Cutting Armand’s hair every night isn’t something new. He does it on his own sometimes, and he accommodates Daniel’s giddy, childish curiosity about it on those nights, too. It starts just with scissors, and then Daniel teaches him about electric clippers, and then it turns into crewcuts and flattops and elaborate patterns carved in. Daniel sometimes touches the tufts of hair that land in the sink and on the floor, and he rolls the strands between his fingers in rapt fascination.
“It doesn’t… feel like real hair,” he says one night. Mohawk tonight, and Armand runs a hand down his shorn scalp, just above the sideburn left behind, and even on a vampire it feels soft like peach fuzz. Daniel pulls a long lock from the sink and wraps it tight around his knuckle until his fingertip turns white.
“What do you mean, Daniel?”
“I don’t know, it feels…” unnatural. “Different.”
He shrugs and drops it, then touches the shaved side of Armand’s head, as well. He scratches behind Armand’s ear and it elicits a head tilt and a smile and soft purr.
“Hey, Armand?”
His eyes are closed and his head is still tilted towards Daniel’s hand, nuzzling the warmth in his palm. “Mmm?”
“Can we try to dye it? Do you think it would take?”
They start with a strip test. Daniel runs out and buys the bleach during the day so that they can try immediately when Armand wakes up. At first it’s just a streak that comes up from his forehead and curls around his face. It takes longer than it should on regular hair, but they’re not worried about the damage it might cause, and Armand doesn’t seem to feel it burning where it’s too low against his scalp. Hours later and it’s done and they can’t stop touching it. Daniel can’t stop combing his fingers through it and marveling at the way it twists in with the other curls. Armand keeps it for three nights before he cuts it off and starts again.
Then it’s his whole head one night, and it takes hours for the auburn to burn down to a pale yellow, almost white. Daniel inspects it every night, curious to know if the Dark Gift will restore the stripped cells and pleased to learn that it does not. The hair still feels unnatural but doesn’t feel damaged the way human hair would. Several times, he catches Armand frozen in place, staring at himself in the mirror with his knuckles against his mouth, and it’s an expression he doesn’t know how to read.
“Can I straighten it?” he asks one night, and It takes hours and way too much hair spray because the curls keep creeping back into place, and eventually Daniel settles for snapping a quick Polaroid before they all pop back in, so that he can have this one memento of the ten minutes Armand had straight blonde hair. They try it again a few nights later with Aqua Net in an aerosol can and wind up with some approximation of Siousxie hair, and even though Daniel thinks it looks cute, Armand mumbles something about being too flammable and washes it out as soon as he can.
And finally there’s the trip to Manic Panic on St. Marks, and the cat hisses at them when they come in, and Armand stares at it coldly as his skin gleams in the ugly fluorescent light, and the girls behind the counter delight in advising them on all the best colors, and they’re nervous, they can feel something is off but can’t figure out what, but they’re still drawn to the danger, as seduced by it as Daniel is. He and Armand leave with one of every color.
Daniel tries a purple on himself, and his hair is light enough that it takes without bleach, and he’s stained the tops of his ears and the corner of his forehead. Armand goes with a dark green. The excess never permeates his skin, because nothing really ever does, and afterward Daniel can’t stop staring at the way it lights up the amber color of his eyes.
But Daniel’s fades after a few washes, and he stares at the way the color tints the shampoo bubbles, and the way it rinses and drips through his fingers. Stark and vivid against the white porcelain tub. And he sees the way it dissolves, night after night, from something lively and exciting to something dull, while Armand’s stays as bright and vital as ever.
And when he’s tired of it, Armand shaves his hair off so that it’ll grow back normal. And Daniel’s remains a fucking mess.
Armand could feel the extra energy as he came through the carriageway into the back garden. Not completely sure what it was, only that he could sense them moving in the flat, and there was something sweet and playful and innocent infused in it, thrumming beneath the presence itself. Lestat was home, he could feel that as well, and Louis. Their energies were different from each other, each palpable and distinct. Lestat felt bold and loud and vivid, Louis soft and sweet and comforting. Lestat was a popping champagne bottle, the splatter of paint on a Pollock canvas, a firework in the night sky. Louis was a gentle hand on your back, reassuring whisper in your ear, the slow and seductive pull of dawn.
I’m here, he told them as he ascended the stairs. He wondered if he should let himself inside, or knock, but instead put his hands in his pockets and waited.
But then Lestat’s face was in the window, his eyes glittery and excited, skin darkened by the recent trip to the sun. The door opened on its own, Lestat’s doing, and it was instantly obvious that he’d chosen to use his mind because his hands were full.
Before he could speak, Lestat extended one arm out, in his hand a single German Shepherd puppy. Three others wiggled against his chest and he cooed in French at them. “Here,” he said, and thrust the one into Armand’s chest. Armand grabbed it instinctively, somewhat bewildered but immediately charmed by the warmth and purity radiating from the creature. “I named this one Armand.”
The spike of anger and reflexive venomous response that usually came out in these moments were quelled by the gentle life in his hands, and he looked away from Lestat to stare at it. It was kicking its legs and squirming but he gave it a little scratch behind its ear to calm it down. It stopped moving and looked at him, eyes so shiny and black, and responded by licking his face. Armand ducked his head so that Lestat wouldn’t see his smile.
“Come inside, I want to close the door. Don’t let them out,” Lestat said, and backed away to make space.
He saw Louis then, when he cleared the doorway, still snuggling his namesake to his chest. Sitting cross-legged on the velvet couch, Mojo curled up beside him, a solid black puppy in his hands. He was scratching its ears and smiling at it and…
Strange ache in his chest, because he’d never seen that look on Louis’s face before.
“Where did all these puppies come from?” he asked. Louis looked up at him as if waking from a trance, like he’d been too absorbed to even notice Armand had arrived.
“Turns out Mojo is a lady,” Lestat said. He plopped down on the floor in the center of the room and took turns giving each puppy pats on their heads. They climbed on his legs and chewed on his shirt.
He held his puppy away from his face to inspect it again. It tilted its head at him and whined, and… strange ache again as he realized how unusual it was, and how he was straining to remember last time he’d held an animal this close. At home, in Kiev. They could never keep pets in Venice. He felt cold all over for a moment before pulling it to his chest again, feeling its warm little body settling against him and hearing the fluttery little heartbeat.
“What are you going to do with them?”
Lestat shrugged and picked one up, rubbing his face against its chubby, furry belly.
“Why don’t you give one to Daniel? Maybe you can win him back.”
Oh, what a title to bear!? But I made a thing for you, anon.
Here’s the pretty scene what took a place in Palais Royal (from The Vampire Lestat, part V: The Vampire Armand), first thing what came up to my mind since I couldn’t think about anything original.
I love those two idiots.
I had tears in my eyes when I reread that part after a long time oh my god
“Had thrown over custom and
respectability and any hope of court ambitions, of which he had none anyway since he
couldn’t even read or write, and was too insulting to wait on any King or Queen, who
became a wild blond-haired celebrity of the boulevard gutter theatricals, a lover of
men and women, a laughing happy-go-lucky blindly ambitious self-loving genius of
sorts.”
“[Louis’] cocky insolent maker”
“Comprising everything you could ever possibly want to know about him
and some of us.”
“The most bold and disregarding dusty vagabond
on occasion, loner, wanderer, heart-breaker and wise guy, dubbed the “Brat Prince”
by my old Master-yes, imagine it, my Marius, yes, my Marius, who did indeed
survive the torches of the Roman Coven-dubbed by Marius the “Brat Prince,” though
in whose Court and by whose Divine Right and whose Royal Blood I should like to
know.”
“Almost destroyed the world.”
“Maddening and fascinating and intolerably annoying,”
“So much for him.”
Louis
“He remained with me because he had to do it. It was the only way that he could go on
existing, and for death he has never had the courage, and never will.”
“Very human,
weak, having lived only two hundred years, unable to read minds, or to levitate, or to
spellbind others except inadvertently, which can be hilarious, an immortal with whom
mortals fall in love.”
“Easy to
track and easy to abandon,”
“Will not make others after his tragic blunders
with vampiric children,”
“Dusty Louis”
Claudia
“Who among us is going to let me be silent on the
matter of Claudia, the child vampire whom I am accused for all time by all of having
destroyed?”
“I never loved her. I didn’t know how.”
Daniel
“Sometimes an intolerable nuisance,”
“Equipped with my powerful blood, he can contend with
any who should be foolish enough to interrupt his plans for an evening, a month or a
year, but he cannot contend with my continuous company, and I cannot contend with
his.”
Gabrielle
“Gabrielle. She’s around now.”
“Everyone hates her.”
“Abandons [Lestat] for centuries, and somehow doesn’t
manage to heed Lestat’s periodic and inevitable frantic cries for help, which though
she could not receive them, being his fledgling, could certainly learn of them from
other vampiric minds which are on fire with the news round the world when Lestat is
in trouble.”
“A vampire so cunning and cold that she has forgotten what it ever meant
to be human or in pain. Indeed, I think she forgot overnight, if she ever knew it.”
“Something more akin
to a prehistoric reptile than a human.”
“Gabrielle, virtually useless to anyone but herself. Some night
she’ll say something to someone, I suppose.”
Pandora
“I don’t know her.”
“Seems
too beautiful to hurt anyone.”
“She seems harmless.”
Santino
“Silent and without apology for the credos
he had stuffed down my throat in the year 1500 before I was sent north to Paris.”
“He says nothing to anyone.”
“He looks at me silently
as if we never talked together of theology and mysticism, as if he never broke my
happiness, burnt my youth to cinders, drove my Maker into century-long
convalescence, divided me from all comfort.”
“At times he looks shrewd and even hateful.”
“Where he actually lives, and when he will surface,
nobody knows.”
“We keep a gentlemanly distance from
one another.”
Marius
“It is like a glacier between us,”
“Neither microscopes nor
computers shake his faith in the infinite, though his once solemn charges-Those Who
Must Be Kept, who held such promise of redemptive meaning-have long been toppled
from their archaic thrones.”
“Enough of him.”
David
“Assaulted by
your closest of friends, the loving monster, the vampire who would have you as his
fellow traveler in eternity whether or not you gave him leave,”
“You dress with high
vanity”
“You look at me as though your
curiosity will put me off guard, when nothing of the sort is true.”
“Hurt me and I’ll destroy you. I don’t care how strong you are, or what blood Lestat
gave you. I know more than you do.”
“Because I show you my pain, I do not of
necessity love you.”
TLDR: What Armand thinks of everyone
Lestat: Dumb asshole that nearly killed everyone.
Louis: Weak and can’t do anything, bless his heart.
Claudia: No one will shut up about how I killed Claudia. Yeah, I mutilated her, but she needed to go.
Daniel: I can’t stand him anymore.
Gabrielle: Useless cold-hearted reptile bitch that everyone hates.
Pandora: Seems pretty chill and harmless?
Santino: Destroyed my entire life and acts as if nothing ever happened. Rude.
Marius: Acts so perfect, actually isn’t.
David: I will not hesitate to fucking annihilate you cause you’re nothing compared to me.
Now tell me Armand isn’t the saltiest vampire out of the coven….
Lost Photographs from Daniel’s Missing Luggage, or,
Glimpses of an Unlife
I’m taking stupid photos at SFO when all the televisions flash red for breaking news. Jeez, I think, another bombing or political scandal. We’re being warned about graphic footage. Huh. New York’s getting two more inches of snow. Well, that sucks.
I must be dreaming, because his face—that’s Armand’s face on the screen!
This is wrong.
The footage is shaky and I can feel the panic threading its way through my body as I watch, helpless, when he screams something at the plaza. Even though I don’t know what’s going on, I know it’s him. It’s the way his hair curls when there’s snow on it, and it’s when—it’s wh—
New York’s getting two more inches of snow and, and they won’t—everyone is staring at me. Everyone, and they—it’s just two more inches of snow in New York. Have I fucked up? Did someone see my fangs—New York’s getting two more inches of snow and the footage keeps looping. I’m being yanked backwards and someone’s shoved me onto my knees and the floor slams into my jaw and suddenly I hear screaming.
It’s me. I’m screaming. Daniel Molloy is now screaming at Gate 7. Daniel Molloy is now screaming at Gate 7. They’re cuffing me and I can’t—
“FUCKING—TURN IT OFF!” I scream at them in ugly, gulping sobs, and someone gags me with a leather strap and one of them figures it out and tries to call on his walkie talkie but they won’t turn me away I can’t look away that’s not what he’s supposed to look like he doesn’t like the cold but now he’s burning.
I-want-my-IWTV 