#caravaggiovagabond

[obediencess]

for @caravaggiovagabond​

The lessons were sacrosanct, Riccardo understood this, perhaps better than anyone. The Master valued education above all else, and it was a privilege he granted them, these lessons, and he above all others, who so often received extra music lessons. He excelled not only to please the Master, but to prove that Marius’ efforts weren’t wasted. Riccardo would be a prince worthy of his title and of the station Marius had given him. But there was only so much Catullus Riccardo could translate before the bordemn inevitably set in. He knew the poems, as he knew so many love poems, off by heart, and their tutor could not deny that he had mastered the more archaic form long ago. These were his justifications, at least, for abandoning his books. Amadeo wasn’t ready yet to take lessons with the older apprentices -- though he had already shown a proficiency in many of the things they did already -- and his private tutor was employed for only so many hours. Already, the other boy was listless, and the sight of him wandering barefooted around the Palazzo, his golden eyes wide with equal parts wonder and uncertainty, tightened Riccardo’s swollen heart. He didn’t like to see him alone. Perhaps Amadeo didn’t understand yet that he didn’t have to be alone. Loneliness became a stranger to Riccardo the moment he was brought under the Master’s wing. He was surrounded by a myriad of children, some older, some younger, who had ensured he would never be alone again. Riccardo gently closed the delicate pages of his poetry and swung his long legs over the bench to rise, giving a great, noisy stretch of his arms above his head, shaking his untamable mane of inky curls around his head, as if the dusty lines of the old Roman poet were something he must rid himself of bodily. He found Amadeo by the window, looking out over the canal, his cherubic face utterly unreadable. Riccardo’s bare feet thuded against the stone as he moved rapidly up the few steps to meet him, and he swiftly budged himself into the remaining space beside Amadeo, arms crossed loosely over his chest. “It’s too beautiful to be inside all day today, don’t you think? You are my time keeper, Amadeo, what time is it?” He asked, eyeing the pocket in which the precious watch sat even now. He had forgotten that these were wonders, and now, beside Amadeo, he relived it. He saw the beauty in these simple things that had once moved him with the same breathless awe that now posessed his friend. “Why don’t we go out? Maestro won’t mind, he understands that the only man who knows Catullus better than I do is the shade of the great poet himself,” he suggested, a radiant grin quirking the corner’s of his lips, his hazel eyes glinting, perhaps with mischief, perhaps with the lustre of sunlight reflecting off of the canal below. “What say you? I don’t like this new expression of yours, it’s far too serious,” he reached out to very gently thumb Amadeo’s cheek, as if he could urge the younger’s radiant smile to the surface by such affection alone. 

[fanatiquee]

@caravaggiovagabond gets 💋 back.  kiss 6/5 7 (meme : CLOSED.)

Any other night, he could have ignored it. Tonight, the subtle, barely-there weight of Armand’s head in his lap turned the words to little more than thick waves that crashed against the bare margins. Armand’s glowingly auburn head, the cascade of perfect curls, drew his gaze downward. He longed to feel them, to wind his fingers through them and study their silken texture. He was beautiful, like this. It was the less demanding posture, to kneel at his feet, play the beseeching postulant for the breadth of a verse or two. Louis opened his mouth as if to read, forcing his eyes toward the words again, chasing their meaning across the darkly stamped stanzas. Before he could wrap his tongue around them, Armand abandoned his post. He was scaling him, rising up from the floor between the book and Louis’ body, pressing the offending thing away with a hand as he almost straddled the younger vampire, flooding Louis’ vision with the burnished, aureate light that lit the flame of his hair and reflected in his coin-golden eyes. 

The expression was so sensuous yet so innocent, and with each heavy lidded blink, Louis was drawn more and more into him, until he felt he was contained entirely within Armand’s closed eyes. He rested behind the curtain, caught up in the soft teeth of his chestnut lashes. It was all over, he knew. It was always all over the moment he dared to meet that beguilingly pretty look. It was an act, now, as it had always been. Louis knew it, he sensed it, he saw the blood-flood beneath the veil but could not lift it. Perhaps the veil rested over his own head, and it was for Armand to raise. Perhaps he had tried and Louis had clung willingly to the edges of the snowy thin silk to retain the milky defuse of the illusion. It was a fine trick. Louis scarcely felt the book slide from his hands, fall into his lap, and from his lap, to the floor, to rest on its pages. 

“Armand,” he ventured, so gently he scarcely heard it himself. It was little more than a fluttering exhale, wrung from him by the touch of Armand’s mouth. Dainty, plush, over-eager, and yet barely there. All these caustic little kisses he trailed across Louis’ jaw that hitched the useless breath in him. Louis’ hands grasped at the arms of his wingback, bit into the upholstery with rounded glassy nails. Armand, for all his lightness, demanded to be felt. Louis felt the whisper of a fang behind the press of his top lip and his eyes fluttered shut a moment. But Armand took no blood. He came instead toward his mouth. Louis dared to look out from beneath the spray of his inky lashes, and find Armand hovering in wait. It froze him utterly. 

Louis willed his arms to rise, to cast him off, to put hands between their bodies, to rise. Displace him. Refuse him. But he couldn’t. And what was more, he didn’t want to. He craved the sweetness of it, the ripened gash of Armand’s blood-flushed mouth. He let himself be kissed, and then at once, he kissed back. It rose in him. His hands rising from the chair so that his arms could close around the little body that loomed above his. He clung to it, this cold, cadaverous thing. He kissed with a restrained, but aching, frightened hunger. “Armand,” he murmured again, a prayer this time, his fingers curling tightly in the rich material of his beautifully tailored opera suit. “Damn you,” he clipped, one hand rising to tangle in his curls. He was doing this on purpose, wasn’t he? How could Louis know? When did the little lover come to him truly, in place of the devourer? Did it ever come? He kissed him again nonetheless. He was starved for the soft-hard touch of him.

[count-v-dracula]

{ meme } | accepting ;••••; @caravaggiovagabond​ asked▬

💋 //why not c;

Like a needle finding a groove, that characteristic grin of cultivated hubris spread out across his face, the lines about his mouth giving way for it. It was never a sickening thing to view, this confident arrogance of his, but how it unfolded from him with a refined elegance.

He could have said something ingenious, or suggestive, but he chose not to, for the present. With measured steps he approached the one that had expressed the desire, hands that were folded neatly behind his back extended out, one whitened fingertip hooked beneath Armand’s dainty chin, tilting his youthful face up to his own while the other hand rested along the delicate curve between neck and shoulder.

“Now that you have made it known...I can’t deny you, can I?” He questioned, his brumal lips just grazing against the other’s as he spoke in a fully resonant voice, rooted in his throat. An ephemeral grin appeared once more upon the Count’s mouth before lips met lips, melding together, a light press at first before he pressed each pair together again, more assuredly, a sliver of intensity in the second. The fingers which set upon the slope of Armand’s shoulder gripped momentarily before releasing with the other hand that had rested beneath his chin.

“Satisfied?” Dracula cooed, one dark brow arched sharply, his mouth yet again curling in a lordly manner.

[hxllion]

I just wanted you all to know that if I end up dead or missing, it was definitely Armand’s fault. Armand is sus, no cap.

[desanctii]

🔧 — engineering/mechanics

ooc. Santino loves working with cars. The very first one he bought solely to take it apart and understand how it works. Then he put it back together. He is a mechanic at heart and when he is fixing up his cars that is the only time he seems to not mind getting dirt on himself. He is always tinkering and doctoring something in his garage for fun. He also considers it an important skill to have to be able to fix your own car. Very few garages offer service around the clock. 

Santino makes it a point to customize every car he buys until it suits him. He greatly enjoys anything that lets him work with his hands and mechanics are right in his wheelhouse. 

[fortunebuoyed]

@caravaggiovagabond plotted for DANIEL MOLLOY and i am not sorry.

Tonight, of all nights, he realizes it’s finally quiet.

The silence can’t be measured, not really. There’s still more of his kind flickering through the villa, ghostly and angelic, laughing and weeping and scolding and the nearest they can be to living. Unseen speakers still echo a vibrato that has begun to drill a neat hole through his skull. He’s never been a fan of Mozart, now less than ever. The whole house is alight with song and voices and the report of an acoustic guitar, though Daniel does not wonder for its presence. It is not the strangest thing any of their kind have brought onto the property.

In his own mind, there is the first quiet since the cellar. No addiction whispering against the folds of his broken brain, no impulses frying the circuits that held him together by a thread, no voice that is not his own pulling him back again, again, again. The search ended, his morality buried, there is nothing left to long for. This calm must have come before, the moment his life and death ended in a single embrace, only he had been too caught up in the chaos to recognize just how much had changed within him. Now, alone in his office, he can soak in the truth. His mind is his own, and its silence is a deep and abiding peace.

He still feels the other approach, a phantom pain where that haunting voice once sat inside of his skull. Armand had warned him of how their connection would be severed by the turning. Still, he hesitates to think of it as a relief, as if there is some trick to the act, as if the Minotaur might follow the golden thread to the very root of his thought. His maker is the furthest thing from a bull, the doll-like boy, the abyss of time crammed into eternal youth.

Daniel does not need to turn to see him. His image exists, always, somewhere in the dark of his thoughts. He ought to be combing over Lestat’s words, editing them, adding his own flourishes for publication, because the bastard left the audience on a real cliffhanger when left to his own devices. The door must close, the story told, the happy ending secured.

It just doesn’t feel complete.

So he sits in his chair, and he smokes, and silence takes his tongue, too. Words came easily before, damnation and worship, mockery and support, and now he sits there useless before the other. His violet eyes cannot even find him. Everything’s so damn quiet. The place where Armand’s mind once pushed into his own aches with nostalgia. He can think a better apology than he can speak it, and he can write a better love story than he can live it.

“How’s the moon?” And there’s the distance between them, the waxing and waning moonlight observing the sea, commanding it, but never getting to touch it. He rests his head against the back of his chair, as if he is still seeking Armand’s nearness without crawling back to him.

[violeteyedvampiremolloy]

𝔄𝔰𝔰𝔦𝔤𝔫𝔢𝔡 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔏𝔞𝔫𝔤𝔲𝔞𝔤𝔢 

A story that ends in blood

The world has always been unkind, and when you have turned to yourself for comfort you have come face to face with an empty pit which seems to be laughing. You don’t care if it kills you but once you find someone whom you love and who loves you back, you will make sure nothing happens to them. They are yours. You will make a tear in this world and create a new place for you and your love if it comes to that. Because it has always been about love, and it is how it always ends.

Tagged by: @caravaggiovagabond

Tagging: @amadeo-child-of-the-renaissance @whitehowler @fanatiquee @symphonyofmalice @amelthebravennian anyone else who fancies it? ^u^

[intervieweird]

@caravaggiovagabond 

It was a mistake.

Just him, trapped in the room with the dead man. The corpse hasn’t moved all day; just pale, folded arms and the stillness of death. And death isn’t pretty. It’s not enchanting. 

He had seen Armand watching hours of raw footage of himself in the daysleep - unblinking and still as the cadaver in the view-screen, russet hair impossibly filling the square like a proliferation of creeping, cancerous cells, splitting and multiplying indefinitely, undying and undying and undying forever.

But he’d seen it - that was the point. He knew what it looked like. And he had demanded this, hadn’t he? He’d shouted for it until he was hoarse and Armand had one of those removed, hooded looks that drew him so far away. And Armand had let him.

Fuck.

What the fuck did he expect? The heavy, drowsing limbs as the pretty young man fell into Sleeping Beauty slumber? This wasn’t like that. This was like watching someone die. This was watching the animating light leave his eyes, glassy and empty and sightless. This was the stiffening of rigor-mortis, this was everything the step before the purpling bloat, the sloshing fluids expanding in the veins, bursting, stinking, putrefying. This was real death. 

He’d felt a pressure between his eyes, swelling into two pulse points like diffracted laser-light shooting beams into moldering grey-matter, melted to slop in his skull.

Dead. The lighted, knowing eyes. Dead, the hands on him, everywhere on him, suffocating him, holding him, petting him. Dead, the fake-boy laugh. Dead. Six-feet dead.

He’d shrunk into the bedroom corner, unwilling to stay but unable to leave, falling into that familiar void of horror, tumbling headlong into that welcome nightmare of timelessness. He might have stayed there forever, too, his legs numb from the stillness, the awful thousand-needle pricking of his nerves. He might have stayed there forever in the room with the dead thing on the bed; his back aching, headache pounding  —  but then the dead thing moved.

Daniel skids to the bathroom, barefoot, outrunning the plunging sunset, bracing both hands against the porcelain toilet bowl as his stomach empties itself in heaving, breathless gasps, aching to the ribs and beyond. He almost wants to look, expecting to see the filthy fluid tinged with the dark red of blood, organ blood, puking up his own kidneys, the inversed placenta, the dead rebirth. Dead.

[vxctorx-archived]

@caravaggiovagabond replied to this post

// happy birthday!

[ thank you, friend! I know we haven’t talked much lately, but I hope you’re doing okay, and also I’m gonna use this as an excuse to say come at me anytime you’d like to talk, because I do miss our chats <33 ]

[sangcreole]

@caravaggiovagabond liked (x) for a short lyric starter // Ft. “Sleep” by My Chemical Romance

“I’m undeserving of your sympathy, ‘cause there ain’t no way that I’m sorry for what I did.” 

[obediencess]

Riddle me this... do you think Riccardo knew about Amadeo fuckin around with Lord Harlech, and if so, what did he think about it??

this is such a juicy question. I definitely think Riccardo knew about it. He was probably a little hurt that Amadeo didn’t come and tell him about it himself, considering they were probably a bit boyishly boastful with each other about certain ‘conquests’ and little romances and the like, especially because Amadeo couldn’t really share with him anything that went on with Marius, though Riccardo knew without being told implicitly what was going on there. So first of all, he was probably a little :/ that Amadeo didn’t think to tell him, and then was infinitesimally jealous. In a, why him? Why when you could have anyone, him? What did he mean to you? Was this simply to get back at the Maestro? And if so, did it have to be him? Why not me? But he also absolutely respects any of Amadeo’s mild rebellions against Marius, even though he is completely loyal to Marius and would never be capable of it himself, because he definitely imagines Amadeo exempt from all the usual rules he imposes on himself. Amadeo needs, in Riccardo’s opinion, more freedom than the rest of them, because of his proximity to the Maestro. And then there’s the high desire to want to best Harlech himself in a duel because Harlech even ATTEMPTED to besmirch and then steal Amadeo away from them. Amadeo is part of THEIR family, he should keep his grimy unworthy hands off him and keep Amadeo’s name out of his ungodly mouth. But again, he respects that Amadeo is perfectly capable of fighting his own battles, even if at times he chooses them badly.

[fanatiquee]

ɪɴ ᴛʜɪs sʜɪʀᴛ, ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ʏᴏᴜ, ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ɴᴇᴀʀ ʏᴏᴜ, ғᴏʀ ᴀ ᴡʜɪʟᴇ. ᴍᴇᴍᴇ ʀᴇsᴘᴏɴsᴇ ғᴏʀ  @caravaggiovagabond​​

Whatever he had come for was now utterly forgotten. It had been some useless thought that lashed him, bade he rise from his arm chair and seek the creature who had inspired it. How right that he should find him here, enclosed in the sail that was once Louis’ shirt. He could not mark it from the others, he knew only that it had belonged to him, at once time, and that it had never suited him half as well as it suited the angel draped in it now. He was swallowed by it, down to the fine hands that abruptly appeared as mere elegant fingers dusting the cuffs. Louis watched the fire of the lamp ignite him from within, and burn to the very edges of his flaming hair, and behind his eyes. Two golden wicks that licked at him a moment, hot and cold at once. Louis could do nothing but look on him, the verdant gaze growing heavy as it drank of him. The pale flesh of his thigh, the risen collar bone that jutted magnificently from the gaping neck. He was a luminous vision as he turned at last and sank his weight in at the knees to sit back on his legs. He was a herald against the gloaming of the orange flickering oil lamp. 

Louis wondered at the porcelain fineness and felt his fingers curl against the door jam where he had grasped it as he entered. He could splinter the wood with his strength, but he released it first. He entered the room wordlessly to come toward the older vampire where he perched, to perch on the edge of the bed. He was the gentleman there, legs wide spread and straight backed, not daring to touch, one hand first on his own knee before it at last extended to touch, to outline the tender shape of his cheek, softly rounded, impishly drawn. 

“I forget myself,” he confessed, his tone ringing with a sense of self-effacing amusement. “You reduce me to nothing, simply to be closed in this -- impediment,” he hooked his fingers against the neck of it, barely touching the flesh beneath. “I might accuse you of doing it to me purposefully if I hadn’t come first to you, if it were not so... entirely natural to you, so unassuming,” he reached now to gingerly study the skin above Armand’s knee, to trace his silken finger tips over it, and then, skim the skin just beneath the shirt’s hem. “That you are so beautiful in this alone -- perhaps more beautiful than when you close yourself in all your tailored clothes,” he paused, gently shaking his head, loosing a few inky curls that shadowed his face in the dim light. “You kept this,” he resumed instead, gently indicating the shirt again, his fingers rising beneath the material to curl lightly around Armand’s hip. “Why did you keep this? What does it mean to you to wear it, now?”

[count-v-dracula]

{ meme } | accepting ;••••; @caravaggiovagabond​ asked▬

💛

For being one that appeared cloistered in the theatre, always behind the fall of the curtain upon the devilry and outlandish theatrics that all Parisians had an appetite for, Armand seemed knowledgeable and ready to show Dracula some particular spots of Paris. She was a beautiful city, the city of light, now thrust into the age of Belle Époque after much turmoil, the sprawling streets and structures arose with new vigor in this age.

Rue de la Convention was beneath the pair’s slow footfalls, Dracula looked up into the various windows, the greenery draped over the iron railing at each illuminated square. Just a few minutes ahead the Seine ran perpendicular to the street, the rushing water loud enough to Dracula, though still in the distance, was as if he was standing upon its banks. 

Prior to this night, and during his stay, which became extended due to happening upon a whole world of those that sustained their lives by the taking of it, Dracula was often a guest in Armand’s sequestered space within the theatre. Talk of days past, current events, philosophies, sciences and art were the order of the day. And, oh, how Dracula loved to talk; his former statesman-self often rose to the surface despite his mortality and the life that had been lived with it, forever gone. Some attributes, it would seem for the Count, never died with the soul when he was reborn.

Having now reached the Seine, a bridge crossing her breadth, Dracula leaned upon the railing, watching the celestial light ripple across the surface, Armand at his side. 

“Thank you...” Dracula started in a velvety tone, turning to the one that was born into this life at a younger age than he, “for your hospitality.” With a kind look and attitude, a black-gloved hand took the slender fingers of Armand’s hand and pressed a feather-light kiss to the top of the other’s hand. Eyes that rivaled the far north’s glaciers fixed intently on the russet gaze.

“I could not have learned Paris without a more suitable host...” he added after releasing his leather grip from Armand’s hand, eyes still settled upon Armand’s, and folded them both behind his back, a sincere smile occupied his mouth in a handsome curve.

[hxllion]

Burned Cinnamon Roll that has Been Through Hell and Back, Slightly Charred

Well... you’re certainly not wrong, cher.

[desanctii]

@caravaggiovagabond​ said: I didn’t know who else to call.

“Considering your immediate circle, I find that hard to believe.” Santino’s remarked dryly. He set the phone down on the counter and continued his nightly routine. It had to be quite late where Armand was, the close of the night. Santino was meanwhile rising to meet the next one. He swiftly buttoned his shirt and raked his fingers through his damp hair to slick it back. 

“What is the matter, then? Don’t tell me you miss my company. I thought you might be glad to have your privacy for a change.” He added, a friendlier lilt to his words then. He didn’t mean to seem so standoffish. He had vowed to work on this. But there was an established pattern he had started to anticipate with wariness. Whenever he was away from Armand and his entourage, whoever they may be, he was only called back when a new catastrophe had reared its head. The urgency in Armand’s tone also did not bode well. 

[fortunebuoyed]

Meta + Daniel’s family // @caravaggiovagabond​

I feel like, for a majority of people, the family you are born into is going to be the first community that truly has impact on you. Before you even know there is a world outside, with all its expectations and myriad reactions to who you are, there are the people who raise you and in some cases are raised with you. This has especially been the case with Daniel, the youngest of five, the accident, but a favored son in many regards. Daniel the neat, conscientious boy who was the pride of his unremarkable parents who produced otherwise unremarkable children. Danny was going places. No one realized the boy was born with a shovel in hand, ready to dig his own grave.

Certainly not his mother, the middle American space case that came to California on a dream. She drove until she ran out of gas money and settled into whatever nowhere town would have her. It was just a temporary pit stop on her great cosmic journey, Katherine would laugh, working odd jobs and earning an odder reputation. Back then they just called it free-spirited, and her moments of great introspective melancholy nothing more than a flash of maturity shining through. Mother is God in the eyes of a child, and Katherine knit all of her babies in with soft words and open arms, armed with books and a spontaneity that could prove downright manic. Daniel was her thoughtful boy, her fellow dreamer, and all that was derided in her she celebrated in him. She handed down that wandering spirit and questioning nature, and something more just beneath the surface, lying in wait until the very end of adolescence caused it to spring fully formed in his mind like Athena.

And maybe Daniel might have had a chance, had she chosen any other man to marry. She met an east coast stranger chasing down a job offer after the war. New in town and handsome as anything, Robert was the kind of man who could charm anyone, even if he fumbled often enough as a father. His intentions were good. Intentions don’t count for much in life, but at least he tried. God only knows what he would have been without the alcohol, other than alive. Daniel was his favorite, his Danny Boy, and for all the wrong he might have accomplished chasing competence, he is remembered fondly by his youngest. Too fondly, perhaps, for all the ways they overlap. All Bob’s surviving friends tell Daniel he looks just like his father, though Bob reached an age that Daniel never will, and Daniel is now older than Bob ever got to be. He died before Daniel graduated high school, years of drinking catching up with him. But you know, at the end of his mortal life, he understood intimately why the old man who never got to be truly old preferred to see the world from the other side of a bottle.

The pair had a proper Catholic wedding, wasted no time in achieving their marital duties. Three sons and a single daughter came before Daniel, and all things considered, they did a fine enough job. Three out of five ended up stable. The boys don’t matter so much to him -- Sure, they’re his brothers, and he likes them well enough, but he never quite connected with them like he did his sister. 

First was Peter, the furthest from Daniel himself in more ways than one. Former high school sports star, now he’s a teacher living on the East Coast with his normal wife and normal kids. The kind of brother you spare a Christmas and Birthday call then shrug off the rest of the year.

Next came James, a card-carrying nerd, the kind you can find in any Hollywood stereotype, working for some IT company in SoCal to put his kids through private school. He sometimes summers on the Island, polite enough to stay out of Daniel’s hair for the most part.

Luke’s the one that took the most after their mother, drifting across the road chasing Americana and putting as much distance as possible between he and his ex. Of the three, Daniel might admit to liking Luke the best.

If you want to really know Daniel, you go to his sister, Maryanne. Two years his senior, and his closest friend in the world through all his human life. She’s always been Annie to the family, Annie and Danny being a matching pair to hear their father talk. Ash haired and sapphire eyed, she has always kept a good head on her shoulders and a protective streak towards her younger brother. The streak of Molloy independence still runs in her, no matter how loyal she is to her baby brother and mother. She eloped at 20 and made her way to Oregon, desperate to get out of Sacramento, out from the shadow of her father’s addictions, trying to outrun the codependency that their mother embraced. Her beau repaid her by ending up like her father, and she returned fire in making the decision to leave. She knew where that path ended and she knew she would be powerless next to his decisions. Maybe one day her daughter will forgive her for it.

And don’t get him wrong, there’s no bad blood between he and his family. They were even really supportive, if for the most part confused, when he came out of the closet. His family did nothing to estrange him, nor did he cut ties officially. It’s just that he got... busy. Caught up in his obsessions, in Armand, and drifted away like his mother before him. Under the urging of others, he’s begun to reach out to them again from the 90s onward, beyond Annie’s insistent presence in his life -- more on that later.

What we take from this is three important figures and their impacts: Katherine’s ‘bad brains,’ Robert’s addictions, and Annie as the safe place to land. 

On some level, Daniel feels responsible for his mother in her old age, when she has no one else in the house to support her. When he sends money back West from the Island, it’s going to his mother and sister. He knows he was her favorite, his mother’s hope for a remarkable child. In some ways, he is that, the accomplished writer, the successful businessman. He can hear the smile in her voice when she’s in the background of a call, announcing that it’s ‘Danny.’ He keeps his distance largely to keep her illusions alive. He’ll make a better ideal than a son, he’s sure. His mother has always done better with her own world than reality, the same as him, even if her coping takes a different shape.

In life, even at the end of it, Daniel would often go crawling back to his sister, when he thought it wasn’t dangerous to do so. She would demand phone calls, hassle him with questions, try to stage interventions for his drinking and relationship with this mysterious man both. It was killing him, she said, and threw up her hands in disgust at his dramatic ‘maybe I’m already dead.’ Regardless of his theatrics, she made it perfectly clear he didn’t even have to come to her, if he would only call she would buy him a ticket home, no matter where he was in the world. 

The only time he really felt scared about all of it, truly scared for himself rather than intrigued by his own terror, was in Annie’s presence. Somewhere between his final escape and a rainy Chicago night, he ended up back in Sacramento, as he so often did -- Annie cried to see him in such a state. Told him he was sick, told him to stay, told him she would call a doctor. She knew. She was strong enough to face what an immortal and the dying man in question had fought so hard to ignore. Many nights, she still doubts her brother is actually alive after the state he was in during that final visit. The first time he skips one of their weekly phone calls, she’ll be on the first plane to Miami. Til then, she’ll keep praying for him.

In a lot of ways, she’s the sense Daniel never had.

As for Robert, well.. One doesn’t have to be a genius to make out how he was the blueprint for his son’s later struggles. Both were beautiful men who threw themselves body and soul into what ultimately killed them. Only, Daniel was far more his father’s son before that San Francisco night, a popular boy with nothing but goodwill. In recent years, he’s started to make more of a connection between his downward spiral and that of his father, and is taking measures to try and pull himself out of the eternal overlap. He can’t help looking like the father he lost. He can, however, help walking the same path of altruistic desires muddled by mediocrity.