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.
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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.