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Post by Armand on Mar 22, 2009 18:46:46 GMT -5
"No, we don't," Armand said, a flash of white teeth showing when he smiled. "We last longer, but we're not forever either." Head tilted a little as he watched Nicolas, curls tumbling down, he did look very sweet, and probably not unlike their theatre day. The coven-master and the playwright very near, and Armand wondered if the surreality of the situation would occur to Nicolas.
"I don't know. I'm sorry, but I don't. I don't know how to stop madness, or how to cure it."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 23, 2009 7:06:38 GMT -5
Nicolas looked away from Armand again, eyes falling on the windowsill in the distance and then shutting again. The room was warmer for the fire in the grate. He wanted to try and savor that. "Madness, is that all?"
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Post by Armand on Mar 23, 2009 8:15:03 GMT -5
"What else do you mean?"
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 23, 2009 8:31:33 GMT -5
He looked back at him again. How deceptive that posture was. His fingers tightened on the arms of the chair he sat in and he heard the wood creak before he let go.
"Was that all it was?" he asked, as though Armand knew. And why shouldn't he? "Simple madness?"
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Post by Armand on Mar 23, 2009 8:44:49 GMT -5
"No," Armand said, tilting his head again at Nicolas as though he was surprised Nicolas had to ask, or as thugh he wasn't sure exactly what Nicolas was trying to find out. "Of course it's not that simple. But it's much easier to say that than to expound upon the many factors."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 23, 2009 9:45:02 GMT -5
Nicolas leaned forward as though quite fatigued in this body and stood, coming to sit swiftly beside Armand as though they were school friends and this was not a conversation they could have from halfway across the room.
"Easier," he repeated, as though doubtful or even scornful, but voice too soft to have a tone.
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Post by Armand on Mar 23, 2009 16:16:19 GMT -5
"Yes," said Armand, just as softly, who really didn't care what Nicolas thought of his choice of words, but who was minorly annoyed that he'd end up spelling it out regardless. "Easier than loneliness, disillusionment, pettiness, bitterness, mania, darkness, obsession, desperation, love, and hate."
Now he only had to wait until Nicolas had a problem with one of his chosen adjectives and questioned him further on it. Language was so burdeningly sparse sometimes. It would be easier to convey things were he in Nicolas' head, through pictures and the decreased need to refine speaking to an exact point, but Armand didn't dare.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 23, 2009 16:27:39 GMT -5
Predictably - as in, exactly as predicted - Nicolas found the words themselves worth speaking further of, and met Armand's eyes with surprise, though also with the desire to understand. That, out of such an arbitrary-seeming list, Armand would find madness easiest to speak of, seemed strange to him.
"Do you think so?" he said, finding comfort in the fact that Armand had listed all of these things out loud, as each word seemed to be drawn outside of himself and the chaos of his own feelings towards Armand, and, once outside of him, to become cement, easy to speak of, easy to notice, and therefore easy to isolate. It was calming, soothing. He thoughtlessly rested his head on Armand's shoulder, enormously trusting, considering how easily Armand could have torn his willpower to pieces, and had in the past. "I suppose, detachedly... do I look more mad than anything else? Certainly you did not mean yourself. Those words were applied to me, weren't they? ... It would have been easier for me to speak of the love, of the hate, than of the madness. I would not have thought of the madness. I don't think of myself as mad."
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Post by Armand on Mar 23, 2009 16:56:54 GMT -5
Armand's eyes flickered down at Nicolas' head on his shoulder, but he allowed it for the moment. How strange that Nicolas would do something like that in the first place.
"Those things are the precursors to madness. What did you think caused it if not those?"
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 24, 2009 13:46:25 GMT -5
He lifted his eyes to Armand's, head still on his shoulder. What an angle to look at him by, with the hair falling over his forehead, his cheek, his temple. It was terribly comforting, and in recognizing that it seemed to him as though he had just noticed a gaping hole in their encounters together, and the urge to dive in - to complete it, to fill it - was so tempting that he could almost feel the draw. How falsely simple it seemed, to be close to Armand now, to simply lean forward, to tilt his head just slightly, his lips touching his throat...
He didn't do it.
His eyes flickered towards the fire again, though he did not move. He would not break the momentarily false closeness, either, any more by pulling back than by leaning in. "I have never thought on the causes of madness. I have told you I do not view myself as one mad. You're right, of course, that it is these things that cause madness. I... " A thought occurred to him, a lazy and potentially cruel one. He even recognized that beforehand, as though speaking of insanity made him sane, and he noticed it. So it's come to that already, he wondered; we're together again, and we will already be cruel? Well. It was cruel only because it hurt him as well, because of his own... chaotic feelings towards this cold and immovable vampire boy.
"I suppose that's why you've never been mad?"
So indifferent-seeming, so worldly, even, and beneath it, the knife's edge.
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Post by Armand on Mar 24, 2009 16:11:09 GMT -5
Armand was not in a mood to care what cruel things Nicolas would say. He recognized the knife edge, and it only made him smile.
"That's right." Mild, disdainful amusement. If Nicolas was going to ask stupid questions, then he could expect stupid answers.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 24, 2009 16:24:43 GMT -5
Nicolas glanced up at him as though surprised. If Armand was not affected by those words, because they were perfectly correct, then Nicolas could not understand why Armand tolerated this from Nicolas. Nicolas was resting against him as they spoke, his head on his shoulder as they sat like children on the floor. It was plainly obvious what Nicolas felt; hadn't it always been? And Armand was unmoved, unembittered?
"You don't mind?" he asked softly, referring to Nicolas' own love, his own hate.
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Post by Armand on Mar 24, 2009 16:40:03 GMT -5
Armand shifted a little, hands unfolding from his lap to prop him up from behind, not an unsettling or jarring movement. "You'll have to elaborate, Nicolas."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 24, 2009 16:52:20 GMT -5
"Being loved," came the elaboration, Nicolas sitting up and looking back at him almost as though getting up from sleep, reaching his hand up to push his fingers through his hair, which had been hanging over Armand's shoulder a moment before. Normally to say that would have been to open up to him immensely, and so that he did not notice it then showed just how open he had absent-mindedly allowed himself to become in this lovely, intimate moment, in the firelight.
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Post by Armand on Mar 24, 2009 17:01:57 GMT -5
"Do I mind being loved?" It was a very open question for Nicolas to ask...and for Armand to answer. "Don't you mean, do I mind being loved by you?"
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