He spent lifetimes being what everyone else needed him to be. But here, in the dim light of a quiet kitchen, he is allowed to be nothing at all. — armand x reader 🍁
💌 : masterlist
playlist: fix you (coldplay) , holocene (bon iver) , like real people do (hozier) , motion sickness (pheobe bridgers) , mystery of love (sufjan stevens) , liability (lorde) , landslide (fleetwood mac) , moon song (pheobe bridgers) , ceilings (lizzy mcalpine) , blackbird (beatles) , saturn (sleeping at last) , turning page (sleeping at last) , touch (sleeping at last) , you're gonna go far (noah kahan) , willing and able (noah kahan) , nothing's gonna hurt you baby (cas) , rearrange my world (daniel caesar & rex orange county) , mirrorball (taylor swift) , archer (taylor swift) , new year's day (taylor swift)
A/N: hi!! this piece is a bit of a deep dive into the quiet parts of loving someone the parts that aren't loud or performative, but just existing :) it's messy and unpolished and a little bit raw, just like the characters. hope you find a little piece of yourself in it. love you guys!
The thing about Armand is that he is a cactus.
I have never said this to him and I probably never will, at least not on a night when I want things to remain peaceful, but it is the truest thing I know about him and I think about it sometimes when he is mid-sentence about something devastating and beautiful and I am nodding along while internally just — looking at him.
All spikes. Completely spiked up. And underneath all of that, underneath the centuries and the precision and the way he holds himself like something that has never once been caught off guard, there is something that wants so badly to be held that it makes my chest hurt a little if I think about it too long. I don't think about it too long. I just love him and move on, which is the only sane way to do it. The only survivable way, I mean.
Because loving Armand is not a small thing to do and I knew that going in and I did it anyway, with my whole eyes open, which says something about me that I am still in the process of figuring out.
He is sitting on the stool at my kitchen counter in his pajamas.
I want to note that. I want to hold that detail up to the light for a moment because I think it deserves it — Armand, who leads a coven, who has centuries of darkness living in him like a comfortable tenant, who can make a room go quiet just by existing in it more completely than everyone else in the room, is sitting on my secondhand counter stool in soft gray pajama pants and a loose shirt with his hair slightly undone and his feet in the fuzzy slippers I told him he could use and he accepted without comment, which I counted as a win and still count as a win every single time I look at them.
He looks so much like a person tonight. He looks like someone who has been here long enough that the kitchen has quietly rearranged itself around his presence, the way a room does when it has gotten used to someone, when it has decided to include them. Which mine has. Which I let it. Which I try not to think about too carefully because if I think about it too carefully I will have to admit things about myself that I am not quite ready to put into words yet and the soup will burn.
The kitchen light is the warm yellow kind, the bulb I replaced three times before I finally found the right one, and it does something generous to the room at this hour, makes everything look softer than it is, makes the mismatched mugs on the shelf look intentional and the herbs on the windowsill look tended and the whole small space look like somewhere someone is genuinely loved.
The window above the sink has fogged at the corners from the steam off the pot. Outside the city is doing what it does — just continuing, just going, indifferent and enormous, unbothered by the fact that something several centuries old is sitting in my kitchen in fuzzy slippers with his chin in his hand, watching me.
The pipes make their sounds. The basil on the windowsill is losing its ongoing battle with existence and I respect it enormously for continuing to try. The rosemary is fine. The rosemary has always been fine. Some things in this kitchen are simply fine and reliable and I find that comforting in a way I would not be able to explain.
I am making soup. It is late — later than most people I know would be awake, but then most people I know are not spending their evenings with someone for whom lateness is not a concept, for whom the hours after midnight are simply hours, no different in quality from any others.
He does not eat. I know this. He told me early on in that careful way he has of delivering facts about himself, even and unhurried, watching my face the whole time for the specific expression that means he has said too much, given too much, that I am going to need a moment and he is going to have to manage that. I never need a moment. I just nod and file it away and keep going, and I think — I think at some point he stopped bracing for the reaction, or at least he stopped doing it visibly, which with him amounts to the same thing.
The soup is technically for me. I made enough for two and I put his in the bigger bowl and I am not going to explain that to anyone including myself.
He is watching me move around my kitchen. He does this — settles somewhere and watches, with that particular quality of attention he has that I have never found the right word for, that complete and unhurried thing, like whatever he has decided to look at receives the full weight of something very old and very awake.
Like he is not just seeing but cataloguing, not just watching but keeping. I used to find it faintly overwhelming. I don't anymore, or rather I do but I have made a different kind of peace with it, the kind where you stop fighting the feeling and just let it be a fact about your life. He watches me. I let him. The kitchen is warm. It is fine. It is better than fine and that is as far as I'm taking that thought tonight.
"We didn't look at the back section properly," I tell him, stirring the bigger pot with one hand, gesturing at nothing in particular with the other. "That Sunday. We got completely derailed before we even got to the back."
"By the copper pots," he says. He already knows.
"You stood in front of them for eleven minutes. I know because I timed it on my phone and sent a voice note about it to no one."
A pause. The dry kind, the one that means he's faintly amused and has decided not to let it all the way through. "I was appreciating craftsmanship."
"You were communing with them. There is a meaningful difference and I think we both know which one was happening."
He says nothing, which is how he confirms things he finds unproductive to argue. I can see him in my peripheral vision, elbow on the counter, chin resting on his hand, watching me with that expression that lives somewhere in the vicinity of comfortable — not warm, exactly, not the kind of warm that announces itself, but the quiet settled version of it, the kind that doesn't need to be performed because it is simply true.
He has a small collection of comfortable expressions and I have catalogued every one of them over time, privately, in the part of me that pays attention to him the way you pay attention to something you want to keep understanding. I do not tell him about this catalogue. Some things are mine.
"Anyway," I say, reaching for the smaller ladle, checking the broth, deciding it needs another minute. "I want to go back. Properly this time, all the way to the back. Because there was a whole blender section we didn't get to." I glance at him over my shoulder.
"Because you said — when we were walking past, you mentioned that you find them fascinating. The mechanism of it or something. How something can be that simple and move that fast." I turn back to the pot.
"So I want to know which kind you'd want."
The kitchen goes quiet in that slightly different way, the way that means something has shifted in the quality of the air rather than just the sound. I turn back to the stove and start telling him what I looked up this week, the blade configurations and the motor grades and the base weight question, because I did look it up, because I found myself thinking about it on a Tuesday for no particular reason I was going to investigate and so I just — looked it up. Read about it. Now I know considerably more about blenders than the average person needs to know and I'm choosing to deploy that knowledge in this moment like it's normal, like it's nothing, because to me it is nothing. It is just a thing I did because he mentioned a thing once and I was listening and I wanted to know more. That is just how I am. I have made my peace with how I am.
I am midway through explaining torque when I notice the bigger pot starting to roll, the soup moving with that restless almost-boiling energy, and without thinking, without any conscious gap between noticing and doing, I reach over and pick up the wooden spoon and stir his bowl. Slow circles. Making sure nothing is sitting wrong at the bottom, making sure the heat is distributing the way it should, making sure it is right for him even though it cannot hurt him and he doesn't need it and the practical reason for doing it does not exist.
He cannot be burned. He told me. I know.
My hand moved anyway. My hand moved because the soup was boiling and he was there and that is the only explanation I have, that is the entirety of it, and I set the spoon back down and keep talking about torque like nothing happened.
I don't notice I've gone quiet until I look up.
He is looking at his bowl.
Not at me. Not at the window or his hands or the middle distance he sometimes looks at when he is thinking something he hasn't decided to share yet. At the bowl. At the exact place where the spoon moved through it.
And his face — his face is doing something I have only seen it do a handful of times in all the months I have known him, something that happens when his management of himself slips for just a moment, when something gets through the careful architecture of his expression before he can redirect it. His jaw has gone very slightly loose.
The set of him, that particular composed gravity he carries like a coat he was born in, has softened at the edges in a way that makes him look — not young, exactly. Not inexperienced. Something else. Something that does not have a clean word but lives in the neighborhood of unheld. Like something receiving a warmth it has no existing framework for and is trying, very quietly, not to show that it doesn't know what to do with it.
I look away. I look back at the stove and I continue talking about blenders and I give him the privacy of not being watched having it, because some things a person needs to have alone even when they are having them in your kitchen, and I have learned that about him slowly and specifically, the places where the pressure needs to come off, and I just take it off. Without announcing it. Without making it a thing he has to respond to. I just turn back to the stove and let him have the moment and keep talking, and that is also a form of consideration, I think. The kind that doesn't ask to be seen.
"The base weight," I say, and my voice comes out even, "is really the main thing. You want it heavy enough that it doesn't move across the counter when you run it at full speed."
A long beat. Two. Three.
"You looked this up," he says.
It is not an accusation. It is not quite a question. It is something that lives between those two things, something careful and slow, something that is trying to figure out what it is holding and whether it is allowed to hold it.
"Yeah," I say. I shift the pot slightly off the direct heat. "You mentioned it once and I was curious."
"You were curious," he repeats, and his voice has gone quieter than it was, "about blenders."
"About what specifically you'd find interesting about them. Which led me to blenders generally." I shrug. He can see it from where he's sitting. "It wasn't a thing. I just wanted to know."
The silence that follows is different from the earlier ones. Thicker somehow. More present. I get two bowls from the cabinet — the good ones, the ones with the slightly uneven rims I found at a ceramics market last spring and carried home on the bus holding them in my lap because I didn't want them to break — and start ladling the soup into them. The sound of it fills the kitchen. Outside, a car passes. The pipes settle into themselves.
"You do that," he says.
"Do what." I bring both bowls to the counter and climb onto my stool, pulling my knees up to sit cross-legged the way I always do without thinking about it, the way I've always done in my own kitchen.
He looks at me. Actually looks, the way he does when he has stopped performing attention and is simply paying it, when the distance he usually keeps between observing and being affected has collapsed without his permission.
The kitchen light catches the edge of him in a way that makes him look almost painterly, almost unreal, and I think for the hundredth time that there is something genuinely absurd about how beautiful he is and how little he seems to register it, the way the very beautiful sometimes don't, the way it becomes just a fact of existence rather than a thing they carry.
His eyes are very dark tonight. Something is moving behind them that he hasn't decided what to do with yet.
I wait. I have learned how to wait for him, which sounds like a small thing and is not a small thing at all. Every instinct I have wants to fill the silence, wants to reach across and make it easier, wants to hand him the words before he has to find them himself.
With him I have had to learn to sit on that instinct. Not because he doesn't want the help but because he needs the space of finding it himself, because the finding is part of what makes it real for him, and so I just sit with my soup and I wait and I let the kitchen be quiet.
"You remember things," he says finally. His hands have come around his bowl, not to eat, just to hold it, and I notice that the way I notice everything about him — the way he sometimes holds warm things like he is reminding his hands of the sensation of warmth, like it is something he has to keep relearning.
"Small things. Things I say once, in passing, without meaning them as anything important. You keep them." He pauses. The thumb of his right hand moves along the rim of the bowl, slow and absent. "You account for me."
I look at him steadily. "Yes," I say.
"Why."
And it lands so plainly. So completely without performance or rhetoric or anything built around it. Just the word, set down between us on the counter like something he has been carrying for a while and has finally, in this warm small kitchen at this late hour, decided to put down. He is genuinely asking. He is sitting in his pajamas holding soup he doesn't need and asking me, with the most undefended face I have ever seen on him, why I account for him. Like the answer is something he has turned over and over on his own and could not find.
I set my spoon down. I give him the full weight of looking back at him.
"Because I consider you," I say. "That's the whole answer. That's all of it."
He is quiet. I watch his face.
"I consider you," I say again, slower, because I want him to actually receive it and not just hear it.
"That means I think about you when you're not here. I think about what you'd want, what you'd find interesting, what would make something easier or better or just — nicer for you. Not because I'm trying to be impressive at loving someone. Not because I want something back from it. Just because you are a person who exists in my life and that means you take up space in my thinking. Naturally. Without me deciding to do it. You're just — there. In my head. When I'm looking up blenders on a Tuesday. You're there."
Something crosses his face. Fast, like weather. A kind of pain that isn't new, isn't fresh, is the very specific pain of something that has been tender for a long time being touched in the place it keeps the tenderness. His jaw stays still but his eyes do something — go somewhere briefly and come back.
"People have —" he starts. Stops. His thumb is still moving on the bowl.
"People have what," I say softly.
He looks at the bowl for a long moment. I watch his face do the thing it does when he is deciding how far to go — that small internal negotiation, that measuring of distance, that question of whether this is a place it is safe to move through. I have watched him do this many times and I have learned not to move while he is doing it, not to lean in, not to make it feel like a performance he has to deliver on demand. I just stay here. I just stay.
"People have wanted things from me," he says finally, and his voice is quiet in the way of something that has been made quieter by intention, by the conscious lowering of a thing that would otherwise be too much. "For a very long time. In many forms. There have been people who loved me more than was good for them, who would have taken themselves apart for a word from me, who built their entire interior world with me at the center of it." He pauses.
"And every time, without exception, underneath the love, there was a shape they needed me to hold. Something they were asking me to be, or to keep being, or to confirm by continuing to exist in a particular way. Love has always been — conditional is not the right word, because I don't think they knew the condition was there. But there was always something. Something required. Something at the bottom of it that was about them and not about me." He is very still.
"I learned to find the thing. The thing being asked. I learned to manage around it. That is how I have moved through most of my relationships with people."
I don't say anything. I keep my face open and I let him keep going.
"What you do," he says, "I notice it. I notice all of it and then I —" He stops. His jaw tightens for just a moment. "I look for the thing. The thing underneath. The condition. And I cannot find it."
He looks up at me and there is something in his expression that I can only describe as the particular frustration of someone who is very intelligent being confronted with something their intelligence cannot resolve. "And I know — I know it's real. I know you. I know the difference. And something in me asks anyway. Something in me goes looking for the catch. Every time. Even now." A pause so brief it almost isn't one.
"Even right now, sitting here, I am asking myself what you want from this. And I know you don't want anything. And I ask anyway."
I feel something move in my chest.
"I know," I say, and I mean it completely, not as a comfort but as a fact. "I know you do that."
"That doesn't —" He stops. Looks at me in a way that is almost searching. "That doesn't frustrate you?"
"No."
"Why not."
I think about this for a moment. I think about all the ways I could answer it and I reach for the most honest one.
"Because I understand where it comes from. And understanding where something comes from doesn't make it not real, it doesn't make it disappear, but it means I don't take it personally. Your doubt isn't about me. It's about everything that taught you that love has a bottom to it, a place where the asking lives. That's not yours by choice. That's yours by what happened to you." I pause.
"I'm not going to punish you for it."
His face does something I don't have a word for. Something that happens deep behind his eyes, something that isn't quite pain and isn't quite relief but contains elements of both, the way something can hurt and ease at the same time when you have been holding it alone for too long and someone finally puts their hands on the other side of it.
"I don't understand why you do it," he says, and his voice has gone very quiet. Not wounded. Something more disoriented than wounded. "I have thought about it. I have — I watch you. I watch you do these small things, these things you don't even seem to notice you're doing, and I think — I try to find the logic of it. Why you would spend a Tuesday looking up blenders because of something I said once. Why you would stir soup for someone who cannot be burned. Why you would —" He pauses. Something flickers across his face.
"Why you would just. Keep making room. For me. Without being asked. Without requiring anything in return. I keep looking for the logic and I cannot find it and I cannot decide if that frightens me or —"
He stops.
"Or what," I say.
He looks at me for a long moment. The kitchen hums. The pipes, the light, the small sounds of a building at night.
"Or if it is the first time in a very long time," he says slowly, "that something has not needed to be figured out."
I feel my eyes go warm and I blink once and look at the counter for a second because I need a moment and I am not going to make this about my feelings, this is not the moment for that. I look back at him.
"Can I tell you something," I say.
He nods. Very slightly.
"Consideration is not a complicated thing," I say. "I think we make it sound like one because we're not used to it, most of us, we're not used to being on the receiving end of it and so when it happens it feels like it must mean something enormous, must be the result of some extraordinary effort or feeling. But it's not. It's just — decency. It's the most ordinary form of love there is." I pause, gathering it, wanting to get this right.
"It's just the act of including someone in your thinking. Voluntarily. Without waiting to be asked. You exist, so I think of you. You're here, so I make room. That's all. That's every bit of it. The blender, the soup, the remembering — none of it is grand. None of it costs me anything I'd miss. I just think of you, and then I do something about it, and that's it. That is the full picture."
He is so still. The kind of still that is the opposite of absence.
"And here is the thing I need you to hear," I say, and my voice has gotten quieter without my meaning it to, the way voices get when they are carrying something they don't want to drop.
"You deserve that."
"Not because you've earned it. Not because you've been good or careful or managed yourself correctly around me. Just because you exist. Just because you're here. That's the whole qualification. You're here and you're you and that's enough, that has always been enough, and I know nobody has told you that in a way you were able to believe, I know the people who loved you before loved you for what you were to them and not just for what you are, and I'm —" I stop.
I feel it pressing at the back of my eyes again and I let it be there this time, I don't blink it away.
"I'm so sorry that that was what love looked like for you. For such a long time. I'm so sorry that love always had a job for you."
He is looking at me with an expression I have never seen on him before. Not in all the months of collecting them. It is open in a way that is almost alarming, almost too much, like a door in a wall you didn't know had a door — and behind it something that is very old and very tired and has been waiting, maybe without knowing it was waiting, for someone to just. Say that. To just say that you deserved better than what you were given. To say it plainly, without agenda, without asking for anything back.
His eyes are bright. Just slightly. In the warm kitchen light.
"You're going to tell me," he says, and his voice is very controlled, "that I do it too. That I consider you. That I move your glass when you set it too close to the edge."
"You do," I say. "You do it all the time."
"That's different."
"How."
He is quiet for a moment. "It doesn't feel the same from the inside."
"I know," I say. "That's because nobody ever counted it for you. Nobody ever pointed at the thing you were doing and said — that. That right there. That is you loving someone. You've been doing it this whole time and no one ever gave it back to you as something real." I look at him steadily.
"I'm counting it. I have been counting it."
Something in him gives. Not in the way of something breaking. More like the way a held breath releases, slow and almost involuntary, the way the body eventually stops being able to hold something even when the mind is still trying. His shoulders drop a fraction. His hands, still around the bowl, go very slightly loose.
"I don't know how to be loved like this," he says. Quietly. Just stating it. Not as an apology, not as a warning, just as the plainest truth he has said tonight.
"I don't have the — I wasn't given the architecture for it. The kind where there's no cost. The kind that's just — there. I keep waiting for the place where it ends or changes or shows me its real shape. I keep waiting for the version of you that wants something from this."
"I know," I say again, because I do, because I have known this about him from early on and I chose him anyway, chose this, chose the waiting he does and the doubt he carries and the spikes and all of it, chose it with my whole eyes open.
"And you stay anyway," he says.
"And I stay anyway."
He looks at me for a long moment. Something is happening in him that he is not managing, not redirecting, just — allowing, maybe for the first time in a long time, just letting something move through him without immediately figuring out what to do with it. I watch it happen on his face. I keep my own face open and I stay very still, the way you go still when something rare comes close.
"Why," he says again, and this time it is different from the earlier "why. This one is smaller. This one is not looking for a logical answer. This one is — almost a confession. Like asking why is the only way he knows to say I don't know what to do with this and I'm trying.
"Because I love you," I say simply.
And then, before he can manage his response or redirect the moment or find the ironic angle of it. "Not the version of you that's useful to me or the version that performs well or the version that fits a particular shape I needed. Just you. This you. The one in the fuzzy slippers holding soup he doesn't need. The one who communes with copper pots. The one who —" my voice does something here, wavers just slightly, just enough to be audible, and I let it.
"the one who is so used to love having a job for him that he doesn't know what to do when it just shows up and sits down and asks for nothing." I pause.
"That one. I love that one."
The silence that follows is not empty. It is so full it is almost a sound.
He reaches across the counter. Slowly. And puts his hand over mine. Not the other way around this time. His hand, finding mine, deliberate and careful, like something that has made a decision and is following through on it before it can think too much. His fingers settle over my knuckles and he doesn't say anything and I don't say anything and the kitchen holds us in its warm yellow light.
After a long moment he says, very quietly. "The basil is dying."
I laugh. I can't help it, it comes out soft and watery and slightly embarrassing, and I look at the windowsill where the basil is indeed at one of its lower moments, one large leaf gone completely yellow at the edge.
"It's been dying for three weeks," I say. "We've discussed it."
"You haven't moved it."
"I know."
"It needs the east light. In the morning." He is looking at it with the expression of someone who has made a decision and is not opening it back up for debate. "I'll move it tomorrow."
Something settles in my chest. Something warm and specific and enormous that I do not try to name.
"Okay," I say.
"I'll be here in the morning."
I look at him. He is looking at the basil. He has just told me, in the language he uses for things he cannot say directly, that he is staying. That he will be here when the morning comes through the east window. That he is choosing to be here, for the basil, for the light, for me — all of it the same thing wrapped in a plant he doesn't want to watch me accidentally kill.
"Okay, Armand," I say.
He looks at me. This new expression again, the one I found tonight that I don't have a word for yet. Open and careful and slightly undone and underneath all of it, underneath every layer of him, just — glad. Quietly, specifically, without agenda. Just glad to be in this kitchen at this hour with cold soup going cold between us and a dying basil on the windowsill and someone who looked up blenders on a Tuesday.
Just glad.
"The soup is cold," he says.
"It reheats fine."
"It doesn't."
"I'm going to heat it up."
"You don't have to."
But I am already off my stool, already reaching for the bowls, and he watches me do it with that complete attention of his, and the kitchen is warm, and outside the city is still going, and tomorrow he will move the basil to the east window, and tonight his hand was on mine across the counter, and I am not thinking about what any of this means or where it ends up or whether we are heading toward something or just living inside it already — I am just here, just in this, just in love with a cactus who is slowly, very slowly, learning that it is safe to be touched.
That is enough. That is so much more than enough.
I put the soup on low heat and I look over my shoulder at him and he is looking back at me and there is nothing else to say tonight and we both know it and neither of us minds.
The rosemary is fine.
The basil will be moved tomorrow.
The rest can wait.
— this was a good vision :)) if you have any more fic ideas, don't hesitate to send them under my asks! 🍂
fully addicted to iwtv chatfics, have mainly been reading human au loustat ones but just devoured this crack / fluff diabolicule one by morimoth on ao3 which had me giggling & kicking my feet to no end, do check it out if you enjoy laughing & having a good time
Claudia's Papa stood locked out, just in a robe and slippers. While gossiping on the phone in the garden, Claudia took the opportunity and locked the sliding patio doors.
She could see the little vein on his forehead start to pop out when he got angry, but she remained resolute about not letting him back in. That's what he got for calling her a big baby. She was five years old and a big girl now—he knew that!
AO3 ver. here Little I by Liz Green
word count: 2,683 category: GEN rating: general audience fandom: Interview with the Vampire ship: Lestat de Lioncourt & Claudia tags: one-shot, lesclaudia, lesdaughter, human au, unholy family, domestic fluff, comedic bickering, healing generational hurt
a/n: i lied about this being the last one-shot i will post, sorry! can't stop writing iwtv one-shots! after tvl EP5 i wanted to cheer myself up because i know EP6 is gonna rip me apart. cute lesdaughter shenanigans!
Little I
'Okay, fun is over. Open the door.'
'No.'
'Claudia..'
'NO!'
'I'm going to count to—'
'NOOOOOOO!'
Claudia's Papa stood locked out, just in a robe and slippers. While gossiping on the phone in the garden, Claudia took the opportunity and locked the sliding patio doors.
She could see the little vein on his forehead start to pop out when he got angry, but she remained resolute about not letting him back in. That's what he got for calling her a big baby. She was five years old and a big girl now—he knew that!
'Claudia!'
She stuck out her tongue and began to walk away.
'Hey! Hey! Don't you—CLAUDIA, STOP!'
Her little beads click-clacked as she stopped and looked over her shoulder at her increasingly flustered father.
'Listen. I'm willing to forgive and forget because you are, as far as I'm aware, my only child, and I am a man of infinite patience and compassion. Open the door, and I promise,' he crossed his chest, 'that we can disregard this minor spat and go and acquire some delicious frozen yoghurt from the fro-yo place you like so much…for some reason.'
Claudia turned and walked towards the window doors.
'My name is Claudia, not "Hey!"' Something her Papa taught her.
'Of course.'
'I want an apology.'
'Pourquoi? Clau—'
'You need to say sorry for callin' me a big baby and a brat. Then I'll think 'bout lettin' you in'
'You want me to apologise…,' he started to laugh and ran his fingers through his blond mane, 'YOU ARE A BRAT!'
'THEN YOU CAN DIE OUT THERE!'
'CLAUDIA!'
'AN' DON'T YOU BE THINKIN' YOU CAN GO ROUND THE FRONT NEITHER!'
'Elle a jailli toute forme de la cuisse de Jupiter, hein?! Enfant gâté! Gâté! Gâté! Gâté!'
Claudia usually switches off when he starts to rant in French. Half the time, he talks so fast that it all slurs together, and she doesn't understand what he's saying anyway. Watching him bark at her was like watching a small lap dog yip at the door. "Clauwdia, Clawdeeya!" sounded like "yip, yip, yip" to her.
He suddenly stopped and took a deep breath in. This is a new thing he's trying now. He's regulating his emotions like what she learnt in school.
'You're in big trouble.'
'Not from where I'm standin'.'
Her Papa suppressed a smile there, but she caught the dimple.
'You've got ten seconds to open this door, or I'm calling Daddy.'
He looked at her all smug. She didn't want that because, unlike her Papa, her Daddy was a serious person. She started to sulk, which only enriched her Papa's smugness.
'So, you'll listen to him but not…of course. Open this door.'
Claudia walked over to the door handle but stopped to stare at it for a while.
'You can't terrorise me, Lestat!' and she took out the key and threw it across the room.
It was the first time she ever saw him speechless. He stood there, frozen in time, and for a while, she thought a glitch had occurred. Then he blew.
'AHHHHHH! I'M CALLING YOUR FATHER!'
'CALL HIM THEN!'
Claudia dropped to the floor and crossed her arms and legs in front of him.
She watched him pace back and forth as the phone rang. A little fluttering in her tummy, but she was steadfast.
'AH! You finally decide to answer your phone! Look, look at what your daughter did!'
He turned the phone around and slammed it against the window. Claudia waved.
'Hi Daddy!'
'Hi, baby! What..what's happening?'
'Nothing! We're playing a game!'
'SHE LOCKED ME OUT!'
'He's lying!'
She watched as her Papa screamed down at his phone, and she could hear her Daddy try to pacify him on the other end.
He walked up to the window and turned the phone over.
'Claudia, you know what you did is wrong, right?'
'No.'
'Lestat, why don't you just grab the spare key?'
'"Why don't you just grab the spare key?" You don't think I haven't thought of that?! The demon hid it!'
'HE CAN'T SAY THAT, DADDY! THAT'S A BAD WORD!'
'Oh, there's more where that came from!'
'Lestat!'
'I'm gonna call the cops and tell 'em THERE'S A CREEPY WHITE MAN SCREAMING AT ME OUTSIDE MY HOUSE!'
'THAT WON'T WORK!'
'A WHITE MAN WITH AN ACCENT!'
'OH-HAHA! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?! HUH?! YOU WANT ICE TO COME AND TAKE YOUR PAPA AWAY?!'
'Lestat, we spoke about using ICE as a threat.'
'This is your fault!'
'Now, how's that?'
'Filling her head with concepts like confidence and self-respect and not reverence and fear!'
'I seem to recall that being your idea, Cicero.'
Claudia was getting bored with listening to her parents argue, as they usually did, and had developed a habit of tuning them out. She thought about where the key could be hiding. Then she thought about what she could have for a snack. There was some string cheese in the fridge. Maybe some apple slices and peanut butter? Now Claudia thought she'd actually like to have some frozen yoghurt.
She got up and walked off, and the tapping on the window from her Papa pulled her back to reality.
'Are you going to look for the key?!'
'Maybe. I don't know yet.'
'Maybe?! Did you hear her?!'
'I'm gonna have to call you back.'
'What?! No wai—' Daddy hung up.
Looks like Claudia might not be in trouble after all.
'I hope you're wearing sunscreen.'
Claudia walked away, ignoring her Papa yelling after her.
It wasn't just because he called her a brat. It was who he said it to.
The other day, she didn't want to leave the park because she wasn't finished playing with her friends. And it was still light out, and she reckoned they could have a late dinner—what was the big deal? But of course, her Papa was hearing none of it. He had become really impatient with her lately, and he was always so snappy in ways he wasn't before. So, he told her no, and she fought back.
In frustration, he turned to her friend's mama and said, "God, she's such a brat!"
He's never done that before.
They drove home in silence, and she hardly spoke at the dinner table.
God, she's such a brat!
It rang in her head over and over again. She didn't understand why it did that.
Lestat sat on the patio chair and sulked. He couldn't believe he had been locked out of his own home by his own daughter. Is this what parenthood was? Just a constant game of Tom & Jerry?
He searched his robe pockets for his vape and took a pull.
Claudia's behaviour was becoming increasingly troublesome. He didn't know how to handle it. He couldn't look to his own parents for help. If he talked to his father the way he let Claudia talk to him, he'd get his teeth knocked out, and, in all honesty, he couldn't ignore the heaviness he felt in his own hand whenever she got smart with him. He had to remind himself that he was an enlightened parent who didn't believe in corporal punishment, no matter how easy it would be to just give a quick pop to the mouth and call it a day. Breaking the cycle, as they say.
They were so close before. She was his little angel. Okay, "angel" might be stretching it.
He took out his phone again and saw the notification.
LE MARI: On my way
About goddamn time, he thought. He took another pull. He looked at his screen's wallpaper, at his little Claudia, pulling that silly face that always made him laugh. He caught himself smiling, and he briefly forgot he was angry at her.
He turned back to the window and couldn't see her anymore. Great.
Who could he talk to about this? Everyone says that this is normal. That it was one of many phases that she'll go through. Well, he hated it! He wished she would go back to being his tiny, cooing baby whose only thoughts were eating and shitting.
Louis was no help. He'd let her get away with bloody murder if he could. It was like he couldn't see it. He thought everything she did was amusing and precocious. But he wasn't there for the tantrums and the crying and the fighting over silly, inconsequential things. His near pathological desire to work all the time, even when he could afford not to, shielded him from all of it.
He couldn't call his mother. She'd only laugh. He remembered her disappointment when he told her they were having her. It seemed unfathomable to her that they would "ruin" the wonderful double-income child-free life they had with a "squealing anchor".
"At least you won't get fat," she said once. Typical Gabrielle humour. He instantly regretted telling her at all.
She laughed similarly when he told her he had eloped with Louis, a year after it happened.
Trying to get advice from her that wasn't "put her up for adoption then" was unlikely.
His vape was low on battery and finally petered out. He could break something, but all he saw was plants and rocks in his Zen garden.
'I found it!'
He turned to the little voice by the window and saw her holding up the key.
'C'est bien. Maintenant, ouvrez-le.'
'Ouvrir quoi, Papa? La door?'
'Claudia…'
'La window, la door, le cabinet? You could mean anythin'—là'
'La doo—The door, Claudia! Open the door, pourriez-vous s'il vous plaît?'
'Ummm…'
'Claudia!'
'La door? You want me to open it?'
She was obviously trying to kill him, or she had her own death wish.
Lestat threw up his hands and sat back down in the chair.
'Have your way, Claudia Ottavia. I give up! I'll just live out the rest of my days here forever. Just burn under this unforgiving sun or die of starvation. I'll have to eat Mojo now, I hope you're happy. I HOPE ROME IS HAPPY!'
She was quiet now, and Lestat got a weird satisfaction from it. But then he could hear sniffling, and he turned to see her face turn red and her eyes streaming with tears.
'What is this? Stop that.'
'YOU'RE SO STUPID!'
'You wouldn't be the first to tell me that.'
'STUPID AND MEAN!'
'Great! What else? That I'm a tyrant, a despot, a dictator?!'
'AND YOUR QUICHE TASTES LIKE SHIT!'
'HEY! DON'T FUCKING LIE—I MEAN—FUCKING SWEAR!'
'LIKE SHIIIIIIIIIT-TAAAAH!!!'
'PUTAIN!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU! YOU DRIVE ME CRAZY!'
'WHY DO YOU HATE ME?!'
Lestat was caught off guard. Hate? Where did she learn that from?
Claudia was wailing and choking now.
'You hate me! I know you hate me! You wish I wasn't born!'
'Claudia, what are you talking about? Will you stop crying!'
'You told Maddie's mama that I was a brat!'
'You can't be serious?'
'I heard you on the phone sayin' you gon' put me up for adoption!'
Ah, so that's the real reason why he's standing outside in his house clothes and slippers, fighting with his five-year-old on the other side of the door.
It was a joke, of course; he didn't mean it. His mother said it about him all the time. She also said he was an accident, and you should never count on Plan B.
'First of all, you shouldn't be eavesdropping on grown-up's conversation, and secondly, it was a jo—'
'EAT SHIT AND DIE!'
Claudia continued to wail, really wail, and it was tearing Lestat apart. He hated to hear her cry. Not because it was annoying or grating, but because it clawed something inside of him. A child should never be left crying. It kills something in them. Something that once gone, you can never get it back.
He walked over to the window and dropped down to her level.
'Claudia…'
'Why do you hate me? What did I do?'
Like a knife to his heart. He never wanted to hear the words that once came out of his own little mouth come out of his little one.
What did he do? When did she start to think that he hated her?
The key to the front door turned, and Claudia ran towards it. Lestat was left alone to think.
He could feel his own eyes well up and cursed himself for being so damn sensitive.
He turned around and faced the garden and remembered one time when Claudia ran up to him, crying. One of her hair ribbons had come loose, and she couldn't tie it back. He picked her up, sat her on his lap, and rubbed her back.
'Shall I tie it up for you?'
Claudia nodded, holding onto his shirt for comfort as she sometimes did. His mother sat across from him, tutting.
'She's a crybaby, just like you were. What do they call it? "Little I"? Hmm…Claudie, are you Lestat's "Little I"?'
Claudia was too young to understand what she meant, and she nodded, burying her face into Lestat's chest.
'Mini-me,' he corrected.
It wasn't the first time he ever felt anger towards his mother, but that day, it was the first time he felt he really could kill her. He could kill for Claudia without any hesitation.
'Don't let him in!' Claudia begged her Daddy, but he patted her on the head.
'Where's the dog at, cher?'
'I don't know?'
But he didn't seem to register the answer. Claudia felt like sometimes her Daddy's head was always in the clouds. Like Jack and the Beanstalk.
'Let's let the dog in.'
'No! No!'
He was gonna kill her; she knew it. Maybe not kill her. But he was definitely going to put her out.
Maybe locking him outside was a bad thing to do; maybe she did take things too far.
But he needed to know that his quiche sucked, and if that was the last thing she told him, then she was fine with that.
She heard her Daddy laugh at Papa by the window. She couldn't hear what they were saying because of her ears ringing.
The door was unlocked and slid open, and she saw her Papa finally step inside. He stared down at her in that scary movie way he sometimes did when she was in trouble.
'Come.'
Claudia panicked and bolted in the opposite direction. It couldn't have been that quick for him to catch up to her and grab her by her pyjama collar. He was getting faster.
But he didn't throttle her. He didn't scream at her. Instead, he hugged her. Claudia was confused. She turned around and saw that he was crying.
Claudia couldn't make head or tail of what he was saying, and she was confused about why he kept kissing her on the cheeks and hugging her tightly.
'I wasn't really gonna keep you outside forever. You gon' get burnt up otherwise. Like when we went to Saint-Tropez, and you fell asleep out in the Sun and turned into a lobster, and it was so gross.'
He loosened up a little and stared up at her. His eyes were all red and sparkly.
'Hey. Listen to me. I would never ever put you up for adoption or send you away ever! Okay?'
Claudia nodded.
'And I don't hate you.'
'Then why are you always mad at me?'
'I'm not always mad at you.'
'Yes, you are!'
'I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Claudia. Do you forgive me?'
'You swear you don't hate me?'
'I swear it!'
'Okay.'
Claudia hugged her Papa, and he started crying again, which made her cry too.
'Let's go get some fro-yo.'
'Yeah, let's go!'
Her Papa lifted her up into his arms and swung her around, and she couldn't help but squeal in laughter.
'You two do this every time.' Her Daddy said.
He lifted the plant pot by the door. 'The spare key was here all along, Lestat.'
Daniel pushed open the sliding door that led out onto the small balcony of his New York apartment. It was early evening, and the streets below were busy with parents and children joyfully out trick-or-treating. Shortly there would be young people heading towards clubs and bars for drunken costume parties, and come early morning they'd all be staggering home again.
A light October breeze ruffled through Daniel’s grey curls as he leant forward against the metal railings. He breathed in the crisp fresh air, eyes roaming to a window over the road where he could see a couple settling down to watch some low budget horror movie, the onscreen monster slashing its giant claws through its unsuspecting victim. Daniel felt himself smiling.
There was only one monster in New York City tonight, and he was currently standing next to Daniel and peacefully smoking a cigarette.
He’d followed him home all the way from Dubai, refusing to explain his exact reasoning for doing so. At first Daniel was sure that the vampire was going to kill him, and had lived in fear as if he was walking on eggshells for those first few weeks. But the killing blow had never come and, despite all logical reasoning, Daniel had become rather fond of his unexpected roommate.
He was probably just lonely, that was all.
“You know, I’m not sure who you hate more.” Daniel finally spoke up. “Me, or those idiots dressed up as Dracula with their cheap plastic fangs and fake blood.”
Armand blew out a wispy stream of smoke before stubbing out his cigarette and flicking it away. His expression was soft with big beautiful eyes that were so wonderfully vibrant and orange in the glow of the streetlamp. His black curls elegantly framed his forever youthful face as he rubbed a thumb back and forth across his wrist.
“I don’t hate you, Daniel.” Armand replied. “I love you. If I hadn’t grown to love you, I would have killed you before now, of course.”
Daniel sucked in a sharp breath, letting the sudden confession hang in the air between them. However, looking at the way they were living, was it really all that unexpected?
“Is it love?” Daniel mused, straightening himself up. “This thing between us? Or are we just a couple of lonely old men finding comfort in the other when the rest of the world has abandoned us?”
Armand sidled a little closer and linked his hand through the cook of Daniel’s elbow. He felt cold, but that was less disturbing than if he’d been warm. Daniel didn’t push him away, nor did he protest when Armand came to rest his head against his shoulder. His black curls were soft against the side of his neck.
“It is love.” Armand’s simple reply. “Do you need me to prove it to you?”
Day 2. Fireplace / Baby, It's Cold Outside / Feast
Once again this is for @vamptember and their 12 nights of Christmas!
Paris, France 1946
Louis and Claudia have apologized to each other for getting into a fight so they decide to stay home in their apartment in Paris and take some time to decompress.
“Claudia thank you for accepting my apology, I swear on my life that I will always have your back.”
As Claudia is wearing a handmade cardigan and sitting by the fireplace, she sighed deeply and looked at Louis in the eye.
“Louis, I accept it and to be honest, it took me a while to process things but I forgive you and in the spirit of the holiday season, let’s go hunting.” Claudia smiled triumphantly.
“You mean it?” Louis asked as he was also warming himself by the fire as he had a blanket all over him.
“Yes, and maybe we can get some gifts from our prey.” Claudia smiled again.
“Alright, get your coat and let’s go!” Louis declared as the two of them put the fire out and gather up their winter gear.
*time skip Dubai Present day*
“Wait, so after the whole Baby Lulu debacle, you and Claudia made amends with one another?” Daniel asked as he was writing something down in his notes.
“Yes, I felt bad for what I’ve done and so I decided to apologize with my whole chest and give Claudia the Christmas that she always wanted.” Louis said as he was looking at his nails.
“Oh, okay go on.” Daniel said as Louis decided to continue on with the story.
*Flashback to Paris, France 1946*
As Claudia got herself a brooch from a woman she bit and Louis got himself some cufflinks, they both wiped the blood from their chins and started to sing Adeste Fideles.
“Adeste fideles læti triumphantes, Venite, venite in Bethlehem!” Louis and Claudia sang as they were laughing and giggling.
“Anytime Claudia!” Louis yelled as he laughed uncontrollably as he was on the verge of slipping on the ice before Claudia caught him.
“Watch out old man!” Claudia shouted playfully as they were heading back into their apartment.
“Don’t call me old man!” Louis shouted back.
“Make me!” Claudia shouted again once more.
“Merry Christmas and happy holidays to the best feast we have ever had in a long time!” Claudia yelled at the top of her lungs.
Are you gonna stay with the one who loves you—Or are you goin' back to the one you love?—Someone's gonna cry when they know they've lost you—Someone's gonna thank the stars above ★ — the one you love, glenn frey
A blue-tinted twilight fractured by a saxophone’s croon and his quiet, heavy arrival. Lestat returns from the night carrying the crimson ruin of a hunt, seeking warmth but met with a strict boundary. Safe behind a rule against the blood on his lips, you let him sink his marble-cold weight into your skin—a silent anchor for a beautiful, fraying catastrophe.
The house is bathed in a soft, blue tinted twilight, the kind of quiet that feels less like a void and more like a held breath. A record is spinning somewhere in the background, the low, soulful croon of a saxophone drifting through the halls, mirroring the slow, steady ache in my chest. I’m leaning back against the velvet cushions of the sofa, watching the shadows dance, when the heavy, familiar weight of the front door closing breaks the spell. There’s no grand fanfare, just the unmistakable, rhythmic cadence of his arrival, a stride that is both weary and impossibly graceful.
When he finally emerges from the dimness of the hallway, he looks like a man caught between two worlds. The moonlight catches the sharp, elegant lines of his face, but there is a disarray to him that feels almost painfully human. His golden hair is windswept, a few strands clinging to the damp, pale skin of his forehead, and there is a smudge of crimson at the corner of his mouth that looks like a tragic, beautiful mistake. He doesn't say a word, but the way his gaze finds mine across the room is heavy with a silent, magnetic pull. He looks like he’s been searching for me all night, even when he was miles away.
"Lestat, you're late," I murmur, though there is no sting in my voice, only a soft, welcoming warmth. As he approaches, the air seems to thin, charged by his presence. He doesn't just sit; he claims the space beside me, his body gravitating toward mine until he is leaning over me, his weight pressing me deep into the sofa. He is startlingly cold, a beautiful, marble like chill that seeps through my clothes and settles against my skin, a constant, shivering reminder of what he is.
"Late?" He repeats, his voice a low, melodic rasp that vibrates in the quiet air. A slow, lopsided smirk tugs at his lips that familiar, arrogant, beautiful menace. He doesn't give me a chance to protest before he is draping himself over me, his long, cool limbs tangling with mine. He nuzzles into the curve of my neck, his breath a cool, steady stream against my skin, his nose brushing the frantic, warm pulse at my throat
"I wasn't late. I was merely making an entrance. A man must maintain his mystique, don't you think?"
"You're a menace," I laugh softly, my hands coming up to rest against the stillness of his chest. There is no heartbeat to meet my palms, only the unyielding, quiet calm of his immortal frame, a stillness that makes the warmth of my own blood feel incredibly vivid.
"And you're a mess. Look at you. You have blood on your collar, and you're going to ruin this silk if you keep rubbing against me like a restless cat.”
A groan, long and theatrical, escapes him, vibrating through his chest and into my palm. He doesn't pull away; instead, he leans more of his weight into me, a heavy, delicious pressure that forces me to sink back into the cushions of the sofa. He drops his full, immortal weight onto me, pinning me comfortably but firmly beneath him, his chest flush against mine so that every frantic beat of my heart feels like it’s trying to sync with his stillness.
"Cruel," he whines, the word muffled against the skin of my collarbone, though his tone is far more amused than truly aggrieved. "Utterly, devastatingly cruel. To hunt through the freezing dark, to feel the very pulse of the world beneath my fangs, to have my mind racing with nothing but the thought of coming home to you... only to be denied the reward because of a little bit of red?”
"But you're a mess, Lestat," I murmur, my voice dropping into a soft, huffing protest that carries the weight of my quiet ache for him.
He stiffens, a microscopic tremor running through his shoulders before he masks it with a sharp, lopsided smirk.
"You want me gone that fast, chérie?" His voice is a low, velvet rasp that vibrates through the marrow of my bones, a sound so rich and melodic, yet there is an edge to it, a jaggedness that he tries to smooth over with a shameless, slow grind of his hips against mine. The friction of his cool weight against my warmth sends a jolt of electricity through me, a heavy, pulsing ache that makes my breath hitch.
He's doing it again. He knows if he lets the mask slip, if he lets me see the hollow exhaustion in his eyes, the peace of this room will shatter. It’s a lie, and we both know it. It's a shield, a beautiful, gilded lie meant to keep the air light.
But as he shifts, his hips grinding against mine in a slow, deliberate, and entirely shameless movement, the tension in the room shifts from melancholic to something much hotter, much more primal. The friction of his cool weight against my warmth sends a jolt of electricity through me, a heavy, pulsing ache that makes my breath hitch. He is teasing me, using his body to bridge the gap between his chaos and my calm, demanding my attention so he doesn't have to face his own silence.
I don't call him out on the lie. Instead, I reach up, my fingers trembling slightly as I tuck a stray, golden lock of hair behind his ear. My thumb lingers there, tracing the cool, smooth line of his temple, and for a moment, the world narrows down to just this—the scent of him, the weight of him, and the way the moonlight catches the desperate hunger in his eyes. I just look at him, admiring the devastating, beautiful creature he is, even in his disarray.
He freezes under my touch, his breath catching in his throat. The mask falters, just for a heartbeat, and he looks at me with a raw, searching intensity that feels like it could strip me bare. "Am I..." He pauses, his voice dropping to a low, uncertain hum, the arrogance momentarily stripped away. "Am I still so captivating to you, even when I am this... unraveled?"
"You're a beautiful catastrophe, Lestat de Lioncourt" I whisper, a small, knowing smile tugging at my lips. The heat between us is a living thing now, a heavy, magnetic pull that makes the air feel thick and difficult to breathe.
He lets out a long, shaky exhale, the tension in his body finally breaking as he surrenders to the weight of my gaze. He nuzzles into the crook of my neck, his lips brushing my skin, his movements becoming slow and heavy with a sudden, profound need. He isn't the conqueror now; he is a man seeking an anchor.
"Wash me?" he murmurs against my skin, the request a low, velvety plea that vibrates through my entire body.
I pull back just enough to look at him, seeing the mischievous glint returning to his eyes, the predator peeking back through the cracks of his vulnerability. I let out a small, huffed laugh, tilting my head as if the task is a great burden.
Lestat doesn't wait for my answer. He lets out a low, impatient groan, a sound of pure, theatrical misery, and nuzzles his face into the hollow of my neck, purring against my skin with a desperate, rhythmic intensity that makes my heart race.
A laugh, warm and bright, escapes me, breaking the heavy spell of the room. I nod, my fingers tangling in his damp, golden hair, pulling him closer to the heat of me. "Fine," I whisper, the word a promise in the dark.
A/N: hey! ik i’ve been sort of on a hiatus, but i finally passed my skill's test and interview for comm! i’m officially a soon-to-be comm arts major, so here’s a little something to celebrate with hihi. also, this is my first ever lestat fic! i've been listening to The One You Love by Glenn Frey lately and i feel like that song fits the exact vibe of this fic perfectly....somehow! LOL (the saxophone is what gets me) hope you guys love it !!
