Armand listens, and does so by watching Daniel as they walk rather than playing at aloof. Back in Dubai, and the natural twinge towards anxiety is matched only by his interest in the thread being taken back up. Masochistic, maybe. He has his tendencies.
A hooded lowering of his eyes before his focus goes back to where they're going.
"I wanted to provoke you. You were being judgmental."
He pauses for the span of a step or two, and then bids, "Elaborate," because it hadn't been that simple, either. Maybe Daniel sees more of himself in this than Armand did in Daniel's work.
A note of interest, about provocation, and judgement. Daniel gives him a look, but doesn't follow up. (Yet?) Might be fun to dissect who was being provocative because it was his job, and who was being judgemental. Another kind of conversational fencing match.
One thing at a time.
"When you want to interview somebody and make it real, get to the truth of why you're there, you have to get past the first answer, and the second answer, and the third. You have to redirect and argue and provoke until you get to the truth. Usually it's not because people are lying to you. They're lying to themselves, or they just don't realize they aren't going far enough. Nobody wants to say the embarrassing thing, the worst thing. You do have to talk them up to the ledge, and then get them to walk off of it. Whether it's in confession or anger."
"'I don't write puff portraiture', you said," Armand says.
Agreeing, rather than making a point, although Daniel would be forgiven for not being able to differentiate the tone. Who wins literary awards, chronicling the lives of phantoms of a person on their best day? And rarely do people win those awards by trying to win awards. They do it by being built this way.
"Focus on him," back to the lesson, for a moment, "his mind. His scent. We're going to go the long way."
Attract less attention. The mark disappears around a corner, and Armand nudges their trajectory to move out of sight, if in parallel, disappearing through late night traffic, sparse crowds.
"You feel it, when you're getting close. You thrill for it, live for it. Lived," vampire jokes on purpose. "A hunt can feel the same."
Agreement, he thinks. Armand is slippery (not all on purpose?). But Daniel is learning.
Oh, right. Also learning vampire shit.
He makes an attempt at putting a pin on the man that Armand has lured out of the building with immense sadness (what a way to do it), and at trying to keep part of his awareness there. Multitasking. He loses the man right away, but slows his steps and considers, and ends up finding him again. He does almost bump into a fellow pedestrian walking in the opposite direction as this goes on, but he recovers, walking beside Armand with his hands in his pockets and looking very normal and un-flustered. Yep.
"It's a puzzle that opens a lock." An odd thing to stay about journalism, perhaps. "It's an unraveling. A bang. Takes all kinds. You get there, and then you get to go past there."
His mark feels like a beacon he can nearly see, a cold point at the edge of his brain oriented in the correct direction. Armand doesn't think to describe this as Daniel keeps pace with him—either it will make sense or it doesn't, or Daniel will have his own way of going about things.
"A peeling back, a luring out." Armand can do both. He prefers the latter when it comes to these kinds of victims, letting them along a path which leads back to himself. His petty cryptofascists are more fun beneath a scalpel.
This, also, he doesn't say. Instead, "Do they appear more human to you, or less? Your puzzles."
He thinks about these things like pins on a map, or a research board; no string involved (usually). In this case the string would be moving, anyway. But it flows along with the way he's connected this to the work he does, it's just a matter of him being able to keep up with it. Easier when he can maintain a line of sight, easier when it's the only thing he's doing, easier when he's not second-guessing the choice of victim.
But Daniel is a fast learner, and he cares more about figuring this out and observing what he can about Armand than he does about the morality.
"Now?"
An odd question. He's not sure what to make of it at first, because everything is both more and less human to him, now. More because it's becoming defining. Less because he feels detached. But he figures Armand means before, actually, and is picking at Daniel's process. So. Reverse back for a less stupid response—
"Everybody's a puzzle." This should be a hard truth, about himself. Something that's been used as an accusation, treating the world like an investigation, seeing everyone in terms of a story and relationships as angles. And yet it's just the way he is. Accepted now that he's ruined every romance, every familial tie, every potential life-long friend. "That probably qualifies as appearing less than human. But I usually like people better when they're puzzles."
He shrugs. Distantly, he traces Armand's chosen mark as he moves around barriers to the water's edge.
A memory, of black tape ejected into the air as if into a vacuum, long inky ribbons. Useless, mundane, trivial, pointless. Armand could imagine a mind like one of those tapes, all coiled up inside of a delicate casing, and slowly dragging it all out into the open, glossy and vapid. He does not like people. He doesn't know if there was a time when he ever had the capacity.
There was a time, though, he might have accused Daniel of it. Misanthropy. He prods around for it now, a way in for dehumanisation, a process that will make the hesitations less—but there, Daniel says it. I usually like people better when they're puzzles.
And then, Armand must think of corruption. Will Daniel become someone who takes people apart for fun? Not for chronicling, not for truth, but for the way their blood tastes. Or perhaps he will go away. Start discarding boring people. He thinks of the couple he'd let go, their inane commentary.
"This way," Armand says.
He doesn't call attention to the way he gently nudges people away from the area. A couple hanging out at the railings discard their cigarettes and decide they've had enough, linking arms and leaving. Others, rerouting, or become distracted, turning around, idling. They'll find their mark sitting on the edge of sloped concrete, where boats would be let into the water. Arms tight around his knees, emanating a despair he has never truly felt before, but has always lived within him, he thinks. Rot, plastered over.
Armand stops. They're at a distance to go unnoticed, for now. He doesn't have to explain that if he were to kill this man, he would feel relief. Daniel has already felt it, ill-gotten though it was.
People are better when they're puzzles, because people suck— prejudiced and stupid, inconsistent, fallible, the dreaded b-word, vapid, selfish, or the worst, just slightly irritating without any grand offsets. Daniel doesn't love people. But he doesn't hate people, and he believes that despite his own pitfalls and inability to connect on a normal, broadly compassionate bleeding heart level, that people are mostly good. Individual people can be good, they can be born good or they can change to become good; societies can rise above, with work. And he believes such work should be encouraged and celebrated, even if he, personally, is frequently mired in bitterness and apathy about the trajectory of the world.
So it's a bit of a bummer to look at this poor fucking guy. He gets it, or at least he thinks he does, but it strikes him that it's already a waste. Armand has godlike power and he uses it to prune a misshapen flower that's already half-wilted instead of an actual invasive weed.
The blood of the dead can pull a vampire down into the grave. They all hear their victims' lives as they die, sung through blood. What do these depressed fucks pull Armand into, time and time again? How is Daniel going to feel draining someone who is, psychologically, half dead already?
He looks at Armand. It's a hard look. Searching. A horrible x-ray of a thing.
Of what he finds there, if anything, he says nothing about.
"Hey," quiet, as he paces over to the man, curled up and half-catatonic. He gets a startled response, gazing up in confusion as a strange old man sits down beside him, hand on his shoulder. Something preternatural enough about Daniel already to hold his attention, and prevent him from casting around for context, from noticing Armand or anything else. A quick exchange that nevertheless, for a moment, seems to stretch on for an eternity. Daniel asks him if he's alright, and the magic of Armand's spell his shattered with a shocked sob, a toyed-with mortal stung by the surprise of random empathy.
Armand is perfectly still under the force of that look.
Maybe a blink out of time once Daniel moves off. An urge to defend himself, which is ridiculous. Daniel had dared him. He chose a single building. Armand does not need to eat every night, not even every week, and he has time to find his perfect invasive weed. This one will simply do. Never mind that Louis has spoken before of what Armand will eat when he can't find his cryptofascists to chase, what Daniel himself has nearly experienced.
He draws in a breath, resettling the book in his arms as he watches Daniel engage with the prey. Feels himself tense as the mortal's world broadens under a show of kindness, like a cracked window. What had Armand expected? That Daniel would repeat his methodology, finish the luring song that has the man slip over the edge into acceptance? No, not really, not on reflection.
And he stays where he is rather than help with clean up, at least not unprompted. After all, didn't he say he wouldn't?
Is this worse? To give the man hope, a sudden soft light, and end it anyway? He clings to Daniel, confused, euphoric, pained. Resignation is too complex a thought for how startled he is, unable to really process what's happening until his heart is pumping too slowly for the thoughts to make it all the way to his brain.
Louis wanted to know if he considered the life of the rabbit. Vegan bait. Throwing paint on classic works of art, reminding you cows are nice. Stupid. You don't have the rabbit's life beamed into your brain when you cut it.
The man dies and Daniel is sated. Maybe he had skipped a meal. Something bloody, a sick crack, puncturing a lung to disrupt buoyancy. Then an easy lift, a shuffle, a shove, a splash. He runs a hand over his mouth before leaning down to rinse them off— one thing to eat a stranger who smelled like sweat and sadness, another to risk tasting public NYC water. The real horror.
Armand strolls his way down the concrete slope a few feet, stopping there still at the top of it. A tall, willowy presence with his cat-bright eyes and chilly composure, the cuddly soft cardigan even more of a costume than it was before.
"I thought this was my test, not yours," he says. When has he ever felt the need to defend his own killings? He had toyed with Louis and his moralising, engaging in the kind of debate that he assumed Lestat had no patience for, and never felt the need to appear more human to the other vampire. Perhaps it's because Daniel is younger. Because it's because it's Daniel, the ever observant, ever opinionated, or because it's Daniel, who dismantled him, and now he is pieces of himself.
He has no pity in the dead meat now sinking into black waters. His fledgling his fed. For that, he feels satisfied.
Imbalanced. Daniel is even shorter this way, though he's always been short, so it hardly matters. He looks up at Armand, with eyes swirling from gold back to blue, the jolt of a pleasant blood-high despite the depressing transfer warming him.
Food, like Claudia said. (More, like everyone else said.)
"It wasn't a test, it was a dare," he reminds him. "And you pulled through, so it's your turn to pick."
Has Armand ever played Truth or Dare? Probably not. Daniel should not be handing him this power. But he just doesn't feel like antagonizing him right now— he has a sense, strangely, that this surreal interaction is plenty, in terms of being a stand-in for needling him about what the fuck he's doing by eating sad people who he's made sadder.
"Doesn't have to be now, now, though." Up the slope. Shoulder to shoulder (and a little lower still, on Daniel's part) in opposite directions.
It doesn't come out snippy, or angry, or really at all bothered. It was a dare, and at some point in the future, it will be Daniel's turn. Armand knows an impulse to pivot, to follow after Daniel. To demand reflection. Judgment. Something true, something cutting. How dare Daniel walk away from him, face clean, and provide no commentary at all.
Commentary could come. Keep walking with him and find out. He might not even need to ask for it. Daniel talks, for a listener. And yet—
Armand has to wonder what he's doing. Macro, micro. Turning this man. Trying to teach him something. He finds he does not know what to do now, and that simply cannot stand.
A drift in the air, a sense of motion. Even to Daniel's heightened senses, his changing eyes, sharply attuned ears, Armand is capable of a kind of disappearance—and, after the sound of one footfall, disappear he does.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
A hooded lowering of his eyes before his focus goes back to where they're going.
"I wanted to provoke you. You were being judgmental."
He pauses for the span of a step or two, and then bids, "Elaborate," because it hadn't been that simple, either. Maybe Daniel sees more of himself in this than Armand did in Daniel's work.
no subject
A note of interest, about provocation, and judgement. Daniel gives him a look, but doesn't follow up. (Yet?) Might be fun to dissect who was being provocative because it was his job, and who was being judgemental. Another kind of conversational fencing match.
One thing at a time.
"When you want to interview somebody and make it real, get to the truth of why you're there, you have to get past the first answer, and the second answer, and the third. You have to redirect and argue and provoke until you get to the truth. Usually it's not because people are lying to you. They're lying to themselves, or they just don't realize they aren't going far enough. Nobody wants to say the embarrassing thing, the worst thing. You do have to talk them up to the ledge, and then get them to walk off of it. Whether it's in confession or anger."
no subject
Agreeing, rather than making a point, although Daniel would be forgiven for not being able to differentiate the tone. Who wins literary awards, chronicling the lives of phantoms of a person on their best day? And rarely do people win those awards by trying to win awards. They do it by being built this way.
"Focus on him," back to the lesson, for a moment, "his mind. His scent. We're going to go the long way."
Attract less attention. The mark disappears around a corner, and Armand nudges their trajectory to move out of sight, if in parallel, disappearing through late night traffic, sparse crowds.
"You feel it, when you're getting close. You thrill for it, live for it. Lived," vampire jokes on purpose. "A hunt can feel the same."
no subject
Oh, right. Also learning vampire shit.
He makes an attempt at putting a pin on the man that Armand has lured out of the building with immense sadness (what a way to do it), and at trying to keep part of his awareness there. Multitasking. He loses the man right away, but slows his steps and considers, and ends up finding him again. He does almost bump into a fellow pedestrian walking in the opposite direction as this goes on, but he recovers, walking beside Armand with his hands in his pockets and looking very normal and un-flustered. Yep.
"It's a puzzle that opens a lock." An odd thing to stay about journalism, perhaps. "It's an unraveling. A bang. Takes all kinds. You get there, and then you get to go past there."
The real shit's off the edge of the cliff.
Or!
"Or." ! "Dinner."
no subject
"A peeling back, a luring out." Armand can do both. He prefers the latter when it comes to these kinds of victims, letting them along a path which leads back to himself. His petty cryptofascists are more fun beneath a scalpel.
This, also, he doesn't say. Instead, "Do they appear more human to you, or less? Your puzzles."
no subject
But Daniel is a fast learner, and he cares more about figuring this out and observing what he can about Armand than he does about the morality.
"Now?"
An odd question. He's not sure what to make of it at first, because everything is both more and less human to him, now. More because it's becoming defining. Less because he feels detached. But he figures Armand means before, actually, and is picking at Daniel's process. So. Reverse back for a less stupid response—
"Everybody's a puzzle." This should be a hard truth, about himself. Something that's been used as an accusation, treating the world like an investigation, seeing everyone in terms of a story and relationships as angles. And yet it's just the way he is. Accepted now that he's ruined every romance, every familial tie, every potential life-long friend. "That probably qualifies as appearing less than human. But I usually like people better when they're puzzles."
He shrugs. Distantly, he traces Armand's chosen mark as he moves around barriers to the water's edge.
no subject
There was a time, though, he might have accused Daniel of it. Misanthropy. He prods around for it now, a way in for dehumanisation, a process that will make the hesitations less—but there, Daniel says it. I usually like people better when they're puzzles.
And then, Armand must think of corruption. Will Daniel become someone who takes people apart for fun? Not for chronicling, not for truth, but for the way their blood tastes. Or perhaps he will go away. Start discarding boring people. He thinks of the couple he'd let go, their inane commentary.
"This way," Armand says.
He doesn't call attention to the way he gently nudges people away from the area. A couple hanging out at the railings discard their cigarettes and decide they've had enough, linking arms and leaving. Others, rerouting, or become distracted, turning around, idling. They'll find their mark sitting on the edge of sloped concrete, where boats would be let into the water. Arms tight around his knees, emanating a despair he has never truly felt before, but has always lived within him, he thinks. Rot, plastered over.
Armand stops. They're at a distance to go unnoticed, for now. He doesn't have to explain that if he were to kill this man, he would feel relief. Daniel has already felt it, ill-gotten though it was.
"We shouldn't waste him on me."
no subject
So it's a bit of a bummer to look at this poor fucking guy. He gets it, or at least he thinks he does, but it strikes him that it's already a waste. Armand has godlike power and he uses it to prune a misshapen flower that's already half-wilted instead of an actual invasive weed.
The blood of the dead can pull a vampire down into the grave. They all hear their victims' lives as they die, sung through blood. What do these depressed fucks pull Armand into, time and time again? How is Daniel going to feel draining someone who is, psychologically, half dead already?
He looks at Armand. It's a hard look. Searching. A horrible x-ray of a thing.
Of what he finds there, if anything, he says nothing about.
"Hey," quiet, as he paces over to the man, curled up and half-catatonic. He gets a startled response, gazing up in confusion as a strange old man sits down beside him, hand on his shoulder. Something preternatural enough about Daniel already to hold his attention, and prevent him from casting around for context, from noticing Armand or anything else. A quick exchange that nevertheless, for a moment, seems to stretch on for an eternity. Daniel asks him if he's alright, and the magic of Armand's spell his shattered with a shocked sob, a toyed-with mortal stung by the surprise of random empathy.
Daniel still kills him.
no subject
Maybe a blink out of time once Daniel moves off. An urge to defend himself, which is ridiculous. Daniel had dared him. He chose a single building. Armand does not need to eat every night, not even every week, and he has time to find his perfect invasive weed. This one will simply do. Never mind that Louis has spoken before of what Armand will eat when he can't find his cryptofascists to chase, what Daniel himself has nearly experienced.
He draws in a breath, resettling the book in his arms as he watches Daniel engage with the prey. Feels himself tense as the mortal's world broadens under a show of kindness, like a cracked window. What had Armand expected? That Daniel would repeat his methodology, finish the luring song that has the man slip over the edge into acceptance? No, not really, not on reflection.
And he stays where he is rather than help with clean up, at least not unprompted. After all, didn't he say he wouldn't?
no subject
Louis wanted to know if he considered the life of the rabbit. Vegan bait. Throwing paint on classic works of art, reminding you cows are nice. Stupid. You don't have the rabbit's life beamed into your brain when you cut it.
The man dies and Daniel is sated. Maybe he had skipped a meal. Something bloody, a sick crack, puncturing a lung to disrupt buoyancy. Then an easy lift, a shuffle, a shove, a splash. He runs a hand over his mouth before leaning down to rinse them off— one thing to eat a stranger who smelled like sweat and sadness, another to risk tasting public NYC water. The real horror.
So.
He turns around. Eyebrows up.
"Any notes?"
no subject
"I thought this was my test, not yours," he says. When has he ever felt the need to defend his own killings? He had toyed with Louis and his moralising, engaging in the kind of debate that he assumed Lestat had no patience for, and never felt the need to appear more human to the other vampire. Perhaps it's because Daniel is younger. Because it's because it's Daniel, the ever observant, ever opinionated, or because it's Daniel, who dismantled him, and now he is pieces of himself.
He has no pity in the dead meat now sinking into black waters. His fledgling his fed. For that, he feels satisfied.
"It's only blood." Food, like Claudia said.
no subject
Food, like Claudia said. (More, like everyone else said.)
"It wasn't a test, it was a dare," he reminds him. "And you pulled through, so it's your turn to pick."
Has Armand ever played Truth or Dare? Probably not. Daniel should not be handing him this power. But he just doesn't feel like antagonizing him right now— he has a sense, strangely, that this surreal interaction is plenty, in terms of being a stand-in for needling him about what the fuck he's doing by eating sad people who he's made sadder.
"Doesn't have to be now, now, though." Up the slope. Shoulder to shoulder (and a little lower still, on Daniel's part) in opposite directions.
no subject
It doesn't come out snippy, or angry, or really at all bothered. It was a dare, and at some point in the future, it will be Daniel's turn. Armand knows an impulse to pivot, to follow after Daniel. To demand reflection. Judgment. Something true, something cutting. How dare Daniel walk away from him, face clean, and provide no commentary at all.
Commentary could come. Keep walking with him and find out. He might not even need to ask for it. Daniel talks, for a listener. And yet—
Armand has to wonder what he's doing. Macro, micro. Turning this man. Trying to teach him something. He finds he does not know what to do now, and that simply cannot stand.
A drift in the air, a sense of motion. Even to Daniel's heightened senses, his changing eyes, sharply attuned ears, Armand is capable of a kind of disappearance—and, after the sound of one footfall, disappear he does.