![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flambeaux) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
singillatim2024-02-05 06:23 pm
[open] General Store
WHO: Louis de Pointe du Lac and YOU (new players welcome too)
WHAT: Opening the General Store!
WHEN: throughout February (at evening/night if you want Louis) + party on an Aurora night second half of the month
WHERE: General Store, Milton
Feel free to also use this setting as open starters or closed to characters other than Louis! Just indicate it if you do! His general store? No... Our general store...
A. Home Improvement
CONTENT WARNINGS: a little bit of vampire blood, talk of hunting animals for food
It started out of the practical need to store and barter goods. Louis's home is not a fit place to entertain anyone other than rats, and he doesn't want to disturb the people who live in the Community Hall.
Louis turns his attention to the thoroughly-looted husk of the General Store. Louis feels oddly shy about starting up anything, self deprecation rearing its ugly head. Lestat called his business back home a "human hobby."
He needs all the help he can get. There's the plumbing and leaks from the recent storm, trash to throw out, walls to paint, shelves to fix. He'd like to make arrangements for daytime hours when he can't be there. And finally, putting a new coat of paint on the GENERAL STORE sign with an addition:
Marché du Lac
How handy is he? Louis did small repairs at his club when a handyman wasn't available at night, he's fairly nimble... and he's never done construction in his life. But any fool can board up a broken window and repair shelves, he reasons.
"Fuck!" he hisses when he hits his thumb with the hammer. He automatically puts his thumb in his mouth, and the taste of that little bead of blood is shockingly good. He must be hungry. Time for a break.
He slips his hammer into the loop of some scavenged cargo pants. He might be terrible at construction, but at least he looks good doing it.
...Why is he working at night?
B. Having a Few People Over
To celebrate the reopening of Milton's only general store, Louis invites the town for food and drinks on the next Aurora night. At the risk of being accused of living in it, he wears his best 3-piece suit, the gray one from home. The place is well-lit, both due to the Aurora and every light source Louis could get his hands on. It's a myth that vampires don't like light. They just have a sun allergy.
Louis used to run a club, he knows how to plan a party. He doesn't know how to cook; he enlisted help for that. Among as much variety as Louis could get, the caterer Lalo Salamanca made a mushroom stew. Delicious--but watch out! A few special mushrooms may have found their way into the batch, possibly into a few bowls, and Louis has no idea...
He puts jazz records on and opens the doors. Empty shelves have been pushed out of the way for mingling or making music--he sorely misses live music. Louis would only request that it be good. (Louis reminds himself to explicitly instruct Lestat not to eat any musicians he deems bad.)
C. Open for Business
It's little more than a single counter and a few shelves worth of stock. Louis contemplates trying to bring in people to sell their own wares just so the rest of the shelves won't look so empty.
He arranges the odd collection of whatever he could scavenge and make presentable: dry goods, cans, candy, alcohol, cigarettes. The storeroom is depressingly half empty. The freezer, moved to an unheated room, is surprisingly full of meat.
In the window he puts up a passable copy of Tim's missing bunny poster. He sets up a little seating area where people can eat and drink if they wish. (It feels odd not to place the round little tables and woven chairs outside like at home, where the weather was mild enough.)
Louis emerges from the back room in an apron at the sound of the bell over the door. His suit and tie are so people won't mistake the owner/manager for a lowly clerk... as much as anyone can "own" anything in this scavenged town.
"Evenin', what can I get for you?"
D. Back in 15
Louis expects at least one teenager to take up loitering... Big mistake. If any hapless souls hang around too long and are trusted not to steal, Louis simply takes off his apron, dons his coat, and says without warning as he leaves,
"Mind the counter while I'm gone."
Congratulations, you now work here until he returns. He'll be back in a few minutes... right?
Do you:
- Invite friends and avail yourselves of the candy, booze, and free aprons
- Actually tend the store
no subject
His decision with this is as a potential conversation starter, or at the very least something interesting to add in later on, and so there's an almost delighted and amused little sparkle to his eye when the other man refers to Vasiliy as "Mr. Yegorovich" — a knowing little glance shared with Vasiliy; of course anyone not familiar with their cultural norms might assume such a title to be the right course to follow, and Konstantin knows that.
"He'll probably tell you to just call him Vasiliy," he smiles — it's how Vasya's been introducing himself most of the time. "So please, call me Konstantin." He's happy to offer up the less-formal allowance, friendly and warm and very much wanting to make an amicable impression on the well-dressed man hosting this party.
Of course the quick-thinking Vasiliy would find a reason to spare him from the act he's been keeping up, grinning as Louis makes his return and offers Vasiliy his own choice of bottle, looking them over thoughtfully.
"Those look good! While you're deciding, I'll go get some less fun things, as a good patient would." He gives a dramatised sigh before he'll slip to the front of the store to fill a cup of water for himself and a cider for Louis, taking his time with it so as to allow Vasiliy a chance to speak to their host.
no subject
Not that this man is as intolerable as most Americans; the mistake is good-natured, and he's a warm host. The fact that his clothing is familiar, that the way he's styled his hair is a reflection of Vasiliy's own, helps tremendously, too.
Konstantin meets his eyes, though, and that's a change from every other time a Westerner has fumbled his name—he's not alone, he's not isolated by it. He looks at him with warmth dancing in his eyes, a twinkle of amusement, and it's something they're sharing, something bringing them closer together. Warmth sparks in his chest in kind, a familiar flutter of bashfulness. It's been a long time since he's felt this way around anyone.
Konstantin slips away; Vasiliy turns his attention back to their host. "Most things do. The cigarettes here too— they're so weak." A genuine, quiet laugh. "Maybe two or three Canadian cigarettes are one Russian smoke."
no subject
Louis assumes Vasiliy and Konstantin, like many people here, might usually just go by their first names, and Louis's habit of sticking to his Southern manners appears quaint. Old-fashioned, even. He's older than he looks. And sure enough, Konstantin suggests they do just that.
Familiarity with first names aside, Louis keeps an eye on Konstantin, as a good host should, as he speaks with Vasiliy. (Before he arrived here, he witnessed a poisoning. No need to tempt fate. It's hardly a thing he thinks about as much as just fastidious practice.)
"Most folks who call me by my first name and ain't my family or friends mean some kind of disrespect, but a small town eases things up." Of course he would be a city slicker. "Louis is fine. As far as I know, I'm the only Louis here. Let's try the bourbon."
He pours Vasiliy a glass. "Any disappointment at least won't come with homesickness. Just homesickness for me. I used to sell from these very makers back home."
The only reason he knows it's half decent, because he had it when he was human and could taste. Louis is surprised, but not that surprised, that a company survived Prohibition and did well enough to send their product up north.
no subject
He's delighted to talk to as many people as he can, features warmed from that brief interaction, glowing a little from some inside light turned on as he then casts that smile to his companions. He hands Louis the glass of fresh cider and then lifts his own glass of plain, cold water, cheerful despite the fact it's certainly not as much fun as what Vasiliy is drinking.
"A different drink for each man!" It's a little amusing...! As he looks to Louis— "Where is home for you, if I might ask? We all seem to be quite the diverse group, here."
Konstantin slides himself into the snippet of conversation he was able to catch on his return easily ('back home', Louis said), no trace of awkwardness as he takes his place beside his housemate without a second thought and looks to their new companion with curiosity, eager to learn about him.
no subject
He swiftly throws back his own shot and downs it in a single motion. He doesn't add his own question—and what did you do there—yet; instead, he just watches with interest and waits for the answer as he holds his empty glass. ]
crying lmao
"Lord, the man won't even sip it! Here, have another, and please don't murder it like the last one. Merde..."*
He rolls his eyes and tips the bottle again, but he grins while he shakes his head. This Vasiliy might know how to clean up pretty good, but that was nothing short of animal behavior, in Louis's opinion. Anyway, Louis is here to set that right.
He holds out his own glass to clink with theirs.
"New Orleans," Louis supplies an answer with the pride of someone who calls a city home more than a state or country. There's just no place quite like New Orleans. It also explains his accent--New Awlins--and the smattering of French that occasionally peppers his otherwise red-blooded American tones. Diverse, Konstantin said, as if Louis's Americanness and the color of his skin weren't obvious.
He thinks this Russian couple is a riot. (He's pretty sure they're a couple, or have the makings of one, because he knows, doesn't he, what he once turned a deliberately desperately blind eye to.) This is what he was missing, casual conversation with charming people about anything other than deer tracks and weird weather.
* French, "shit"
'He wouldn't have survived 1937'
There's an amused chuckle at the whole display as he reaches to clink his glass of water, genuinely enjoying the activity, the shenanigans, as it were. It's all easy and comfortable (on his end, anyway); indeed, it feels like mingling with friends the same way anything back home would. Louis is easy to talk to, and Vasiliy is drinking heartily, so everything is good!
"New Orleans! There's a place I've never been to, but it sounds like a dream. Vasya was living in America before here, too — Chicago."
Konstantin's very at ease conversing about the other man's life details; it comes as naturally as anything.
such a peach!! cw implied heavy drinking
"In Russia we do not take sips of vodka— Kostya, tell him. There is no reason to drink so slowly. This is how we drink it in country of manufacture." He throws the second shot back with ease just as he had the first, and barely feels either, aside from maybe the slightest loosening of tension in his shoulders a few moments after he swallows. It takes more than two; this is small talk. Drinking to be polite.
It sounds like a dream, Kostya says, and he holds his tongue—he'll tell him about what a nightmare it is later. He's sure an American city is a very pleasant place for their friend to live if he's above the dilapidated trailer-park poverty that, in his experience, seems to characterize the American South as he knows it.
Konstantin offers up that he lived in Chicago; he nods, corroborating. "It was 2018. Probably a different Chicago than you know."
The pomade keeps the repression in line
“Oh this is just casual drinkin' for you then,” he laughs. Vasiliy isn’t even breaking a sweat. Louis knows better than to challenge him.
Louis comes from money and is used to it, that much is clear. However, no matter how much money he had, there were still places like the opera house he couldn’t go without pretending to be someone’s footman. His American South is a dream if one has money, but especially if one is white.
The options for making any appreciable amount of money for a Black man were limited. Louis saved his family fortune with a place of ill repute in the red light district, but his church was all too happy to receive a large donation towards the roof.
Louis is a man of contradictions, a man seeking to do good while regularly killing people for their blood.
“2018? They still do hair like us in 2018?” They’re not beating the pomade allegations. “Then why is it so hard to find pomade in town?”