#sorry a tree fell on my house and i got covid 😂

[monstersinthecosmos]

Vamptember Day 18 - Lost in Translation

{the veils - vicious traditions}

Who did this to you? Daniel thinks.

He doesn’t ask, though. Armand never answers, and Daniel’s not in the mood to argue about it. The ripple of hurt crosses his face though, the moment Daniel thinks it. Daniel’s nerves are too worn down to feel bad about it.

Another hour or so before sunrise, and Daniel thinks he might leave as soon as Armand does. He chews at his cuticle and stares hard at the newspaper, reading each line backwards and forwards, trying to make it take up space in his head to mask his thoughts. Armand rolls his eyes and goes to flop on the couch at the other side of the room, staring idly at the movie that’s been playing on the TV this whole time in the background. 

He counts the lines on the news page, then counts all the times he sees the letter S. Every time he sees a number, he stops and adds it together. Fills his head with useless noise so that Armand will stop spying.

Maybe it works, or maybe it doesn’t. Too hard to tell, except that he’s in Phoenix by the afternoon, and Armand doesn’t follow. Daniel never knows if he really slipped from the grasp, or if Armand is just mad at him, anyway. Maybe Armand doesn’t want to come after him this time.

Still, he finds himself looking around the hotel room, as the sun goes down. Unsure if he’ll even be able to feel Armand out there, anyway, but checking for him all the same. Nothing, though, and the pull of the evening darkness has him feeling sleepy. He forgets, sometimes, how nice it is to sleep at night. How badly his body misses it.

He unzips his duffle bag, thrown onto the corner table. Digs under the layer of clothes to the little photo album—stupid tourist merch he’d grabbed in Vegas—and checks the window again before settling onto the bed with it. He’s been tucking their Polaroids in here for safe keeping. In no order, so that he opens on a photo of himself lighting a cigarette, but the next photo is their hotel suite from three months earlier, and then a few of Central Park in the daytime. Specific things that Daniel had been tasked to go photograph, though he never really understood what Armand wanted to see.

But Armand had stared at the photos for hours. One of them was of an overflowing garbage can, another of a rusting bike rack. A blurry photo of a jogger. A pigeon, beside a puddle with a rainbow-streak of oil floating at the surface. Armand had laid all the photos from that day around him in a semi-circle on their bed, and hadn’t spoken for the rest of the night.

He turns the page to a photo of Armand, and checks the corners of the room, tries to feel if he can sense Armand nearby, digging in his head. He slips the photo from the plastic sleeve and tilts it towards the lamp light, the glossy shine bringing Armand’s skin to life. 

Who did this to you? he wonders again, with privacy this time. He stares at the photo, studying each line of his face, trying to imagine him alive.

Daniel can’t even tell how old he was. 

His age is such an illusion. The danger around him carries a weight. Daniel doesn’t find him particularly boyish most of the time because of it. It’s like there’s a force he throws around himself, demanding that no one notices. But sometimes, away from him, sober and safe, Daniel’s surprised he doesn’t see it more often.

It’s his cheeks, Daniel thinks. He traces the curve of Armand’s face in the photos. And sometimes it’s the pathetic way you can hurt his feelings—how it shows, right in his huge dark eyes. And the way he laughs, when he really means it. Daniel always thinks he can see through the veil in those moments. It’s Armand at his most human.

More and more, he thinks the version in Louis’s interview was a lie. And he can imagine Armand lying about it as easily as he can imagine Louis protecting him. 

The same way Louis didn’t quite say it, did he? Didn’t really explain it. Not really. Probably too used to being around child-vampires to even find it remarkable. Probably too inhuman to think it even mattered.

Sometimes Daniel doesn’t know why it even matters, except that it bothers him more, and more, as the time rots away. And he finds himself staring sometimes, like he had last night. Wondering too loud, maybe, until Armand gets offended. Still, he never answers the questions about it. 

Daniel remembers the interview often, even these years later. He still combs over it sometimes, as if reading it one more time will reveal some clue that he never noticed before. 

He’d stopped at a bookstore near the hotel this afternoon, wandering around for the fresh air and uncomfortable sunlight. His book had been tucked away in the horror section, between all the cheesy paperbacks about ghosts and monsters. Of course, Molloy, all those other books are cheesy. Not yours. How special of you to share nonfiction. 

Interview with the Vampire contained ghosts and monsters, too, though, didn’t it? Whatever. Daniel rolled his eyes and checked up and down the aisle in the little store, before flipping to the chapters about Armand, knowing exactly which part was being so pesky in the bottom of his skull. Another peek for witnesses, and a pathetic fake cough to cover the noise as he tore the page out and stuffed it in his pocket.

Stupidly hit with guilt a moment later, though, as the book was half-slipped back into its little slot. His mom used to yell at him for dog-earring his library books. Told him how inconsiderate it was to all the other readers. He wondered, for just a second, if she’s doing okay. If she still reads as much as she used to. If she ever read Daniel’s book.

He shivered and grabbed the book again, blushing as he pushed the thoughts away and unable to meet the cashier’s gaze as he paid for it. He kept his hand on the crumpled loose page in his pocket as he walked back towards his hotel, feeling it grow soft and damp in his sweating palm, and threw the book out in a trash can a block away.

So now.

He pulls the page back out. Runs his hand over it a few time, flattening it against his thigh, the letters blurring before he remembers to actually focus. He knows it by heart, really, but he wants to see. Really see, as if he’ll notice something different this time.

"`No,' he said. There was a brief smile on his lips, an evanescent flush of pleasure.” 

The mental image has warped over the years, as Daniel became more and more familiar with him. He holds the paper next to the album page, then flips to the next group of photos. He wishes he had one of Armand smiling. 

He knows, on the inside, that he’s seen Armand smile. He can imagine Armand’s laugh, the way his face scrunches. But hard to know what an evanescent flush of pleasure looks like. Hard to know how different he must have seemed to Louis, one of his own kind. And Daniel spends enough time trying to imagine Armand as a human, but what had he looked like a century ago?

In that dark tower, maybe his hair tousled by the bad weather. Lit by the fireplace as he pulled Louis to his orbit. He imagines the old clothes on his unchanged figure, playing dress-up through time. His same face, too youthful, even back then. The same eyes, and Daniel imagines the way they might glow gold from the fire, the way they shine like a cat sometimes. 

“ `But you feel an obligation to a world you love because that world for you is still intact. It is conceivable your own sensitivity might become the instrument of madness.’ “

And when had he stopped reading all of it in Louis’s voice? He even used to imagine the distortion of the tapes, from listening to them over and over. Could hear the squeak of the tape deck infused over the words. He hears Armand’s voice in his head now, though. Hears his strange accent. Imagines the crackling of the fire wound through it, maybe the wind at the open window, or rain on the roof.

“ `There was love between you and the vampire who made you?' I leaned forward.

" `Yes,' he said. `A love so strong he couldn't allow me to grow old and die.’ “

There’s no secret revelation here. No paragraph that he’s been skipping this whole time. No word that blended in, unnoticed. 

The same details as always. Fifteenth Century Venice. A maker who loved him. 

Daniel peels one of the Polaroids out—himself, this time. He doesn’t love this picture but Armand doesn’t like when he throws them away. Maybe Armand kept the better ones—Daniel wonders if he keeps them pinned to his coffin lid, the way real people get buried these days.

But anyway.

They could’ve been mistaken for peers when this all started. The Daniel in the photo is different, though. Worn out by now. It’s been a hard few years. Even when it’s good, it’s hard. The drinking can’t be healthy. He wears it in his face, doesn’t he?

And he’d found his first gray hair last month. During the day, thank christ. No vampires around to hear him freak out as he plucked it. And there’s circles under his eyes more often that not, these days. And the frustrated crease in his brow doesn’t disappear the way it used to.

He flips the paper over, nauseated. Flattens his palm over it, pressing it to the top of his thigh. Doesn’t want to look at it anymore. Doesn’t want to wonder about Armand’s maker and if he’s still out there. How frightening he must be, even older than Armand is. Just thinking about it makes Daniel’s stomach churn. 

Maybe Armand would tell him more, if he actually planned to turn him. And maybe he’d even tell the truth. Not this weird saccharine bullshit he made up for Louis. What the fuck is an evanescent smile? This probably wasn’t even true. 

It’s strange, still, trying to picture Armand as a source of calm, the way he’d been for Louis. And what about to his maker, as some fragile little human?

He grabs his cigarettes from the nightstand and turns the page in the album. The top picture was from a house party they’d crashed a few months back. Someone else had taken it of them, had grabbed the camera off the coffee table without knowing who it belonged to. 

Daniel was mid-smoke, and had looked up at the camera at the last second. He’s got his elbows on his knees, and his eyes are half-shut, and the smoke clouding from his mouth catches in the camera flash to obscure half of his face. Looks like shit and annoyed to be there, but Daniel remembers having fun that night.

And Armand beside him, sitting on some guy’s lap, talking quietly by his ear. The oldest guy at the party—someone’s creepy boyfriend, or maybe an intruding older brother, or maybe just the drug dealer. Daniel doesn’t remember. But he’s tall, broad in the chest, so that his shirt stretches tight on hm. 

Armand glows orange for a moment as Daniel lights his cigarette. Not quite a fireplace in an old tower, but. The man in the photo is grinning, as if he thinks Armand is cute, as if he’s said something funny, and his hand is unsubtly curled around Armand’s inner thigh.

“Get over it,” Daniel mumbles out loud. He holds the first hit of smoke inside until it hurts, and slams the book closed as he exhales.

The page flutters from where he’d flattened it against his leg, so gentle as it lands on the bedspread. Face down, but Daniel is stupid, because there’s words on both fucking sides, anyway.

You see these powers as a gift! 

Not like he doesn’t know the conversation by heart, anyway, but he doesn’t need it flashing in his face like this.

If I knew a mortal of that sensitivity, that pain, that focus, I would make him a vampire in an instant. 

“Get over it,” he says, again. Louder, as if that helps. 

 Do you see how ruthless I am in love? 

Is this what you meant by love?