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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 24, 2009 15:54:32 GMT -5
Nicolas' head tilted just slightly, as though he were wary or startled at the feel of Armand's breath on his throat - as though this situation were a great deal more intimate than having Armand act as his barber. Then again, why should cutting hair not be intimate? It was a completely different act amongst vampires than it was amongst mortals.
He spoke so softly that a mortal would not have heard him, lips hardly moving. "Be gentle. It's my first time."
And that spoke volumes, didn't it.
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Post by Armand on Mar 24, 2009 16:03:20 GMT -5
Be gentle. Armand's lips spread in a smile. "Be calm."
And he cut where Nicolas' hair was tied back, so that the thick curly tail was caught up in one hand while the freed strands fell softly around Nicolas' face, curling and newly shorn.
Then time for the little silver scissors. Armand cut quickly and efficiently.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 24, 2009 16:17:09 GMT -5
Armand's efficiency, his own calm, were almost numbing. Any unwanted parallels Nicolas' feverish imagination could cook up to events from his past turned into smoke at his words, at the brush of his cold fingers; and, like smoke, they could be easily blown away, if Armand would only purse his lips and blow.
The lack of weight on his back was almost frightening. The sight of his own hair on his white shirt almost obsessed him. He immediately wanted to burn the shirt, and wanted, suddenly, for Armand to speak to him. He himself could think of nothing to say, but the silence was eerie.
((Guide to how Nicolas' hair would look cut:
Jaw-length - Still boyish but accentuating the jaw, so not as boyish as... Hair brushing the cheekbones anywhere - Probably the youngest look. Hair brushing the eyebrows - Kind of like jaw-length. Sort of like a student. He was 20 when he died, after all. Very short - could probably pass for older. He'd look very strange that way and the curliness adds to the boyishness of it. His hair is long and very heavy as it is, so anything above the jaw is going to have bigger curls and also probably look a bit lighter because the weight won't be pulling them down.))
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Post by Armand on Mar 24, 2009 16:23:27 GMT -5
"How short do you want it, Nicolas?" Armand's voice broke the silence, exactly as if he could read the tension in Nicolas' shoulders, or more likely his thoughts. His fingers, the scissors, they had paused in Nicolas' hair, and the proximity made it as intimate as the way the boyish vampire spoke his name, detached and secret at the same time.
(( Mm-hmm. I figure he should go for either really short or closer to chin length, because in-between and he'd be all poofy. If it's left up to Armand, he'll leave it chin-length. He's being "gentle," after all. Wouldn't want too dramatic of a change. ))
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 24, 2009 16:48:40 GMT -5
Nicolas would not have shrugged in this position, nor have tilted his head back to look at Armand. Nonetheless, he could not answer that question, and almost cautiously parted and moistened his lips before speaking.
"I want it cut."
The softness of his voice took away the potential sharpness of it. He did not know what sort of hairstyles anyone wore; he merely wanted whatever Armand did. He did not know how Armand could bare to cut his own hair, how he could stand to see it altered so pointlessly.
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Post by Armand on Mar 24, 2009 16:59:29 GMT -5
"It is cut." Armand had withdrawn completely now, as he looked down to tighten the tie holding together the longest of Nicolas' shorn hair, so that the strands would not separate and create a mess. "But do you want it cut more? Feel it and tell me."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 24, 2009 17:07:21 GMT -5
Nicolas paused before doing as Armand had told him. It would be readily apparent to Armand that his hand was trembling as he touched it. It was... He ran his fingers through it and it ended that much earlier. He was moments from being overwhelmed by panic, as he had been the previous night, and swallowed. When he turned his head to look up at Armand, he felt how light it was, no pressure at all on the base of his neck.
Why was this so peculiar? How many times had he helped Eleni cut hers when short hair had been the fashion for young women, swept it up, blown strands off her bare skin? Too many to count. So what was strange about it for himself?
And Armand, with his hair like that... "This is normal, isn't it?" he said softly, panic subsiding, although the detachment had not yet filled the void. He expected it would, but nothing was there yet. He wanted to take Armand's hand, but he couldn't bear to look at what was left of his hair, full as it was. He paused again. "Do you care?"
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Post by Armand on Mar 24, 2009 17:12:07 GMT -5
"It is," Armand said, head tilting up a little automatically so he would meet Nicolas' gaze. "Of course I care, Nicolas. I'm glad that you would try it." This trembling fright was all too apparent, and Armand was prepared for another panic attack like the one Nicolas had had the other night in the middle of the crowd, but none came. He discretely placed the scissors and the hair on the table beside and a little behind him, out of sight.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 24, 2009 17:20:22 GMT -5
"I should have done this before," he said, eyes still on Armand, almost as though asking, although it was more as though this had only just become obvious. It was painful to do it, to change, even though he had known it was simple and painless for their kind from the start. "It's only... it's only going to make me mad not to." He licked his lips, momentarily feeling, as though a sudden drop from a high altitude, the flicker of fear like a snake's tongue against his skin. That blackness. Madness, he knew that. He was clinging to what that hair represented, terrified of standing with two feet in this century, afraid to come away into it. That was it, wasn't it? Would Armand know? He had told him he was in danger of going beneath the earth. "Isn't it?"
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Post by Armand on Mar 25, 2009 7:28:33 GMT -5
"No need to worry about madness on this account, then, if that's what you think. It's already done." Armand wondered, idly, whether in life Nicolas had been prone to these fits- but no, as Nicolas had told him, that had been Lestat. It made him think of a mortal hyperventilating, the way Nicolas slowly slipped into it, gasping, but unfortunately in this case a paper bag was not enough.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 25, 2009 10:21:25 GMT -5
"I mean," said Nicolas in a low voice, eyes on Armand's only for a while before beginning to lower, as, open though they were, he was not seeing him, but seeing something else, as though from a distance. "If I am upset by this, doesn't that mean I might be going mad?" Nicolas, vulnerable and panicked, was not careful with his own powers of projection, nor with guarding his mind. The strength of his disorientation would be plainly obvious to one such as Armand.
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Post by Armand on Mar 26, 2009 7:30:01 GMT -5
It was with Nicolas that he needed a focus. In life, and a little after death, it had been Lestat. Then for years Armand, then Eleni, and it was simply that now Armand must fill that role again. A focus, an anchor, something to cling to, and while Lestat may have never noticed it, Eleni might have, and Armand cetainly did- it was in his actions so often, subtle but there, the way he shifted like he did now to draw Nicolas' eyes to him, the ocassional touch, his omnipresent calm. Armand was capable of filling any role when he was needed, and in this one he'd had practice.
"Any blooddrinker is likely to be so affected by the change," Armand said quietly, lashes lowered but eyes quite firmly fixed on the other. "Surely even mortals could hear Gabrielle's screaming when hers grew back." There was a little risk in mentioning Gabrielle, but it was such a familiar risk that Armand hoped Nicolas would be calmed- or at least distracted- nevertheless.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 26, 2009 7:53:03 GMT -5
Nicolas' expression seemed very cold, but it was the coldness that came with something being brittle - it needed to be still because flex it and it would break. Nicolas looked almost to be judging Armand and finding him wanting, but why that was - if it was because Armand's explanation seemed ridiculous, a lie, or because he had mentioned Lestat's mother - could not be made certain.
Nonetheless, even as he looked away, and after a moment, stood and approached one of the fine transparent windows as though Armand were not in the room with him, he drew upon Armand heavily, as though he were leaning on him. Armand, who knew, who had adapted to so many centuries for him. Armand owed him, didn't he. All that instruction from Nicolas in his faithless times and now Nicolas needed instruction. Surely Armand could recognize a debt.
Peering into the black night as he did, he could rather clearly see his own reflection as though it were a mirror, and he almost drew back from it. How different it looked, and, the hair shorter but not short, how... taller. Hair that was normally dragged down rested much more easily. It seemed to him to look overwhelmingly young, and he could hardly recognize his face. He turned and sat down again, swiftly.
"No, shorter, please," he said, distantly; and then, immediately, the words came to him in their counterpart German, Eleni picking up a handmirror, peering into it, and setting it down and requesting that Nicolas and his careful scissor-holding fingers do the same, decisively.
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Post by Armand on Mar 26, 2009 7:59:32 GMT -5
Armand reached behind him for the scissors again without a word, cutting faster, for it was nearly a miracle how fast a vampire's fingers could fly. So in less than a minute it was shorter, much shorter, but Nicolas' face was still achingly open and young, his dark eyes so wide now, the neck so vulnerable, for the lack of a curtain around it.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 26, 2009 8:05:36 GMT -5
Nicolas contemplatively brushed a cut curl off of his cheek, feeling as though he were in the middle of the wreckage of a train, and picking himself out carefully. He stood more slowly this time, and approached the window. He hardly recognized his own face. He might have been any young man from this century, mightn't he have, and did indeed look like a young man. There was something about showing off his face like this that accentuated his youth; it appeared all over his features in ways it didn't when the long, sombre queue was hanging down his back. At the same time, however, the profusion of hair had always seemed quite boyish, and it completely lacked that boyish nature now. It looked as harsh and severe as anyone's, and reminded him of his father's, almost painfully adult. Except that Nicolas, of course, would not be expected to cover his with a wig.
He turned back to Armand, hand clasping the other arm in an almost closed posture, loose though it was. "The shirt's covered," he said. "May I change it?"
It was so peculiar to feel the lightness when he moved his head. How flippant every incline of it would seem now, how very much more cynical, how very much more worldly. He felt as though a ghost had kissed the back of his neck that was now exposed.
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