The way Armand makes himself comfortable in this space is different to how he did in Dubai. Given to control, tension, precision, even while sharing a bed, and while not all of that is gone—here, he sits against the headboard, a leg folded beneath the other, unself-conscious as he peruses the thick coffeetable type book spread open in his lap. Julie Mehretu's abstracts, and he's currently occupied in an analysis of her early sketches.
He hadn't had Louis' gift for finding young talent, but he can appreciate the work of the established, and so this doesn't truly feel like some form of reaching back for something. If he doesn't sleep the whole day away with Daniel, he will go upstairs and take charcoal into hand, and refuse to wonder what Louis might think of whatever he does next.
Soon, hopefully, the past won't be an act of negation. It simply won't matter. For now—
He turns a page as Daniel speaks, looking up and keeping the corner of glossy artbook page pinched between his fingers. His wardrobe has adapted too, a soft T-shirt and sweatpants, albeit both items criminally expensive.
"I like your commentary," he says. "Is that the same thing?"
In mortal life, if he were ever in a holding pattern like this with someone - near impossible to imagine, but going with the thought experiment - he'd have burned it down ages ago. Forced the issue, explain or get out.
What's the rush, now? He hasn't figured out what this is, and there's no one to ask. No two beings in existence have been in anything even like this situation. Dead or undead. So he proceeds with no expectations, and prunes away unhelpful mental wanderings with better efficiency than he applies when selecting meals. Experiencing it one night at a time, and unpacking things when he's alone. Armand is interesting, and dangerous, and beautiful, and smart, and Daniel is comfortable with him (somehow). Armand wants men like Lestat, and Louis, and a fucked up ancient Roman painter that Daniel hopes has gone into the earth to never return; Daniel sees women sometimes, once then never again. Reconnecting with his body is his business and not something any other vampire he knows can or will understand. He handles it away from them, and shuts it off at home.
"It's something," he says, wry humor. "I'll keep trying." A habit by now, to chuck DVDs at Armand. Another holdover from recovery, during which Daniel didn't know what to do, just put random shit on during the day when he was passed out so that the house wouldn't be silent. Like Armand might slip away into some severed vampire coma he couldn't be woken from, and then Daniel would have to contend with why he didn't want that to happen.
Clothes go where they go, a few books next. Daniel is wearing an oversized long-sleeved shirt, soft pants. Shorts when he's alone, more coverage when Armand lingers. Barriers out of— respect, privacy, something? Daniel is a substitute, he's pretty sure. Though for what, who fucking knows. Maybe Armand is still crafting the role, like a sculpture perpetually still in the blobby clay stage.
"What— oh." A slipper robbed from the foyer, wedged halfway under his dresser. Peanut crimes. Daniel yanks it free and goes to chuck it upstairs to be collected later (or just stolen again by the lurking beast). "Are you staying down here?"
Armand is free to; Daniel would say so if not. Has before.
I'll keep trying, a little like the quiet part spoken out loud. The sense of Daniel trying to bring Armand things, things to capture his interest or spark his joy or occupy his time. He has had the thought before—something to throw into the hole that is him, shape it into something, what do you like spoken to highlight his own emptiness, but,
early discomforts. Not gone forever, perhaps, but not present now. Some sense of him assured that Daniel does not consider him dull, a complete freak of nature, an alien being in need of acclimation. At least, not so much that he finds it insulting, not so much that they can't exist in each others spaces.
In Daniel's space, initially, now also his. And Peanut's, who Daniel has walked in to find in Armand's arms, chin buried in soft fur as if to absorb the rumbled purring, at least once or twice.
"Yes," he says. He has turned another page but has taken to watching Daniel when he is certain the other vampire won't notice.
With a soft impact, he closes the book. "I took the liberty of downloading more of Bakshi's films, if you'd like to see them too." He had done so a little while ago, actually, but it seems pertinent to offer in light of I'll keep trying.
Can't a guy just want to find things that cheer up the eldritch horror Botticelli angel that turned him into a vampire when he didn't ask?
It's fucked up in here. It always will be. Daniel hums confirmation to that 'Yes', does some beep-beeping on the security system panel near the door to the stairs (Armand will know how to use it, if he gets sick of being asleep during the day and wants to bail), and then—
"I'd like that." Still pleased with the success of that suggestion. Somewhere in the dark depths of his storage unit is an American Pop laserdisc, but fuck only knows where the laserdisc player is (not that he couldn't get a new one) (of any of these items) (wealth does not break all habits). Digital is the solution. "Thinking about a specific one?"
He'll listen to the answer while he brushes his teeth in the en suite, out of sight but easily connected. Still no satisfactory answers from anyone about dental work, by the way. What a world, what a world. For a moment, when he meets his own gaze in the mirror, he thinks again: It's fucked up in here.
Yeah, well, he tells himself. Kinda interesting, despite that.
"I had it in mind to view his first one. Fritz the Cat?"
The Mehretu is set down, placed on one of the side tables, and Armand drags himself a little ways off the headboard, coming to sit in a loose-cross legged posture nearer the middle. He either does not brush his teeth or does not allow Daniel to witness it, or perhaps just does so infrequently—after his occasional meals, one imagines.
"Unless you have a preferred title."
But probably at least somewhat an element of privacy, where Daniel allows himself to do domestic things in Armand's presence, laundry and tidying and grooming, Armand holds himself in more reserve. Still enjoying finding a space for himself in the routine of existence. Considers the bed, considers the coffin, considers the sound of water in the drain pipes as he loops his arms around his knees.
Anyway, he has found he likes cartoons of a certain brand and mood. Adult, complex, satirical, dark. The eternal impulse towards comparison, and equally resisting it: Louis "The Plays Were Weird" du Lac would have no patience for them. They did not even have a television in Dubai.
Not actually narrowing it down all the way, with Bakshi, but his amused point remains— "Yeah, that works."
Armand is a strange thing. The least human thing on the planet, possibly. But he thinks cartoons are neat, and sits on Daniel's bed, and sometimes cuddles with the weird cat he picked up from a local rescue. It's fucked up in here. Tooth brush goes back in its cup. Daniel touches the bridge of his nose, though his glasses aren't there. Auto-pilot. Painfully ordinary and a thousand, million miles from fascinating.
He switches most of the lights off on his way back to the bed, and sits beside Armand on it. The elder vampire can decide for himself if he wants to rev up the film now, and further, can decide if he wants to prop up his tablet, or screenshare to the tv that takes up significant real estate on the wall facing them. Surrounded by shelves, it looms, slightly reflective, sporting an undignified sticky note affixed to one corner, displaying the wifi passwords.
He makes himself comfortable, meanwhile. On days when Armand opts to stay with him, the coffin goes empty. Just not practical.
Indeed, as Daniel settles, Armand collects up his phone, and the screen glows with its idle graphics as he fishes around for the file.
Once the movie begins to play, he shifts backwards to settle as well. A nearness that has become familiar, but far from ordinary. He shifts his knee and there, a little point of contact, and on the screen, a cartoon construction working hippopotamus pisses off the side of a building, and the stream of bright yellow consolidates into the title screen. Good and wonderful.
He does have a habit of watching things with giant eyes and very little outward reaction, at least for the most part—but here and there, a smile, a breath of amusement, which may be even more satisfying to witness when it's evoked by something particularly stupid or vulgar, of which this movie has plenty to offer.
Leans in. All vampires have at least a little bit of weird cat energy, and this inching into the edges of affection is how Armand's manifests in the moment.
Vague memories of this— not in the something fucked with my head way, but in a way where he's pretty sure he's seen it before, or parts of it, in an adult theater bookended by actual pornography, back when adult theaters were a thing. As trashy as one would expect, but the were fine places to sleep through hangovers and occasionally watch other men jack off. Honest and open filth, opposed to the private, shuttered shame of the internet. At least then you were getting out of the house.
He wonders of Armand's luring songs into darkness would take to a place like that, or if he would sit in the vaguely sticky theater seats and stare unblinking at the screen for the entire duration of each absurd reel, smiling now and again at the least glamorous moments, ignoring the rest of the world. He wonders if they ever missed each other in passing at some grindhouse showing mondo films and old Disney filler cartoons.
Posture he's become near expert at by now: shifting to allow an openness that Armand might curl into, when he decides to. Daniel lets him pick the pace of it. Sometimes during this stage he thinks frankly deranged fucking thoughts, like workshopping different answers to a question posed to him in 1973. Do you think I'm boring?, and Daniel had said No, but was there something better? Something truer, if worse? How could you be boring, you're the scariest fucking thing I've ever seen, and the other monster keeps complaining about his ex and wouldn't even fuck me.
The problem with all of this is that Daniel looks forward to it. He just has to pretend not to, because thinking about it too often is going to drive him insane, and there's too much else in his life that could also easily drive him insane.
As ever, he wonders what goes through Daniel's head in moments like this.
His inability to know and his ability to imagine the worst doesn't stop him. It doesn't take very long, slotting himself in against Daniel's side, head against his shoulder, a hand resting on his torso. This comfort being offered him, warmth and presence, strange enough and unfamiliar enough in its manifestation that he could once again feel a little like he is playacting as someone else.
Maybe Armand will speak of it one day, those strange dislocations inside himself, but he is loathe to become a burden. Which might be funny if he said it out loud, given everything.
Does Daniel find comfort in it as well? Armand does not believe the other man would permit anything he hated, or even found mildly objectionable, but what is the shape of it? Sometimes (and he thinks of it now as he watches the parade of animals fucking each other papering over muddled political commentary, truly an artefact of its time) he remembers the taste of Daniel's blood, the clarity of it. His mind gift still active, yes, but all those thoughts felt like they carried through the rich crimson essence of him.
He was terrifying, he was fascinating, and he still is. Was, in that moment. Is? What is he now? Does he want to be terrifying? Is he still fascinating? When will he become boring?
Daniel's hand is laying there above his own. Armand does not think before he slides his own underneath it, toys until their fingers tangle.
One arm tucks around Armand when he fits against him, and it's cozy, comfortable; the elder vampire is taller, willowy and spindly, and to Daniel it seems more like an enormous predatory snake winding around him than Armand actually making himself smaller.
The movie is bizarre, as expected. Comically pornographic in a way that would never pass as earnestly erotic except to very particular furries, and not especially adept at its politics. A brave and bold effort regardless, though Daniel isn't paying attention to it. Too difficult to pay attention to anything but Armand. Sometimes he manages it, but not today, and he doesn't bother trying. Uninterested in anything but tracing over long fingers with his own, drawing nonsense patterns with light, careful touches of nails, resting now and then against the delicate skin of his pulse point to feel his heart and the blood that moves through him.
Blood that made him. Blood he barely remembers, outside the big picture overwhelming moment, feelings of agony and euphoria, higher than high.
He has never asked. His transformation wasn't about intimacy, and the closest thing to a conversation they've had about it was back in those infant days of Fake Rashid, and Armand's seething hostile reaction to Louis' mocking offer to let Daniel have a taste. Between that and Armand's professed repulsion about the creation of vampires, no signals are mixed. Only a total fucking moron would ask.
Regardless, it is parts comforting and sensual to feel his pulse. Armand feels good against him. He smells good. Daniel ignores the cartoon, Bakshi's lurid scenes, and draws more nonsense on his the back of his wrist.
Armand will not give credit to Bakshi's exuberantly promiscuous furries for the following: he has lain against Daniel this way before and thought of sex, as he does now.
And they have argued, sometimes fiercely, and Daniel has seen the worst of him, has deliberately scattered his house of cards while maintaining eye contact. They have gone for long absences and abrupt reunions. They have exchanged human corpses and still living prey. Armand has made him into a vampire.
All of this into account and he still wonders if sex would ruin something. Sex can be ruinous. It can also be nothing, which is a different kind of ruinous.
His eyes flick to where their hands overlap, where Daniel is drawing invisible lines down his fingers, diamond-hard nails, tendon and bone. Is this the holding pattern he has consigned himself to? He has also, a little, lost track of the movie—perhaps it's that degree more juvenile than his sensibilities would prefer, although if they were to stop now, he would watch it later for completion's sake, as an interesting and bold thing in a body of work.
He thinks about how Daniel spent a lot of Dubai with his sleeves rolled up.
Long-sleeves here. But, all the same, he turns his hand so that he might hook that wandering finger in his own, and then draws it in until he can brush his lips against that pulse point.
They cannot read each other's minds. Privacy, forever. But there's no way to miss Daniel's pulse ticking up in an instant— a startle expressed only internally, the rest of him remaining under the spell of surreal domesticity they cast on themselves during days like this. His traitor heart does not slow down once he's processed that tiny, seismic movement, further condemning him to exposure.
Why?
The movie no longer exists. He thinks of ruining Armand's life, barking every slave name at him just to be cruel and to draw blood over vengeance for a week of torture and a following lifetime of strange dreams. He thinks of looking at each other in Dubai; in silence, during the day, in sound, at night when Louis was there, talking about things Daniel should have been listening to. Dark, deep pools staring out at him from Armand's face, inviting him to drown.
How fast it happened. Out of spite, Louis said. But sometimes Daniel thinks of those eyes, and drowning, and he wonders if Armand decided far earlier. If he realized he'd decided. If sitting there and continuing the interview was as good as wading into the dark water.
Alright. Maybe he knows why.
Daniel flexes his fingers, splays them, allows Armand to hold him captive. A permissive and curious pause, with all of his attention wrapped up in it while an irrelevant cartoon plays and splashes changing colors over them.
Armand is aware he has visited a significant amount of pain onto Daniel. Much of the worst of it, without using his hands or his fangs, but also: his hands insistently stroking the man's face, his hair, violent for what they meant, violent for being unwanted and cruel. It wouldn't be exculpating in the least if he remembered it as a kind of dream, disassociated from his present self.
But worse, he remembers it all with perfect clarity, what he was thinking, how he was feeling. Far different from memories of half a millennia ago. Remembers sweat-greasy curls, the scent of tears and blood, the warm weight of him when he was finally pushed enough to stop fighting.
New memories, now. Associations. Tangled hands. Sleeping on the same mattress, waking to watch the long breaths in and out. A clinging embrace that Daniel had not been cognizant to as his blood was stolen.
Thinks of that now as Armand focuses on the infinitely fine feeling of a pulse beneath his mouth. No bloodlust behind the way it intrigues him, pressing a more deliberate kiss there, hand sliding to push Daniel's sleeve out of the way, thumb following the line of muscle from wrist to midway up towards the elbow.
A rare temptation, to bite. To taste what he can't excavate for himself. Maybe in time. Instead, a following kiss to the meat of Daniel's palm. Eventually, he will have to look up and observe his fledgling's face.
Once upon a time, Daniel offered himself. Not an offer of earnest lust, but an attempt to buy his way out of a nightmare situation that he was still struggling to make sense of. He'd traded sex plenty, mostly for drugs, but sometimes for safety. It wouldn't have been anything, just another strange dot on the line of his addictions.
Maybe. Maybe blowing a vampire would have permanently rewired something in him. Fucked him up in a different way. Less mortal peril, more psychosexual torment. Though he thinks there's already plenty of the latter between them. He wonders if it's as confusing for Armand as it is for him.
Daniel continues to allow the searching touch, and he continues to enjoy it. Armand kisses his palm, and Daniel slides fingertips over Armand's cheek.
Armand's hand overlaps, following along. Daniel would say something. He would have said something by now if he wasn't welcome. He presses Daniel's hand further against him as he considers himself.
Grainy voices from the movie in the air, no thoughts at all that Armand can access. It has been an inconceivably long time since he has been with any paramour or momentary fling that he could not simply read exactly what it is they wanted and expected from him. And before that doesn't bear thinking about it. Certainly not now.
So call it a uniquely new experience instead. Because it is.
Armand shifts to align himself closer against Daniel so that he doesn't have to twist when he lifts his head and looks at him. The lighting is dim and strange, but they are vampires, and his eyes are a specific kind of dark amber, a tone of the earth rather than leaping flames. Wood and clay. He places a hand on Daniel's chest, bracing, zigzags a look over his face.
Daniel is a better read of people, in contrast. All signs point to the desire to bridge that gap between them.
All signs, if Armand weren't Armand. Daniel has consistently read so much in him— seems to always know when he's lying, except for when Armand doesn't know Armand is lying. Which happens, sometimes. The mind is not a palace of many rooms. It's a battlefield suspended over twisting layers. Daniel imagines them on opposite sides, Daniel imagines them meeting in quiet tents, where everything is peaceful.
Armand wants to kiss him. Daniel wants it, too. He's an infuriating monster, unrecognizable as human, sometimes he's too fucking stupid to find his way out of a paper bag, and he is ruinous in his attempts to right himself. And yet he's interesting, and creative, and good in an argument, and he likes dismal poets and screwed up cartoons. They're the only two people that exist. More and more, that thought does not feel isolating.
The arm he's had around Armand stays though the adjustment in posture, and Daniel curls his fingers against Armand's back, then splays them again. A tender hold that nearly surprises him, despite what he's been doing this whole time.
"Please answer me out loud," is quiet, but steady. "May I kiss you?"
They don't have to guess. They can learn to read each other, and they can ask. He wants Armand's permission. He wants to hear it.
Daniel has been holding him the whole time, but Armand feels it as a comforting weight now as he turns to press along side and against him, as Daniel gives him that request, asks that question. He knows immediately that he would cut loose the notion of sexual or even sensual intimacy if it meant losing that kind of tenderness.
But it stays. Under Daniel's arm, ribs and shoulders lift along with a deeper breath in and out.
"Yes," he says, fingers curling in the fabric of Daniel's shirt. Armand shifts, enough to meet him a little more than half way, but inviting Daniel to close the last few necessarily fractions.
Armand is so close to him now. Daniel tells himself that this isn't going to be the thing that wrecks it between them, it's fucking laughable to think anything could wreck it between them when torture hasn't. If it falls flat, they've overcome worse things. They've destroyed each other already and seen where the pieces fit back together. They can make it no matter what and that is...
Just phenomenal. How are you possible? he wonders, and then nudges forward that last little bit, and presses his mouth to his maker's.
And more. Armand, closing his eyes, pushing that little bit forwards to insist himself on that kiss. Gentle fingers setting at the edge of Daniel's jaw. (There'd been next to no thought on his part about the subjects of sexuality and gender, those trivial human anxieties that Daniel nevertheless has been caught in before. The young man who had offered to suck his cock fifty years ago did not do so out of desire, he knows.
But all the same.) It's a shallow kiss, sweet that way, but there, a press of intimacy, where they might open for each other. When Armand withdraws, its by a scant distance alone. Lifts his head a little more so they can look at each other without crossing their eyes.
"Would you want me this way?" has notes of Am I boring?, purely in the way it leaves him open for the potential to be hurt. Less clawing desperation, at least.
It's easier than it should be. No clap of ominous thunder, no psychic floor falling out from under them. Just a kiss that feels like a warm extension of the ways they already tangle together while the rest of the world fades away.
Daniel looks at him. Little flecks of awe like the first time he saw him floating in the reading room, spirals of warm affection, warm blood-gold-blue reflecting in each other. Armand has grown so familiar, as a person and a monster. There's no room between them for insecurities, no place for You're beautiful enough to have anyone, no excuse for Daniel to shudder back under the shame of his physical age. These things have been peeled away. Armand is fucking crazy. Daniel isn't squeamish.
Still. A bit of surprise. Half at the vulnerability, half at it being kind of a stupid question. Mixed. A soup of surprise.
"I've thought about it," he says. "Often enough that I've had to make myself stop thinking about it. Because I didn't want to derail anything by being an asshole."
He touches Armand's face, which is perfect, and still occasionally nightmare inducing. They've made peace and they've made friends, and every so often, Daniel still falls asleep and sees radiating orange eyes staring at him in the midst of his worst nightmares, then wakes up and those eyes are besides him, closed, dozing contentedly against his chest. He's gotten used to it.
"I want you in any way that you'll have me, too."
Do you think I'm boring? — No. One word. Not his best. Could have used workshopping. This also may need some, its careful, awkward honesty. Armand can't read his mind, and Daniel is terrible at connecting sincerely, and, and, and. They are still so close.
A flicker of a look in Armand's eyes, his expression—a sympathy with some humour to it, for not wishing to derail things. There is a lot they might stand to lose. For Armand, an anchor in the sea of him. For Daniel—
Well. He has expressed before that Armand is frightening.
Focus sharpens at that next thing. He does not mind it if honesty is awkward. It could be a problem, if he is trying to be careful, and fails at it. Honesty has a way of rattling out of him when it comes, as if he'd been holding on to too much of it and has no way of gracefully setting it down. Slipping between his fingers, overflowing. Rare, that. Rarer and rarer as the time moved along with Louis.
"I want you completely," he says. Daniel is his. Has he ever possessed something, truly? Presiding over the coven like a boy given the leash to a wild tiger. A dim memory of a painting being displayed, and although it was known that it was Amadeo who painted it, the praise was awarded to the one who had tutored him. Lestat, never his, never even pretended at it. Louis, who did not wish to feel like he was owned.
But Daniel is his. His fledgling. There is nothing under heaven that could change this fact. And it gives him no right to anything beyond the knowledge of its truth.
He would like more, if given it. It takes barely any movement to press their mouths together again, and then follows slipping a knee on the other side of Daniel as he does so.
Completely. Has anyone ever wanted him like that? Has there ever been anyone who he would believe wanted him like that? Armand has seen everything. The very worst, most pathetic, most offensive parts of him. And he's still here, like he feels that strange, comfortable isolation too.
(He knows it's the bond. He doesn't care that it's the bond. He cares about the bond. Crucial distinctions.)
"It's yours."
All of it, whatever he wants. Daniel, apparently, which despite all his brashness still makes some small part of him inside tremble with anxiety and anticipation. He is open, accepting, fucking eager for more contact, frankly, but the look in his eyes as Armand closes the small gap to kiss him again has traces of Me? You're picking me?
Him, to slide up against. Him to turn. Him to torture for a week. Armand, his maker, his everything else anymore. Daniel tips his head into the kiss and lets him move where he wants, arms around him welcoming and supportive— only slightly awkward with where to put things (things like hands). It's been decades since he's messed around with another man in earnest. Buried behind him as too complicated to bother with. He could, there's been opportunity, he just hasn't.
It's overwhelming, this thing Daniel says. Armand is in the mood to feel overwhelmed.
To settle like this on top of Daniel has he has imagined doing so before, straddling and pressed in tightly to kiss him. To feel Daniel's arms around him and for his hands to find places to settle. Me? says that flicker in Daniel's eyes and Armand can dedicate all parts of himself to answering Yes, you.
A hand, travelling up the side of Daniel's neck, over that old circle of bite marks from half a century ago. Slipping into his hair, feeling its texture between gentle fingers, running a line with his thumb down the curve of skull to neck. A different, roving touch to the last time the way he touched Daniel resembled this. No too-hard petting.
And kissing him, a way of doing so that tests what Daniel says, inviting him to yield.
A shriek of some kind from the television, and barely a flicker of Armand's eyelashes follow the television going black. No scent of anything fried, so he probably just hit an off switch. Probably. They're doused in silence, in dimness, Armand's knees gently squeezing in on either side of Daniel's thighs.
Armand, warm and pressing down on him. It sends something profound up his spine, more than a jolt, different from the kind of arousal he feels with the humans he still hooks up with sometimes; he's never held another vampire this way. The feeling is different. He hadn't noticed— how could he? Why would he?
Kissing him is unexpected richness. Light with care and reverence, dark with eons-old promises of The only two on Earth, and that silver, shivery, bond. Daniel has never truly yielded to Armand— never fought him for dominance, but made him work. At patience, at communication, at being honest, at showing up. He has never been a dutiful, studious fledgling, even in times of learning from him. A pain in the ass to teach. Impossible to steal the last word from. Armand, paying the price of saving him, fifty years and counting.
He yields here. Leaning back to let Armand sink against him. Tipping his chin and letting him kiss him the way he wants, the way that feels good for him. Holding him and sliding his hands around his back, over the ribcage that houses that too-intense heart, up his spine, touching silken black hair, cradling him with a touch that's welcoming and capturing at once.
It doesn't matter anymore, why Armand made him. They've made the rest on purpose.
Absurd that he is extremely contented by the idea of spending a long time making out like teenagers. Old men both, for all the ways he does not consider Daniel to truly be that. A fascinating mix of human maturity and vampiric youth, and a mind as sharp as any mortal, no sign of dulling.
Armand relaxes bodily beneath these long strokes of Daniel's hands, as if he has craved that as much as the kiss burning between them. Feels, too, Daniel yield, and the kiss deepens, still slow, still testing things between them. Feels his own blood warming by the time fingers are in his hair, and the hand he has braced at Daniel's side curls into a fist, gathering fabric there.
As soon as he feels content with what he has, comes the desire for more.
This manifests as a wandered kiss, landing at the corner of Daniel's mouth, cheek, ear, then tucking down to the scarred side of his neck. To the way the hem of Daniel's shirt is pulled upwards by an inch, a few inches.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He hadn't had Louis' gift for finding young talent, but he can appreciate the work of the established, and so this doesn't truly feel like some form of reaching back for something. If he doesn't sleep the whole day away with Daniel, he will go upstairs and take charcoal into hand, and refuse to wonder what Louis might think of whatever he does next.
Soon, hopefully, the past won't be an act of negation. It simply won't matter. For now—
He turns a page as Daniel speaks, looking up and keeping the corner of glossy artbook page pinched between his fingers. His wardrobe has adapted too, a soft T-shirt and sweatpants, albeit both items criminally expensive.
"I like your commentary," he says. "Is that the same thing?"
no subject
What's the rush, now? He hasn't figured out what this is, and there's no one to ask. No two beings in existence have been in anything even like this situation. Dead or undead. So he proceeds with no expectations, and prunes away unhelpful mental wanderings with better efficiency than he applies when selecting meals. Experiencing it one night at a time, and unpacking things when he's alone. Armand is interesting, and dangerous, and beautiful, and smart, and Daniel is comfortable with him (somehow). Armand wants men like Lestat, and Louis, and a fucked up ancient Roman painter that Daniel hopes has gone into the earth to never return; Daniel sees women sometimes, once then never again. Reconnecting with his body is his business and not something any other vampire he knows can or will understand. He handles it away from them, and shuts it off at home.
"It's something," he says, wry humor. "I'll keep trying." A habit by now, to chuck DVDs at Armand. Another holdover from recovery, during which Daniel didn't know what to do, just put random shit on during the day when he was passed out so that the house wouldn't be silent. Like Armand might slip away into some severed vampire coma he couldn't be woken from, and then Daniel would have to contend with why he didn't want that to happen.
Clothes go where they go, a few books next. Daniel is wearing an oversized long-sleeved shirt, soft pants. Shorts when he's alone, more coverage when Armand lingers. Barriers out of— respect, privacy, something? Daniel is a substitute, he's pretty sure. Though for what, who fucking knows. Maybe Armand is still crafting the role, like a sculpture perpetually still in the blobby clay stage.
"What— oh." A slipper robbed from the foyer, wedged halfway under his dresser. Peanut crimes. Daniel yanks it free and goes to chuck it upstairs to be collected later (or just stolen again by the lurking beast). "Are you staying down here?"
Armand is free to; Daniel would say so if not. Has before.
no subject
early discomforts. Not gone forever, perhaps, but not present now. Some sense of him assured that Daniel does not consider him dull, a complete freak of nature, an alien being in need of acclimation. At least, not so much that he finds it insulting, not so much that they can't exist in each others spaces.
In Daniel's space, initially, now also his. And Peanut's, who Daniel has walked in to find in Armand's arms, chin buried in soft fur as if to absorb the rumbled purring, at least once or twice.
"Yes," he says. He has turned another page but has taken to watching Daniel when he is certain the other vampire won't notice.
With a soft impact, he closes the book. "I took the liberty of downloading more of Bakshi's films, if you'd like to see them too." He had done so a little while ago, actually, but it seems pertinent to offer in light of I'll keep trying.
no subject
It's fucked up in here. It always will be. Daniel hums confirmation to that 'Yes', does some beep-beeping on the security system panel near the door to the stairs (Armand will know how to use it, if he gets sick of being asleep during the day and wants to bail), and then—
"I'd like that." Still pleased with the success of that suggestion. Somewhere in the dark depths of his storage unit is an American Pop laserdisc, but fuck only knows where the laserdisc player is (not that he couldn't get a new one) (of any of these items) (wealth does not break all habits). Digital is the solution. "Thinking about a specific one?"
He'll listen to the answer while he brushes his teeth in the en suite, out of sight but easily connected. Still no satisfactory answers from anyone about dental work, by the way. What a world, what a world. For a moment, when he meets his own gaze in the mirror, he thinks again: It's fucked up in here.
Yeah, well, he tells himself. Kinda interesting, despite that.
no subject
The Mehretu is set down, placed on one of the side tables, and Armand drags himself a little ways off the headboard, coming to sit in a loose-cross legged posture nearer the middle. He either does not brush his teeth or does not allow Daniel to witness it, or perhaps just does so infrequently—after his occasional meals, one imagines.
"Unless you have a preferred title."
But probably at least somewhat an element of privacy, where Daniel allows himself to do domestic things in Armand's presence, laundry and tidying and grooming, Armand holds himself in more reserve. Still enjoying finding a space for himself in the routine of existence. Considers the bed, considers the coffin, considers the sound of water in the drain pipes as he loops his arms around his knees.
Anyway, he has found he likes cartoons of a certain brand and mood. Adult, complex, satirical, dark. The eternal impulse towards comparison, and equally resisting it: Louis "The Plays Were Weird" du Lac would have no patience for them. They did not even have a television in Dubai.
no subject
Not actually narrowing it down all the way, with Bakshi, but his amused point remains— "Yeah, that works."
Armand is a strange thing. The least human thing on the planet, possibly. But he thinks cartoons are neat, and sits on Daniel's bed, and sometimes cuddles with the weird cat he picked up from a local rescue. It's fucked up in here. Tooth brush goes back in its cup. Daniel touches the bridge of his nose, though his glasses aren't there. Auto-pilot. Painfully ordinary and a thousand, million miles from fascinating.
He switches most of the lights off on his way back to the bed, and sits beside Armand on it. The elder vampire can decide for himself if he wants to rev up the film now, and further, can decide if he wants to prop up his tablet, or screenshare to the tv that takes up significant real estate on the wall facing them. Surrounded by shelves, it looms, slightly reflective, sporting an undignified sticky note affixed to one corner, displaying the wifi passwords.
He makes himself comfortable, meanwhile. On days when Armand opts to stay with him, the coffin goes empty. Just not practical.
no subject
Once the movie begins to play, he shifts backwards to settle as well. A nearness that has become familiar, but far from ordinary. He shifts his knee and there, a little point of contact, and on the screen, a cartoon construction working hippopotamus pisses off the side of a building, and the stream of bright yellow consolidates into the title screen. Good and wonderful.
He does have a habit of watching things with giant eyes and very little outward reaction, at least for the most part—but here and there, a smile, a breath of amusement, which may be even more satisfying to witness when it's evoked by something particularly stupid or vulgar, of which this movie has plenty to offer.
Leans in. All vampires have at least a little bit of weird cat energy, and this inching into the edges of affection is how Armand's manifests in the moment.
no subject
He wonders of Armand's luring songs into darkness would take to a place like that, or if he would sit in the vaguely sticky theater seats and stare unblinking at the screen for the entire duration of each absurd reel, smiling now and again at the least glamorous moments, ignoring the rest of the world. He wonders if they ever missed each other in passing at some grindhouse showing mondo films and old Disney filler cartoons.
Posture he's become near expert at by now: shifting to allow an openness that Armand might curl into, when he decides to. Daniel lets him pick the pace of it. Sometimes during this stage he thinks frankly deranged fucking thoughts, like workshopping different answers to a question posed to him in 1973. Do you think I'm boring?, and Daniel had said No, but was there something better? Something truer, if worse? How could you be boring, you're the scariest fucking thing I've ever seen, and the other monster keeps complaining about his ex and wouldn't even fuck me.
The problem with all of this is that Daniel looks forward to it. He just has to pretend not to, because thinking about it too often is going to drive him insane, and there's too much else in his life that could also easily drive him insane.
no subject
His inability to know and his ability to imagine the worst doesn't stop him. It doesn't take very long, slotting himself in against Daniel's side, head against his shoulder, a hand resting on his torso. This comfort being offered him, warmth and presence, strange enough and unfamiliar enough in its manifestation that he could once again feel a little like he is playacting as someone else.
Maybe Armand will speak of it one day, those strange dislocations inside himself, but he is loathe to become a burden. Which might be funny if he said it out loud, given everything.
Does Daniel find comfort in it as well? Armand does not believe the other man would permit anything he hated, or even found mildly objectionable, but what is the shape of it? Sometimes (and he thinks of it now as he watches the parade of animals fucking each other papering over muddled political commentary, truly an artefact of its time) he remembers the taste of Daniel's blood, the clarity of it. His mind gift still active, yes, but all those thoughts felt like they carried through the rich crimson essence of him.
He was terrifying, he was fascinating, and he still is. Was, in that moment. Is? What is he now? Does he want to be terrifying? Is he still fascinating? When will he become boring?
Daniel's hand is laying there above his own. Armand does not think before he slides his own underneath it, toys until their fingers tangle.
no subject
The movie is bizarre, as expected. Comically pornographic in a way that would never pass as earnestly erotic except to very particular furries, and not especially adept at its politics. A brave and bold effort regardless, though Daniel isn't paying attention to it. Too difficult to pay attention to anything but Armand. Sometimes he manages it, but not today, and he doesn't bother trying. Uninterested in anything but tracing over long fingers with his own, drawing nonsense patterns with light, careful touches of nails, resting now and then against the delicate skin of his pulse point to feel his heart and the blood that moves through him.
Blood that made him. Blood he barely remembers, outside the big picture overwhelming moment, feelings of agony and euphoria, higher than high.
He has never asked. His transformation wasn't about intimacy, and the closest thing to a conversation they've had about it was back in those infant days of Fake Rashid, and Armand's seething hostile reaction to Louis' mocking offer to let Daniel have a taste. Between that and Armand's professed repulsion about the creation of vampires, no signals are mixed. Only a total fucking moron would ask.
Regardless, it is parts comforting and sensual to feel his pulse. Armand feels good against him. He smells good. Daniel ignores the cartoon, Bakshi's lurid scenes, and draws more nonsense on his the back of his wrist.
no subject
And they have argued, sometimes fiercely, and Daniel has seen the worst of him, has deliberately scattered his house of cards while maintaining eye contact. They have gone for long absences and abrupt reunions. They have exchanged human corpses and still living prey. Armand has made him into a vampire.
All of this into account and he still wonders if sex would ruin something. Sex can be ruinous. It can also be nothing, which is a different kind of ruinous.
His eyes flick to where their hands overlap, where Daniel is drawing invisible lines down his fingers, diamond-hard nails, tendon and bone. Is this the holding pattern he has consigned himself to? He has also, a little, lost track of the movie—perhaps it's that degree more juvenile than his sensibilities would prefer, although if they were to stop now, he would watch it later for completion's sake, as an interesting and bold thing in a body of work.
He thinks about how Daniel spent a lot of Dubai with his sleeves rolled up.
Long-sleeves here. But, all the same, he turns his hand so that he might hook that wandering finger in his own, and then draws it in until he can brush his lips against that pulse point.
no subject
Why?
The movie no longer exists. He thinks of ruining Armand's life, barking every slave name at him just to be cruel and to draw blood over vengeance for a week of torture and a following lifetime of strange dreams. He thinks of looking at each other in Dubai; in silence, during the day, in sound, at night when Louis was there, talking about things Daniel should have been listening to. Dark, deep pools staring out at him from Armand's face, inviting him to drown.
How fast it happened. Out of spite, Louis said. But sometimes Daniel thinks of those eyes, and drowning, and he wonders if Armand decided far earlier. If he realized he'd decided. If sitting there and continuing the interview was as good as wading into the dark water.
Alright. Maybe he knows why.
Daniel flexes his fingers, splays them, allows Armand to hold him captive. A permissive and curious pause, with all of his attention wrapped up in it while an irrelevant cartoon plays and splashes changing colors over them.
no subject
But worse, he remembers it all with perfect clarity, what he was thinking, how he was feeling. Far different from memories of half a millennia ago. Remembers sweat-greasy curls, the scent of tears and blood, the warm weight of him when he was finally pushed enough to stop fighting.
New memories, now. Associations. Tangled hands. Sleeping on the same mattress, waking to watch the long breaths in and out. A clinging embrace that Daniel had not been cognizant to as his blood was stolen.
Thinks of that now as Armand focuses on the infinitely fine feeling of a pulse beneath his mouth. No bloodlust behind the way it intrigues him, pressing a more deliberate kiss there, hand sliding to push Daniel's sleeve out of the way, thumb following the line of muscle from wrist to midway up towards the elbow.
A rare temptation, to bite. To taste what he can't excavate for himself. Maybe in time. Instead, a following kiss to the meat of Daniel's palm. Eventually, he will have to look up and observe his fledgling's face.
no subject
Maybe. Maybe blowing a vampire would have permanently rewired something in him. Fucked him up in a different way. Less mortal peril, more psychosexual torment. Though he thinks there's already plenty of the latter between them. He wonders if it's as confusing for Armand as it is for him.
Daniel continues to allow the searching touch, and he continues to enjoy it. Armand kisses his palm, and Daniel slides fingertips over Armand's cheek.
Is this real?
no subject
Grainy voices from the movie in the air, no thoughts at all that Armand can access. It has been an inconceivably long time since he has been with any paramour or momentary fling that he could not simply read exactly what it is they wanted and expected from him. And before that doesn't bear thinking about it. Certainly not now.
So call it a uniquely new experience instead. Because it is.
Armand shifts to align himself closer against Daniel so that he doesn't have to twist when he lifts his head and looks at him. The lighting is dim and strange, but they are vampires, and his eyes are a specific kind of dark amber, a tone of the earth rather than leaping flames. Wood and clay. He places a hand on Daniel's chest, bracing, zigzags a look over his face.
Daniel is a better read of people, in contrast. All signs point to the desire to bridge that gap between them.
no subject
Armand wants to kiss him. Daniel wants it, too. He's an infuriating monster, unrecognizable as human, sometimes he's too fucking stupid to find his way out of a paper bag, and he is ruinous in his attempts to right himself. And yet he's interesting, and creative, and good in an argument, and he likes dismal poets and screwed up cartoons. They're the only two people that exist. More and more, that thought does not feel isolating.
The arm he's had around Armand stays though the adjustment in posture, and Daniel curls his fingers against Armand's back, then splays them again. A tender hold that nearly surprises him, despite what he's been doing this whole time.
"Please answer me out loud," is quiet, but steady. "May I kiss you?"
They don't have to guess. They can learn to read each other, and they can ask. He wants Armand's permission. He wants to hear it.
no subject
But it stays. Under Daniel's arm, ribs and shoulders lift along with a deeper breath in and out.
"Yes," he says, fingers curling in the fabric of Daniel's shirt. Armand shifts, enough to meet him a little more than half way, but inviting Daniel to close the last few necessarily fractions.
no subject
Okay.
Armand is so close to him now. Daniel tells himself that this isn't going to be the thing that wrecks it between them, it's fucking laughable to think anything could wreck it between them when torture hasn't. If it falls flat, they've overcome worse things. They've destroyed each other already and seen where the pieces fit back together. They can make it no matter what and that is...
Just phenomenal. How are you possible? he wonders, and then nudges forward that last little bit, and presses his mouth to his maker's.
no subject
And more. Armand, closing his eyes, pushing that little bit forwards to insist himself on that kiss. Gentle fingers setting at the edge of Daniel's jaw. (There'd been next to no thought on his part about the subjects of sexuality and gender, those trivial human anxieties that Daniel nevertheless has been caught in before. The young man who had offered to suck his cock fifty years ago did not do so out of desire, he knows.
But all the same.) It's a shallow kiss, sweet that way, but there, a press of intimacy, where they might open for each other. When Armand withdraws, its by a scant distance alone. Lifts his head a little more so they can look at each other without crossing their eyes.
"Would you want me this way?" has notes of Am I boring?, purely in the way it leaves him open for the potential to be hurt. Less clawing desperation, at least.
no subject
Daniel looks at him. Little flecks of awe like the first time he saw him floating in the reading room, spirals of warm affection, warm blood-gold-blue reflecting in each other. Armand has grown so familiar, as a person and a monster. There's no room between them for insecurities, no place for You're beautiful enough to have anyone, no excuse for Daniel to shudder back under the shame of his physical age. These things have been peeled away. Armand is fucking crazy. Daniel isn't squeamish.
Still. A bit of surprise. Half at the vulnerability, half at it being kind of a stupid question. Mixed. A soup of surprise.
"I've thought about it," he says. "Often enough that I've had to make myself stop thinking about it. Because I didn't want to derail anything by being an asshole."
He touches Armand's face, which is perfect, and still occasionally nightmare inducing. They've made peace and they've made friends, and every so often, Daniel still falls asleep and sees radiating orange eyes staring at him in the midst of his worst nightmares, then wakes up and those eyes are besides him, closed, dozing contentedly against his chest. He's gotten used to it.
"I want you in any way that you'll have me, too."
Do you think I'm boring? — No. One word. Not his best. Could have used workshopping. This also may need some, its careful, awkward honesty. Armand can't read his mind, and Daniel is terrible at connecting sincerely, and, and, and. They are still so close.
no subject
Well. He has expressed before that Armand is frightening.
Focus sharpens at that next thing. He does not mind it if honesty is awkward. It could be a problem, if he is trying to be careful, and fails at it. Honesty has a way of rattling out of him when it comes, as if he'd been holding on to too much of it and has no way of gracefully setting it down. Slipping between his fingers, overflowing. Rare, that. Rarer and rarer as the time moved along with Louis.
"I want you completely," he says. Daniel is his. Has he ever possessed something, truly? Presiding over the coven like a boy given the leash to a wild tiger. A dim memory of a painting being displayed, and although it was known that it was Amadeo who painted it, the praise was awarded to the one who had tutored him. Lestat, never his, never even pretended at it. Louis, who did not wish to feel like he was owned.
But Daniel is his. His fledgling. There is nothing under heaven that could change this fact. And it gives him no right to anything beyond the knowledge of its truth.
He would like more, if given it. It takes barely any movement to press their mouths together again, and then follows slipping a knee on the other side of Daniel as he does so.
no subject
(He knows it's the bond. He doesn't care that it's the bond. He cares about the bond. Crucial distinctions.)
"It's yours."
All of it, whatever he wants. Daniel, apparently, which despite all his brashness still makes some small part of him inside tremble with anxiety and anticipation. He is open, accepting, fucking eager for more contact, frankly, but the look in his eyes as Armand closes the small gap to kiss him again has traces of Me? You're picking me?
Him, to slide up against. Him to turn. Him to torture for a week. Armand, his maker, his everything else anymore. Daniel tips his head into the kiss and lets him move where he wants, arms around him welcoming and supportive— only slightly awkward with where to put things (things like hands). It's been decades since he's messed around with another man in earnest. Buried behind him as too complicated to bother with. He could, there's been opportunity, he just hasn't.
no subject
To settle like this on top of Daniel has he has imagined doing so before, straddling and pressed in tightly to kiss him. To feel Daniel's arms around him and for his hands to find places to settle. Me? says that flicker in Daniel's eyes and Armand can dedicate all parts of himself to answering Yes, you.
A hand, travelling up the side of Daniel's neck, over that old circle of bite marks from half a century ago. Slipping into his hair, feeling its texture between gentle fingers, running a line with his thumb down the curve of skull to neck. A different, roving touch to the last time the way he touched Daniel resembled this. No too-hard petting.
And kissing him, a way of doing so that tests what Daniel says, inviting him to yield.
A shriek of some kind from the television, and barely a flicker of Armand's eyelashes follow the television going black. No scent of anything fried, so he probably just hit an off switch. Probably. They're doused in silence, in dimness, Armand's knees gently squeezing in on either side of Daniel's thighs.
no subject
Armand, warm and pressing down on him. It sends something profound up his spine, more than a jolt, different from the kind of arousal he feels with the humans he still hooks up with sometimes; he's never held another vampire this way. The feeling is different. He hadn't noticed— how could he? Why would he?
Kissing him is unexpected richness. Light with care and reverence, dark with eons-old promises of The only two on Earth, and that silver, shivery, bond. Daniel has never truly yielded to Armand— never fought him for dominance, but made him work. At patience, at communication, at being honest, at showing up. He has never been a dutiful, studious fledgling, even in times of learning from him. A pain in the ass to teach. Impossible to steal the last word from. Armand, paying the price of saving him, fifty years and counting.
He yields here. Leaning back to let Armand sink against him. Tipping his chin and letting him kiss him the way he wants, the way that feels good for him. Holding him and sliding his hands around his back, over the ribcage that houses that too-intense heart, up his spine, touching silken black hair, cradling him with a touch that's welcoming and capturing at once.
It doesn't matter anymore, why Armand made him. They've made the rest on purpose.
no subject
Armand relaxes bodily beneath these long strokes of Daniel's hands, as if he has craved that as much as the kiss burning between them. Feels, too, Daniel yield, and the kiss deepens, still slow, still testing things between them. Feels his own blood warming by the time fingers are in his hair, and the hand he has braced at Daniel's side curls into a fist, gathering fabric there.
As soon as he feels content with what he has, comes the desire for more.
This manifests as a wandered kiss, landing at the corner of Daniel's mouth, cheek, ear, then tucking down to the scarred side of his neck. To the way the hem of Daniel's shirt is pulled upwards by an inch, a few inches.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...