out her notebook and takes out a blank sheet of paper to give to Mugman. After a minute of watching him mess with it, he gives it back to her, and she curiously looks it over as he speaks. “I only know how to make paper airplanes. Hope you like it.”

Boris would be grateful when that gets Audrey to smile a little as she thanks Mugman.

Then Cuphead comes back with ink covered unconscious Bendy, looking pissed off when he finds the three of them playing cards. Boris would be scared enough seeing Bendy in Cuphead’s arms, but he nearly has a stroke when Audrey runs forward and starts kicking at Cuphead’s legs and yelling at him to let her big brother go. Cuphead being caught off guard and frankly getting even more pissed off that this freaking rugrat has the guts to kick him (which surprisingly hurts). So he grabs her by the back of her sweater, throws her and Bendy at Boris, and leaves while dragging Mugman by his handle. Audrey later gets one hell of a scolding once they’re back safely at Xedo’s and stay hiding there for a few days.

None of them expect Holly to come looking for them since she lost her job at the college because of them, but Audrey certainly wouldn’t be complaining once they get to know her and she helps them figure out what to do with the magic outdated map. Holly even complimented her on her art skills when Audrey showed her a drawing of what the map looks like to her and her brothers. By the time Holly leaves Audrey right away tells her brothers that she likes her. Getting some chuckles out of them and a pat on the head.

Few days later, Bendy asks Boris and Audrey if they want to go see the circus, laughing when both of his younger siblings look ready to explode with excitement before they leave to go see the show. Both Boris and Audrey have a blast as Audrey sits on Bendy’s shoulders to see better over the crowd, and the two get VERY excited when Bendy manages to get them to meet the mouse. Though while Boris is nervously trying to talk to Mickey, Audrey would be a bit more bashful and overwhelmed meeting THE Mickey Mouse. Mickey notices her clinging to Boris’s leg as he slowly kneels down and says hi. Audrey doesn’t say hi back, but she does reach into her bag and pull out her notebook, pulls out one of her more colorful pictures she made and gives it to him. Mickey thanking her very much and saying he’ll treasure it always, Audrey smiling so much more as her yellow eyes twinkle.

Unfortunately, Bendy has an ink attack. Mickey quickly takes charge of the situation and helps Boris with Bendy while telling Donald to take Audrey with as he gets Oswald and the kids out of there. Audrey would be rather spooked by the bad attack her brother is having, and also confused by the very tired looking rabbit man looking even more spooked then she is. She respectfully keeps her distance from Oswald and the bunny kids as she patiently, and tensely, waits for the attack to end. She’d be caught a little off guard when some of the bunny kids around her age approach her with a carrot muffin and introduce themselves, saying their Uncle Mickey said a treat might help cheer her up.

Audrey appreciates that and chats a little with them until Mickey Mouse comes to get her and tells her the attack is over. As he walks her back to Bendy and Boris he’d tell her she’s an amazing brave little girl, and that he’s sure her brothers appreciate how strong she is. Audrey thanking him for his nice words, and clinging to Bendy once she’s back by his side while Mickey pulls Boris aside to talk to him.

Things, unfortunately don’t get much better when they leave. Cuphead and Mugman find them again as they head out, the three trying to run for it, and dodging when Cuphead shoots at them. Causing him to shoot Mugman instead. Boris firmly holds Audrey as he covers her eyes before she sees any of the blood, and Boris carries her when they run for it when Cup clearly snaps.

Bendy does his best to calm Boris and Audrey down after that traumatic situation, but getting surprised by detective Ringtail and Featherworth at the apartment doesn’t really help. Alice would quickly grab Audrey as she screams at the detectives not to arrest her brothers, she’d get so worked up that her eyes would turn red like Bendy’s does when he gets mad. Bendy quickly asks the detectives to let him and Boris calm her down, and thankfully they allow it. Bendy instructs Audrey to take deep breaths until she’s calm enough, and gently explains that she’s going to stay with Xedo and Wiston for a little bit while Holly and Alice check up on her for them. Until they can come back to her, she has to promise to be on her best behavior and be brave for them. Audrey promises with teary eyes.

It absolutely kills Bendy and Boris as they get dragged off hearing their little sister crying.

And on that oh so happy note, it’s time for the funfacts!

-Alice does her best to not act distant towards Audrey and Bendy, or shudder when Audrey tugs her hand and she gets hit with the cold feeling demons give off. Honestly she finds Audrey very sweet and enjoyed spending time with her as they all stayed at Xedo’s. Which is why she didn’t hesitate to pick up Audrey and comfort her as her brothers were arrested. Ignoring the cold feeling chilling her to the bone as she spends a long time soothing the crying little girl and promising her things will be okay. She’d be a shivering mess though once Audrey eventually falls asleep and Alice finally puts her down.

- Audrey doesn’t like Black Hat. He’s big, mean, and freaking SCARY, way scarier than Lady Facilier was. She was GLAD they left and she told her brothers she did NOT want to go back to that casino. Bendy and Boris would not argue with that.

-Xedo and Wiston are interesting. Audrey’s glad Xedo wants to help tell the truth about everything going on and clear her brothers’ names, but after watching Wiston try setting stuff on fire a few times, she decides she prefers not sitting next to him during meals and during quiet periods. She won’t hesitate to throw a cup of water at him if she has any reason to feel worried and she doubts Bendy and Boris would be mad if she did.

- She starts liking Mugman a bit more after he made her a paper airplane to cheer her up. She enjoys playing with it when she and her brothers are forced to hide at Xedo’s for a while. Bendy decides not to ask who made it for her.

- Cuphead at first gave Mugman a hard time over getting “beat up” by a little rugrat in New Orleans after he saw the bruise Audrey gave him when she kicked him. Mugman swears Audrey’s tougher than she looks, but Cuphead ignores that. Until Audrey kicks HIM when she tries defending Bendy from him. Cuphead would not look at Mugman who’s watching him trying to hide his limp with a smug look.

-Audrey laughing up a storm when Mickey hugged Boris and he BARKED because he was so overwhelmed. Though honestly she wasn’t much better when Mickey gives her a quick hug too before walking her back to her brothers after Bendy’s attack. She’d be BLUSHING from head to toe to the point that her white fur looks pink and she looks ready to just duck inside her sweater like a turtle hiding in its shell.

-She knows how Bendy feels over Cuphead and Mugman, so she’d try not to voice how upset she is over Mugman clearly being badly hurt because she started to like him (she may not have seen anything but everything she heard made a pretty clear picture) but it’s kinda hard to hide how shaken up she is even if Boris is being more open about how the whole thing upset him. Bendy takes Audrey into his arms as he does his best to sooth the two of them and carries her all the way back to Xedo’s apartment.

-After they officially meet and became friends with Holly, she helps out a lot with Audrey’s education whenever she has time. Bringing her books to read and teaching her some things that she learned while in school. Bendy and Boris appreciate her help since their education is a bit limited and they’ve been lacking in her lessons with the whole quest keeping them busy.

#bendy and boris in the inky mystery #babitim #Bendy and the Ink Machine #batim #Cuphead #the cuphead show #au #audrey drew #Inky Mystery Audrey AU #my stuff #quest bendy #quest boris #quest cuphead #quest mugman

5 notes · View notes