|
Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 24, 2009 17:17:27 GMT -5
Nicolas leaned back only very slightly, almost as though he'd swayed, almost like a flinch. A mortal would not have seen it. "Who else loves you?" he asked, the heat, had there ever been any, was taken out by the sudden drop in volume of his voice, by the near-faintness of it. Armand looked like an illusion in the flickering firelight. He always had. Would he open his eyes now and find he'd fantasized all of this, made up the character and name and history of the cold-skinned boy in those catacombs, as he wiped Nicolas' blood from his Cupid's lips and looked at him quizzically, forever an enigma? "By me."
|
|
|
Post by Armand on Mar 24, 2009 17:34:29 GMT -5
The slightest twitch of Armand's mouth, like he'd smile again. ...Point. Why, he was in a good mood. He didn't feel like analyzing the reason why- it might prove discomforting.
Nicolas leaned back, and Armand moved forward to smile at him prettily. "I don't mind. I don't mind at all." A light exhale, almost like a laugh- just because Nicolas loved him didn't mean Armand had to return the favor. "You may love me as much as you want, Nicolas, for ever and ever." If Nicolas wanted what Armand thought he did, then he was asking the wrong questions. But if he wanted to remain happy, then he was asking the right ones. Armand swayed to his feet before any answer and padded across the floor to the fire, which needed stoking if it was going to stay alight.
|
|
|
Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 25, 2009 11:31:39 GMT -5
Nicolas was not entirely surprised or even very much affected when Armand stood and moved to stoke the fire. His hair did so look like a halo, Nicolas mused, couldn't help but muse. Firelight brightened the red, so that he was like a Russian saint with that splendidly literal halo... Nicolas imagined touching Armand's hair, and how soft he would find it, and how it really was not the same. The blood might have been better than the physical manifestation of love, but what about the spiritual manifestation of it? Could a vampire hope to ever achieve the same union?
No. Nicolas glanced down and to the side, as though thinking.
When he looked up again, Armand still looked like an angel, on the edge of hell. He wondered how close to reality it was, and resigned himself momentarily to the fact that he would never be allowed to know.
"We don't last forever," he said very softly, though not with a reprimand, and perhaps not even with sarcasm. He almost smiled. "And some of us don't even last very long. If only I had the time." He stretched out his legs in front of him, and tilted his head, regarding Armand with complete lucidity. "Tell me, really, how long do you think it would take for me to stop loving you? How long before the mortal dies, and then...?"
He was not baiting him, for once. He wanted to know. He asked in seriousness. He crooked one knee, leaned forward just slightly, wholly prepared to resume hundred-year-old conversations about immortality.
|
|
|
Post by Armand on Mar 25, 2009 16:32:11 GMT -5
Armand sat on the floor again, across from Nicolas now and a little to the side, so that Nicolas' outstretched legs didn't touch him. "Until you are disillusioned," he said- softly, but matter-of-factly. Although Armand couldn't imagine what else it would take, after the severing of Nicolas' hands, the end of his playing... "Until the hate outweighs the love. Until you find someone else you love better and you forget."
|
|
|
Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 26, 2009 7:41:59 GMT -5
Nicolas watched almost passively, although with a great interest. Of course, he could not grasp what Armand was getting at, because in the end, it was not love or hate that held Nicolas to him, but something else, something that was better termed a fixation. And Nicolas could not imagine any disillusion further than what he'd already painfully experienced in his mortal life, nor loving anyone better. But his words nonetheless brought a genuine smile to Nicolas' face, although it was still a very cynical one.
"But, Armand," he said with light laughter, leaning forward slightly, almost incredulous, and then merely skeptical, that Armand should not know this already. "The hate does outweigh the love. Don't you know that?"
|
|
|
Post by Armand on Mar 26, 2009 7:54:07 GMT -5
Armand blinked at him, taken aback, even a little confused- the slightest pursing of his lips, and the furrowing of his brow, and he looked at Nicolas with a great deal of skepticism. "Then why are you here?" he asked. "Tell me."
Was it the tower that exerted some hold on him, some old, vague memory of the theatre? Only the need for companionship? It was not that Armand expected love, or cared very much for it, but if Nicolas had no purpose, no reasoning, no dim thoughts tying Armand and Lestat, then why on earth was he with Armand now? It wasn't as if he hadn't any other place to go. Armand regarded Nicolas with great interest, waiting patiently for his answer with his arms folded over drawn-up knees.
|
|
|
Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 26, 2009 8:12:31 GMT -5
Nicolas' lips parted as he took a breath of air, and then he paused, tilting his head again, further, watching Armand now in some frowning contemplation. Why was he here? How could he possibly articulate it? He could say that there was no other choice for him, but Armand was so logical, so sensible, and would surely know otherwise, and would profess otherwise. He could explain he loved him anyway, but this seemed silly to him, too. No, surely Armand knew - even if, some some levels, Nicolas could not - that Nicolas had always loved Lestat still, too, and he would certainly not have remained under the same roof that held his coffin.
"I can't," he said after a moment, frowning slightly, and stroking his temple as though he could find the answer still. An idea came to him, a terrible idea, an intimate idea, and he shrank from it immediately, struggling to keep himself from acting upon it right away. No, he couldn't do that. Not without Armand's express permission. He wasn't even entirely sure that he wanted to, but the need to comply with Armand's command far outweighed his own fluttery anxieties about that. "Not in words," he said meaningfully, and quite seriously. He could very easily show Armand what it was he felt.
|
|
|
Post by Armand on Mar 26, 2009 8:18:07 GMT -5
Go ahead, said Armand's eyes, the curious tilt of his head, and the little gesture he made, almost a shrug, with an outward flutter of his hand. He fully expected a bombardment of mental images and snatches of thought, for what else could Nicolas have meant, and the other vampire had so little control in his powers of the mind that Armand was braced now for the images that were obvious enough when they leaked out unconsciously.
(( Look, look, two go ahead gestures for the price of one! ))
|
|
|
Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 26, 2009 15:20:18 GMT -5
Nicolas inclined his head, too, although almost in vulnerability, rather than in curiosity. Well, Armand was welcoming it, and that was something to be curious of; he would not begrudge him that, though. He wanted to show him, to share, to make him know. And although there was a chance he would look back on this moment later with rue, and would bitterly regret this, the moment seemed ripe for such an intimacy, and he did not want to turn away from it. He met Armand's eyes in a manner not unusual from him, and... explained, if the word could be used, that he was achingly, terribly fixated upon Armand, and had been ever since Armand had brought him into the cemetery. Although Nicolas was not conscious of all that he was saying, the message was easily gleaned from it - that even after Lestat had come, and pulled him away, he had been lost to that time. He might still have been wandering in it.
Although sometimes it was rather more like that crushing isolation in the tower. Nicolas was not quite able to reign in the flow of his thoughts after they had been allowed to spill, and although he had not wanted to make that clear to Armand, he couldn't keep it out, that terrible blackness, that misery, that haunting sense of not existing... until it did not seem right or sane to try to exist at all.
|
|
|
Post by Armand on Mar 26, 2009 15:53:29 GMT -5
Stockholm syndrome was not a term that would be coined for another hundred years, but nevertheless Armand was thinking of it. He'd known this, hadn't he, to some extent- that on that night under Les Innocents, his wasn't the only world view changed, nor Lestat's. He remembered from the theatre that sometimes one could look at Nicolas and catch the flicker of ghostly flames and pale faces, and that was only random images picked up, not this deliberate throwing down of barriers and thoughts.
And what constituted a fixation? Well, he could muse on that later. Or he could try and divest Nicolas of it now- as if such a thing could be done. No. By all accounts, Nicolas should be dead, and it was only that he wasn't, and he didn't know what to do. Whoever had helped him after the ashes were not scattered, this vague and dim companion Nicolas said he couldn't remember, they had not done him any favors.
"You were meant to self-destruct," Armand commented, very casual and very detached. He cut off the stream of images and thoughts completely- he'd seen what he wanted, and this fixation was just as irrational and incapable of his curing as Nicolas.
|
|
|
Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 28, 2009 15:49:28 GMT -5
((978 posts... you will be a whale soon! )) Whatever Nicolas had expected, he hadn't gotten it. Perhaps it was Armand's coldness that enabled him to turn off the faucet of images, for it certainly brought no intimacy to lay things bare to Armand, and it appeared he had not given Armand anything that he had not already had, and certainly nothing that he wanted. Armand would not refuse it, but he did not need to do anything with it, either. He would not turn Nicolas out, but he did not feel the need for his presence. Nicolas felt this knowledge crushingly, and drew his knees up and leaned forward, looking away from him, painfully subdued, lashes lowered until the nearly grazed his cheeks, waiting for the moment to pass.
|
|
|
Post by Armand on Mar 28, 2009 16:01:24 GMT -5
(( *nods serenely* ))
Armand tilted his head, eyebrows raising a little at Nicolas' sudden curling into himself and unaware of the his current thoughts. Armand had not meant anything other than what he'd said- that Nicolas had been meant to die then, and stay dead, and that he had not was why he was so troubled now. There had been no viciousness, he hadn't intended to make Nicolas turn away, and that he had showed he'd been more affected by Armand's simple statement than Armand had meant him to be.
|
|
|
Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 28, 2009 16:30:04 GMT -5
Nicolas glanced askance to his hand, resting on the dusty floorboards, palm up. The fingers were curled, and he imagined feeling himself holding something; and then he imagined that the hand wasn't there at all, and his fingers tightened into a fist before he could relax again. A violin, that was what he was picturing. The neck of a violin in that left hand, those fingers pressing down against the strings. He had wanted to get a new violin not long ago, unable to recall what must have happened to the old one, but he was no longer sure.
The pain at the distance between himself and Armand subsided, as it had to in order for him to recover. He wanted that distance to not be so disheartening, and after all, it was not as great a distance as there was between himself and the entire nameless world.
Without looking up - and without knowing how much time had passed; it could have been an hour and he wouldn't have noticed - he began to speak, very quietly, as though speaking to himself. And he very easily could have been. Had Armand left, he would not have entirely noticed. "I wanted to get a violin earlier," he said softly, as though a groan, or a sigh, as though exhaling after having been for so long underwater. "I wanted it to be as it was. But do I still? Should I? What did we use to have?" He did sigh, then, eyebrows furrowing. "As long as there was the theater, it was easy to pretend, wasn't it, that there was more between us than air, than nothing. There isn't, though, is there?"
|
|
|
Post by Armand on Mar 31, 2009 6:41:39 GMT -5
Armand was getting tired of this need. It made his lip curl to think of the despair Nicolas apparently felt in not being closer to Armand. He couldn't comprehend it.
But the theatre- things had been different then. A little brighter for having a purpose, even a flimsy one, but now they only had this tower, and Armand did not know whether that affected Nicolas as it did Armand.
"Why are you asking me?" he said, resting his cheek on the top part of his arm, that same arm wrapped around his knees, and referring to the violin. "I am not the violinist." And, quietly, "Nicolas, there is no reason we couldn't have now what we had then if you would only stop doubting and questioning the lack of it. Did you like those intimate conversations, backstage, your dressing room, among the costumes and the paint? If you want it again, stop holding up a measuring stick to your memory, because I have neither paint nor costumes anywhere in the tower and I can't replicate the scene."
|
|
Vincent
- Ingenious Pilot -
Me here at last on the ground, you in mid air%\0\%
Posts: 245
|
Post by Vincent on Apr 10, 2009 7:27:07 GMT -5
Feeling a little better after taking out his frustration on some poor humans, Vincent came back to Armand's tower. He thought he should go to apologize for his behaviour earlier, when he heard voices behind the closed door. The first one was Armands', that he knew. But the other one... he didn't recognize the voice. He was about to open the door when he heard one of them mentioning the word 'love'. Vincent froze. Maybe it wasn't the best time to burst right in and interrupt them?
He stood still, listening to what the two male voices on the other side of the door talked about.
I shouldn't be here... I shouldn't be here! Vincent thought, but he couldn't help himself. There was something in their words that caught him, made him stay put. He may have heard wrong, but it seemed like that the man he didn't know, was in love with Armand.
Great... don't tell me this is a lover's quarrel?! Now what should I do? I can't just leave, I bet at least Armand have sensed my presence by now.
After he heard Armand talking about a theatre and stuff, Vincent got himself together and knocked on the door.
|
|