the one with lestat and armand;
Jul. 28th, 2023 12:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
armandi[He's owed this.
By anyone's rationale, but especially by a vampire's, oh, Lestat surely owes him for this. Dumping his miserable paramour onto Armand, forcing him to either babysit or imprison him for the sake of the coven . . . and give Armand credit, for he has done his best. He is no caregiver, but he has tried, for it isn't as if he dislikes Nicki. He cannot say he is his biggest fan, no, but there is something wretchedly dark about him that appeals— and god knows Armand can sympathize with a newly turned vampire who loathes his maker.
But it is no mercy, imprisoning him instead of allowing him death. And still Armand does it.
He knows why. He knows very well why, and resents it as much as he cherishes it, his dead heart twisting miserably.
So: a bar.
So: the scent of humans all around, the thrumming notions of sex and hunger all around them.
So: Lestat across from him, and never mind the flare of anger that spikes across Armand's mind as he hears that inevitable question. How is he, and though he wants nothing more than to seethe, Armand lifts a single shoulder.]
As well as can be expected.
[A nothing answer.]
He has stopped performing. He has stopped answering any of us, except to alternate between grief and anger, and focuses only on his playing.
[And I took his hands, he does not think. I locked him away and stole his violin from him, and it was a cruel as it was kind.]
Did you expect differently?
By anyone's rationale, but especially by a vampire's, oh, Lestat surely owes him for this. Dumping his miserable paramour onto Armand, forcing him to either babysit or imprison him for the sake of the coven . . . and give Armand credit, for he has done his best. He is no caregiver, but he has tried, for it isn't as if he dislikes Nicki. He cannot say he is his biggest fan, no, but there is something wretchedly dark about him that appeals— and god knows Armand can sympathize with a newly turned vampire who loathes his maker.
But it is no mercy, imprisoning him instead of allowing him death. And still Armand does it.
He knows why. He knows very well why, and resents it as much as he cherishes it, his dead heart twisting miserably.
So: a bar.
So: the scent of humans all around, the thrumming notions of sex and hunger all around them.
So: Lestat across from him, and never mind the flare of anger that spikes across Armand's mind as he hears that inevitable question. How is he, and though he wants nothing more than to seethe, Armand lifts a single shoulder.]
As well as can be expected.
[A nothing answer.]
He has stopped performing. He has stopped answering any of us, except to alternate between grief and anger, and focuses only on his playing.
[And I took his hands, he does not think. I locked him away and stole his violin from him, and it was a cruel as it was kind.]
Did you expect differently?
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Date: 2023-08-05 04:39 am (UTC)oh, how lestat wants to wring that beautiful, slender neck of his. is it not armand who turned his world upside down those months ago, him and his ragged cult of vagabonds and desperate devil worshippers? perhaps he could have lied to himself a little longer - gazing upon his once stunning nicolas from the streets of paris, illuminated by the light of their little apartment so full of mortal hope. there he'd be, haunting his (their) windowsill like a specter - tonight i will tell him. i will see him, i will convince him this ache of losing me is better than this cursed existence. i will beg him to take the money i give him and live the life of a king as he deserves. he could keep lying to himself after the nicki he could no longer bear to gaze upon had been turned - a black, hellish pit of despair and darkness, believing he would eventually embrace the dark gift and live radiantly among sweet eleni and felix and eugenie and laurent.
if magnus took his very morality and hollowed him out, then armand had found the last sliver of his soul and plucked it with those long, delicate fingers with painful precision. armand possessed a piece of him that was more than just the stolen sip of blood - it was the love and the passion lestat burned with beneath his hatred; dreaming in equal measures of nicki flushed and full of vitality and armand with his cherubic face beckoning to him, unfairly exquisite despite the dirt and the rags of decades underground in the catacombs.
and now he stands here, looking as placid and unmoved as he had in the very same crypt, closed off to him with nearly a century of experience and practiced ease in his exceptional skill. there is a part of him that knows he should thank armand for taking on the duty - for relieving him of his grief and disgust that cannot stand to even be in the same room as his beloved, mindless nicolas any longer. is it love that prompts him to do it? does he see something in nicki that had been lost to him forever once he had been solidified as his former lover's maker? or is it just another game, another conduit to embracing this modern decade now that he's free from the shackles of subservience to the devil?
no, there is nothing subservient about him now. beautiful armand with his carnelian skin and amber eyes, exuding a cool distance even as he shrugs his dainty shoulder and gives him a noncommittal answer. how he wishes to tug his fingers through raven black hair, soft coiled curls and shower him with kisses he does not deserve. maybe the lie can continue if he tells himself he'd sooner rend every mortal in this bar still so he might launch himself across the table and wrap large palms around his windpipe and squeeze, thighs squeezing around lithe hips where he might lean down and viciously nip at plush lips. i hate you, i want you, i need you, i will not have you.
the loss of gabrielle is still a raw wound, open and oozing out the last bits of disappointment that he is yet again alone and all is silent except the petty musings of mortals he could have wrapped around a preternatural finger. but there is no depth there, no one worthy of companionship. he had denied armand before - and he will again, but there is something heady about his presence tonight that makes lestat feel as if he is on the precipice of reconsidering. no. you will devour each other to the bone.]
You did it to him. My Nicolas - mind shattered, drawn into your cacophony of misery. My beautiful Nicolas, his free spirit never to soar again!
[there is an emphasis to his words, an insistence that almost seems as if he is trying to convince himself. a plume of smoke is exhaled from the cigarette, grasped between thumb and pointer finger, and he dips back down to hollow his cheeks and suck around it again for that burn down his throat that almost reminds him of nights after renaud's, sustaining himself on sips of wine and tobacco and dreams. pointedly he ignores the last question. pointedly he pretends the reality that nicki should never have been made, should never have been allowed to draw out the despondency of his existence - should have had pity taken upon him to relinquish him of such gloom.]
But you are not here for that.
[lestat offers a knowing, wry twist of a smirk, the fullness of his lower lip curving up into the small scar at the corner of his mouth. there is no mirth in it, no twinkle in his eyes.]
Non, you are here for something else. And why don't you tell me what it is, mm? Save me your tricks, your games and illusions and putain d'esprit.
[he leans in across the table, one shoulder angling in as his voice drops low, sultry and dangerous. god, he looks ethereal in this shithole. is lestat no better than these humans with that thrum of sex and hunger and need? no. there is nothing he wants less. he wants a care gabrielle has never given him, he wants a lightness in nicki that never even existed to extinguish.]
Have you come for me again? You still wish to have me, Armand - I know this.
All across Paris the city is marked with your desire, the whispers of your want. Even more than that - the ire because you cannot have it! The scattered corpses of your former compatriots, the insanity you bring to the stage every night.
Tell me. Say it to me, petit misérable.