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.
He'd thought of sex, probably, in a general sense if not a specific act. Still a part of him that anticipates this desire in others, lessons learned young, reinforced over and over and over. The odd distance that had settled between himself and Louis, at times, broken by sex. And he likes it, fucking, so it's not exactly a burden, meeting need with need, want with want.
But Daniel touches his feet, keeps a hand on him, both of them half-huddled on the rug, and Armand has to remember the long moments they've spent touching that had little to do with any of that, even if it becomes it, or comes after. Laying against Daniel, fingers playing where his hair gets finer at the base of his neck.
And now this. He watches Daniel's hands with hooded eyes, head tipped. Not weird, not too weird. He thinks he can feel every fine little mammalian hair reach up to greet him. Electric.
Shifts a leg, encouraging that journey, after a glance of assent.
Armand is the deep whorls of his charcoal drawings. Slopes of his ankles, indents, the hard line of his shin. Daniel's grounding hand stays where it is, occasionally flexing and petting against Armand's side, while the other slides up. A little look, once, gently teasing, like— should he check the other side, too? Both feet?
Which would be fine. There's no hardship to touching him, mapping him out, his fingers with careful claws finding bare skin and clothed flesh alike. He slips his touch under the hem of his trousers, but doesn't push anything up, because Armand is just as pleasant to feel that way, too. Kneecaps, the little divots where everything connects, tendons that rarely get any attention unless you bump into something. He wishes Armand wouldn't toss all the drawings he doesn't love instantly. Daniel loves them all instantly.
"Sometimes I think of you like a plant," Daniel tells him, even though this is something he had planned on not telling him, on grounds it's stupid. But the drugs have decided otherwise.
It's relaxing. Absorbing. He can feel parts of himself unwind rather than tense up, which, he thinks, might be his more natural response. Not always like a flinch. Sometimes, it's to go as still as possible, so as not to discourage/encourage. Sometimes it's the slow winding up of something pleasant. This is how it is, under someone else's hands.
Not Daniel's, not always. Here, he can relax. He has to. No ability to wind through his brain, to monitor very much at all except for what he can observe the usual way.
Draws his focus up at this. Expression opening, amused. "How am I like a plant," Armand invites. There are a lot of plants with many different temperaments. Maybe he will teach Daniel this. But, for now—
Daniel is paying attention to the backs of Armand's knees, now. A sensitive, easily overlooked area; he traces shapes through fabric, thinks about biting him there. Wonders if Armand would let him. It'd be a funny spot to ask for, first thing. Not his wrist, not his throat. Your knee pit, could I?
Everything is dreamy and beautiful. The paint on the ceiling has floated down to blanket them in violet and gold.
He looks up. Daniel's expression turns sheepish, a little half-smile, expressing that he feels silly about what he's going to say.
"Bear with me," he requests. Sliding his touch over a calf, seeing if Armand wants to extend a leg, or keep it propped up. This might be sensual, but it isn't really sexual. Just touching him, because they're both here, real, now. "Plants hibernate. Some of them. Sometimes all they are is just a seed in the ground all winter. Or they go dormant for years, or they're just something people think is inert, like... when everybody went nuts for tulips and were buying and selling their bulbs, passing around these rock-like things. Tulip Mania. Maybe you were there."
It was in the 1600s. Maybe he was. Daniel has a hand on a thigh, now, but his touch remains slow, not aiming anywhere saucy.
"And you might think, plants need the sun, nobody like us can be like a plant. But you hibernated away from the sun, and now you can see it again. You say, sometimes, you're not sure if we should exist, and you don't feel like you're a part of the world. But I think you're like a plant." He's said this already. Look. Go with him. "Because you were hibernating. And who knows the world better than you, now? Someone that's been a part of it for so long? Who else would understand the way it's changed, the ways it could be healed? I just.. think it's beautiful."
Biddable under coaxing hands, Armand stretching out that leg, angled to rest it against Daniel's. It feels like affirmation, these wandering fingers, in time with the things Daniel is saying. Armand is, in fact, present, and he is, in fact, rooted in his own body, not just some revenant thing ambulating himself for no particular purpose, taken apart, roughly thrown back together.
"I like plants," and he doesn't remember if he said that or just thought it, when Daniel had challenged him that one time, if there was anything real in him at all. Challenged him to think about it, at least, if not the notion itself.
He is watching Daniel's hands, which he also likes, and the world which is an odd rendering of layered cellophane layers aglow has skewed rosy, and that's because his eyes are wet. Which so rarely happens. Looks back at up Daniel's face, a flutter of a blink.
Says, "I think you will be disappointed," and that sentence was more full, but ends there.
There's a nerve that runs along the outside side of the thigh. Daniel had a pinched one, in his forties. He presses his fingers along where it would be, in Armand. Who likes plants. Daniel smiles a little to himself; he knows that, he thinks. He remembers his tree and its unfortunate, symbolic immolation. He wonders if his maker would like to do any gardening here.
"It's not that kind of a thought." Still touching him. He sees painted stars, even though there aren't any on the ceiling, drift down to illuminate them here on the floor. "It doesn't come with any expectations. You just are, and that's what I think."
Finally, Daniel glances up, and sees Armand's face.
He wishes he had some endearment for him. He can't think of any that wouldn't sound patronizing, though. Babe? Honey? Boss? The free hand that's been used just for grounding slides up a bit, settling over the center of his chest.
In case this is in question. Daniel is being attentive, and they've done this kind of thing before, and so Armand understands their roles. He might even say that doing this, sharing these experiences, entering these theatres that Daniel knows better than Armand, is almost worth doing for the purpose of being led along through them, as well as for the experience itself. For Daniel to look up and see him and put a hand on him and tell him where they are.
He is alright. They're right here, still. Daniel, who sees him as something like no one has described him as before, like something alive, whose out-of-placeness is a beautiful thing. Of course, there's the impulse to argue. Daniel will be disappointed, it's only a matter of time, unless he is different, and Armand wouldn't have made him if he wasn't different.
Like with the corpse they left behind, there are shapes sprouting out from the rug, but these don't have him recoil. Watches as they curl around them, like they are still in a thick garden of wild flowers.
"I remember not really understanding that the world could change." Now with Daniel's hand wandered up further, he can touch at this contact, a trailing of fingertips across the back of his hand, to his wrist. "I didn't consider that the world was round and that it existed in a greater space or spun in circles. I didn't relate the way that I could learn things, that humanity could also learn things. I thought I was joining in with a song already written. I didn't know there was more to discover and imagine than already had been. And then I was immortal."
Up to Daniel's elbow, feeling towards the tender skin inside of it, slipping beneath his sleeve. "And a hundred years pass. Two hundred. You wish you could go back. It's too much, too fast. I think it's why the Children embraced the dark underground the way they did, but it doesn't work. We still need the blood. We'll always still drink of the world."
A creature sprawled on his floor, touching him, being touched. A creature that Daniel resembles more and more each day; they are the same kind of monster. Armand, taken too soon. Daniel, probably not soon enough. Carrying opposite ends of the same troubled rope.
Tied together with it.
But free, here. In colors, and paints, and growing things.
"You never got to rest." Daniel lets Armand's fingers climb his arm. He turns it gently, whenever it's helpful to that questing touch. Rest. What a word, like a bell. "The current pulled you along so quickly."
A hand on Armand's chest, the other resting light against his belly. They are connected. All the time, connected, a silver thread. He wonders if Armand feels like he can put his feet in the water and watch, now, or if he always feels like he might drown. Daniel wants to hold his hand and make sure he doesn't get swept away.
"Everything that lives in this world takes something. You know that." Daniel walks fingers across his soft middle. "Vampires and plants. I know it isn't simple. But it could be, for a few minutes."
The invisible and completely unbreakable string that connects them as beings. Armand's hand has settled on Daniel's arm, fingers hidden in his sleeve. Some urge in him that wants that closeness, to be inside of him, which could be sex but isn't right now, more like a desire to occupy the exact same space in the world, behind his ribcage, beneath his skin.
That would be like drowning. Armand is conscious of his breath from the way Daniel's hands are on him, and does so slowly, with consideration.
"That would be nice," he confesses. The constant tightrope walk between survival at all costs and an annihilation, a floor that gets lower and lower, vanishing away from him, with every passing second. He could just be a plant for a while. Grounded.
He pushes Daniel. Gently, ish. The aim is to lay against him amongst the grasses and flowers.
Gently, ish, Daniel goes. He lays down on his side next to Armand, careful to go slowly so he doesn't disturb the colors cradling them, and so that Armand's fingers inching up his sleeve aren't dislodged. Flowers grow around them, mingling with painted stars.
"I like being here with you."
A confession for a confession.
He means the broad spectrum: Armand's fleeting visits, his presence in the house, the times he stays in his own room, the times he crawls into bed with Daniel. This past week, carving it out just for the two of them, fooling around and sinking into each other. Right now, on the floor, in the grasses and flowers, making shapes in charcoal and the sky.
It's always true, but it feels especially obvious tonight. They're supposed to be tied together.
Armand can imagine the multitude of complicated feelings and thoughts that this confession might induce, but presently, he is a plant. Moss, perhaps, or a creeping vine. He can feel this transformation like a tickling across his skin, like little feathery offshoots are pushing past his nails and curling up towards Daniel's bicep.
Sort of feels like drawing. Maybe later.
He is told, I like being here with you, and accepts it in its simplicity. "I like that I can," he offers back. That he is welcome. A bed, a room. Art supplies. A cat who steals his slippers in such a way that it feels flattering.
Plants, and stars. Part of each other, part of the world. The same ecosystem of roots and vines; they have the same heartbeat, and so it only follows that they would be the same botanical entity, too. A sharp, earthy scent, like eucalyptus, or mint. Fresh dirt, wet paint, refreshing cold air, the soft dust of flower petals.
Daniel smiles. It makes his face do funny things, because he's already got so many deep-carved lines. His eyes disappear with it, but the impression of the look in them is sincere and sparkling, because what else is there in the whole of the Earth that he might like to hear?
Existence is a fucking mystery. No one will ever know he meaning of life. There isn't one. But Armand likes that he made him, and Daniel likes that Armand is his maker. What a luxury, to have one puzzle piece to hold and guard like the precious thing it is.
He still has places to touch him. Slowly, he continues, angled against his maker. Vines will stitch them together.
He can entertain this hallucinations for a while. They are more sensory than visual, as if his nervous system were given the ability to sprout beyond his skin and gently feel the world around him. Like he can feel the fine muscles in Daniel's face flex along with a smile, intuit the unconscious prompts that formed it. Connect it to the thing he said.
Remembers what it felt like, to be in terrible possession of Daniel's body, of at least some of his mind. Of course, overwhelming humans in that way is nothing new, was nothing new, but had he ever indulged in cruelty that way before? He doesn't think so.
Feels it now, a little, that sense of entangled physiology, except he can no more exert his will than he can convince his own pain receptors to fire or go numb.
"I like drawing you," after a moment of drifting, of feeling Daniel touching him.
He can feel Armand's pulse, where he touches him. It's the same as his own. They are one entity now, like trees whose roots mingle together and combine into the same system. A single heart cleaved in two. It makes him wonder about how long Armand waited to create another vampire, and if he was lonely before. He had been disgusted by it, sure, but Daniel's been disgusted by plenty of things that he's liked. Doesn't have to make sense.
But it does, somehow, right now. Most things do make sense when you're high as fuck on mind-expanding mushrooms, Daniel notes with some measure of serene satisfaction. Just kinda nice.
"I like it when you do." A thumb, over a pulse point. "I like when you draw anything, actually. It's nice having you there, when we're both doing something. Listening to the way you move a pencil or a charcoal over a surface. Or when I come back and find something you've done, that you're working on."
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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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But Daniel touches his feet, keeps a hand on him, both of them half-huddled on the rug, and Armand has to remember the long moments they've spent touching that had little to do with any of that, even if it becomes it, or comes after. Laying against Daniel, fingers playing where his hair gets finer at the base of his neck.
And now this. He watches Daniel's hands with hooded eyes, head tipped. Not weird, not too weird. He thinks he can feel every fine little mammalian hair reach up to greet him. Electric.
Shifts a leg, encouraging that journey, after a glance of assent.
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Which would be fine. There's no hardship to touching him, mapping him out, his fingers with careful claws finding bare skin and clothed flesh alike. He slips his touch under the hem of his trousers, but doesn't push anything up, because Armand is just as pleasant to feel that way, too. Kneecaps, the little divots where everything connects, tendons that rarely get any attention unless you bump into something. He wishes Armand wouldn't toss all the drawings he doesn't love instantly. Daniel loves them all instantly.
"Sometimes I think of you like a plant," Daniel tells him, even though this is something he had planned on not telling him, on grounds it's stupid. But the drugs have decided otherwise.
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Not Daniel's, not always. Here, he can relax. He has to. No ability to wind through his brain, to monitor very much at all except for what he can observe the usual way.
Draws his focus up at this. Expression opening, amused. "How am I like a plant," Armand invites. There are a lot of plants with many different temperaments. Maybe he will teach Daniel this. But, for now—
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Everything is dreamy and beautiful. The paint on the ceiling has floated down to blanket them in violet and gold.
He looks up. Daniel's expression turns sheepish, a little half-smile, expressing that he feels silly about what he's going to say.
"Bear with me," he requests. Sliding his touch over a calf, seeing if Armand wants to extend a leg, or keep it propped up. This might be sensual, but it isn't really sexual. Just touching him, because they're both here, real, now. "Plants hibernate. Some of them. Sometimes all they are is just a seed in the ground all winter. Or they go dormant for years, or they're just something people think is inert, like... when everybody went nuts for tulips and were buying and selling their bulbs, passing around these rock-like things. Tulip Mania. Maybe you were there."
It was in the 1600s. Maybe he was. Daniel has a hand on a thigh, now, but his touch remains slow, not aiming anywhere saucy.
"And you might think, plants need the sun, nobody like us can be like a plant. But you hibernated away from the sun, and now you can see it again. You say, sometimes, you're not sure if we should exist, and you don't feel like you're a part of the world. But I think you're like a plant." He's said this already. Look. Go with him. "Because you were hibernating. And who knows the world better than you, now? Someone that's been a part of it for so long? Who else would understand the way it's changed, the ways it could be healed? I just.. think it's beautiful."
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"I like plants," and he doesn't remember if he said that or just thought it, when Daniel had challenged him that one time, if there was anything real in him at all. Challenged him to think about it, at least, if not the notion itself.
He is watching Daniel's hands, which he also likes, and the world which is an odd rendering of layered cellophane layers aglow has skewed rosy, and that's because his eyes are wet. Which so rarely happens. Looks back at up Daniel's face, a flutter of a blink.
Says, "I think you will be disappointed," and that sentence was more full, but ends there.
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"It's not that kind of a thought." Still touching him. He sees painted stars, even though there aren't any on the ceiling, drift down to illuminate them here on the floor. "It doesn't come with any expectations. You just are, and that's what I think."
Finally, Daniel glances up, and sees Armand's face.
He wishes he had some endearment for him. He can't think of any that wouldn't sound patronizing, though. Babe? Honey? Boss? The free hand that's been used just for grounding slides up a bit, settling over the center of his chest.
"We're still right here."
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In case this is in question. Daniel is being attentive, and they've done this kind of thing before, and so Armand understands their roles. He might even say that doing this, sharing these experiences, entering these theatres that Daniel knows better than Armand, is almost worth doing for the purpose of being led along through them, as well as for the experience itself. For Daniel to look up and see him and put a hand on him and tell him where they are.
He is alright. They're right here, still. Daniel, who sees him as something like no one has described him as before, like something alive, whose out-of-placeness is a beautiful thing. Of course, there's the impulse to argue. Daniel will be disappointed, it's only a matter of time, unless he is different, and Armand wouldn't have made him if he wasn't different.
Like with the corpse they left behind, there are shapes sprouting out from the rug, but these don't have him recoil. Watches as they curl around them, like they are still in a thick garden of wild flowers.
"I remember not really understanding that the world could change." Now with Daniel's hand wandered up further, he can touch at this contact, a trailing of fingertips across the back of his hand, to his wrist. "I didn't consider that the world was round and that it existed in a greater space or spun in circles. I didn't relate the way that I could learn things, that humanity could also learn things. I thought I was joining in with a song already written. I didn't know there was more to discover and imagine than already had been. And then I was immortal."
Up to Daniel's elbow, feeling towards the tender skin inside of it, slipping beneath his sleeve. "And a hundred years pass. Two hundred. You wish you could go back. It's too much, too fast. I think it's why the Children embraced the dark underground the way they did, but it doesn't work. We still need the blood. We'll always still drink of the world."
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Tied together with it.
But free, here. In colors, and paints, and growing things.
"You never got to rest." Daniel lets Armand's fingers climb his arm. He turns it gently, whenever it's helpful to that questing touch. Rest. What a word, like a bell. "The current pulled you along so quickly."
A hand on Armand's chest, the other resting light against his belly. They are connected. All the time, connected, a silver thread. He wonders if Armand feels like he can put his feet in the water and watch, now, or if he always feels like he might drown. Daniel wants to hold his hand and make sure he doesn't get swept away.
"Everything that lives in this world takes something. You know that." Daniel walks fingers across his soft middle. "Vampires and plants. I know it isn't simple. But it could be, for a few minutes."
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That would be like drowning. Armand is conscious of his breath from the way Daniel's hands are on him, and does so slowly, with consideration.
"That would be nice," he confesses. The constant tightrope walk between survival at all costs and an annihilation, a floor that gets lower and lower, vanishing away from him, with every passing second. He could just be a plant for a while. Grounded.
He pushes Daniel. Gently, ish. The aim is to lay against him amongst the grasses and flowers.
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"I like being here with you."
A confession for a confession.
He means the broad spectrum: Armand's fleeting visits, his presence in the house, the times he stays in his own room, the times he crawls into bed with Daniel. This past week, carving it out just for the two of them, fooling around and sinking into each other. Right now, on the floor, in the grasses and flowers, making shapes in charcoal and the sky.
It's always true, but it feels especially obvious tonight. They're supposed to be tied together.
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Sort of feels like drawing. Maybe later.
He is told, I like being here with you, and accepts it in its simplicity. "I like that I can," he offers back. That he is welcome. A bed, a room. Art supplies. A cat who steals his slippers in such a way that it feels flattering.
"I like that I made you," for free.
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Daniel smiles. It makes his face do funny things, because he's already got so many deep-carved lines. His eyes disappear with it, but the impression of the look in them is sincere and sparkling, because what else is there in the whole of the Earth that he might like to hear?
Existence is a fucking mystery. No one will ever know he meaning of life. There isn't one. But Armand likes that he made him, and Daniel likes that Armand is his maker. What a luxury, to have one puzzle piece to hold and guard like the precious thing it is.
He still has places to touch him. Slowly, he continues, angled against his maker. Vines will stitch them together.
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Remembers what it felt like, to be in terrible possession of Daniel's body, of at least some of his mind. Of course, overwhelming humans in that way is nothing new, was nothing new, but had he ever indulged in cruelty that way before? He doesn't think so.
Feels it now, a little, that sense of entangled physiology, except he can no more exert his will than he can convince his own pain receptors to fire or go numb.
"I like drawing you," after a moment of drifting, of feeling Daniel touching him.
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But it does, somehow, right now. Most things do make sense when you're high as fuck on mind-expanding mushrooms, Daniel notes with some measure of serene satisfaction. Just kinda nice.
"I like it when you do." A thumb, over a pulse point. "I like when you draw anything, actually. It's nice having you there, when we're both doing something. Listening to the way you move a pencil or a charcoal over a surface. Or when I come back and find something you've done, that you're working on."
Alone, together, he just likes that Armand draws.
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