It's an answer that plays well with believers and intellectuals, and middling with others; Daniel only tries a little to make it not specifically for Armand, and wonders at himself, incredulously, if it wasn't easier to talk like this. A buffer between them. The performance of it, as Armand likes to fall back on.
How much have I changed you?
He notes the way the ancient vampire's attention shifts for a brief moment. Daniel considers reaching out, dipping into the mind of the attendee who pulled it, but doesn't. Let it be a surprise to ask about later. And let him wrap up this Q&A section without risking a superpowers fumble. The host follows through on his meditation on fear and death, asks him about how changed he feels in terms of his career, and his social circle. Levity and seriousness. She's not doing half bad. Another question from the room about the balance of research versus creativity, then a final one, about an older book, and his thoughts on how the oil industry has carried on without any meaningful change. It detours them a bit, and the host is more clumsy about cutting them off to wrap up, but Daniel is gracious about it. She spends a while with him during the transition, all bright smiles, taking photos and little videos for her TikTok, and Daniel indulges her.
Book signing. An employee sits behind the little folded out table with him, occasionally taking a photo for social media and making sure no one gets Extra Weird. A global pandemic lingers, and so it's not so strange that Daniel wears gloves for this bit, the way items are being passed back and forth. A young couple has wandered in behind the one that annoyed Armand, navigating around chairs being put away. 'I wonder what we missed', 'I think it's the vampire guy', 'Oh woah, sick—' Enthusiastic, they discuss grabbing a copy and hopping in line, drawing an annoyed look from Mr Scoff.
The skeptic lingers towards the front of the store while his partner and her floral hand cream take to the line, and then Armand behind her. That he's here alone isn't too unusual. Currently, a woman in her forties is telling Daniel that she drove from the other state to be here, asking if he'd sign another for her wife who couldn't come. A lone teenager, next, who is too shy to do more than offer his name for the signing, and nod at some prompted question.
A thoughtful audience, then, mostly. Some fans, some curious people who saw the sign at the door. Difficult not to compare it to the theatre. Armand made a habit of, occasionally, sitting amongst them back then as well, not just presiding from his balcony perch. It was good to regard the thing from the proper view.
His turn. He lays the book down in front of Daniel, pushing it forwards.
"I can't say I'm convinced," he says, ignoring the employee sitting alongside. "Given the innate romance of death by vampire compared to death by bus, or CEO. Compelled, perhaps."
A little forward, maybe, but surely, Daniel has experienced weirder fans.
Daniel has never, ever, experienced a weirder fan than Armand.
He looks up at him, finding him both ethereal and comedic in his disguise— which is still more convincing as a real person than his performance as Rashid; in retrospect his dark eyes were fake-looking, though he thinks Armand was less controlled. More willing to snipe and argue. Freedom when he wasn't being himself. Interesting.
"Innate romance?" Eyebrows up, as he slides the book towards himself. "Can the bus not also love?"
Shut up, Daniel. But there's a part of him that almost looks over his shoulder like Armand isn't speaking to him, surely. Innate romance.
"Compelled towards what?"
His hand, pen held, hovers over the blank page facing the dedication (to all the editors who dropped him over this one). Steady.
"The bus is a random event. Your assassins are doing their job."
Armand glances at the employee, who is attempting to summon some courage to find the right place to shuffle him along. Even in this current get up, unassuming jewel tones and cute hair and glasses that veil the intensity of his vampire eyes, it's difficult not to exude something, some sense of warning.
Or, perhaps, he doesn't care not to. "The vampire selects."
And, as for the blank page, he supplies, "Rakesh," easy. "And I don't know. The story, I suppose. It feels nearly true."
"Which story?" Glance down, to write. Glance up, eye contact through lenses; he feels he can see straight through, to warm amber. "The book, or the answer about my mortal fear?"
Daniel gives space for him to answer, even though the employee is looking a bit puzzled. Writing a tad more than 'Thanks for your support'. It's fine, though, the couple behind the good-looking hipster with his hair up are chatting away with each other, clearly not in a hurry.
(Why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad? Pay attention to how things blend Why talk about all the known and the unknown See how the unknown merges into the known)
A curious flick down. That's more writing than most people are getting. Armand's mouth twinges, a faint smile.
"Walking into a vampire's lair and cheating death is a little like bargaining with death itself. You talk of—well, not fearlessness, but your acceptance of your own fear, your own death. But perhaps there's the expectation you will talk your way out of it. Perhaps there's arrogance at play."
A little sharp, and the employee offers the kind of laugh meant to diffuse some idea of tension, maybe their own. You're not meant to accuse authors of arrogance when you get your book signed.
"I mean no disrespect," Armand is moved to say. "Only that it's fascinating."
Daniel ticks his gaze up from where he's doing a proper thanks-blah-blah now, which would look normal if not for where he's crossed out the dedication and written a name that isn't Rakesh. Covered sunset meets— what? Well. His eyes look like nothing in particular, just outlines, but who knows what color they are.
"Oh, you don't know the half of it," he says. A final glance at his handiwork, then to the employee. "He's got a point, which makes me think he might know a journalist or two already. We're not sensitive enough for fiction, and we're too stubborn for acting. The thing that keeps a reporter from flinching is probably 60/40 ego versus nerves. On average."
Who knows what Daniel's split is. He closes the book, and looks back at Armand. Slides it over.
Armand takes the book, and moves off without a glance, without any further outward sign. His book has already been purchased, so he can drift through the remaining crowd, past the skeptic, and out into the evening street.
The couple he had identified emerge not long after. 'All done?' 'Yep. He's so funny.' 'He's a con artist.' 'Oh, who isn't.' They walk off, his arm around her shoulders, their conversation moving to dinner, to a bar he wants to try. The incredible amount of frivolity that mortals fill their tiny little lives with.
He drifts further down the street, doesn't pursue, lingering. Tracking two individuals in a city like New York's, barely knowing their minds, their scents, would make for an interesting challenge. Instead, he flips open the book to take note of all that writing he received.
As he does so, he says out loud, "I suppose you avoid draining those who attend your events," at a normal speaking voice. If Daniel chooses to, he can hear it. "Even if they're rude."
Molloy's handwriting is a jagged, but not as bad as it was; he's able to keep things on an even line. Standard pleasantries, and where his snipe at previous editors is crossed out, Armand is written. This copy is for him and him alone.
The rest— fragments of a poem by Rumi, all of which are on the rambling, stream-of-consciousness side of lyrical. It's about transformation, it's about the point of it all, it's about pointlessness. In the end (that Daniel doesn't transcribe, it's a long poem and he doesn't have the whole thing committed to memory so preciasely), it turns sexual. But it's a Rumi poem. They all do.
—In my head?
A funny half-startle for the last person in line to get a book signed. It takes him a second to realize Armand is doing something and not speaking to him telepathically. Daniel gets through everything graciously, though there are bare minutes left. He doesn't know what his maker (!) has done, exactly, but he puzzles it out while he says thanks and shakes some hands and talks to his assistant about anything they need to pack up.
"Maybe."
Just a word. Trying it out. Vampire tricks, throwing voices, finding one person in a crowd from a distance, even if it's just the awareness of them and not their mind.
He stands in the street and reads the poem fragment, fingertips wandering along the edges of the page. He reads it a few times, as if to more thoroughly parse its meaning and intention, and tips his head at that drifting maybe that he thinks is for him.
"One of them thinks you're a fraud, and the other, a clown. They'll be out late tonight."
Not very long ago, perhaps Armand would have just seen to it himself. Drained the pair a little to weaken them but with more than enough blood left over to satiate a newly made vampire, bundled them up, left them under Daniel's bed with drifting memories of the strange being that abducted them so easily, perhaps an answering fragment of poetry. The impulse is there, even, to create some distance after his little pantomime in the bookstore.
An offer, anyway. Will Daniel kill a woman who bought his book, but doesn't believe in it? Her annoying boyfriend, with his crime of being annoying? Will Daniel wish to hunt with him?
Speaking of distance. Daniel is surprised Armand is still around. Seemed like an artful note to escape on. He wonders if there's some greater purpose waiting for him, or if Armand is just doing what Daniel was doing in that diner— drawing it out and wondering why.
He doesn't manage a response. Trick too tricky, without understanding what's being done, and he isn't actually sure Armand heard him. That could be a response, or just extra goading.
Will he wait, while Daniel finishes up here? Will he be there, when Daniel exits the bookshop and goes to look for him? One thinks he's a fraud, one thinks he's a clown. People are allowed to think that. He's devoured people who've done nothing to him, not even a slight, though he tries to take deliberate aim. The hunger is difficult when it peaks, and Daniel is as prone to forgetting to eat while lost in work as he is prone to over-indulging when he has time. Once (a shard of ice) he listened to a food addict discuss his struggle, saying bitterly that at least with drugs or gambling, you don't have to do some drugs and some gambling every single day. You have to eat. Daniel found it lacking.
Now. Hah.
It's exciting, despite everything, to look for Armand. He can't track his mind, and the bond isn't a tether like that. But he can— sense? Smell? Something. It's something, a feeling that's faint like a whisper that nearly touches him. A person that isn't a void, a person he can't connect with but is connected with.
A little wind-swept from the cold and from hurrying, Daniel appears. Eyes wide and curious. Hey.
Daniel, hurrying to catch up and find him, an earnest question out of his mouth, eyes bright. Something in that that's pleasing. Endearing?
Maybe not every twinge of abnormal emotion needs analysis.
"Yes," says Armand, turning to him, book held at his side. "I've observed it before, between maker and fledgling. It's not reliable, or a secret means of communication, but," a gesture, half a shrug. Something like throwing one's voice, something like relying on that inexplicable bond to pick up the other's words in the wind, automatically honing incredible hearing in on a single note in the symphony.
Hey.
"If a naysayer of yours is found dead each appearance, that may lend some credence to your authorial honesty."
Just an idea. Vampires among us. He's kidding, by the way. It's hard to tell.
He thinks it with the full force of his consciousness, and he makes himself confront that he feels that way. He has been hauntingly beautiful, unnervingly perfect, stunningly attractive in a way that seemed too ideal to even bother engaging with. And he is those things, but he's never thought 'cute' before. It doesn't especially suit him, because he's wearing a costume, but the performance ads to the charm. Reality tips slightly. (To the north?) Armand came to a book signing just to mess with him. His level is messing with him has been playful. With claws, but still playful.
Daniel sets this aside to inspect. Not sure about it. He thinks of eyes on him, always on him, of quiet deep breaths in and hands splayed on the table, restless. He also thinks: That's a cool trick.
"I'll have to practice to get the hang of it," he says. Interested in vampirism, in the things they (he!) can potentially do. His gaze wants to tick down to the book Armand is holding, with its personalized ramble, but he refrains.
"Could also bring the FBI back." Daniel smiles, though, a funny little curious thing, because he suspects humor. Out of Armand. "Why, are you hungry?"
Out here, Armand takes off his tinted glasses, folding them, slipping them into a pocket. Lamp-like eyes again, although—well, Daniel's eyes change, and he might have observed the way bright orange can dull itself down a little. Still striking, still bright, but a little less haunted than they can be.
"Law enforcement can be a nuisance," he says. "And it doesn't seem like the kind of game you wish to play."
Daniel, still engaging with human society, still a person, still a public figure. Armand's tone doesn't imply disapproval so much as observation. It's hard to be a functional celebrity if the feds would like to investigate you for serial murder. Maybe the rude couple will live tonight.
Maybe not. "A little. And you've skipped some meals."
Orange, blood red, not-quite-brown. Deepening layers of it. Daniel has, indeed, noticed; his own shift between clear blue and orange is either more striking or more comical, depending on your point of view. He's glad he doesn't have to watch himself, in any event.
"Dominoes."
One falls, then another, then a hundred. He's not in a hurry to be on law enforcement's radar, not in a hurry to end up entrenched in an increasingly high profile series of kills to get out of a jam. He rationalizes murder just fine, he doesn't need more layers. Besides—
"I want to write the book about the first open vampire to end up in court over biological imperatives," he says, "not star in the documentary. Let somebody else fall on that one."
This little bit of celebrity is fine. It gets him money and the occasional hookup and certain freedoms, which is a nice offset to tanking the credibility of his career (for now). He will pass on more, especially if it comes with restricting his freedoms. Like jail. Pass on jail. Meanwhile: he gives Armand a look.
Daniel steers his attention off a glance to the book, but Armand lifts it, drawing focus. "You quoted Rumi," he says. "Who also once said, 'I have never become less from dying'."
Optimistic. Romantic. Religious, first and foremost, but these words exist beyond their context, a fragment of a poem penned quickly into the acknowledgments of a book about queer vampires and their violences.
Cute, also.
And he begins to walk, a pivot that invites Daniel to stay in step.
"That one gets a little blasphemous," he muses. "Imagining past the death of angels."
Rumi had style. Maybe it was the mysticism— made all the religion tolerable.
Pause. Consider. Mm, what the hell. Daniel follows him. (As if he wouldn't? He tells himself it wasn't guaranteed. It can't be. Armand didn't know he'd follow, or else he wouldn't have to invite him, even wordlessly.)
The city is always packed, it's always busy. A couple of unconvinced, marginally rude attendees fade into obscurity while an ocean of minds and bodies open up, all awaiting assessment for their potential. Daniel is more familiar with video games than the average seventy year old, owing to a combination of nostalgic tolerance based on youthful enjoyment of arcade machines and time sunk in to topics around violence in media. He thinks of the way people decry anything with harm done opponents made out of pixels arranged to look like humans, other living things, the slaughter of which is seen as nothing more than a thing to do to receive experience points.
He also thinks about the movie Gerry when he thinks of video games, but that's like, whatever. A funny thing his brain does, because it's all ridiculous. The point is: converting living beings to an inanimate resource. Thinking nothing of it. Pixels. Mortals. Different from him. He thinks of Louis. Why is a fox less than a human. Why did he tap the woozy Slavic guy's neck like a heroin user lifting a vein, a dismissive and vulgar routine, but fix himself to Armand's throat like it was a lifeline?
"Pretend you're me." Oh, another one of these. "And pretend I want to pick off skeptics. Where do I put the line? What's the most minor offense that still ranks?"
Daniel does not sounds like he thinks this is a morally deep question. He sounds like he thinks it's darkly funny to joke about.
Armand might like a video game, if he could condescend to touching the apparatus. Or perhaps it would seem ordinary. Following road rules in GTA when he could, at any moment, do whatever he wanted instead. Giving the Sims a perfect little life instead of drowning them in a pool. He is, of course, not thinking of this when Daniel asks his question—
But when he does consider the human being, there is something of a game to it. To allow their inner worlds to matter for the chance of a darkly funny debate.
"Suppose they're an infection to the conversation," he says. Gamely. "Not adamant in their convictions, not attempting to discredit you or criticise your work in some way that demonstrates thought and care. They're only interested in rendering inert any interesting question that could be raised, in belittling the curiousity of others. Entropic ignorance."
A steady stream of life around them. Thoughts, ordinary, repetitive, brushing against their minds. Nothing wrong in ordinary repetition. It's like watching a river. "You could imagine that their incurious nature as something that dulls all they touch, not just your book."
"So it's a kind of justice." We're playing a game, here. A hypothetical thought experiment, not life-ruining. Hopefully. "Not in a law and order way. A cosmic balance way. Is art not a force of nature itself, yadda yadda, if reality is defined by what we make of it."
Mixing his philosophies, but Armand is clever enough to pick up that he's doing it on purpose. Daniel is the kind of person to understand philosophy but not put much value on it— finding the engagement between differences and balances across all the spectrums and schools more interesting. Enough that he feels confident in his understanding to be imprecise in their use.
"A removal of rot. What's my motivation? Is it ego? Do I get to decide, because my judgment is unassailable about this sort of thing? Or is it selfless? Do I just like this world because I live here, and it's a community service?"
"Call it justice," Armand says. "Call it gardening."
He had said he likes their conversations. He had meant: that bright, clarifying thing he feels, rubbed raw by the right questions, the shock of revelation. He had also meant: sharp words, testing each other, little moments throughout the interview where Louis, sitting at an angle from him or close to him or across the other side of the room had nearly become ornamental to a wider game while he unspooled his life story.
But isn't it nice, too, to talk philosophy, mixed philosophy, without a recording device nearby. They have more time to do the same thing they were doing before, a kind of mutual figuring out.
"Our way of life is currently only addressed by a set of laws upheld by covens of middling power to enforce them, and none of those laws specify how we go about our selections. There is no legislation dictated by human courts that allow it, is cognizant to it, but perhaps that will change, but let us remain in the present. Even human morality, whether expressed through ancient scripture or afternoon television programming for children cannot abide by a way of life in which the baseline to survival is murder."
Talk of eating only animals, imbibing only from the willing. Louis, a master of his impulses, clinging to these things as if he isn't awaiting the inevitable plummet. Armand won't be there to catch him.
"So." So. "Who can you prescribe your own judgment to, if not yourself?"
"All those laws, and nobody bothered to outline 'who to eat'?"
That's funny, for some reason. Daniel wrinkles his nose though a quiet laugh. "Actually— no, that makes sense. Those laws are morals handed down on high from someone, or something, else. No room for encouraging penitents to make their own independent moral judgements. But still something of an oversight in the machine."
It's a nice night out. They pass a news stand, a hot dog cart. Daniel thinks it's odd that news stands have survived, but he thinks the few that remain are vanity projects. Adding to a culture, not making a profit. Hot dogs don't smell like anything anymore, meanwhile.
"Anyway, I know that's me prevaricating. Gardening. I kinda like that."
It makes him think of Armand's tree, and a question he hasn't asked yet. Still not yet. Biding his time.
"Is my judgement my own? How much of a product am I versus an independent entity, when it comes to a moral compass? How I was raised, by who, the things I've experienced. How long do I have to live, sectioned off from those foundational influences, to manifest a fully unique moral perspective?"
The book beneath his arm gravitates to being held against his belly, arms crossing comfortably as they go. Armand, having shrugged at all those laws—they should have committed to more, Christianity got away with ten of them—and denying outward sign of pleasure for praise, listens to the rest.
Thinks of being a product. Of being raised, sectioned off, manifested. The pavement underfoot takes on a new kind of quality, like he is simply rolling the whole earth beneath him, pushed along by the press of the toe of his shoe, and he is staying in place.
A vicious and sudden thought: Daniel is laying a trap for him. Only rhetorical, maybe, but a trap nonetheless. But maybe he isn't. He can't read his mind. He can't know.
"Weeds are no more or less evil than the bed of flowers," Armand says, from somewhere slightly behind himself, walking several paces back, it feels like. "And you know them when you see them."
A retreat, from philosophy to metaphor. Embarrassing.
Not every conversational turn is a hit. Daniel is better at asking questions and dissecting the answers later than he is at idle chatter— and better at that than philosophy, too, despite whatever he happens to academically know. He notes the slightly withdraw, but doesn't feel slighted or nervous; impervious to hurt feelings, when it comes to talking. He does so much of it, and it's usually so combative.
"Hey, that's good enough for congress and pornography," he says, clueless of Armand's internal paranoia. Maybe the trap was letting Daniel Molloy talk at all.
"If I'm being honest—"
Wouldn't it be nice if he wasn't? If he could shut up for a minute.
"—I don't know where I stand on morality and judgement, concerning dinner. I trust myself, mostly. I've been calling a lot of quick shots, though, and not following up on whether or not they were the right ones. I can admit that's out of wilful ignorance. I don't want to feel bad about it. So." So. "The best way is to be mindful up front, probably."
The conversation shifts, moves on. The world turns normally. The moment is over.
And Daniel Molloy talking in itself is no prison, even if Armand finds he has to tune back in a little. "Probably," Armand says. Internally guarded, still, more watchful of the possible curves and loops of the conversation ahead of then. Mindful up front. "I've seen many vampires fail to engage with the question at all, or give up after a decade or so."
He could speak a little of Louis, his mindfulness to the point of compulsion, and Armand has a lot of data, but he doesn't feel like it. Doesn't wish to evoke him now.
"I think there is no law pertaining the selecting because it will always vary. The bearable thing," treating himself to a callback. "The pleasurable thing. Do you find yourself hesitating, in the moment?"
Maybe: someday, Daniel will figure out more about what those moments are. Someday, Armand will feel comfortable telling him.
Maybe.
"Sometimes. It's been—" a movement with his hand, up and down, like a rollercoaster, or an unsteady sea. "The out of control desperation at first, and then overthinking how I'm going to get away with anything, after. There are a lot of needles to be threaded. Things to think about. Amazon not selling you blenders."
A callback of his own. Without realizing it, Daniel fails to evoke Louis. That exchange was only theirs.
"How high does 'the pleasurable thing' rank for you, when you choose?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
How much have I changed you?
He notes the way the ancient vampire's attention shifts for a brief moment. Daniel considers reaching out, dipping into the mind of the attendee who pulled it, but doesn't. Let it be a surprise to ask about later. And let him wrap up this Q&A section without risking a superpowers fumble. The host follows through on his meditation on fear and death, asks him about how changed he feels in terms of his career, and his social circle. Levity and seriousness. She's not doing half bad. Another question from the room about the balance of research versus creativity, then a final one, about an older book, and his thoughts on how the oil industry has carried on without any meaningful change. It detours them a bit, and the host is more clumsy about cutting them off to wrap up, but Daniel is gracious about it. She spends a while with him during the transition, all bright smiles, taking photos and little videos for her TikTok, and Daniel indulges her.
Book signing. An employee sits behind the little folded out table with him, occasionally taking a photo for social media and making sure no one gets Extra Weird. A global pandemic lingers, and so it's not so strange that Daniel wears gloves for this bit, the way items are being passed back and forth. A young couple has wandered in behind the one that annoyed Armand, navigating around chairs being put away. 'I wonder what we missed', 'I think it's the vampire guy', 'Oh woah, sick—' Enthusiastic, they discuss grabbing a copy and hopping in line, drawing an annoyed look from Mr Scoff.
no subject
A thoughtful audience, then, mostly. Some fans, some curious people who saw the sign at the door. Difficult not to compare it to the theatre. Armand made a habit of, occasionally, sitting amongst them back then as well, not just presiding from his balcony perch. It was good to regard the thing from the proper view.
His turn. He lays the book down in front of Daniel, pushing it forwards.
"I can't say I'm convinced," he says, ignoring the employee sitting alongside. "Given the innate romance of death by vampire compared to death by bus, or CEO. Compelled, perhaps."
A little forward, maybe, but surely, Daniel has experienced weirder fans.
no subject
He looks up at him, finding him both ethereal and comedic in his disguise— which is still more convincing as a real person than his performance as Rashid; in retrospect his dark eyes were fake-looking, though he thinks Armand was less controlled. More willing to snipe and argue. Freedom when he wasn't being himself. Interesting.
"Innate romance?" Eyebrows up, as he slides the book towards himself. "Can the bus not also love?"
Shut up, Daniel. But there's a part of him that almost looks over his shoulder like Armand isn't speaking to him, surely. Innate romance.
"Compelled towards what?"
His hand, pen held, hovers over the blank page facing the dedication (to all the editors who dropped him over this one). Steady.
no subject
Armand glances at the employee, who is attempting to summon some courage to find the right place to shuffle him along. Even in this current get up, unassuming jewel tones and cute hair and glasses that veil the intensity of his vampire eyes, it's difficult not to exude something, some sense of warning.
Or, perhaps, he doesn't care not to. "The vampire selects."
And, as for the blank page, he supplies, "Rakesh," easy. "And I don't know. The story, I suppose. It feels nearly true."
no subject
"Which story?" Glance down, to write. Glance up, eye contact through lenses; he feels he can see straight through, to warm amber. "The book, or the answer about my mortal fear?"
Daniel gives space for him to answer, even though the employee is looking a bit puzzled. Writing a tad more than 'Thanks for your support'. It's fine, though, the couple behind the good-looking hipster with his hair up are chatting away with each other, clearly not in a hurry.
(Why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad?
Pay attention to how things blend
Why talk about all the known and the unknown
See how the unknown merges into the known)
no subject
A curious flick down. That's more writing than most people are getting. Armand's mouth twinges, a faint smile.
"Walking into a vampire's lair and cheating death is a little like bargaining with death itself. You talk of—well, not fearlessness, but your acceptance of your own fear, your own death. But perhaps there's the expectation you will talk your way out of it. Perhaps there's arrogance at play."
A little sharp, and the employee offers the kind of laugh meant to diffuse some idea of tension, maybe their own. You're not meant to accuse authors of arrogance when you get your book signed.
"I mean no disrespect," Armand is moved to say. "Only that it's fascinating."
no subject
Daniel ticks his gaze up from where he's doing a proper thanks-blah-blah now, which would look normal if not for where he's crossed out the dedication and written a name that isn't Rakesh. Covered sunset meets— what? Well. His eyes look like nothing in particular, just outlines, but who knows what color they are.
"Oh, you don't know the half of it," he says. A final glance at his handiwork, then to the employee. "He's got a point, which makes me think he might know a journalist or two already. We're not sensitive enough for fiction, and we're too stubborn for acting. The thing that keeps a reporter from flinching is probably 60/40 ego versus nerves. On average."
Who knows what Daniel's split is. He closes the book, and looks back at Armand. Slides it over.
"Thanks for coming in."
no subject
Armand takes the book, and moves off without a glance, without any further outward sign. His book has already been purchased, so he can drift through the remaining crowd, past the skeptic, and out into the evening street.
The couple he had identified emerge not long after. 'All done?' 'Yep. He's so funny.' 'He's a con artist.' 'Oh, who isn't.' They walk off, his arm around her shoulders, their conversation moving to dinner, to a bar he wants to try. The incredible amount of frivolity that mortals fill their tiny little lives with.
He drifts further down the street, doesn't pursue, lingering. Tracking two individuals in a city like New York's, barely knowing their minds, their scents, would make for an interesting challenge. Instead, he flips open the book to take note of all that writing he received.
As he does so, he says out loud, "I suppose you avoid draining those who attend your events," at a normal speaking voice. If Daniel chooses to, he can hear it. "Even if they're rude."
no subject
The rest— fragments of a poem by Rumi, all of which are on the rambling, stream-of-consciousness side of lyrical. It's about transformation, it's about the point of it all, it's about pointlessness. In the end (that Daniel doesn't transcribe, it's a long poem and he doesn't have the whole thing committed to memory so preciasely), it turns sexual. But it's a Rumi poem. They all do.
—In my head?
A funny half-startle for the last person in line to get a book signed. It takes him a second to realize Armand is doing something and not speaking to him telepathically. Daniel gets through everything graciously, though there are bare minutes left. He doesn't know what his maker (!) has done, exactly, but he puzzles it out while he says thanks and shakes some hands and talks to his assistant about anything they need to pack up.
"Maybe."
Just a word. Trying it out. Vampire tricks, throwing voices, finding one person in a crowd from a distance, even if it's just the awareness of them and not their mind.
no subject
"One of them thinks you're a fraud, and the other, a clown. They'll be out late tonight."
Not very long ago, perhaps Armand would have just seen to it himself. Drained the pair a little to weaken them but with more than enough blood left over to satiate a newly made vampire, bundled them up, left them under Daniel's bed with drifting memories of the strange being that abducted them so easily, perhaps an answering fragment of poetry. The impulse is there, even, to create some distance after his little pantomime in the bookstore.
An offer, anyway. Will Daniel kill a woman who bought his book, but doesn't believe in it? Her annoying boyfriend, with his crime of being annoying? Will Daniel wish to hunt with him?
Too many unanswered questions.
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He doesn't manage a response. Trick too tricky, without understanding what's being done, and he isn't actually sure Armand heard him. That could be a response, or just extra goading.
Will he wait, while Daniel finishes up here? Will he be there, when Daniel exits the bookshop and goes to look for him? One thinks he's a fraud, one thinks he's a clown. People are allowed to think that. He's devoured people who've done nothing to him, not even a slight, though he tries to take deliberate aim. The hunger is difficult when it peaks, and Daniel is as prone to forgetting to eat while lost in work as he is prone to over-indulging when he has time. Once (a shard of ice) he listened to a food addict discuss his struggle, saying bitterly that at least with drugs or gambling, you don't have to do some drugs and some gambling every single day. You have to eat. Daniel found it lacking.
Now. Hah.
It's exciting, despite everything, to look for Armand. He can't track his mind, and the bond isn't a tether like that. But he can— sense? Smell? Something. It's something, a feeling that's faint like a whisper that nearly touches him. A person that isn't a void, a person he can't connect with but is connected with.
A little wind-swept from the cold and from hurrying, Daniel appears. Eyes wide and curious. Hey.
"Could you hear me?"
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Maybe not every twinge of abnormal emotion needs analysis.
"Yes," says Armand, turning to him, book held at his side. "I've observed it before, between maker and fledgling. It's not reliable, or a secret means of communication, but," a gesture, half a shrug. Something like throwing one's voice, something like relying on that inexplicable bond to pick up the other's words in the wind, automatically honing incredible hearing in on a single note in the symphony.
Hey.
"If a naysayer of yours is found dead each appearance, that may lend some credence to your authorial honesty."
Just an idea. Vampires among us. He's kidding, by the way. It's hard to tell.
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He thinks it with the full force of his consciousness, and he makes himself confront that he feels that way. He has been hauntingly beautiful, unnervingly perfect, stunningly attractive in a way that seemed too ideal to even bother engaging with. And he is those things, but he's never thought 'cute' before. It doesn't especially suit him, because he's wearing a costume, but the performance ads to the charm. Reality tips slightly. (To the north?) Armand came to a book signing just to mess with him. His level is messing with him has been playful. With claws, but still playful.
Daniel sets this aside to inspect. Not sure about it. He thinks of eyes on him, always on him, of quiet deep breaths in and hands splayed on the table, restless. He also thinks: That's a cool trick.
"I'll have to practice to get the hang of it," he says. Interested in vampirism, in the things they (he!) can potentially do. His gaze wants to tick down to the book Armand is holding, with its personalized ramble, but he refrains.
"Could also bring the FBI back." Daniel smiles, though, a funny little curious thing, because he suspects humor. Out of Armand. "Why, are you hungry?"
Want to get, like.
A pizza.
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"Law enforcement can be a nuisance," he says. "And it doesn't seem like the kind of game you wish to play."
Daniel, still engaging with human society, still a person, still a public figure. Armand's tone doesn't imply disapproval so much as observation. It's hard to be a functional celebrity if the feds would like to investigate you for serial murder. Maybe the rude couple will live tonight.
Maybe not. "A little. And you've skipped some meals."
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"Dominoes."
One falls, then another, then a hundred. He's not in a hurry to be on law enforcement's radar, not in a hurry to end up entrenched in an increasingly high profile series of kills to get out of a jam. He rationalizes murder just fine, he doesn't need more layers. Besides—
"I want to write the book about the first open vampire to end up in court over biological imperatives," he says, "not star in the documentary. Let somebody else fall on that one."
This little bit of celebrity is fine. It gets him money and the occasional hookup and certain freedoms, which is a nice offset to tanking the credibility of his career (for now). He will pass on more, especially if it comes with restricting his freedoms. Like jail. Pass on jail. Meanwhile: he gives Armand a look.
"Are you keeping track?"
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To the tune of: maybe.
Daniel steers his attention off a glance to the book, but Armand lifts it, drawing focus. "You quoted Rumi," he says. "Who also once said, 'I have never become less from dying'."
Optimistic. Romantic. Religious, first and foremost, but these words exist beyond their context, a fragment of a poem penned quickly into the acknowledgments of a book about queer vampires and their violences.
Cute, also.
And he begins to walk, a pivot that invites Daniel to stay in step.
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Rumi had style. Maybe it was the mysticism— made all the religion tolerable.
Pause. Consider. Mm, what the hell. Daniel follows him. (As if he wouldn't? He tells himself it wasn't guaranteed. It can't be. Armand didn't know he'd follow, or else he wouldn't have to invite him, even wordlessly.)
The city is always packed, it's always busy. A couple of unconvinced, marginally rude attendees fade into obscurity while an ocean of minds and bodies open up, all awaiting assessment for their potential. Daniel is more familiar with video games than the average seventy year old, owing to a combination of nostalgic tolerance based on youthful enjoyment of arcade machines and time sunk in to topics around violence in media. He thinks of the way people decry anything with harm done opponents made out of pixels arranged to look like humans, other living things, the slaughter of which is seen as nothing more than a thing to do to receive experience points.
He also thinks about the movie Gerry when he thinks of video games, but that's like, whatever. A funny thing his brain does, because it's all ridiculous. The point is: converting living beings to an inanimate resource. Thinking nothing of it. Pixels. Mortals. Different from him. He thinks of Louis. Why is a fox less than a human. Why did he tap the woozy Slavic guy's neck like a heroin user lifting a vein, a dismissive and vulgar routine, but fix himself to Armand's throat like it was a lifeline?
"Pretend you're me." Oh, another one of these. "And pretend I want to pick off skeptics. Where do I put the line? What's the most minor offense that still ranks?"
Daniel does not sounds like he thinks this is a morally deep question. He sounds like he thinks it's darkly funny to joke about.
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But when he does consider the human being, there is something of a game to it. To allow their inner worlds to matter for the chance of a darkly funny debate.
"Suppose they're an infection to the conversation," he says. Gamely. "Not adamant in their convictions, not attempting to discredit you or criticise your work in some way that demonstrates thought and care. They're only interested in rendering inert any interesting question that could be raised, in belittling the curiousity of others. Entropic ignorance."
A steady stream of life around them. Thoughts, ordinary, repetitive, brushing against their minds. Nothing wrong in ordinary repetition. It's like watching a river. "You could imagine that their incurious nature as something that dulls all they touch, not just your book."
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Mixing his philosophies, but Armand is clever enough to pick up that he's doing it on purpose. Daniel is the kind of person to understand philosophy but not put much value on it— finding the engagement between differences and balances across all the spectrums and schools more interesting. Enough that he feels confident in his understanding to be imprecise in their use.
"A removal of rot. What's my motivation? Is it ego? Do I get to decide, because my judgment is unassailable about this sort of thing? Or is it selfless? Do I just like this world because I live here, and it's a community service?"
Poking at the edges of a theory. Arrogance.
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He had said he likes their conversations. He had meant: that bright, clarifying thing he feels, rubbed raw by the right questions, the shock of revelation. He had also meant: sharp words, testing each other, little moments throughout the interview where Louis, sitting at an angle from him or close to him or across the other side of the room had nearly become ornamental to a wider game while he unspooled his life story.
But isn't it nice, too, to talk philosophy, mixed philosophy, without a recording device nearby. They have more time to do the same thing they were doing before, a kind of mutual figuring out.
"Our way of life is currently only addressed by a set of laws upheld by covens of middling power to enforce them, and none of those laws specify how we go about our selections. There is no legislation dictated by human courts that allow it, is cognizant to it, but perhaps that will change, but let us remain in the present. Even human morality, whether expressed through ancient scripture or afternoon television programming for children cannot abide by a way of life in which the baseline to survival is murder."
Talk of eating only animals, imbibing only from the willing. Louis, a master of his impulses, clinging to these things as if he isn't awaiting the inevitable plummet. Armand won't be there to catch him.
"So." So. "Who can you prescribe your own judgment to, if not yourself?"
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That's funny, for some reason. Daniel wrinkles his nose though a quiet laugh. "Actually— no, that makes sense. Those laws are morals handed down on high from someone, or something, else. No room for encouraging penitents to make their own independent moral judgements. But still something of an oversight in the machine."
It's a nice night out. They pass a news stand, a hot dog cart. Daniel thinks it's odd that news stands have survived, but he thinks the few that remain are vanity projects. Adding to a culture, not making a profit. Hot dogs don't smell like anything anymore, meanwhile.
"Anyway, I know that's me prevaricating. Gardening. I kinda like that."
It makes him think of Armand's tree, and a question he hasn't asked yet. Still not yet. Biding his time.
"Is my judgement my own? How much of a product am I versus an independent entity, when it comes to a moral compass? How I was raised, by who, the things I've experienced. How long do I have to live, sectioned off from those foundational influences, to manifest a fully unique moral perspective?"
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Thinks of being a product. Of being raised, sectioned off, manifested. The pavement underfoot takes on a new kind of quality, like he is simply rolling the whole earth beneath him, pushed along by the press of the toe of his shoe, and he is staying in place.
A vicious and sudden thought: Daniel is laying a trap for him. Only rhetorical, maybe, but a trap nonetheless. But maybe he isn't. He can't read his mind. He can't know.
"Weeds are no more or less evil than the bed of flowers," Armand says, from somewhere slightly behind himself, walking several paces back, it feels like. "And you know them when you see them."
A retreat, from philosophy to metaphor. Embarrassing.
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"Hey, that's good enough for congress and pornography," he says, clueless of Armand's internal paranoia. Maybe the trap was letting Daniel Molloy talk at all.
"If I'm being honest—"
Wouldn't it be nice if he wasn't? If he could shut up for a minute.
"—I don't know where I stand on morality and judgement, concerning dinner. I trust myself, mostly. I've been calling a lot of quick shots, though, and not following up on whether or not they were the right ones. I can admit that's out of wilful ignorance. I don't want to feel bad about it. So." So. "The best way is to be mindful up front, probably."
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And Daniel Molloy talking in itself is no prison, even if Armand finds he has to tune back in a little. "Probably," Armand says. Internally guarded, still, more watchful of the possible curves and loops of the conversation ahead of then. Mindful up front. "I've seen many vampires fail to engage with the question at all, or give up after a decade or so."
He could speak a little of Louis, his mindfulness to the point of compulsion, and Armand has a lot of data, but he doesn't feel like it. Doesn't wish to evoke him now.
"I think there is no law pertaining the selecting because it will always vary. The bearable thing," treating himself to a callback. "The pleasurable thing. Do you find yourself hesitating, in the moment?"
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Maybe.
"Sometimes. It's been—" a movement with his hand, up and down, like a rollercoaster, or an unsteady sea. "The out of control desperation at first, and then overthinking how I'm going to get away with anything, after. There are a lot of needles to be threaded. Things to think about. Amazon not selling you blenders."
A callback of his own. Without realizing it, Daniel fails to evoke Louis. That exchange was only theirs.
"How high does 'the pleasurable thing' rank for you, when you choose?"
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