applesaucedream | The Tomato in the Mirror

Current Music: April 12, 2013

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The Tomato in the Mirror

Spring is in the air, and monsters are in your head. It will be hard to run from your fears tonight, though -- for you see, you are the thing lurking in your nightmares. Whether it's something that goes bump in the night, a ferocious animal, or even a person you find intimidating, you have become that which frightens you. Anyone who encounters you in this dreamscape will see the shape of you nightmares, and should you look into a mirror, well....

Dreamers will find themselves in an oversized funhouse whose twists, turns, and intersections turn it into a maze. There is no entrance and there is no exit, only branching hallways, tunnels, and ladders that divide and rejoin in baffling combinations. By the look of it, the funhouse has been here for years, slowly falling into decay as its lights burn out one by one and the bright paint chips and fades. The machinery, however, is still working, still ready to surprise these new guests. Hallways end suddenly in long, steep slides back down into the depths, floors lurch under dreamers' feet, and entire corridors spin horizontally. Elsewhere, dreamers might become lost in the mirror maze or get dropped into a vast ball pit.

[Mod note: Usual dream party rules are a go: apply the dream's transformation to your character(s) as you see fit, and decide for yourself whether they will remember these experiences in the morning. Both members and non-members are welcome to play all characters on this post, including those which are not currently part of the game's cast. Have at!]

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A voice Peter doesn't recognize drifts up the yawning opening of the slide, and he peers fruitlessly down to where it turns and the view is cut off. "Who's there?" he calls testily.

"Gabriel." And, right, his voice sounds different too. Better explain that. "The dream made me into someone else. But you should toootally come down here. There's a ball pit!" The balls are a little grimy, but he's not bothered by it.

"The hell did it do that for?" Peter eyes the slide dubiously, then looks back at the hall from whence he presumably came. He wants to argue that he's too old for this crap, but arguing that he's too old for anything will likely just open him up to ridicule. With a sigh like the world is on his shoulders, he sits down at the edge of its opening and swings his legs onto the polished wood. "Fine. Get away from the bottom."

Easing his way onto the top of the slide, he tries to control his descent. That only works for a few seconds, and then he loses his grip -- it's almost like it's oiled, like a bowling ball lane -- and goes wooshing down, down, down, letting out a strangled yelp along the way.

Gabriel laughs as Peter shoots out of the slide at full speed, the plastic balls waving out around his point of impact as if he's some kind of flailing meteoroid. "It's a bit slippery."

That was not fun in the slightest, and Peter did not enjoy himself one bit, nope. Not one bit. He gives one good thrash where he's come to rest on his back, partially buried, and succeeds mostly in burying himself slightly deeper.

"...How do I know you're really Gabriel?" he asks really, really belatedly.

"Seriously?" he asks, amused at Peter's difficulties with navigating in a ball pit. "Okay. Shall we do the classic then? Ask me something only I'd know the answer to." He moves forward a little, pushing through awkwardly until he can reach out and pull Peter a little more upright. "There. Give me your best shot."

"Look at you," grouses Peter, gesturing...but allowing Probably Gabriel to help him up, a cold hand gripping the one his friend offers. It's easier once he's not floundering on his back, at least. "You don't look anything like him. You. Him."

Tugging his clothes straight, he tilts his head and asks the first thing that pops into it. "What are you?"

It's only now that he's gotten a closer look at Peter that he realizes what is going on here. "Look at you. Speak for yourself, Lestat."

He looks down at his hands again, frowning. "I know. It's not the best, is it?" He gestures vaguely to his own face. "So. Angels. Gods. The whole thing. It's all real where I'm from, right? This is what Death looks like. I literally look like Death right now."

He'd meant it as a question of verification, back to that ask me something only I would know bit. Gabriel's reply more than covers it, though, as well as makes his appearance all the more disturbing. Where before Peter had merely been looking at some stranger, now he's suddenly filled with the urge to edge away.

Or he would do, if his brain wasn't busy playing the last few words of Gabriel's first comment back over and over like a scratched record. Lestat. Bloody stupid fiction it may be, but Peter read the entire Vampire Chronicles several times over as a teenager (though inexplicably to the few gothy friends he'd had at the time, he'd detested all the protagonists).

"This is a dream, isn't it?" he asks urgently, visibly upset about something.

"This is a dream," Gabriel reassures him, seeing that he's getting worked up about it. Maybe he shouldn't have said anything about the whole 'face-of-death' thing. Or maybe not having a pulse is freaking Peter out. Totally understandable, either way, as this dream seems gears towards thrills and frights.

"You're probably snoring Lucy's ear off right now." He tilts his head at Peter, considering him. This looks a little more frightening that usual, considering the new face. "Alright there?"

"Why wouldn't I be alright?" replies Peter a bit too quickly. Maybe Gabriel was shitting him -- maybe it was just a dig at the way he often dresses in dreams, like he's still onstage slaying gloriously fake vampires (but never a vampire himself -- never, not even when he was a kid coming up with his first scripted show). There's not really a surreptitious way to check and reassure himself, but he tries anyway, clasping one hand over the other wrist to check his pulse...which he can't seem to find.

"Because you're suddenly a vampire?" He'd thought that that part was obvious. "I look like death, you're a vampire. One hell of a theme, don't ya think?

He scoots around a bit, rustling the play balls at he does. "Are you gonna freak out?" Peter does look like he's edging in that direction. "As much as I'd love to see you flailing around in a ball pit, you really don't have anything to worry about."

NOPE. Peter's hand flies to his mouth, where he cuts it on one of the teeth he's been exploring with his tongue. "Oh, fuck me," he moans, looking at the blood on his thumb. It's probably fortunate he doesn't technically need to breathe, as he's already on the road to hyperventilation. "It's just a dream," he reminds himself, not realizing he's saying it out loud. "Just a dream, just a dream."

Well, fuck. So much for Peter not freaking out in the ball pit. "Yup. Just a dream. You are correct. Ding ding ding, you get the prize." Gabriel doesn't really want to try using any of his powers on Peter at the moment. Despite his ease at looking like Death itself, he's afraid that his powers might be altered as well. Who knows what might happen here if he tries to calm Peter.

"Tell me about what happened after me an' Seth left. How's the power doing?" He grins distressingly wide. This is a pretty transparent distraction tactic, but he doesn't think he needs to be smooth about it. A drowning man will grab onto anything, after all. He expects that Peter will grasp onto this instead of facing what's distressing him "When should I come over for lessons? Or that threesome. How're negotiations on that one going?"

Peter's busy feeling his face, trying to reassure himself that he hasn't gone completely shark-mouth. At least he's not feeling any urge to bite Gabriel? Then the memory of Lucy teasing him about the rebels' resident vampire biting Peter on the dick if he goes wandering around the building naked comes to mind, and why is he thinking about biting Gabriel on the dick now?!

"...I never said we were going to have a threesome," he says, snapping back to the real world and grabbing onto that lifeline like, well, a lifeline. "I dunno, ask Lucy when she's available. She's the one with a schedule." Ish. And he means for the practicing.

"Do I need to fit her schedule to teach you how to teleport?" Hooray for distractions.

He waggles his eyebrows in Peter's direction. "Unless you weren't talking about that. In that case, yeah, she better fit me into her schedule. Us."

Peter gives him a blank look. What about it is weird? "Yeah, you do. She deals with all that stuff. I --" he flaps a hand -- "delegate."

What, Gabriel, you think Peter has time for stuff like planning ahead? Half the time when he tries it, it turns out Lucy already had something scheduled for them to do. Surely that's the entire reason, not at all that he's afraid to try teleporting without her there to undo his mistakes.

Edited 2013-11-11 22:15 (UTC)

"You delegate." He raises an eyebrow in Peter's direction. "What is she, your secretary?"

"She does double duty," grins Peter. No way it's going to get back to Lucy, right?

"Oh, I'm so going to let her know you said that." Yeah, don't hold your breath, Peter. He probably won't, but you never know what he'll find amusing in the moment. He grins back at Peter. "Just out of curiosity, how do you think she'd react? My guess is righteous anger."

"Yeah? Your word against mine, who's she going to believe?"

Actually...that's kind of a good question.

Ha, well, Gabriel doubts that Lucy trusts him much at all, and Peter isn't actually all that good at lying. "She knows you pretty well, Peter. She could probably throw out a guess about anything and get it right."

"You won't be helping your chances," says Peter lightly. Not that he intends to have a threesome at all, nope.

Gabriel is starting to think that the negotiation for this mythical threesome is more entertaining than the actual thing could ever be. "Oh, and what are my chances now?" He pauses and snorts. "Disregard the old-man face."

If he thinks that, clearly he is underestimating Peter's sexual prowess.

"It's a lot to disregard," replies Peter innocently. "Show up like that and I don't think even Lucy's going to be interested."

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has_a_horn - 2013-11-15 06:44 (UTC) - Expand

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fucking_ebay - 2013-11-17 23:22 (UTC) - Expand

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