If Vampire Cuddles Were Real… 🖤

Lazaar’s Backstory

Don’t mind me - just over here daydreaming about Lazaar’s backstory. Again. I blame @asgoodeasgold for this particular version: she posted a fab interview of about MG’s Wickham and I went down an Abigail x Death Comes to Pemberley rabbit hole 🐇.

Who knows why.

📷 Silly photo mashup above made from screenshots of Death Comes to Pemberley (still currently available on Netflix - hurrah!) and MG’s interview with PBS on YouTube (thanks @asgoodeasgold for posting): https://youtu.be/AWZn_0FGSMg?si=8N8uTs5Jc78G4UIo 📷

Chapter 21 of the Visitor explains how Lazaar might have ended up at the gallows. It’s historically inaccurate and completely implausible, but it’s just for fun. Thank good(e)ness.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/58121329

Yep, Lazar. Still. 🧛✍️❤️

He does-but-he-doesn’t want to be there. Yes, perfect, perfect song 👌 Listening to it now.

Carl’s trying (and failing) to enjoy a cup of tea in a greasy spoon on the beachfront. Who’s sitting opposite him, I wonder… 🤔

📷 Photo faffing (imperfect and just for DQ fun) - original photo of MG by Uli Weber for Style Italia and of the greasy spoon from whynow.co.uk blog 📷

Carl ended up looking exasperated. By himself or Mona/Rachel? Only time will tell.

Mixed media photo and Procreate faffing about as I enjoy reading Department Q and wait patiently for the Netflix show.

📷 Orginal photos by BBC drama and David Calder on Facebook 👌

Ooh, I like that angle. He would indeed have supreme self control. I tried to write some more. But he turned into MDCM again. (That man/creature/fictional-unattainable-wishlist-setter has a lot to answer for). I’ll try again. Or maybe just do two alternatives because who needs sleep anyway? 🧛❤️🩸

Mood: Lazaar / languor

Refusing to do his vampire thing. And driving Ana to distraction. Imaginary, inexpert edits on an Abigail theme.

Wrote a little bit to go with these on AO3. It waffles. It’s undercooked or overcooked. A bit much or not enough. Can’t really decide. But - happily - it’s just for fun.

Edits above using Procreate ✍️

📷 Beautiful original photos (below) by Iain McKell, Phil Fisk and Joe Gillespie. Dress is from Reformation. 📷

(Just in case you needed some kawaii vamps in your feed). 🧛🖤

Fan Art - Carl Mørck - Department Q (using Procreate)

Carl Mørck in his beautifully brooding glory. This Procreate sketch/paint tries to capture my love for this character, the amazing Department Q books and the beautiful Matthew Goode, who will be playing him on Netflix. Hurrah.

Based on a photo from the Hackett SS24 Campaign, as seen on @asgoodeasgold feed on Instagram. Sketched first and then faffed around with different brushes and effects. A Mørck Metamorphosis, you might call it 🙃 Can’t wait for the Netflix series.

Still imagining that Abigail epilogue? Yes, I am.

In my mind, this is Joeys’s house. She has a visitor, as you can see 🧛🔍🖤

⬆️ (enjoying the luminance brushes on Procreate a little too much 😂)

📷 Fan art photo collaging using Procreate - photo of MG from ADOW - photo of MB by Luis de la Luz - stock/my own photos of garden furniture, foliage, house, etc. 📷

And there’s an imaginary scenario (for @cecipaez-blog1 ). I don’t own the characters, I haven’t properly studied the film, I have no idea what I’m talking about, really: it’s just for fun 🎡.

——————————————

A Visitor - Part 2 - Ready or Not

— imaginary mini epilogue to Abigail (2024) featuring Joey/Ana and Lazaar —

You often feel like you’re being watched. It’s a hazard of your line of work and the questionable company you keep. But tonight, as you clear away the debris of an evening with friends in your backyard, the feeling is palpable.

You pause to listen and gauge the sensation. The fairy lights strung overhead dance slightly in a warm swirl of summer air, making the shadows below you throb in and out of focus. A wind chime twinkles, with slight menace, from the garden next door.

Get a grip, you tell yourself.

Get inside and lock the door, your body tells itself.

Just as you have composed yourself and are about to continue the clean up job, a clear, luxuriant voice cuts through the warm night air behind you.

“Not interrupting anything, I hope?”

Your movement slows as immediately you identify the speaker. You straighten and speak his name:

“Lazaar.”

You are surprised by the evenness of your tone, when your pulse seems to feel the exact opposite.

You turn and, with another rush of the tepid breeze, he emerges from the shadow of a tree. His hands are in his pockets. His posture is soft. But his stare is far from it. He walks slowly towards you, enquiringly.

“I had friends over for dinner,” you gesture towards the empty pizza boxes piled in your arms and the beer bottles which clink together in your clawed fingers.

He nods and his gaze flickers towards the house.

“Everyone left,” you find yourself needlessly reassuring him.

“I see.”

You can’t quite see if he’s smirking but it feels as though he might be. As he observes the clutter in your arms, the movement of his eyes is languid and appraising. “May I?” he reaches towards the empty bottles to relieve you slightly of your load.

You’re taken aback by the offer, but agree, “Sure.”

As the bottles are transferred, you notice his nostrils flare. You realise he’s trying to ascertain what kind of company you have kept. His brow smoothes and you assume he is satisfied by his investigations; it was, after all, a girls’ night in.

Without being asked, he walks over to the bin store and deposits the bottles in the correct one. Returning to take the pizza boxes from your arms, he repeats the process. You observe that you find this bizarrely incongruous show of domesticity wildly attractive.

As he saunters back towards you, he looks at the open door to the house. You stand there wondering if you are actually going to invite a vampire into your home.

“Why are you here, Lazaar?” The question emerges low and slow into the sultry air. You didn’t mean it to sound so provocative but you’re coming to realise you have little control around this man. Creature. Fantasy figure.

The piercing gaze is on you now. The vampire looks slightly agitated by your question. You watch as he steels himself and sits down upon the garden wall. He shrugs:

“I find that you…” his gaze drops to his hands, “you… are on my mind.”

You take a deep breath to quell the lilting, fizzing sensation rising within you. You note the unassuming nature of his posture as he sits on the wall, deliberately metres away from you. Yet this calculatedly unthreatening stance does nothing to mask his agitation.

Numbed and blurred slightly by the moderate amount of beer you’ve consumed, you probe your instincts more carefully. You find there is no fight or flight here. No threat. You feel the same submissive calm of a few nights ago when you saw him in his garden. The same curiosity. The same heady lurch of your insides when he so much as looks at you.

“Ditto,” you hear yourself say, with a slight smile.

The look that now passes his features is positively devilish and you witness his first genuine smile at you in return.

But the warmth of the moment curdles instantly. You gasp as you notice the uniformity and whiteness of his teeth. They look normal and far from razor-sharp. A wave of nausea resonates with the shock pulsing through your body.

“Your mouth…” you breathe, your fingers finding your own lips by way of explanation.

His smile fades and he moves towards you but stops abruptly when you recoil.

“You’re not…” you breathe and your heart begins to thump as confusion and panic flood your senses, “you’re not in your true form. This - this isn’t you. It’s just an illusion… what are you doing? What game are you playing? Why are you here? I think you should…”

“Ana…” he interrupts, his voice gentle but stricken, “Ana, it’s all right…”

“I must be crazy. What the f*ck was I thinking…,” your mouth is dry and your legs are shaking as you try to back further towards the house.

“Ana, please,” his palms are raised in surrender as he takes two more cautious steps towards you. As the moonlit shadows slide over his features, you watch his face transform into something more familiar. His pupils darken until void of all light, his irises take on an ethereal glow and his fangs become clearly visible beneath a snarling lip.

Your heart stills as you realise that this sight, which should terrify you, has in fact achieved the opposite effect.

“There now…” he soothes, the old-worldly timbre chiming again in his voice. He tilts his face up to catch the moonlight further.

Otherwise he remains very still. Waiting. Watching.

His breath is patchy and you can see the anguish in his eyes.

“Why did you change?” your voice is unsteady, as though you might cry.

“My form… I can... I wanted to be something less alarming… more palatable… more safe.” His brow furrows and his lips close firmly. In the moonlight, you notice a muscle ticking in his jawline.

His vulnerability in this moment is exquisite.

“I did it for you,” he murmurs and this dissolves your doubt as swiftly as it had appeared.

“Well don’t,” you fold your arms but take two steps towards him, “don’t do that again.” your voice softens.

“I shan’t,” he bows his head reverently and relief floods through his tone.

When he lifts his head again, his gaze is searching, “But I want to take the form that you desire.”

The last word rips through you, quite literally, and he speaks again:

“How do you want me to be, Ana?”

⬆️ Fan-art-photo-faffing for Department Q; Carl Mørck (played by MG) at a Greasy Spoon - Part 3; all made up/just for fun whilst we patiently await the show

Let’s call this ‘Variations on an MG-string’ - Mørck’s mood from cool to warm to abso-bloody-lutely (re: Mona/Rachel, of course). This series of edits imagines a meeting between Carl and Rachel at a beachfront cafe after a windswept walk. Perhaps it’s Portobello Beach. Perhaps it’s a date. Or could turn into a date. Who knows.

📷 ⬆️ Original photos/screenshots by Uli Weber, @asgoodeasgold and from Downton BTS 📷 Edited using Procreate 🖌️🎨

Hurry up Netflix and give us some info so I can stop overthinking it! 😂 Can’t wait!

Lazaar ✍️

Still a work in progress but this is what I’ve managed so far today. Drawn using various brushes on Procreate - mainly from the amazing Laura H Rubin.

Also updated The Visitor on AO3 🧛❤️