in hell the units are the gallon and the fuck | CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pairing: Armand/Daniel Molloy
Rating: E
Summary:
Survival is an artform.
Armand has been an unwilling student, an eager acolyte, a master of the craft.
The things he feels can be broken down into component parts. Can be simplified into anatomic essentials, the series of processes required to make him something that functionally resembles the likeness of man. Sensation without thought. Water-damp brushstrokes dragging across a canvas with no paint. No color. No light.
Leaving Dubai was an act of necessity, arriving anywhere else an act of apathy.
In which Daniel attempts to make sense of the past and Armand attempts to do whatever the opposite of that is.
You might like this fic if: you want an exploration of Armand's trauma that isn't concerned with retelling the details but also won't be shying away from the impacts, you want Armand pov & Daniel pov, you like flashbacks, you read visions of the hereafter and kinda wondered what was going to happen next.
Excerpt below the cut:
He wakes to the sight of Armand kneeling on the floor, fiddling with the knob on a television that must have materialized at some point while he was asleep. Judging by the sun streaming in through the windows, it’s well into morning.
There’s no reason for how uniquely disconcerting it is to see Armand doing something as mundane and human as adjusting the a television set. Nearly everything Daniel sees him do is, by technicality, mundane and human. It’s just that the idea of a monster watching TV is wildly more entertaining than the idea of a monster going to the cinema or watching a shitty rock concert at the bar.
Armand is bound to know he’s awake, but he doesn’t say anything, just fidgets with the antenna until static begins to solidify into an image.
“I know it makes no difference to you, but we definitely talked about leaving the blinds shut during the day,” Daniel complains, throat rasping and parched. “I’m gonna die in here one day. You’ll come back to find me roasted and all my blood boiled away, and then you’ll be sorry.”
That does earn him a look from Armand. Darker than he was aiming for in response to a little standard morning griping. Daniel guesses he can’t fault Armand the occasional unexpected sore spot. That many years and Daniel is surprised sometimes that Armand can navigate the world at all.
It’s there and gone in a flash, replaced with a blatantly neutral expression.
“No? No apology?” Daniel barrels past the moment because he’s still half asleep and can’t figure out how to wade into it. Armand just blinks at him, expectant. “Right. What’s with the TV, then?”
Armand’s smile is better than the sunrise and just as likely to kill him at this point. Daniel is starting to wonder if he’ll disappear when this heatwave breaks, a mirage in an urban desert, a monster tucked between the brick cactuses where he can scavenge for small and stupid rodents.
The thought scares him. Not for the possibility that he’s losing his mind, or for the possibility that he’s the stupid rodent in question. Only for the possibility that he could be left much the way he was all those years ago—uncertain whether his memory has betrayed him, unable to erase the scars.
“You’re irritatingly maudlin this morning,” Armand says, smile replaced with curiosity as swiftly as it arrived, with no apparent intention to answer Daniel’s question.
“I just woke up,” Daniel protests. “Give me a minute to piss and drink a glass of water, then maybe you can get some enthusiasm.”
He regrets saying it because now he’s got to follow through. Get out of this bed, walk himself across the wooden floors, drink some lukewarm water from the tap. It’s a herculean effort that goes entirely unappreciated by Armand, who just returns his attention to the screen.
The bathroom tile is warm under his bare feet. The walls are warm. The drinking glass by the edge of the sink is warm.
He was reading the newspaper yesterday and they were recommending limiting toilet flushes and sharing bathwater. The fact that he didn’t consider taking the advice for even a moment is all the proof he will ever need that his ethics bend the moment it becomes inconvenient. Shitty, knowing he’s a bad person. Not quite as shitty as pissing into cloudy water, though, so.
He drenches his head under the tap so that for an hour or so he can feel damp and too hot rather than dry and too hot, brushes his teeth so his mouth tastes less like a body left in the desert, and figures that’s the best it’s gonna get for now.
When he emerges from the bathroom he’s not in a better mood, but he’s willing to let Armand convince him.
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