#and can synthetize it better c: purr purr

[ccaptain]

tl;dr: H:SR Kaeya only lets his hair down around his partner(s), when there's trust involved, and when he's deeply stressed to further inconvenience himself as a self-sabotaging technique.

There's nothing simple about H:SR Kaeya, and this includes his hair. It's a painful affair, down to every root of it.

He always keeps it tied up for a reason: for easy management, to keeps locks out of his face and for praticity. These didn't used to be his hair, but he will take care of it nonetheless. He only wears them down in two occasions, centered specifically around his partner(s) and situations of deep stress.

Around his traveling companion, he wears his hair down specifically around bedtime, when he joins them to either lull them to sleep by reading/telling them a story, caressing them until they're out or joining them for a restoring nap. Letting his hair down around them is an act of trust, and makes the act of untagling long locks after something so sweet a bit easier on him- he trusts that his partner will not feel inconveniencing by waking up with a mouthful of cobalt. Any help with untangling his hair is appreciated and helps with intimacy; he could fall asleep properly if his hair is played with in a relaxing situation.

In the second case, in situations of deep stress and even remnants of a trauma he's stuck with, he will often let his hair down and past his waist.

It's a self-punishment: his hair is troublesomely long, and tends to tangle and wrap him if he isn't careful. So he lets long locks go days with tangling around his neck, his arms, his wrists and pull at his scalp when he gives a careless tug to free a limb, a digit, the palm of his hand. He will let cobalt in front of his vision, impairing himself as much as he can. Why would anyone do this to themselves, knowing that it will just add to their mental stress?

Kaeya claims not to know why people self-sabotage, but the fact that he takes this behavior on without realizing is another example of how ironically human he is without seeing it.

He lets what's left of Kaeya Alberich punish him further. When he's down, he just keeps sinking until he feels like pulling himself together.

[ladyfloriographist]

Prompt: 13. “Can we just make a decision? Please?”

Pairing: Adam (Only Lovers Left Alive) x femme!voluptuous!Reader

Warnings: night drives to a video store, fluff-ish stuff, flirting, cursing (because it’s Adam), and would vamps love the idea of temperature play? I think they would

XXXX

“Oh, my God. Adam, stop. Pull over.”

Adam glances out your window for the briefest moment. “What is it?” his vaguely interested baritone drones.

“Look!” It’s an old video store, a movie rental place, a relic from a time gone by. “Please please—oh! We’re past it.” You sigh and slump back in your seat, staring out the window as the next-to-deserted moon-lit city rolls by.

Slowing to a stop before a red light, Adam looks to you. “Really?” he says, with the faintest smile—like he could humour you, if you were sweet about it.

You put your hand on his where it rests on the gearshift. The chill of his flesh is comforting, somehow, and he feels the same about your warmth. You run your thumb over the exposed back of his hand. “I haven’t seen one of them in so long. I didn’t even know they still existed. Will you take me, baby? Can we go?”

Ever so subtly, the corners of his mouth tug upward, like he’s trying to hold back a smile.

“Five minutes,” you attempt to persuade him further, “that’s all. And we could have a movie night!”

His brows raise, and you shuffle a little closer to him in your seat.

You adjust yourself, pushing your chest out and pressing your arms together to exaggerate your ample cleavage. Then, you drop your voice and murmur huskily, “You could watch me eat a choc-top—”

The traffic lights turn green.

“—feel my mouth get all cold.”

Adam tears his gaze from yours and throws a u-turn, spinning his old Jaguar around and following the road back the way you’d come.

He smiles slyly at you out of the corner of his eye as the engine rumbles down the desolate street, and you grin at him. No more words need be said.

Adam pulls into the carpark, and an old neon ‘open late’ sign flickers and flashes in the large window.

“Wow,” you whisper, ripping off your seat belt and stepping out of the car. “I can’t believe this place is still here. I thought they all closed a few years ago.”

Adam huffs a shallow laugh as he shuts and locks his door. “Time in a lost place is a funny old thing.”

You whip around to face him, and find him glaring at the old building with thinly veiled disgust. The large windows are a little grimy, and two nearby rubbish bins overflow with garbage. Inside, one of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling flickers, and another one is cracked and broken, illuminating nothing beneath it.

“Fuck’s sake…” Adam murmurs quietly.

You stretch your arm out to him. “Come on, grumpy.”

Slowly his gaze lands on yours, looking every bit the part of a sullen teenager.

“For me,” you beckon him closer, offering your hand. “We won’t be here long.”

Begrudgingly, Adam stalks towards you and slips his gloved palm into yours. “They’d better sell that fucking ice cream here,” he growls, slipping on his Oakley shades.

“I’m sure they will, baby,” you croon, smiling back at him as you push open the large glass door.

It’s stale inside, the damp and dust only just kept at bay by whirring air conditioning that churns out crisp, cold, recycled air.

You shiver a little, and Adam finds it delightful.

The young clerk behind the counter looks up, slightly surprised but mostly disinterested. “We close in ten,” they grumble.

“Midnight?” Adam questions, and the clerk nods, going back to their phone. He squeezes your hand and says, “Make it quick,” – but your attention is already elsewhere.

“How much for a slurpee?” you call to the sales clerk eagerly.

They look at you with a blank stare.

“Sorry,” you gesture at the machine, rotating crushed, watery ice artificially coloured a deep pinkish-red. “For a slushie?”

“Two-fifty for a small, four bucks for a large.”

You glance at Adam, smiling sweetly. “It’ll make my tongue red,” you murmur breathily.

Adam regards you with an intense, lingering stare.

“I’ll taste a little sweeter,” you whisper.

He looks deep into your eyes, and when he glimpses your lips his nostrils flare very, very subtly—but enough for you to know, your whispered words are affecting him.

After pleading and paying you and Adam find yourselves strolling into the paranormal and supernatural section.

You break from his palm to grab at one of the selection, and hold it up to his face.

“This,” you say emphatically, “this was so popular, babe.”

Adam tilts his head to the side as he scrutinises the cover. “’True… Blood’?” he says slowly, turning over the concept in his mind.

You nod. “It’s what the vamps drink. This manufactured kind of…” you search for the word, “synthetic blood.”

“Hm.”

“Based on books.” You hand the Blue-Ray to him and he peruses it further. “And HBO made it, so,” you wrap your lips around the clear plastic straw and suck more of the icy treat into your mouth.

You keep your eyes locked with his as you do, and Adam watches from behind his black sunglasses, rapt. You swallow and finish your sentence. “So, it’s very sexy.”

Adam looks set to lunge for you and tackle you to the musty, un-vacuumed carpet.

You think quickly, having bitten off more than you can chew and needing to pump the brakes on your teasing. “Here,” you grab the first thing you see and hand it to him, “another option.”

Adam takes the DVD case and his features soften. Gently, he trails the tips of two fingers over the cover art. “Vlad,” he murmurs, and his mouth breaks into a small, wistful smile.

Your gaze flicks back and forth from Adam to ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ in quick succession. “You know Gary Oldman?” you squeak, incredulity lacing your voice and your features.

Adam smiles. He places the DVD back on the shelf. “By another name.”

You stare, gobsmacked, as Adam picks up another movie—continuing on as if no revelations have been divulged. His smooth forehead creases as he inspects the DVD and he flips the case over in his hand.

“Handsome,” he says softly. “Was this popular too?”

“’Twilight’?” you raise your brows. “Very.”

The furrow creasing Adam’s brow deepens, and he slides the movie back into its place on the shelf.

After a few more minutes of browsing, the clerk calls out from behind the counter, announcing to the pair of you that the store is closing.

You spin on your heel to face Adam. He’d been getting lost in small moments of nostalgia, disdain, and melancholy. Perhaps bringing him here was a bad idea.

“Come on, baby,” you take his hand in yours, “they’re closing. Pick one and let’s go.”

Adam grumbles an inaudible growl of a word and looks up from the DVD he’d been holding. He stares at the shelves, and clenches his jaw.

This isn’t good. “Can we just make a decision? Please?”

“Is this what you thought of me and my kind before we met?” Adam says in the dull, drole tone of someone particularly unimpressed. “That I could, fucking, sparkle and glimmer in the sunlight?” Unceremoniously he drops the movie back onto the shelf, and his lip subtly curls in distaste. “How terrible for you to realise the truth. Fuck, you must be bitterly disappointed.”

You cock your head to the side. Though you couldn’t possibly have foreseen Adam confronting his own undead immortality at a Blockbuster in the middle of the night, this was definitely a bad idea. Adam was dipping his toes in the cold, dark, rippling pool of vampiric existentialism and no, you will not try this again, lest he fall in.

The clerk calls out to you again, impatient and tired.

You switch tacts, trying on something that all men fall prey to, living or undead. “Well, the truth is stranger than fiction, my love.” You step closer to Adam, and place your palm on his chest. You step up on your tip toes, and let your hot breath fan over his neck. “And far more… seductive.”

Like dropping a cube of ice into warm water, the press of your hand thaws his surly mood.

Adam gazes at your face. “Look at you,” he purrs, eyeing how the crushed, syrup-laden ice has changed the colour of your tongue. “You look like…” he licks at his bottom lip, “you’re just like… my little strawberry.”

You smile. “A strawberry, hm?”

“Yes,” he murmurs darkly, backing you against the shelves.

“Hey! Hey—excuse me. Look, I’m locking up and I really need y’all to leave,” says a voice off in the distance.

“Well, come on then, baby,” you murmur with a soft, breathy voice, “take me home and eat me.”

Adam’s almost never moved faster.

XXXX

Come and let me know if you have a prompt you’d like me to write! There are some lists on my blog, and at this stage I’m happy to write for the Enola Holmes versions of Sherlock and Mycroft, and any Tom Hiddleston character b/c I’m in love xx