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eclipsecrowned · 2 years ago

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Daniel/ @luxsclaris‘s Armand, mention of past OC/Armand, 3.5k, beta read. orig. published jan 2021 on fortunebuoyed.

The music chasing after his fleeing feet paints Armand an altogether joyous thing. As he dances through the corridor, its high windows setting the streetlights to illuminate his hair like a blaze, the Vampire seems more a child than Daniel has ever seen him. Meandering after him, Daniel is led past a dozen eras, the Caliphate blurring into the Romanesque only a doorway apart, past a hallway offering glimpses of Velazquez and Goya standing at odds across from one another. This Spanish gallery offers a myriad of delights, if the pair have the time and inclination to discover them.

There are better museums in Spain, though. The terrible pair had not traveled so far just to settle on a speck of locked up art for its own sake. All that matters tonight is a single painting tucked away somewhere in a corner of the Renaissance exhibit. Peering again at the leader of their expedition, Daniel realizes too late that Armand has been talking, babbling about the piece they now seek. Words flicker through his pounding head, ‘furs’ and ‘silks’ and every decadent luxury that is a dozen lifetimes removed from Autumn 1982. Pulling his faded denim tighter around his frame, the mortal fishes in his pocket for the painkillers that will banish the previous night from the present..

The headaches come so often of late, spurred by a poor diet and endless adventures across his nights. In fact, the artisan of his migraines proceeds with an airy laugh through the empty gallery, offering a little spin of delight. These games always bring him joy. The sound of his laugh echoes inside Daniel’s beleaguered skull as he takes the pills dry. The things he does for love.

Armand vanishes through a doorway in a flash, before his name can properly form on the other’s lips. He calls it regardless, stopping adjacent to the path that had dragged the vampire away from him. “Armand--”

“I’ll catch up,” comes the reply. Violet eyes raise to study the placard beside him -- Romanticism. The soft lines and endless layers of the style seem ill-suited to the artist’s tastes, but Daniel proves grateful for the chance to let the pills percolate in his bloodstream anyway. Carelessly, he hounds the corridor for an out, ever obedient to the directions the sweet-faced woman at the desk offered him. Twenty minutes to closing, she advised, Castilian accent rounded out with matronly care. The words had chased him, Armand already tugging him along on their great quest.

As she had said, the Renaissance collection stood to the left of the endless stroll, nestled into the furthest corner of the first floor. He cannot fault the layout. The collection is worth the wait. His steps echo across the parquet flooring, shadow looming across the pale marble figure that stands guard over the paintings lining the wall. Harsh shadows and demure womanhood paint a fine enough contrast to soothe his aches. Snippets of frescos hang liberated above his head. He thinks, it is a pity Armand did not follow. Whether he feels at home or not doesn’t much matter. The exhibit is a feast for the senses, the kind that Armand’s breed so adores.

The boy ancient has a wall to himself, just as promised, his bare ass peeking out from between a silk-draped divan and the vibrant fur of some golden beast. The modern Narcissus stares spellbound into the mirror set before him, reflecting features that have remained unchanged in the long centuries since. Marius was -- is? -- a master of his craft, and the appearance is so accurate as to set the human desperate to touch the canvas, as if there will be flesh against his touch rather than pigment.

He is in love with himself, Daniel decides, studying the awed expression that stares back from the mirror. Scoffing, he digs his fists into the pockets of his jeans, fleeing the rooms in totality. There is nothing left in the display to compare, and besides, their twenty minutes is almost up. If Armand is to discover this portrait of his unending youth, then he must be led swiftly to it. He is not, in fact, catching up. Abandoning the Renaissance without a glance towards the neighboring Gothic and Neoclassical rooms, Daniel tells himself that he must still be a little drunk, that the effigies seem too lifelike through the door out to the sculpture garden.

He has grown too accustomed to marble flesh and unsettling gazes. Yes, the statues appear alive to him now, but never in the way that Louis has described. His nails form perfect half-moons around his palms.

Armand’s stillness is so complete that, for the briefest moment, Daniel mistakes him for part of the collection. The redhead has not made it past the first room, stagnant in appraisal of a piece. It’s not like him. The terrible, unmoving moment seems wrong to tread upon, wronger still to permit. Rocking to and fro on his feet, the mortal casts a glance about the collection, looking at the pastel displays of nature and portraiture. Among this ephemeral flood, what can there be to possess his companion so? Slowly, cautiously, he approaches the other. How long has it been since I’ve hesitated with him?

Her dress is carmine, her hair a dark coil of curls braided around the crown of her head. The otherwise pleasant expression stares defiant out towards her audience, night-black eyes fierce despite the distance. Settling beside Armand, he recognizes the style immediately. The former stands there a long, long while, studying her features, his own brushwork. Daniel comes to settle beside him, feeling ceaselessly awkward for intruding. The apparent youth is no longer Narcissus staring into his own abyss. This face is a stranger.

Unnamed Mulatto, the little gold placard reads.

“Who was she?” Daniel whispers.

“They were the last human I fell in love with,” comes the confession, comes the breath catching in Daniel’s throat. He studies her, then the chain of gold around her neck, clutches the locket against his shirt.

“She’s beautiful,” he says, because what else is he meant to say? This dark woman, frightfully made, defiant even in facsimile, gives him little else to go on. There is something discordant in that face which makes him a liar, her soft smile at odds with her sharp stare.

“You should have seen them swordfight.”

“I didn’t think women could do that back then.”

And he's already thinking, what in me will you admire after I am gone? He studies those dark eyes, which seem so lifeless to him, a dark abyss in a sea of white, a grave come to swallow him. She is dead. He knows that as surely as his own name.

“They weren't a woman. But at the same time they were.”

Daniel doesn't understand it. He can't, in the parlance of the era, except that she -- they -- are singular in Armand's eyes. Or perhaps they make a matching set, he and this lost muse. Her warm oval face, offset by the chill of his realizations, seems unfathomably more abhorrent in the ensuing silence. Her mortality is his. It sours in his pit.

He doesn’t recognize Armand’s absence, his searching around for something sharp enough that he could rectify some flaw in the presentation. All Daniel registers is the horrific scraping as the vampire scratches their name into the placard: Claudia di Montoya. The spell breaks. Autumn 1982 rushes back into focus. Inhaling, Daniel discovers that the room is suddenly too hot for him. Sliding out of his jacket, he forces a new purpose into the air.

“Right. So. we have less than ten minutes, if that, before security picks us up, and I have to show you where I finally found your ass in this gallery--”

Bloodless fingers trace the new marks carved into gold, lingering over the syllables of Claudia, brown eyes boring into their own. The hand drops, and Armand drags himself up from the depths of memory. “Alright, Daniel. Lead the way.”

He knows that he must have done so, that they stand studying the canvas depicting a then human boy. He knows that Armand does not react with his commonplace amusement, his rundown of the events leading up to the pieces creation. This is not like Naples, or Prague, or Ontario, where they have found similar depictions of his life as a muse. The most the immortal offers is a slow smile, a hushed “There it is,” and Daniel understands very well what the difference is between Naples, Prague, Ontario, and Leon.

Why are they always named Claudia?

The question hounds him on their escape, down the city streets, into the bar where Daniel carves out a small meal of hot tapas. The two of them remain quiet among the ebb and flow of locals seeking a snack between dinner, and it’s so unlike Armand. It’s unlike Daniel, too, to go without his customary drink. Armand has dragged him around the world so he could be a part of it, but he sits consumed, contemplative. In this walled world of smoke and voices, a dozen languages flowing like wine, Daniel imagines the other a world way. In his own mind, the vampire must still be in another room, far from Venice, long before this bar. She dances up to him, crimson swirling around her ankles as the band plays a waltz through a gilded palace. She’s staring his keeper down like a shark, that awkward smile a threat, and like any proper storybook villainess, she devours her target whole. Skin, blood, curls, and lace, Armand is engulfed into her, a wooden puppet fed into flames. Daniel holds his glass all the tighter.

That pensive mood fails to pass as they leave. There are no further stops along their walk to whatever passes for home, the rented room in a crumbling piece of ancient architecture. Daniel decides that he is tired of history, though he turns his question over until it is worn smooth.

It is the sole question he can tolerate. It is the only one without a clear or meaningful answer, and if he dares to branch out from it, he’ll be heading straight for bedlam. The overlap of names can mean nothing but coincidence. The golden chain, the choice of words, the melancholy that has settled inside of his jailer, these things carry far greater meaning. Thoughts, and his desperate attempts to block them, consume him so deeply that he hardly notices Armand slipping away when the moon is at his highest. In his absence, Daniel finds little to do but lean against the worn metal lining the balcony and smoke.

Armand returns, but not alone. Like an alchemist, he has gathered his tools, ready to perform some magic on the task he has chosen. He places the late beloved upon the desk with such care, the rags and chemicals he has brought along burning at mortal senses. His paints and brushes are at the ready, and Daniel feels fire build in his chest. Uncaring, the other begins his careful undertaking, hardly needing light to go about his restoration.

Daniel hates it, actually. Hates this memento mori lurking under this rented roof, hates that this is all he will be one day. In another hundred years, will Armand point at some ash-haired man in a gallery and say to someone else 'That was Daniel, I loved him very much, he was a fool, but he was beautiful when he was in his right mind' ? His latest cigarette burns too close to his fingers. He drops it, careless, to the streets below, staring at the tiny, irritated mark it has left behind. Nothing is said, but the night grows cold, and his tactical retreat is pyrrhic. There is warmth within, yes, but also the ghost Armand chooses to set between them.

Shutting the door to the world outside, the pair become locked into that harsh company, the spectral Claudia with her hands around her lover’s throat.

Slumping into what passes for his chair, the human passes the next hour in silence, so pointedly ignoring the work that it consumes his every thought. Dexterous digits dance along the desk, seeking oils, seeking brushes, seeking that which will return his dead beloved to him. Daniel’s own hands twitch uselessly against the arms of his seat. Here, he is powerless, less than a thought, less than a long-dead stranger. The silence is broken at last by the devil himself.

“They never believed me, about any of it. I told them everything, Vampires, my past, and Claude always thought I was lying through my teeth. Even faced with proof, they blamed my theatricality and my staff’s skill with stagecraft. It never broke them, the truth, not like others.” Fondness colors his voice in spite of it. For every way in which this person might spite him, his voice is heavy with reverence.

Daniel must ask, in that soft, hesitant voice, “Is that why you never turned them?”

“No.” Armand does not pause as he speaks, a slip of a brush still swirling against the canvas. “They had a life. They loved someone else, their princess, named Haydee. They had children eventually. They had a human life, and I wouldn't take them away from that.”

How gracious, then, for the bloodsucker to show restraint with those that desired it. He’d never done a damn thing for those that actually want anything from him, after all. “Good for them,” Daniel says, and he reaches for his cigarettes, lights one. Standing, he resigns himself to the curiosity that colors his distaste, clears the distance between them to study Armand's undertaking so far. There's so much yellow paint. and he thinks, I am here, and I love you, only you. What does a human life have to offer me? But he simply exhales, silent, as smoke hangs in the air between them.

If he loves himself in death as he did in humanity, then Daniel need only reflect the vampire as clearly and coolly as Marius�� mirror. If he loved another and let them go, then there are no assurances between them, no safety net to catch Daniel as he struggles towards death or immortality. The architect of his salvation could choose to damn him instead, wholly untouched by his plight. He imagines the pitiless creature before him pristine as the white button up clinging to his form, absent of any trace of paint. The palette of Daniel’s desire for him, for everything he is, might never reach him.

Armand must feel the emotions rolling off him, but he ignores it in favor of continuing to fix the painting. The restorers cannot have ruined the original too deeply for as quickly as he rights their wrongs. The whole of his focus narrows to knifepoint over the abyss that had so captured his companion, which remain defiant in the dim of their quarters. Daniel watches her stare blaze to life under Armand's steady hands, gilded and bright. People have always spoken of his own eyes, like violets. Is this what the other likes best, the fire in eyes that give the rest of the world pause?

Once the golden irises are right, the master artist goes to refining the rest. The changes are small, but somehow urgent. Armand moves furiously to make the portrait as it should be, as it was originally. The barest twitch of his fingers transforms the image into something greater. Red curls slip free of the scrunchie that bunches his hair to a low bun against his spine, turning the vampire to a mess as he keeps at his artistic endeavors.

His lover might have kissed that pallid neck and drawn him from his efforts, were Daniel any more forgiving of this intruder and how Armand forces her into their life.

“She's not smiling anymore,” Daniel notes at last, when the change is finalized. Her face pulls into harmony as her mouth turns to a hard line. “Was that her mood then, or yours now?”

There’s age in the way he sighs, true age. For a moment, Daniel imagines himself catching a glimpse of what Armand should have been, had the chance to grow and dedicate himself to his first talents. Hunched over his workspace, world narrowing to his subject alone, the youth becomes a master. Daniel hates this, too, this thought that would mean his master’s death, nothing other than a historical footnote. He deserves more than that. He deserves more than this momentary obsession that tears at whatever trust the two have rebuilt in the months since Daniel’s return.

“They're not smiling because someone dared to touch their portrait that was not my hands. It's what they would want.”

Those hands dance smoothly across the stolen art, ensuring his vision return to the world. He must not want this ancient Lenore to return from her sepulchre to damn him for the mistakes of other artisans. Dead is dead, the mortal knows, and they are owed nothing. When had Armand last spared a thought for this loved and lost before the museum so rudely reminded him of her existence? She doesn’t belong here, this poorly lit room with yellowed wallpaper, because it is theirs, and she is worth far more than the entire building.

“Mm,” Daniel hums, and doesn't have much else to say. In spite of his mood, there is something riveting in this, actually, watching the master at work. He had been born far too late for the Palazzo, for the golden days when the boy in front of him assisted in his Master’s artistic pursuits. He’s only ever been left with the aftermath of that golden age, the pieces scattered across museum displays and private collections the world over. This should be a great gift, watching his lover keep at his ancient craft. But he's still so bitter about the shape his night has taken.

“What pendant is she wearing?” he asks, once he is properly braced for the possibility that the locket around his neck belongs to a cycle. He had once thought it was his own, a gift passed between lovers that said whatever else his keeper was, he was protective of what counted as his.

The other offers a comfortingly familiar shrug that sets his shoulders colliding with his ears, saying simply, “Some pendant. I don’t know. Perhaps a piece Haydee gave them.”

Daniel relaxes. Comforted, he steps away from their shared obsession, slumps into his chair, snuffs out his cigarette on its upholstered arm and flicks it towards a pile of books. Dragging a hand through his hair, he concedes there exist small mercies in Armand's presence.

He does not know what time passes in the euphoria of that small victory. He keeps time in the fact that it has been long enough for him to get lost in his thoughts, for the night to grow ever smaller. Whether it is minutes or hours later, Armand finishes his first phase of restoration and throws himself into Daniel’s orbit. The former’s body fits perfectly against his, straddling him, pushing him backwards with insistent hands as kisses the warmth from Daniel’s lips.

“You and Claude are not the same. For one, you love me back. For two, they are long dead. I loved them once, but that love is in the past. I only wish to honor them now by making sure their portrait is in hands that will care for it properly. I'll send it off to the Montoya estate in Sardinia once it's finished being restored.”

The mortal lays there, dispassionate, as he listens to these assertions. and what can he possibly say to that? God, his lover thinks he's jealous. If he compares himself to this fallen woman, it isn't in self-pity -- it is to outdo her, to look at where she failed and he might yet succeed. But he allows Armand to kiss him, kiss his lips cold as marble, and says nothing of how he refuses to be another portrait to be repaired. His mind is made. All that’s left is to make a plan of it.

Armand keeps up the kissing, down to his neck, to play at biting only to merely drag his teeth along pale skin. His hand reaching down to rub Daniel through his pants, falling into a pattern so familiar that it would be boring were it any less fulfilling. He recognizes what Armand thinks, mind gift or no. Perhaps sex will get his mind off of all this.

He lets Armand believe that it will. Lets himself give in, already deciding to make his stand, yet another escape. Tomorrow, perhaps, when the sun is up. Perhaps taking the unfortunate girl with him. It will be cruel, beyond any attempt he’s made in the past, to deprive the vampire of his companionship and a newfound project. It must be done, however, to speak what cannot be conveyed properly in words. There will be a statement in this even if he does fall again, consumed by the need for Armand, for his slender arms and white-hot blood.

He won't be content to be art.

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