Though none is on the menu tonight— Daniel has selected mostly psilocybin mushrooms, a strain he knows to be reliably potent and stable for relaxation and mind expansion, and supplementary MDMA. The kind of cocktail that in fifty years may end up offered as utterly ordinary therapy, but is worth a lifetime in prison today.
A smile, as Armand situates himself in Daniel's space, on his person. He accommodates this and winds his arms around his maker's torso, lets him get comfortable. A mortal Daniel would have complained about being squashed, a Parkinson's-riddled Daniel wouldn't have been able to tolerate it. Being dead is fucking great, actually. Daniel noses near the arch of his shoulder. Pleased, as he keeps most of his attention on the fish he's caught, carefully reeling.
She is overwhelmingly bitter and desperate. Self-righteous and self-loathing. She wants her world to make sense, even if it means her world being over. She drives too fast, not because Daniel encourages her too, but because she's impatient and being angry at other drivers scratches at the itch that never goes away in her heart. She wants the answer, though whether it's because she wants a resolution or she wants it to shut up, is difficult to ascertain.
The welcome feels precious. Earned. How good, to have Daniel's arms settle around him, for his fledgling to be pleased, transmit this pleasure in sweet gesture. All things can be ripped away, shattered apart, burned, some form of annihilation dependent on the material it is made of, and Armand is capable of enjoying it while it lasts.
And he can close his eyes, focus. Ah. There she is.
There's no cheating the veil that divides them. No ability to wave hello from within a third party's brain. The closest they get is the sharing of blood, blood being the substance that forms their connection. Armand just listens, and can guess at a sense of Daniel twisting around a neurotic kind of anxiety, hateful and quick to spark, exploiting synaptic pathways that already exist in pursuit of that answer.
Yes, good. He plays with the hair at the nape of Daniel's neck, feeling this flush of approval. "I'll entertain the idea of a vacation," he says, meanwhile. "I don't think the population of Greenland can sustain a vampire for more than a week or two, without that vampire going noticed."
Armand's ease against him, the little touches, inspire Daniel to drop a kiss against his collarbone. Too much threatens to be sickly, and he second-guesses himself now and again with the reminder of New relationships are always like this, he'll stop thinking it's cute sooner than you want. Might as well indulge while he can.
Terrifying word, by the way. The R Word. Relationship. A mundane, yet daunting, tag on something that's been deeper (and worse) (and better) since its inception. Since they looked at each other in a bar for less than sixty seconds, with somebody else between them.
"Yeah, smart money probably picks off tourists in Iceland."
Vacation— someday. There's temptation to do everything soon, before it fizzles out, before Daniel fucks it up. But you can't rush when you can't die.
This woman should also quit rushing, and he encourages her, which sort of works. She parks in a commuter lot and heads to a rail stop, buys a hat (with cash) from a vendor that's starting to pack up for the night. Her phone is in her car, she drops her keys into a trash bin. Vanishing into anonymity, as she begins to draw closer to this neighborhood, where one of them will have to start precise control to avoid her being caught on anyone's ring door cams.
"I like this, though. Millennials call it a 'staycation.'"
He watches all her movements like a cat peering at a bird through the window, his fingers in Daniel's hair still toying with more of an absent minded fidget now. Watches the actions she takes at, Armand is sure, Daniel's instruction, smiles a little at the art of hiding the body before the body has stopped moving.
Foolish for him to give instructions. Daniel scarcely needs them. This could be an opportunity to feel redundant, but it doesn't turn into one. There is much more appeal for him personally in watching this fledgling he has made act upon the world, as he wishes.
"Millennials would," he says. "Justifying an absence of disposable income and a nice time spent at home in terms of capitalist productivity, or the willful lack thereof."
Eating rich people, finding everyone else tiring, reacting to an annihilated prime by making horrendous observations about older and younger generations alike. Mentally ill and kind of hot about it, kind of horrible. (Daniel has been fired from several newspapers before.)
In the not-quite-end, Daniel does need Armand's help with more finite control— he knows where she needs to go, how to path, but making her do it with precision is tough. He's not quite figured out how to get those intricate controls without either slipping or causing more damage than he'd like. Only a little annoying, meanwhile, because of course Daniel is the actual irritating distraction between them, but he can't lurk in Armand's head while he does it, so he wants pointers. Easier than ever to ask for them when Armand has foolishly arranged himself right in Daniel's grasp.
Deana, her name is, and she does eventually make her way to a hidden gate in the tall fence that separates their back yard from a neighbor's back yard — having a borderline Luddite neighbor who rejects all modern security and goes to sleep at 8pm is handy for smuggling in food without being tracked. Walks over grass, stops before them, has a funny contradiction on her face of a frown knitting her eyebrows over blank eyes.
Daniel kisses Armand's throat, just under the line of his jaw where he can feel his pulse, before they get up.
He gives his pointers. The way one can shape their commands to resemble the sorts of things a human tells themselves: stop, duck, faster, go. A light touch that still takes a preternatural amount of concentration and care to maintain. When Daniel truly explores the untapped potential of all a vampiric mind is capable of, the amount of plates that can be spun in one moment, then there will be trouble.
And Armand is not yet tired of sweet little kisses. Of cloying behaviour. Eventually, maybe something will turn, curdle, and Daniel will kiss him in that way and he might feel like e has been set on fire or needs to remove his skin to escape whatever deception it feels like, from either of them, but for now—
A pleased hum, a reluctance to stand. But he does.
"Please, be welcome," he tells Deana, who doesn't respond to that like he actually said it, but some part of her brain receiving it, soothed by it. She moves inside, this known quantity who has turned herself into a corpse already, a missing person report filed in, let's be generous, twelve hours or so.
He picks up his drawings things, and goes to put them away. Does the rounds, ensuring curtains are drawn.
Deana walks to the living room, and does not look up at the ceiling; painted like the sky, but shifting like sunset (or sunrise?) — broader and higher than Daniel's apartment, it took some time to coax the painter into finding the right balance of not too fiddly and detailed but not too blobby, blue into violet with clouds kissed with greys or pinks. (Maybe should have done the basement instead, but the ceiling is so much lower, and he's really only in there to sleep or fuss around during the day.)
She sits down on a sofa, slightly off-center, and waits. Passive thanks to mind-control, but still eager thanks to the part of her brain that Daniel hooked into when he decided on her. I'll understand soon. I'll know soon. Soon. Soon. Soon.
He encourages this, as he gets a glass of water. You're almost there. On second thought, he tries the fridge, and lucks out with a can of soda as well.
Mushrooms first. Nothing glamorous about it, eating spindly, gilled plants, sipping Diet Coke in between; she has done pills, a little bit of coke in university, but this is very hippy-dippy and her subconscious mind is at first riled in a bad way by the idea of raw dogging shrooms. Aspartame and carbonation help. There's no rushing this bit, it has to sink into her before Daniel decides to feed her more or stop, so he just sits back in a chair and looks over to Armand, hand extended. Luring.
Lured, Armand takes that hand. Doesn't resettle in Daniel's lap again, maybe to be contrary, or not too predictable. Stays close, stays intimate, shifting around behind him, to comfortably drape his arms over his shoulders, smooth hands down his chest. Knows there would have been the chance he'd deny himself if Daniel hadn't beckoned. Knows there are times when this feels like performance.
Content, tonight, to simply do as he wants. Within reason. For instance, he could play with their prey's mind like a cat with a yarn ball, but instead he says,
"Would a bad trip transfer, do you think, during the blood drinking?"
Less in the tone that he actively desires to fuck with their meal so much as speculative, and a little assumptive that Daniel will be informed on the topic.
Still learning each other, like this. Daniel has no qualms about being greedy, especially not when he has every reason to believe that this is on a timer. He banishes potential anxiety and digs both hands into enjoy it for now.
One hand, a literal one not a metaphorical one, slips up Armand's forearm to touch him, and slide fingers along veins, to the pulse point in the ditch of his elbow, and down again to his hand. Elegant artist's fingers, against his own broad ones. The predator nails look a little funny on Daniel, but on Armand, it looks like he was always meant to have them. Beautiful like the full spread of teeth in a tiger is beautiful.
"A 'bad' trip happens in the brain," he notes. "So maybe, but it wouldn't be about substance contamination in the blood, it'd be a psychological reaction to whatever you might end up exposed to while drinking from them. Depends on if freakouts during dinner unsettle you, I guess."
He tips his head back to look at his maker, curious about his thoughts. Deana is staring at her soda can. Slowly, she reaches for another little mushroom, and as she eats it, she begins pushing the tab on the can back and forth to weaken it, transfixed.
Armand easily rocks that little bit aside to meet Daniel's eye. Happy to engage. It's still a little like playing with their food, just less aggressively. Talking about it in front of her. Sensing the way her mind has to skitter aside or bend or shape itself around the words.
"Separate things," agreeable, "the chemical we are taking in through the blood and our own physiological response to it, and our psychic sense of the person producing that blood, their feelings, their memories, their emotional state."
Turns his hand, tangling fingers with Daniel. "But I wouldn't be surprised if there's interference between the two. I'm given to understand that psychedelics produce powerful spiritual awakenings."
"They can." Fingers laced, all contrasts. "Peyote's been used for thousands of years in religious practices for a reason. But you can also just see funny colors and fall asleep."
Deana might be seeing some funny colors right now. She's noticed the ceiling.
"It'd be an interesting experiment. See if a vampire's reaction can be deliberately curated by selecting a donor experiencing what they'd like to experience in turn."
An interesting experiment that would require a truly staggering amount of drugs and worrying number of vanished mortals. Daniel's pretty sure he could easily get volunteers if they thought they'd live - people are freaks, he's one of them - but asking an impaired monster to refrain from draining a victim to the point of death isn't practical.
"You know, for the vampire scientific digest I'm eventually going to publish."
Imagine.
The woman ends up consuming all of the mushrooms left to her with little prompting— much less effort than it had taken to direct her here. She's eager to sever herself from her own mind and turn off the torrent of stress. There's an answer in here. Daniel eventually sits next to her, and she asks quietly what the pills are. He tells her, and she takes them without prompting. There is a serenity to her that wasn't there when she arrived. She fantasizes that she'll wake up on the other side of this as someone completely different, and the drugs tell her that she will. She'll understand any minute now.
No peer reviewed, control tested, exhaustive study required, mock assurance before Armand is letting Daniel up. Stands where he is, a partial lean on the back of the chair. Watches Daniel and his prey, listens to her mind, the circling the drain rationalisation that is keeping her fixed on the couch.
Fingers wandering along the arm of it as he moves in closer, coming to settle on her other side. The spell might break if he intervenes too much, but also, it's too late for her. Riding high, now, spiralling into coloured streamers of consciousness. He strokes her hair back away from her ear. Her neck.
"Who will you be, Deana?" he asks.
She shakes her head. Doesn't know. But there are little flickers of notions. Herself, with more money. A man, with a wife. Her teenage self, running a marathon, never stopping.
A kaleidoscoping interior, between drugs, and vampire hypnosis. Daniel watches her mind and lets it fracture into different observable parts— gracefully, like ripples in a pond, watching distorted shapes of koi fish and reflections of flowers and stars.
"It can be a surprise," he tells her, nudging this and that in her head. Lacking in Armand's light touch, centuries of experience, and so he compensates by being conservative with his moves. Makes sure she doesn't realize she's in some stranger's house, flanked my men she's never seen before, being plied with drugs and told that she'll be reborn in just a second.
The intoxicants make it easier. She wants to be someone else, and as the flush of sensation overtakes her, she mentally reaches out to take the hand guiding her towards the door at the top of a hill. All she has to do is open it.
"Do you want to go first?" Daniel asks Armand, quiet. Away from the woman's attention. "I can keep an eye on you if you don't like it."
Armand can flex his power in subtle and precise ways, centuries of practice, a certain talent for it to begin with. But he watches her, and watches Daniel with her, and takes pleasure in drawing together the ways a journalist is a hunter, kiting a resistance subject around, provocation, silent spaces, lures.
A pause, which is a drawing back, lifting his eyes to consider Daniel across her, eyes violent orange already. Pupils normal, naturally. "Yes," he says, an agreement.
Maybe he won't like it. He is willing to experience that too.
He settles his hand on the back of her head, and Deana falls her skull back against his palm without much coaxing. When he parts his mouth, shows his teeth, it is both the mechanics of the thing as well as wanting Daniel to watch him, see his fangs drop and sharpen. (Fun fact, the cat with the biggest kill rate is the black-footed cat, which is an especially diminutive predator, little teeth and big eyes.)
"Soon," he promises her, before leaning in, and setting his teeth to her neck, sinking them in.
Deana will open the door and fall into the rainbow rainfall of a euphoric high when her blood begins to leave her. She just wants to know what she'll be like tomorrow. It'll be better than today, better than everything, and it feels so good, so indescribably good to get there, that she's now fully committed. Holding still pliantly as she's fed from, her eyes unfocused, seeing only multicolor clouds and stars as they form the next stage of her existence.
Armand looks incredible. His eyes, his fangs. Daniel gets to watch unabashed— not that he didn't stare before, now and then when he was actually able to observe his maker drinking, but it's different now. Now, he can raise a hand and stroke over the ancient vampire's hair to make sure he can see all points of contact. Now, he can cradle him gently, and silently encourage him to take as much or as little as he likes. They've had the Don't just keep doing more if you don't feel the high right away talk before about the substances Daniel fucks around with, so he trusts him to make an appropriate call on when to stop.
It's erotic. He had thought so before (so long ago?) in Dubai. He'd thought so as he learned to do it himself, though he rarely allowed himself to look at it that way. He has the freedom to, now. It's safe to watch Armand, the flex of his throat as he swallows, the seal of his mouth to the mortal's flesh, and think: it's just fucking beautiful.
He can feel Daniel look at him. The bond, perhaps, or just a more base awareness, knowing that the cradling touch to his head was motivated by wanting to touch his hair, motivated by his fledgling drinking in the sight of him. In this century, he has decided to welcome back the enjoyment of being looked at, instead of expressly finding comfort in the wings.
Long and slow and tender, his swallowing down of poisoned blood. It had hit her quickly, he'd noticed, which means the blood will be close to instant. As soon as he begins to feel something a little like a warm undercurrent flow beneath his thoughts, a sense of floating, Armand retracts his fangs, keeps his mouth sealed just to stem the precious flow.
She is not dead, but she is not lucid, she is gone from this realm, a limp thing on the sofa with a stubbornly beating heart.
Armand lifts his head, a glimmer of blood-stained teeth. Tips head, eyes opening to slivers as he presses his cheek to Daniel's hand.
Beautiful. He doesn't say so often, too aware of the fact that Armand was valued for his beauty in a nightmarish way— he might try to explain, that his otherworldly, monstrous qualities strike him as the most beautiful, that all kinds of people are physically beautiful and Daniel doesn't sit around getting distracted by them. But it would be corny.
He cradles Armand's face, thumb sweeping low near his mouth; he wants to push inside and touch the sharp curve of a fang, feel the remnants of blood, maybe lean forward and kiss him. Instead, he behaves. Starting off as a trip-sitter. No funny business until he's sure Armand is alright.
"Here you are," he murmurs. "Just like you're sitting with your feet in a stream. Watch it go by."
Sometimes it's just charming hallucinations. Psychedelic inspiration, and he thinks Armand will like that on principle, even if the euphoria and mind expansion never kick in. But if they do, Daniel will be mindful to only ask positive questions, and try to keep his attention relatively present. The ecstasy should help with that, and make it extremely difficult for him to end up going down any dark self-examination paths.
No longer drinking directly from Deana's heart, her blood becomes his own. Or his own consumes hers, and his skin is warm with it. Considers the creature he is, the root-like system of veins and arteries, reaching down, producing something unseen in the sun, but doesn't get too far down that path before Daniel speaks, his voice a resonance texture in the air, and draws his focus.
Amber eyed, blue eyed. A twenty-year old with fear and an unwavering focus in his eyes, a busy and distracted thirty-something power walking down a city street, a sixty-nine year old saying you're not from Dubai, I thought you were a native, as if he was the story.
He had smiled then too, as he does now, a fleeting and rare thing. Blood flecked, still, but human otherwise. "Yes," he says. He likes that analogy. Likes to watch the water go by.
Externally, it isn't quite the sleepy softness that Daniel has had some exposure to, since they began some co-habitation. Dreamy, maybe, but just as much from a satisfying draw of blood as the effects of the drugs. A sense that Armand is looking at him very intently, all of a sudden. A deliberate focusing.
Twofold surges of interest: that small smile, which seemed so disarmed and honest then, seems that way again now, and the knifelike focus that narrows down onto him. Armand is such a tangle of things, and it goes down in him for miles. Daniel thinks he could tumble forever, endless depths, velvet black and strange and endless.
His own eyes are overbright, starting to turn demon-yellow in anticipation of the blood. He looks back at Armand for another moment, a lopsided smile on his face that's entirely too fond for the situation, committing what amounts to a ritual murder together like it's romantic, before he moves to take up that invitation. The hand touching Armand's face slips down, though he stays connected, resting it on his maker's knee instead. Gives him better leverage as he leans in to Deana's other side, and opens his mouth for the sizeable fangs that extend from unremarkable canine teeth.
He bites down, covers the wound, and drinks. Deana shivers, her head falling back on the sofa, and Daniel holds her steady without letting go of Armand's knee. This isn't just the high, for him, he's also taking sustenance, and this will be the last of her life, walking through the door in her mind. A big hit, for Daniel, but he'd calculated what he might take on his own for a casual trip added the tiniest bit more, eyeballing the split between him and Armand. He's done this before, and he trusts his experience just fine; there's all kind of shroom etiquette these days, extensive communities throughout the world and dedicated tutorials on Reddit that emphasize the danger of tripping alone. But Reddit wasn't around when Daniel started using, and he's been a solo traveler long enough to know he can look after the both of them.
Her heartbeat, into his, and into his maker's (always seeming to sync when they sit next to each other for long enough). He swallows blood, psychedelics, life. Deana walks on, euphoric, and she lets go of any hand guiding her to do so. A joyful crossing as Daniel finally withdraws, letting her fade on her own. Pinpricks at her throat remain— they'll heal quick, but not instantly, like Armand can facilitate. Still a babypire.
Daniel looks at him. Made of black lilies, haloed like a saint, like the devil, ceiling moving above his head and opening up into galaxies of pastel planets.
Armand watches. Armand sees that Daniel is a being made of oil paint, still wet on the canvas, layered heavy in beautiful, artful textures of silver and peach. Knows that he could reach out and smear his fingers through him. It's tempting to do that, isn't it? When you create something that's perfect, and now that there is nothing left to do, all that is available to you is ruining it? Disfiguring it?
When he reaches out, his fingertips are very gentle. Aware of this fragility. He strokes down along Daniel's cheek, his jaw, flexed enough to keep his claws away. For a moment, he thinks, that's it, it's ruined, and he swears that the paint parts to reveal layers of white, red, stained canvas.
But no, Daniel is still whole.
Armand turns his hand, checking his fingertips. Nothing has come away. This is good. And when did he ever last touch paints? This is hallucination.
"Follow the interesting things," Daniel suggests. "Or just watch."
Armand is a deep well, deep enough to drown in. Daniel might like to see what's in there, all the way. It seems like it would be easy, from this vantage point— not simple, not safe, but he could reach inside of him and find the coldest parts and at least acknowledge them. Would Armand like that? Would he tolerate seeing Daniel's hands, frostbitten and damaged, offering comfort to the worst of him?
"Can I touch you?"
Making sure. Overwhelming, sometimes, all this.
He's not going to reach in anywhere. He just wants to touch his wrist, feel his pulse, think about blood and intimacy.
He hasn't considered that, Daniel touching him. The question strikes him as, somehow, ridiculous, but that sensation, like a chime, feels like it is struck from somewhere far away, or long ago, resonates oddly. Like, of course Daniel can touch him. Anyone can do anything, except for Armand.
The moment passes. He decides: yes, Daniel can, he would like it very much, and wonders if he would smear apart beneath him instead.
"Can we," he starts, and then looks to Deana, who is no longer Deana, but a garden, compost, ready to sprout. If he looks at her much longer, he will convince himself that the odd unfurling shapes that have begin to grow past her lips are real. Armand looks back to Daniel, casts him a smile.
Like some undersea creature, cast up into colorful stars. Armand's beauty is unsettling even in ordinary times, persisting even when Daniel sees past it. Now it appears to be some unhinged thing, a force of nature in itself, and it's terrible in a way. But still beautiful.
(Maybe Daniel should have said May I.)
"Anywhere you want."
Daniel offers his hands to his maker, allowing him to guide them wherever. Hopefully not into, you know, an incinerator or something, but he's not actually worried. High enough to be enjoying himself and be seeing into other dimensions, but not high enough to be totally lost. Still keeping half a foot into the real world to maintain focus on Armand, in case he takes a bad turn.
Armand winds his hands around Daniel's, flows to his feet, pulling him along. Anywhere you want feels like a promise, like he truly could go anywhere. The old palazzos of Venice, ancient even then, or sunny narrow alleyways where the sound of voices clatters off the stone and the sun makes warm the puddles and he doesn't entirely remember when or where he has that memory, or the ocean, which wouldn't kill them, but get out far enough, deep enough, and there would be little they could do but be held by it.
(Oh, starvation? Vampires don't die of starvation, not really, perhaps not even the young ones. Feed their brittle corpses with enough blood—)
Not the theatre. It was good that Louis burned it. Everyone always does what his heart desires, until they don't.
These thoughts, sparking between stars, and he thinks he would prefer his imagined ocean than anything he remembers. But between fantasy and memory, there is reality, the present, and he finds he has led Daniel to the floor, merely a room away. "I want to be here," he explains, his hands now reaching for Daniel's face. "I want you to touch me."
The study, the floor, hardwood with a complementary rug that goes well with the color of the grain and the color of the ceiling, which is darker in here than the living room. Daniel gets down there with him, no pain in his knees there beside Armand. He wonders if he just needed to move, or if he needed to get away from the corpse; his maker is wildly idiosyncratic sometimes. (Most times.)
"All right."
Daniel turns his head enough to press a kiss to one of Armand's thumbs.
"Here. Me and you."
He keeps one hand grounded on Armand, stays where he is just next to him, and then reaches with his other. Reaches down to his feet. Starts there, touching his toes, stroking over them and the flat tops of his feet, pressing lightly on the tendons there and sliding up, careful. He watches Armand's face as he does this, waiting to see if this is actually too weird and maybe he meant a hand job.
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All roads, alive and dead, lead back to cocaine.
Though none is on the menu tonight— Daniel has selected mostly psilocybin mushrooms, a strain he knows to be reliably potent and stable for relaxation and mind expansion, and supplementary MDMA. The kind of cocktail that in fifty years may end up offered as utterly ordinary therapy, but is worth a lifetime in prison today.
A smile, as Armand situates himself in Daniel's space, on his person. He accommodates this and winds his arms around his maker's torso, lets him get comfortable. A mortal Daniel would have complained about being squashed, a Parkinson's-riddled Daniel wouldn't have been able to tolerate it. Being dead is fucking great, actually. Daniel noses near the arch of his shoulder. Pleased, as he keeps most of his attention on the fish he's caught, carefully reeling.
She is overwhelmingly bitter and desperate. Self-righteous and self-loathing. She wants her world to make sense, even if it means her world being over. She drives too fast, not because Daniel encourages her too, but because she's impatient and being angry at other drivers scratches at the itch that never goes away in her heart. She wants the answer, though whether it's because she wants a resolution or she wants it to shut up, is difficult to ascertain.
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And he can close his eyes, focus. Ah. There she is.
There's no cheating the veil that divides them. No ability to wave hello from within a third party's brain. The closest they get is the sharing of blood, blood being the substance that forms their connection. Armand just listens, and can guess at a sense of Daniel twisting around a neurotic kind of anxiety, hateful and quick to spark, exploiting synaptic pathways that already exist in pursuit of that answer.
Yes, good. He plays with the hair at the nape of Daniel's neck, feeling this flush of approval. "I'll entertain the idea of a vacation," he says, meanwhile. "I don't think the population of Greenland can sustain a vampire for more than a week or two, without that vampire going noticed."
He understands your tricks.
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Terrifying word, by the way. The R Word. Relationship. A mundane, yet daunting, tag on something that's been deeper (and worse) (and better) since its inception. Since they looked at each other in a bar for less than sixty seconds, with somebody else between them.
"Yeah, smart money probably picks off tourists in Iceland."
Vacation— someday. There's temptation to do everything soon, before it fizzles out, before Daniel fucks it up. But you can't rush when you can't die.
This woman should also quit rushing, and he encourages her, which sort of works. She parks in a commuter lot and heads to a rail stop, buys a hat (with cash) from a vendor that's starting to pack up for the night. Her phone is in her car, she drops her keys into a trash bin. Vanishing into anonymity, as she begins to draw closer to this neighborhood, where one of them will have to start precise control to avoid her being caught on anyone's ring door cams.
"I like this, though. Millennials call it a 'staycation.'"
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Foolish for him to give instructions. Daniel scarcely needs them. This could be an opportunity to feel redundant, but it doesn't turn into one. There is much more appeal for him personally in watching this fledgling he has made act upon the world, as he wishes.
"Millennials would," he says. "Justifying an absence of disposable income and a nice time spent at home in terms of capitalist productivity, or the willful lack thereof."
But, for the record, "I also like it."
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Eating rich people, finding everyone else tiring, reacting to an annihilated prime by making horrendous observations about older and younger generations alike. Mentally ill and kind of hot about it, kind of horrible. (Daniel has been fired from several newspapers before.)
In the not-quite-end, Daniel does need Armand's help with more finite control— he knows where she needs to go, how to path, but making her do it with precision is tough. He's not quite figured out how to get those intricate controls without either slipping or causing more damage than he'd like. Only a little annoying, meanwhile, because of course Daniel is the actual irritating distraction between them, but he can't lurk in Armand's head while he does it, so he wants pointers. Easier than ever to ask for them when Armand has foolishly arranged himself right in Daniel's grasp.
Deana, her name is, and she does eventually make her way to a hidden gate in the tall fence that separates their back yard from a neighbor's back yard — having a borderline Luddite neighbor who rejects all modern security and goes to sleep at 8pm is handy for smuggling in food without being tracked. Walks over grass, stops before them, has a funny contradiction on her face of a frown knitting her eyebrows over blank eyes.
Daniel kisses Armand's throat, just under the line of his jaw where he can feel his pulse, before they get up.
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And Armand is not yet tired of sweet little kisses. Of cloying behaviour. Eventually, maybe something will turn, curdle, and Daniel will kiss him in that way and he might feel like e has been set on fire or needs to remove his skin to escape whatever deception it feels like, from either of them, but for now—
A pleased hum, a reluctance to stand. But he does.
"Please, be welcome," he tells Deana, who doesn't respond to that like he actually said it, but some part of her brain receiving it, soothed by it. She moves inside, this known quantity who has turned herself into a corpse already, a missing person report filed in, let's be generous, twelve hours or so.
He picks up his drawings things, and goes to put them away. Does the rounds, ensuring curtains are drawn.
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She sits down on a sofa, slightly off-center, and waits. Passive thanks to mind-control, but still eager thanks to the part of her brain that Daniel hooked into when he decided on her. I'll understand soon. I'll know soon. Soon. Soon. Soon.
He encourages this, as he gets a glass of water. You're almost there. On second thought, he tries the fridge, and lucks out with a can of soda as well.
Mushrooms first. Nothing glamorous about it, eating spindly, gilled plants, sipping Diet Coke in between; she has done pills, a little bit of coke in university, but this is very hippy-dippy and her subconscious mind is at first riled in a bad way by the idea of raw dogging shrooms. Aspartame and carbonation help. There's no rushing this bit, it has to sink into her before Daniel decides to feed her more or stop, so he just sits back in a chair and looks over to Armand, hand extended. Luring.
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Content, tonight, to simply do as he wants. Within reason. For instance, he could play with their prey's mind like a cat with a yarn ball, but instead he says,
"Would a bad trip transfer, do you think, during the blood drinking?"
Less in the tone that he actively desires to fuck with their meal so much as speculative, and a little assumptive that Daniel will be informed on the topic.
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One hand, a literal one not a metaphorical one, slips up Armand's forearm to touch him, and slide fingers along veins, to the pulse point in the ditch of his elbow, and down again to his hand. Elegant artist's fingers, against his own broad ones. The predator nails look a little funny on Daniel, but on Armand, it looks like he was always meant to have them. Beautiful like the full spread of teeth in a tiger is beautiful.
"A 'bad' trip happens in the brain," he notes. "So maybe, but it wouldn't be about substance contamination in the blood, it'd be a psychological reaction to whatever you might end up exposed to while drinking from them. Depends on if freakouts during dinner unsettle you, I guess."
He tips his head back to look at his maker, curious about his thoughts. Deana is staring at her soda can. Slowly, she reaches for another little mushroom, and as she eats it, she begins pushing the tab on the can back and forth to weaken it, transfixed.
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"Separate things," agreeable, "the chemical we are taking in through the blood and our own physiological response to it, and our psychic sense of the person producing that blood, their feelings, their memories, their emotional state."
Turns his hand, tangling fingers with Daniel. "But I wouldn't be surprised if there's interference between the two. I'm given to understand that psychedelics produce powerful spiritual awakenings."
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Deana might be seeing some funny colors right now. She's noticed the ceiling.
"It'd be an interesting experiment. See if a vampire's reaction can be deliberately curated by selecting a donor experiencing what they'd like to experience in turn."
An interesting experiment that would require a truly staggering amount of drugs and worrying number of vanished mortals. Daniel's pretty sure he could easily get volunteers if they thought they'd live - people are freaks, he's one of them - but asking an impaired monster to refrain from draining a victim to the point of death isn't practical.
"You know, for the vampire scientific digest I'm eventually going to publish."
Imagine.
The woman ends up consuming all of the mushrooms left to her with little prompting— much less effort than it had taken to direct her here. She's eager to sever herself from her own mind and turn off the torrent of stress. There's an answer in here. Daniel eventually sits next to her, and she asks quietly what the pills are. He tells her, and she takes them without prompting. There is a serenity to her that wasn't there when she arrived. She fantasizes that she'll wake up on the other side of this as someone completely different, and the drugs tell her that she will. She'll understand any minute now.
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No peer reviewed, control tested, exhaustive study required, mock assurance before Armand is letting Daniel up. Stands where he is, a partial lean on the back of the chair. Watches Daniel and his prey, listens to her mind, the circling the drain rationalisation that is keeping her fixed on the couch.
Fingers wandering along the arm of it as he moves in closer, coming to settle on her other side. The spell might break if he intervenes too much, but also, it's too late for her. Riding high, now, spiralling into coloured streamers of consciousness. He strokes her hair back away from her ear. Her neck.
"Who will you be, Deana?" he asks.
She shakes her head. Doesn't know. But there are little flickers of notions. Herself, with more money. A man, with a wife. Her teenage self, running a marathon, never stopping.
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"It can be a surprise," he tells her, nudging this and that in her head. Lacking in Armand's light touch, centuries of experience, and so he compensates by being conservative with his moves. Makes sure she doesn't realize she's in some stranger's house, flanked my men she's never seen before, being plied with drugs and told that she'll be reborn in just a second.
The intoxicants make it easier. She wants to be someone else, and as the flush of sensation overtakes her, she mentally reaches out to take the hand guiding her towards the door at the top of a hill. All she has to do is open it.
"Do you want to go first?" Daniel asks Armand, quiet. Away from the woman's attention. "I can keep an eye on you if you don't like it."
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A pause, which is a drawing back, lifting his eyes to consider Daniel across her, eyes violent orange already. Pupils normal, naturally. "Yes," he says, an agreement.
Maybe he won't like it. He is willing to experience that too.
He settles his hand on the back of her head, and Deana falls her skull back against his palm without much coaxing. When he parts his mouth, shows his teeth, it is both the mechanics of the thing as well as wanting Daniel to watch him, see his fangs drop and sharpen. (Fun fact, the cat with the biggest kill rate is the black-footed cat, which is an especially diminutive predator, little teeth and big eyes.)
"Soon," he promises her, before leaning in, and setting his teeth to her neck, sinking them in.
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Armand looks incredible. His eyes, his fangs. Daniel gets to watch unabashed— not that he didn't stare before, now and then when he was actually able to observe his maker drinking, but it's different now. Now, he can raise a hand and stroke over the ancient vampire's hair to make sure he can see all points of contact. Now, he can cradle him gently, and silently encourage him to take as much or as little as he likes. They've had the Don't just keep doing more if you don't feel the high right away talk before about the substances Daniel fucks around with, so he trusts him to make an appropriate call on when to stop.
It's erotic. He had thought so before (so long ago?) in Dubai. He'd thought so as he learned to do it himself, though he rarely allowed himself to look at it that way. He has the freedom to, now. It's safe to watch Armand, the flex of his throat as he swallows, the seal of his mouth to the mortal's flesh, and think: it's just fucking beautiful.
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Long and slow and tender, his swallowing down of poisoned blood. It had hit her quickly, he'd noticed, which means the blood will be close to instant. As soon as he begins to feel something a little like a warm undercurrent flow beneath his thoughts, a sense of floating, Armand retracts his fangs, keeps his mouth sealed just to stem the precious flow.
She is not dead, but she is not lucid, she is gone from this realm, a limp thing on the sofa with a stubbornly beating heart.
Armand lifts his head, a glimmer of blood-stained teeth. Tips head, eyes opening to slivers as he presses his cheek to Daniel's hand.
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He cradles Armand's face, thumb sweeping low near his mouth; he wants to push inside and touch the sharp curve of a fang, feel the remnants of blood, maybe lean forward and kiss him. Instead, he behaves. Starting off as a trip-sitter. No funny business until he's sure Armand is alright.
"Here you are," he murmurs. "Just like you're sitting with your feet in a stream. Watch it go by."
Sometimes it's just charming hallucinations. Psychedelic inspiration, and he thinks Armand will like that on principle, even if the euphoria and mind expansion never kick in. But if they do, Daniel will be mindful to only ask positive questions, and try to keep his attention relatively present. The ecstasy should help with that, and make it extremely difficult for him to end up going down any dark self-examination paths.
"Feeling good?"
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Amber eyed, blue eyed. A twenty-year old with fear and an unwavering focus in his eyes, a busy and distracted thirty-something power walking down a city street, a sixty-nine year old saying you're not from Dubai, I thought you were a native, as if he was the story.
He had smiled then too, as he does now, a fleeting and rare thing. Blood flecked, still, but human otherwise. "Yes," he says. He likes that analogy. Likes to watch the water go by.
Externally, it isn't quite the sleepy softness that Daniel has had some exposure to, since they began some co-habitation. Dreamy, maybe, but just as much from a satisfying draw of blood as the effects of the drugs. A sense that Armand is looking at him very intently, all of a sudden. A deliberate focusing.
"Now you," he invites.
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His own eyes are overbright, starting to turn demon-yellow in anticipation of the blood. He looks back at Armand for another moment, a lopsided smile on his face that's entirely too fond for the situation, committing what amounts to a ritual murder together like it's romantic, before he moves to take up that invitation. The hand touching Armand's face slips down, though he stays connected, resting it on his maker's knee instead. Gives him better leverage as he leans in to Deana's other side, and opens his mouth for the sizeable fangs that extend from unremarkable canine teeth.
He bites down, covers the wound, and drinks. Deana shivers, her head falling back on the sofa, and Daniel holds her steady without letting go of Armand's knee. This isn't just the high, for him, he's also taking sustenance, and this will be the last of her life, walking through the door in her mind. A big hit, for Daniel, but he'd calculated what he might take on his own for a casual trip added the tiniest bit more, eyeballing the split between him and Armand. He's done this before, and he trusts his experience just fine; there's all kind of shroom etiquette these days, extensive communities throughout the world and dedicated tutorials on Reddit that emphasize the danger of tripping alone. But Reddit wasn't around when Daniel started using, and he's been a solo traveler long enough to know he can look after the both of them.
Her heartbeat, into his, and into his maker's (always seeming to sync when they sit next to each other for long enough). He swallows blood, psychedelics, life. Deana walks on, euphoric, and she lets go of any hand guiding her to do so. A joyful crossing as Daniel finally withdraws, letting her fade on her own. Pinpricks at her throat remain— they'll heal quick, but not instantly, like Armand can facilitate. Still a babypire.
Daniel looks at him. Made of black lilies, haloed like a saint, like the devil, ceiling moving above his head and opening up into galaxies of pastel planets.
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When he reaches out, his fingertips are very gentle. Aware of this fragility. He strokes down along Daniel's cheek, his jaw, flexed enough to keep his claws away. For a moment, he thinks, that's it, it's ruined, and he swears that the paint parts to reveal layers of white, red, stained canvas.
But no, Daniel is still whole.
Armand turns his hand, checking his fingertips. Nothing has come away. This is good. And when did he ever last touch paints? This is hallucination.
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Armand is a deep well, deep enough to drown in. Daniel might like to see what's in there, all the way. It seems like it would be easy, from this vantage point— not simple, not safe, but he could reach inside of him and find the coldest parts and at least acknowledge them. Would Armand like that? Would he tolerate seeing Daniel's hands, frostbitten and damaged, offering comfort to the worst of him?
"Can I touch you?"
Making sure. Overwhelming, sometimes, all this.
He's not going to reach in anywhere. He just wants to touch his wrist, feel his pulse, think about blood and intimacy.
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The moment passes. He decides: yes, Daniel can, he would like it very much, and wonders if he would smear apart beneath him instead.
"Can we," he starts, and then looks to Deana, who is no longer Deana, but a garden, compost, ready to sprout. If he looks at her much longer, he will convince himself that the odd unfurling shapes that have begin to grow past her lips are real. Armand looks back to Daniel, casts him a smile.
White teeth. Blunt, human. "A change of scenery?"
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(Maybe Daniel should have said May I.)
"Anywhere you want."
Daniel offers his hands to his maker, allowing him to guide them wherever. Hopefully not into, you know, an incinerator or something, but he's not actually worried. High enough to be enjoying himself and be seeing into other dimensions, but not high enough to be totally lost. Still keeping half a foot into the real world to maintain focus on Armand, in case he takes a bad turn.
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(Oh, starvation? Vampires don't die of starvation, not really, perhaps not even the young ones. Feed their brittle corpses with enough blood—)
Not the theatre. It was good that Louis burned it. Everyone always does what his heart desires, until they don't.
These thoughts, sparking between stars, and he thinks he would prefer his imagined ocean than anything he remembers. But between fantasy and memory, there is reality, the present, and he finds he has led Daniel to the floor, merely a room away. "I want to be here," he explains, his hands now reaching for Daniel's face. "I want you to touch me."
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"All right."
Daniel turns his head enough to press a kiss to one of Armand's thumbs.
"Here. Me and you."
He keeps one hand grounded on Armand, stays where he is just next to him, and then reaches with his other. Reaches down to his feet. Starts there, touching his toes, stroking over them and the flat tops of his feet, pressing lightly on the tendons there and sliding up, careful. He watches Armand's face as he does this, waiting to see if this is actually too weird and maybe he meant a hand job.
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