A Romantic History [1/2]
Sunday, 25 October 2009 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teakayTitle: A Romantic History
Fandom: Old World of Darkness (Vampire: the Masquerade)
Genre: Angst/Horror
Rating: R
Word Count: ~7,300
Summary: A Toreador storyteller who’s not as understanding as he thinks meets a Nosferatu Cleopatra who’s not as over things as he thinks. Sparks fly and set things on fire.
Author’s Notes and Warnings: I've been dithering over this piece for a while and am finally biting the bullet. This is going up in two posts. Further notes on sources and the like at the bottom of the second post. Thanks to those who helped out with that.
Contains language, allusions to violence, torture, nonconsensual sexual contact, dark themes. Please note that the views of these characters certainly don’t always match my own.
Prologue
2000
In the tunnels beneath Manhattan, in the midst of a Hosting of historians, a Camarilla Cleopatra explained the story of Nosferatu and Arikel thusly:
“Every Nosferatu has a favorite story – I’d love to tell you mine. The Toreador have a rather fascinating tale about our kind, one that’s supposed to explain why the two clans despise each other so much. It’s said that before Nosferatu was cursed by Caine, he was beautiful; the Degenerates of Clan Toreador believe he even fell in love with an Antediluvian named Arikel. When he was made hideous, he was so ashamed that he could never show himself to his true love again.
“Nosferatu, in his rage, hunted his own childer and forced them into hiding, but Arikel celebrated the Embrace of her childer and taught them to revere beauty. Nosferatu’s lost love, Arikel, created the Toreador, and apparently, they’ve pitied us ever since. Isn’t that beautiful? I heard this story from a rather handsome storyteller, and he still repeats the story faithfully to me each night. You see, I’ve nailed him to a cross in my haven and kept him fed with my vitae every night. He will love me forever, as Arikel and Nosferatu never did.”
Part I: A History
2000
Their last conversation ran thus:
“I’m off to Manhattan for the next week or three,” Charles Leonard announced after they woke that night. “There’s to be a Hosting. A historians’ convention. All manner of stories to tell.”
“Oh. Take me with you?”
“You know they wouldn’t appreciate your talent. They simply can’t see past appearances.”
David lifted his head and managed to push himself up by maybe the thickness of a fingernail. “Please? I won’t leave, I promise.”
Leonard crouched beside him, toying with his hair. “Of course you wouldn’t. Still, no.” He had a reputation to consider.
Now he was squirming best as he could around the nails that transfixed his limbs. “I’m going crazy in here, Leo, please –”
“I’m not enough for you?”
“No – yes – I just – just – you’re enough, I mean, you’re more than enough, a lot more than enough, but you’re leaving and you won’t be here and I – I –”
“My dear, why don’t you think of it as a test? A way to show how faithful you are.” Though truth be told it wasn’t much of a test, because – to take just one incidental reason – there was nobody for him to be unfaithful with except perhaps the blood doll. “And when I return, I’ll tell you all the stories I’ve heard. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”
“Yes,” he hurried to say. “Yes, it sounds lovely.”
“Now, would you tell me that one again, for the road?”
He nodded and told the same story he’d told every night for the last three years. Not a hint of a resigned drone now – his voice swooped about in dramatic throes, dropped to the murmur of the final words. When it was done Leonard trailed a finger along his face. “I’m sure they’ll adore it.”
“Thank you. I love you.”
“Of course you do,” said Leonard, and opened a vein in his wrist. A nip of his own tongue followed by a long Kiss in twice the sense had all the trappings of what they’d both used to be, but he’d found veins more practical for shifting vitae in volume. He decided against direct contact this time. The Kiss felt all well and good for him, but he couldn’t help but regard it with some amount of suspicion. Not that he feared diablerie at this point, but having his blood sucked out felt altogether too pleasurable to subject himself to at whim. “Now, would you…?”
David arched up again, lips parted. Together they had it down to an artform that would never be on display at Elysium. Leonard’s aim was impeccable and his target caught the steady trickle with a modicum of dignity. When they were done Leonard sealed the cut and dabbed up a stray drop from the corner of David’s mouth. David sighed and lay back on the cross, half-contented, though fragments of mute fear remained in the set of his mouth and at the back of his half-lidded eyes.
“Jonathan will take care of you while I’m away. You like Jonathan, don’t you?”
“I like him a lot.” The pretty lie tripped right off his tongue. There might not be infighting per se, they each had their niche, but Leonard knew they certainly didn’t like each other.
“Now don’t get carried away with him.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
A mundane kiss goodbye, then, and Leonard tasted remnants of his own blood as he scoured David’s mouth. After three years and a steady diet the shudder of revulsion was almost gone. “I’d rather you didn’t pine too much,” Leonard told him, climbing off and making for the door out of the back room. Jonathan had his gear ready; all that was left to do was sling it on and leave the haven to properly start the journey to Manhattan.
“I love you.” Leonard let himself look back. David had lifted his head again, as far as he could, to keep watching Leonard from the floor where he lay half-crucified. “So much.”
Leonard turned away and closed the door behind his back.
***
2000
It wasn’t his favorite story, the one he told Leo every night. His favorite, David supposed, was the story of Arikel’s painting, because even though it ended with the painting destroyed and Caine’s curse levied there was still the hope in the part of the painting that Caine hadn’t seen. That one bored Leo, though, and he was sarcastic about it. David didn’t like that, but he didn’t want to argue. So on those nights when Leo wanted him to choose a second story himself, he didn’t choose that one.
Lying on the floor was much better than upright. Of course he didn’t need to breathe anymore, so suffocation wasn’t a problem, but his arms would wrench and after a while he could barely take in or let out enough air to talk. That was why Leo would always let him down eventually, to tell the night’s story if nothing else. The cross hadn’t been upright for a long time now so he supposed he was becoming ungrateful. Leo liked him upright –
“It’s a better motif, isn’t it? More symbolic. I know you love your symbolism. You deserve to be shown off, don’t you?”
– but he’d made this concession he hadn’t needed to. It was another reason for David to be grateful.
He wasn’t shown off to anyone besides Leo and Leo’s ghoul, Jonathan. No one else came in the room where Leo kept his treasures, and he wasn’t about to leave it.
“If you were to wander, I fear you’d never come back. I wouldn’t blame you, my dear, if you ran off after the first decent face you caught sight of. I’m not much competition, I’m well aware.”
He would come back, he’d insisted time and again. He just wanted… he wanted…
“The minute you stick your head out, your sire will be on it. Do you think he could understand what we’ve made for ourselves? He’ll think it’s foul play. How else could I win someone as lovely as you?”
He hardly ever thought about Andrea di Cesare. It was one of those things he set aside long ago, better not to consider to keep things smooth. When Leo asked him he thought about it just enough to imagine his sire’s face at the news and to agree that no, he couldn’t possibly understand.
Besides, it was much safer here. Straightforward. It was worse out there, said Leo, because they still pretended there was nothing wrong.
Strange, he still thought sometimes, how his world had grown small in two great leaps. It started with the Embrace leaving him the nighttime, and now it was down to this room and Leo. But then both occasions had opened new vistas, so given time he supposed he could learn to be content with this.
Meanwhile, though, he was bored. It sounded awful but there it was. He twisted his head about, craning his neck, in the hopes that he could distract himself for a time in another piece of Leo’s collection.
“Some of my clan give up. They reject everything beautiful just because they can’t be. Personally, I think that’s their loss, don’t you?”
***
1996
His name was David Flavian. Degenerate, novelist and would-be Noddist, primogen’s childe and darling of the moment. When he was asking after translations of the Book of Nod, Finn passed him on to Nell and Nell passed him on to Leonard. “Sorry about that, Leo,” she said when she tipped him off, not sounding particularly sorry. “‘Least he’s not too big of a prick as they go. Bit sweet, bit stupid. Almost think he’s got to be hiding something but, Tories, you know. Throw him a bone, would you?”
When he first met Leonard he didn’t survey his surroundings with contempt but rather with the fascination of a tourist in the Third World looking at quaint local color. With Leonard himself, in the absence of illusionary masks he seemed to concentrate on adjacent items like the top button of his battered overcoat or the point in the air just above his hat, with occasional furtive glances up or down. He spoke easily, strewing false modesty with a generous hand. “I sound awfully silly, don’t I?” he would say, to head off accusations of such at the pass, and he would smile, and Leonard would find himself saying that of course he didn’t, do go on.
“Of course I take creative license,” he said. “Like in my last book – do you want a copy? They sent me a bunch.” And Leonard agreed that he would like a copy (to laugh at if nothing else). And the next time they met David brought along two novels and an anthology. Leonard read them and laughed at them because they were so cheerful, so earnest, all the shadows and heavily-veiled allusions to bloodsucking (so veiled that the creatures in some of his stories were the fictional bastard children of werewolves of all things) just window dressing. The mirror-twin of Hannah Wheatley romance. He stashed them in the back room, amidst the chipped crystal and the armchairs scratched up by divers pets and those things there was nothing wrong with except to the critical eye of someone with nothing better to do than throw things away.
And then there was the time Leonard agreed to meet him in a swankier venue for the latest trade – some dark little club with live music. He could do favors for such a good customer, even if such an obnoxious person. He enhanced his mask with a good chunk of blood for the occasion, working off an old photograph he kept inside a broken music box, and was rewarded by David going into a trance at the sight before realizing who was underneath.
“You used to look like that?” he whispered later, when they were seated against the wall, shy of a corner (Leonard knew that people watched corners).
Leonard nodded.
“That’s terrible. Not the looking, I mean. I mean the used to.”
“It builds character.”
“Well,” said David in a tone that Leonard would’ve described as thoughtful if he didn’t know better, “on the inside you are one of the loveliest Kindred I know.”
“You’re only saying that because I’m not myself, aren’t you?”
“It’s true.”
And it was true, to him. Not for him the greased flattery from behind a hand holding in the vomit, not for him the catty jabs. He had his tricks of the tongue but they were entirely superficial. He was so sincerely stupid, Leonard thought, that he believed his own pretensions, so sincerely stupid that Leonard couldn’t look away.
“It’s got to be awful,” he said, gesturing with his glass half-full of some newfangled cocktail. “I don’t think I could’ve taken it. You must be so strong.”
“Oh, don’t underestimate yourself,” said Leonard, and imagined how his flesh might twist, his bones warp, his smile collapse in on itself, though unless he crossed paths with a Tzimisce he was safe from that particular fate.
Later that night David whispered, leaning over the table, “My sire told me a story about Arikel and Nosferatu once – um, is there another name for him? It sounds kind of odd now that I say them together. Doesn’t match.”
“Can’t say so.” After scores of centuries and as many layers of obfuscation it was pointless trying to pin names on antediluvians, thought Leonard, but let him sling them around if he liked.
“Anyway, it’s supposed to explain the differences.”
“Besides the obvious?”
“Um, yeah, besides the obvious. More like – like differences of opinion.” They would like to believe it was something set in stone from the days of Nod rather than admit they were insufferable in their own right. “I was wondering if you know one like it too. You know, over there.”
“Why don’t you tell me, and we’ll see.”
David leaned even closer and whispered inches from Leonard’s face. “Well, what he said was once Nosferatu used to be beautiful…”
And so it went. His hands fluttered. In the half-light he looked half-alive and made it look easy.
“… in the day they slept entwined in the same crypt. In the night they drank from one another, and with these drinks they were bound so firmly that they imagined it would last forever…”
Leonard kept looking at him.
“So he drove his childer away, into the deeper dark,” he concluded minutes later, “Arikel, though, celebrated when each of hers rose from death, and taught them to celebrate, to delight in the beauty of things. And she taught them a way to be at peace with the human and the Beast – the way she tried to show Caine once. That’s why we’re lucky. I mean. Well. It’s what he said.”
“Fascinating. I can’t say I’ve heard it before.”
“At least not the part where we’re the lucky ones?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that part,” said Leonard. “I’m rather sure I’ve heard that somewhere, at least.”
David laughed behind his hand, with at least enough sense drifting around inside the hollow of his head for the sound to carry the slightest nervous tremor. “It’s only one point of view. So what do you say about that kind of thing? I mean, if you say anything. I guess not everyone’s as – well – as interested.”
“We say plenty of things. Remind me to tell you one of them sometime.” And with that Leonard made his excuses – he still had to find a way to make up for the blood expended on keeping up appearances.
He got the blood from a young man leaving the club, who he left passed out in the narrow gap between buildings. For a few moments struggling in the dark he thought he might have made a mistake and grabbed David, which would have gained him maybe an indignant look and definitely a third of a blood bond (unless the blood was so sickly sweet that immediately he’d vomit back into that face, and oh the indignation that would get).
***
2000
Jonathan’s blood didn’t compare but if he tried sometimes he thought he could pick up hints of Leo’s, mingled with it, and he savored that. He also knew that sometimes Leo drank from Jonathan, in a perpetual cycle, so there was another thing he could try to recognize.
He licked the wound on Jonathan’s wrist closed when he was done. Jonathan, once recovered, wiped off David’s face and left, pulling the string to put out the lightbulb as he went. David wished he wouldn’t do that. When the door was closed there was nowhere for sound and light to come in. There was nowhere to look but inside-out. And inside there were so many pitfalls. There were so many locked doors that he could forget why they were locked and try to open them.
Sometimes Leo was the one to tell him stories. He whispered them so soft that even right next to David’s ear they were almost lost. David remembered most of them being first told in a time he’d carefully locked off. What filtered through from then was fragmented to match – newly-Embraced fledglings tangled in inextricable knots, never-seen phantoms stalking the depths of the earth. Most of it was enhanced later, the blanks filled in.
A story that wasn’t: “Once there was a man, why don’t we call him Charlie, who got everything he wanted. Then one night, while Charlie was out looking for something else to want, he met someone else who looked as handsome as he was. They went into a back alley together and they… they lived happily ever after. Happily ever after. Now will you be quiet?”
***
1997
Early in the new stage of their relations, soon after the third drink, David had if not snapped at least bent considerably. With Toreador vitae already laying indelible claim to his body, it seemed only his mind was left to buckle and collapse and twist around these new facts of his existence. For a time he did this with alacrity. Leonard would sleep in the room, sit by him on the floor or stand before him at the wall, and David would beg him to leave or to stay and Leonard would speak of whatever crossed his mind. At this point he finally told him a little of what the Nosferatu said among themselves.
Once, in search of variety, he’d embarked upon an especially familiar plot. David, lucid enough to realize where it must be headed, went into hysterics. Leonard, not in a mood then to push him and not exactly relishing the tale of dead Charlie himself, had settled for another rumor of the Nictuku, which calmed David somewhat. Maybe it gave him hope that he’d escape through Final Death when one night they came for Leonard.
Even then, at some point every night David had at least enough composure to accept Leonard’s blood, enough to tell the story – sometimes twice in a night when he lost track. Leonard kept the lighter in a pocket but never had to bring it out again.
Sometimes in those nights Leonard listened to the ragged whimpering, the delirious mantras of pleas, remembered his first nights below, and found himself imagining what it would be like to sire someone himself, or even to bring someone down and let David do it. Such a family that would be. He’d been sure he’d have a family once – it was the done thing, and it wasn’t as though Charlie Leonard would have had any trouble finding an available woman.
Really, he told himself, there was no comparison. It was the same face in the mirror, when all was said and done, and the mind reassembled itself in reasonable fashion.
***
1998
A year after coming down, David got a new shirt. He knew it had been a year because Leo told him while he stammered thanks.
He hadn’t changed clothes since his arrival. This wasn’t the issue it would have been for kine, but a layer of miscellaneous grime had still accumulated, especially on his shirt. There were holes front and back on the left side and the collar was stiff with old bloodstains. Leo had said he could cut it right off if David wanted, but David wanted to keep it as long as there was nothing else. Now that there was something else, Leo even agreed to take the nails in his wrists out for as long as he needed to put it on.
At first he continued to lie there, unsure of how his arms were supposed to move, until Leo cleared his throat. His wrists throbbed as he pushed himself into a sitting position, made more awkward by the way his legs stayed folded to the side. He reached up and began to fumble with the buttons. After a while Leo began to help, straddling his legs and working from the bottom. Their hands met just below David’s collarbone. Then Leo peeled the old shirt away from his shoulders and down off his arms.
When it was clear David’s arms came up again to cross his chest. He ducked his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so self-conscious in quite this way. Maybe when he met Andrea – but that was long-faded. He stared at the vanishing marks on either side of his wrists – he’d been healing them without thinking and now he was hungry, distinctly more than usual now that he drank from Leo like clockwork. It made him feel even stranger.
“What is it?” Leo pressed the new shirt onto him. “Do you like what you see?”
He shook his head, mute, and hurried to put his arms through the sleeves. The fabric was dark blue, soft. He used one hand to hold it closed in front and the other to push the gleaming buttons through the holes. Halfway up he realized he was off by one button and had to begin again. He could feel Leo watching all the while and ducked his head lower.
It was something he would have taken for granted a year ago. A year ago he would have had a whole closet to rifle through at his leisure. And now it was a prize to be able to sit up and wear one without bloodstains on the collar… it was such a superficial thing, really, to fixate on. He wanted to do something of his own now. He wanted to shunt them both away from thinking of his failings. He wanted to show that he really was grateful for such a prize.
He put his hands on Leo’s shoulders, then, and pressed their mouths together. He realized only after the fact that he’d closed his eyes. He didn’t dare open them; it might botch things. He was ashamed again that that was even a possibility.
He had no idea how long they remained that way. He worked forward with his tongue and Leo’s mouth opened just enough to allow it in. He felt his hands move inward, resting on either side of Leo’s neck – and he imagined, then, bringing them around his throat. Imagined twisting just so. Imagined the crack. Imagined jamming his fingers into Leo’s eyes. Imagined tearing out his throat, drinking him to nothing, swallowing his soul… What was wrong with him?
He barely noticed when Leo kissed him back, then moved his own hands, pressing David back onto the cross, opening his arms, folding back the cuffs of the new shirt (so considerate of him), prodding his wrists to rediscover the right spots. He should have known this would happen, thought David, regretting the waste of blood. He stared at the ceiling and tried not to cry out when the first nail went back in between his armbones because he’d caused enough trouble already. What was wrong with him?
***
1997
He took up one of the pieces he’d collected in the back room, a porcelain bowl with a chip on the rim he thought would be to David’s taste. David held it with ginger fingers and examined it from all angles, distracted if not entranced entirely. When the stake slid between his ribs his hands twitched open and the bowl smashed against the ground in the alley. If it had been a story, there probably would have been a symbol in there.
The stake didn’t come out until everything was nailed down and bolted in place and left for a few nights for blood to run low, because security won out over Leonard’s desire to hear him scream. Until then he peered in nightly to check that David still hung immobile. The bare feet, he thought, were a nice incongruity to the tableau; he’d taken off the shoes and socks before nailing them.
When the night came Leonard balanced on a chair, drew the stake from David’s chest, and tossed it to the side. David’s extremities twitched. His mouth opened and closed in silence. Thus reminded, Leonard stepped down and engaged the jerry-rigged apparatus to lower and turn the cross. Level on the floor, David squirmed and exhaled.
“Leo?” he said at last, disbelieving. Disbelieving, maybe, that the Leonard hiding beneath three coats and a fedora and the Leonard hiding behind a mask was the same Leonard that stood over him now. Maybe his mind had been paralyzed with the rest of him, so that it took until now for him to start thinking it over. “This isn’t funny, you know.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Okay. Okay, it’s very funny, ha, ha. You made your point. Come on.” Leonard kept his feet, hands folded behind his back, and watched him start to catch up. “Come on,” he repeated, grabbing at the very tips of straws. His eyes were glazed bright blue. “Let me up.”
For a few dizzying seconds this made more sense than it ought to. Then Leonard remembered and turned to look to the side of the room, and the way the feeling popped like a soap bubble once David’s face was out of view confirmed his suspicion. He turned back with care, delving into a pocket. “I don’t believe I made my point.”
David stared back at him and Leonard continued to watch the progression of expression, imagine the gears turning. Perhaps it was a risk to keep looking as David tried to exercise his Presence, but he knew what he was up against (not much) and considered the risk acceptable.
“Look. Leo. You don’t really want to do this, do you?” He clearly knew the answer. “What’s the point? If you just let me go now we can keep it between us –”
“We can’t.” Elysium chatter had it that di Cesare was climbing up the walls and he was almost tempted to visit Elysium just for the sight. Leonard would be more worried about coming under scrutiny if David hadn’t had such an active social life, apparently based off of being harmless and readily soaked for favors. He wouldn’t have been able to keep it up much longer, thought Leonard; Jyhad would have rolled over him and his pleasant idiocy. Really, he was doing him a favor.
“I was after a copy of the new translation. I didn’t tell anyone before because I didn’t want to be embarrassed if I didn’t find it. Which I didn’t. Complete wild goose chase. Come on, please. My arms hurt.”
“How about the rest of you?”
“Leo. Leo.” He began to twist about again. “Please. What do you want?”
Leonard was only too happy to show him. David didn’t reciprocate this happiness, not when Leonard dropped down and aligned their bodies together, their faces nearly touching. Instead he cringed, trying to retreat into the wood beneath him, eyes shut, pretty face contorted with disgust (because when it came down to it he was a Degenerate, he was like the others). Leonard put a hand beneath his chin, tilting it up, and wondered if he had looked like that once.
“I’ve been thinking of that lovely little tale again. The one about Arikel and Nosferatu. But oh,” he asked, with perfect consideration, “aren’t you hungry by now?” And he began to chew on his tongue.
It didn’t take David too long to realize and panic. “I’m sorry,” he started to babble, eyes flying open, as Leonard got a good flow going. “I’m sorry. Sorry. Please – please don’t, I’m sorry, please –”
He stopped and closed his mouth as Leonard’s covered it. That posed little barrier when Leonard forced in his tongue. He wasn’t worried David would try to bite; that would make things even easier. David seemed to know this as well. Instead he shuddered and writhed underneath him, shut his eyes again, gagged, tried to push back Leonard’s tongue and spit back the vitae that made its way into his mouth. Leonard didn’t need to worry about coming up to breathe and so stayed there, the hand under David’s chin spreading out to encompass the lump in his throat, until he was sure that David had swallowed – marked by a movement in the throat and a choked sob, because David could guess very well what would happen on the night after, and the night after that.
He sat up, atop David’s legs, and waited.
“You’re sick.” It sounded paltry, as though David thought it needed to be said but didn’t know how to say it with the requisite force.
“So I’ve been told. There was something else I wanted from you.”
“Like what?” Judging from the pause, it seemed to take a great effort of thought for him to come up with what he flung out next. “My face? Are you missing yours?”
Just like the others – that made things easier. “I already have that. What I’d like now is your tongue.”
“Then cut it out already.”
It really was funny watching him pretend at being a Brujah. Or maybe pretending to be a hero in his own story where it all would come out all right after a dab of cathartic suffering. “You work with words and you can’t understand a little figurative language? I’m not sure of all the details of that little story. I’d love to hear it again.”
“Tell it to yourself, you fucking sick bastard.”
“You’re so much better at it, though.” He reached back into a pocket and brought out the cigarette lighter, preparing himself. He had some obvious advantages where the lighter was concerned, but that didn’t mean he could be utterly cavalier. He used his other hand to delve again, coming up with half a pack of cigarettes.
David’s eyes were still closed. “You might want to look now,” Leonard told him. “I want to give you fair warning.”
He counted to ten, braced, and flipped the lighter open. It was quite an old model and the flame came up immediately. David jerked slightly at the sound. Leonard brought up a cigarette and waited for it to catch; once it did, he closed the lighter and set it down within reach as the cigarette continued to burn. He inhaled a few times; no sense in too much waste. Perhaps it was the smell that finally prompted David to look. When he did, the bravado dissipated posthaste as he stared upward into the glowing ash and the rising strand of smoke with Rotschreck building up behind his eyes.
“If you’d rather, of course – ” Leonard plucked it from what was left of his lips and began to bring his hand forward. “ – there is your face.”
He continued to stare, and Leonard began to wonder if he’d overdone it, frightened him into paralysis in lieu of the impossible fight or flight. When he was contemplating whether it would be more or less helpful to grind it out on David’s cheek David began to babble again, and some of the words in the torrent sounded gratifyingly familiar.
“Please slow down.” Leonard withdrew the cigarette several inches. “Would you begin again?”
David began again. This time it wasn’t particularly engaging, but Leonard still pulled the cigarette further back and when the tale was finished he extinguished it on the concrete. It couldn’t be helped that David’s hands could no longer flutter quite as they had.
“Thank you,” said Leonard, with some light applause for good measure. He retrieved the lighter and climbed off, ready to get the cross back up. He started hauling.
“Leo, please…”
Leonard paused.
“Why? At least tell me…”
“Certainly. Let me tell you why.” He resumed his maneuvering. “Because you are an arrogant child and you’ve only been coddled and encouraged by the like-minded.” The cross jerked upright, followed by David’s choked yowl as all was dragged down again by gravity, arms parting ways with sockets. “Some of us would’ve been happy to educate you while you were breathing, but since a Degenerate snapped you up they think it’s settled. I happen to disagree. Do you still happen to think you’re lucky?”
At this point the incoherent choking that had started halfway through his diatribe finally gave way to speech between gasps as David found the energy to push up on his feet, give his lungs a chance to deflate. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Fear, choked-back fury, but not pity. No more pity.
“You said that before. Are you sure you know what it means?” He secured the bolts. “Stop crying. You’re not human. Don’t fool yourself.”
***
1997
It was the second night with the stake out, not that there was much difference. He was trying not to cry. There was already plenty drying sticky down his face and neck – he needed all he could scrape together. He’d already spent as much as he dared on the strength to pull loose, but he couldn’t counter the strength used to drive in the massive nails. He remembered far more than he wanted to of that.
He almost couldn’t stand the temptation to drop into torpor, but he needed to stay awake in case there was an opportunity. Besides, Leo would probably kill him once he went catatonic and wasn’t entertaining anymore. If he gave up he had no chance. He had to remember that even while his body wanted to cut its losses – even when part of him insisted it was better to die here than live here.
Disgusting. Sick. Who was supposed to be the degenerate? Andrea told him not to lord it over Nosferatu – told him they were ill-starred enough already. And he’d listened, and he’d always tried to be polite. He wasn’t some shallow poseur, assuming the worst from an ugly face. Hadn’t it made perfect sense that someone so fucked-up on the outside would have good insides to balance?
He wasn’t crying anymore, at least. He was too angry now for that. Maybe frenzy could do what conscious effort couldn’t. Maybe he could even kill Leo the next time he came in. Drain him dry. Only then he could be the one in trouble and that wouldn’t be fair at all. And if he killed Leo he’d probably be stuck.
He tried to focus past the hum of pain. If he couldn’t escape then there had to be at least some way to make this easier. At least until the third drink. Maybe then he wouldn’t care anymore –
That was it. Two could play that. He probably couldn’t make a complete blood bond with the chances he had left but if he could sneak it in twice maybe that… maybe that could at least help…
His teeth weren’t jagged as Leo’s but he still had fangs. He worried at the inside of his mouth, careful not to overdo it, until he could taste his own vitae. Now that he knew he could do it, he sucked the wound closed and began to go over the searing details of the last time. He had to be ready for the next.
When the next time came he bit the same spot once he knew what was coming. He knew he couldn’t force Leo’s bloodied tongue back into his putrid mouth, but in the motions of trying he mingled his own blood with it. He wasn’t sure whether it made its way all the way down Leo’s gullet as it needed to, but he could hope.
***
1997
The first thing he said after the third drink was “I still fucking hate you,” as if saying so would make it-keep it true. A lost cause; it was ebbing fast even as he spoke.
“I must say, I’m rather hurt.” And he waited.
After a while David began to cry again. “Don’t do that,” Leonard advised him, dabbing it up. “It’s a waste of good blood.” David cried harder. “For God’s sake.”
“Hate you – hate you –”
“For God’s sake.” He began to brush a hand through David’s hair, winding a dark strand around a finger.
The next time David spoke, when the night was nearly over, he said “I’m sorry I said you were sick.” This time Leonard could tell he meant it.
“Don’t worry your pretty head,” said Leonard.
Some nights later he drifted out of a delirium long enough to say “I love you.”
“Likewise,” said Leonard, for the look on his face.
***
1999
He held off on telling Leo for a very long time. Even when he remembered he’d tried to do it, he didn’t know if it had worked and surely Leo wouldn’t be happy to know about it. There was even a phase when he thought about trying to complete the blood bond, so he’d be sure that Leo loved him just as much. But he remembered a little of how afraid he’d been and thought no, it would be wrong.
Then he thought, he shouldn’t have secrets from the one he loved. He had to show all of himself though it shamed him.
Leo wasn’t as angry as he’d been afraid he would be. He laughed and said “Well, don’t try again.”
“I promise.”
“Now why, you silly thing,” said Leo, leaning closer, “would you think I needed encouragement to fall for someone like you?”
***
1999
Even if he tried it, thought Leonard, it certainly hadn’t worked. How could it have worked? He would have noticed.
“Someone like me?” David whispered.
“Aren’t you accustomed to being loved?”
His head tilted to the side. Leonard watched the fall of his hair, the movements of his eyes, the slight shifts in his face and in a body that still remembered how to move at a wider range than it was now allowed, along the bent length of his legs and the outstretched length of his arms. In a bolder mood David had asked him not to put up the cross anymore. Leonard hadn’t seen why not.
“I guess so,” said David after a while, looking fretful. “But why would they?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“I guess it is. But that – that’s not a very good reason, is it? You’d know better.”
Sometimes Leonard wondered. “You are quite handsome on the inside.”
“Not that much,” David objected.
He could no longer absorb thick layers of flattery with but a token bit of modesty before accepting it as his due. These nights he was always ready with doubts. The secrets to his contentment were puzzles Leonard found intriguing to solve.
“It can’t be that hard to find someone with a brain. Who isn’t so shallow. Who can be what you deserve. Why me?” Leonard lay down atop him and he blinked rapidly before forcing his eyes back open, trying to prove he could look Leonard in the wreck of a face it had taken months for Leonard to look at voluntarily (his sire had delighted in ambushing him with mirrors). “I can’t even – if you knew what was in my head right now…”
He put his head over David’s shoulder, turning to speak beside his ear. “I rather think I know enough.”
“Really?”
“Of course. To take only one reason,” because one reason at a time was better, he’d found, than a multitude, “I know you know the most fascinating stories. And you tell them so well. Would you tell me that one again?”
“All – all right.” A pause. “Once, before Caine cursed him, Nosferatu was beautiful…”
He seemed to have relaxed by the end of the latest recitation. Leonard encouraged this with little murmurs, a stroking hand that he barely flinched from. “You’ve taken quite a journey, my dear, all for the better.” A Kiss atop a kiss, tonight. David opened his mouth readily, sighed with pleasure at Leonard’s ministrations, gradually participated himself, sucking at Leonard’s tongue for the trickle of vitae. Another good sign as this puzzle went; it meant he was at that ideal high point between the long-gone defiance and slack, abject submission.
“I do love you.” He’d said it so many times that Leonard had categories for it. They ranged from frantic desperation to be believed and to believe himself – the tone he might have said it earlier tonight – all the way to this peaceable statement of fact. “I won’t ever stop.”
Someone told him that and meant every word, thought Leonard, pleasantly fuzzy round the edges. Someone would tell him that in perpetuity. “I know.”
He put on the face. He did this once in a long while, as a treat. When David was agitated he would protest further that Leonard didn’t need to do that, that his awful biases didn’t call for accommodation; now he just smiled, accepting it. This was how Leonard was sure he was getting it right.
He didn’t bother getting up. They both slept on the cross that day.
***
2000
A lurch and a concerted effort to lose his nonexistent lunch and everything spiraling on a greased slide to hell. He thought he might have screamed for Leo but there was too much else roaring in his ears to be sure; at some point, whether it actually got out or not, it turned from screaming for to screaming at.
He regained his senses some time later and turned his head uselessly in the dark, taking stock. All extremities still attached; he could move his fingers and toes, if not by much. Hungrier than usual. Had Jonathan come in tonight yet? Or would it be last night, now? And Leo…
“You sick bastard!”
Unless Leo had been off at his historians’ convention for a year and a day, he was probably dead. Good. That was good. Because Leo put a stake through his heart and shut him away down here and forced him into a blood bond and kept him for… two? … three years. Half of his time as Kindred spent crucified, doing nothing but parroting that story to satisfy Charles Leonard’s twisted whims. Bastard.
Leo’s death didn’t pull out the nails. He had revelations but nothing to do with them. His best chance was Jonathan. It wasn’t a very big chance, but it was there. In the meantime, as ever, he could only wait and think.
He’d had some idea of what to expect before it happened but how could he have thought that way, felt that way? How could his mind (his heart) have been so contorted? It was beyond comprehension.
What was worse, he found, was when it began to seem almost comprehensible. When he thought back and Leonard’s face seemed it might have something beautiful hiding behind it besides the mask of what-once-was that he sometimes put in front of it. When he thought further back and was nearly embarrassed by the glamour of his charmed unlife, praised for being, praised for creating, surrounded by other corpses draped in loveliness.
No. Oh, no. No. He couldn’t think that way. Nothing was making him feel anything like that anymore. Actions trumped words and within actions putting nails in his wrists and vitae down his throat certainly trumped the way Leo would pet his hair and kiss him like he meant it and –
And of course he hadn’t meant it. It was David’s own blood that made Leo act that way. He shouldn’t get credit for what David had to trick him into. And as for that, he didn’t need Leo’s laughter and dismissal for forgiveness. He didn’t need forgiveness at all. He just needed out.
And he wouldn’t cry. Anything he should be upset over was three years old by now. Waste of blood.
Part 2 of 2 here.
Fandom: Old World of Darkness (Vampire: the Masquerade)
Genre: Angst/Horror
Rating: R
Word Count: ~7,300
Summary: A Toreador storyteller who’s not as understanding as he thinks meets a Nosferatu Cleopatra who’s not as over things as he thinks. Sparks fly and set things on fire.
Author’s Notes and Warnings: I've been dithering over this piece for a while and am finally biting the bullet. This is going up in two posts. Further notes on sources and the like at the bottom of the second post. Thanks to those who helped out with that.
Contains language, allusions to violence, torture, nonconsensual sexual contact, dark themes. Please note that the views of these characters certainly don’t always match my own.
Prologue
2000
In the tunnels beneath Manhattan, in the midst of a Hosting of historians, a Camarilla Cleopatra explained the story of Nosferatu and Arikel thusly:
“Every Nosferatu has a favorite story – I’d love to tell you mine. The Toreador have a rather fascinating tale about our kind, one that’s supposed to explain why the two clans despise each other so much. It’s said that before Nosferatu was cursed by Caine, he was beautiful; the Degenerates of Clan Toreador believe he even fell in love with an Antediluvian named Arikel. When he was made hideous, he was so ashamed that he could never show himself to his true love again.
“Nosferatu, in his rage, hunted his own childer and forced them into hiding, but Arikel celebrated the Embrace of her childer and taught them to revere beauty. Nosferatu’s lost love, Arikel, created the Toreador, and apparently, they’ve pitied us ever since. Isn’t that beautiful? I heard this story from a rather handsome storyteller, and he still repeats the story faithfully to me each night. You see, I’ve nailed him to a cross in my haven and kept him fed with my vitae every night. He will love me forever, as Arikel and Nosferatu never did.”
Part I: A History
2000
Their last conversation ran thus:
“I’m off to Manhattan for the next week or three,” Charles Leonard announced after they woke that night. “There’s to be a Hosting. A historians’ convention. All manner of stories to tell.”
“Oh. Take me with you?”
“You know they wouldn’t appreciate your talent. They simply can’t see past appearances.”
David lifted his head and managed to push himself up by maybe the thickness of a fingernail. “Please? I won’t leave, I promise.”
Leonard crouched beside him, toying with his hair. “Of course you wouldn’t. Still, no.” He had a reputation to consider.
Now he was squirming best as he could around the nails that transfixed his limbs. “I’m going crazy in here, Leo, please –”
“I’m not enough for you?”
“No – yes – I just – just – you’re enough, I mean, you’re more than enough, a lot more than enough, but you’re leaving and you won’t be here and I – I –”
“My dear, why don’t you think of it as a test? A way to show how faithful you are.” Though truth be told it wasn’t much of a test, because – to take just one incidental reason – there was nobody for him to be unfaithful with except perhaps the blood doll. “And when I return, I’ll tell you all the stories I’ve heard. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”
“Yes,” he hurried to say. “Yes, it sounds lovely.”
“Now, would you tell me that one again, for the road?”
He nodded and told the same story he’d told every night for the last three years. Not a hint of a resigned drone now – his voice swooped about in dramatic throes, dropped to the murmur of the final words. When it was done Leonard trailed a finger along his face. “I’m sure they’ll adore it.”
“Thank you. I love you.”
“Of course you do,” said Leonard, and opened a vein in his wrist. A nip of his own tongue followed by a long Kiss in twice the sense had all the trappings of what they’d both used to be, but he’d found veins more practical for shifting vitae in volume. He decided against direct contact this time. The Kiss felt all well and good for him, but he couldn’t help but regard it with some amount of suspicion. Not that he feared diablerie at this point, but having his blood sucked out felt altogether too pleasurable to subject himself to at whim. “Now, would you…?”
David arched up again, lips parted. Together they had it down to an artform that would never be on display at Elysium. Leonard’s aim was impeccable and his target caught the steady trickle with a modicum of dignity. When they were done Leonard sealed the cut and dabbed up a stray drop from the corner of David’s mouth. David sighed and lay back on the cross, half-contented, though fragments of mute fear remained in the set of his mouth and at the back of his half-lidded eyes.
“Jonathan will take care of you while I’m away. You like Jonathan, don’t you?”
“I like him a lot.” The pretty lie tripped right off his tongue. There might not be infighting per se, they each had their niche, but Leonard knew they certainly didn’t like each other.
“Now don’t get carried away with him.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
A mundane kiss goodbye, then, and Leonard tasted remnants of his own blood as he scoured David’s mouth. After three years and a steady diet the shudder of revulsion was almost gone. “I’d rather you didn’t pine too much,” Leonard told him, climbing off and making for the door out of the back room. Jonathan had his gear ready; all that was left to do was sling it on and leave the haven to properly start the journey to Manhattan.
“I love you.” Leonard let himself look back. David had lifted his head again, as far as he could, to keep watching Leonard from the floor where he lay half-crucified. “So much.”
Leonard turned away and closed the door behind his back.
***
2000
It wasn’t his favorite story, the one he told Leo every night. His favorite, David supposed, was the story of Arikel’s painting, because even though it ended with the painting destroyed and Caine’s curse levied there was still the hope in the part of the painting that Caine hadn’t seen. That one bored Leo, though, and he was sarcastic about it. David didn’t like that, but he didn’t want to argue. So on those nights when Leo wanted him to choose a second story himself, he didn’t choose that one.
Lying on the floor was much better than upright. Of course he didn’t need to breathe anymore, so suffocation wasn’t a problem, but his arms would wrench and after a while he could barely take in or let out enough air to talk. That was why Leo would always let him down eventually, to tell the night’s story if nothing else. The cross hadn’t been upright for a long time now so he supposed he was becoming ungrateful. Leo liked him upright –
“It’s a better motif, isn’t it? More symbolic. I know you love your symbolism. You deserve to be shown off, don’t you?”
– but he’d made this concession he hadn’t needed to. It was another reason for David to be grateful.
He wasn’t shown off to anyone besides Leo and Leo’s ghoul, Jonathan. No one else came in the room where Leo kept his treasures, and he wasn’t about to leave it.
“If you were to wander, I fear you’d never come back. I wouldn’t blame you, my dear, if you ran off after the first decent face you caught sight of. I’m not much competition, I’m well aware.”
He would come back, he’d insisted time and again. He just wanted… he wanted…
“The minute you stick your head out, your sire will be on it. Do you think he could understand what we’ve made for ourselves? He’ll think it’s foul play. How else could I win someone as lovely as you?”
He hardly ever thought about Andrea di Cesare. It was one of those things he set aside long ago, better not to consider to keep things smooth. When Leo asked him he thought about it just enough to imagine his sire’s face at the news and to agree that no, he couldn’t possibly understand.
Besides, it was much safer here. Straightforward. It was worse out there, said Leo, because they still pretended there was nothing wrong.
Strange, he still thought sometimes, how his world had grown small in two great leaps. It started with the Embrace leaving him the nighttime, and now it was down to this room and Leo. But then both occasions had opened new vistas, so given time he supposed he could learn to be content with this.
Meanwhile, though, he was bored. It sounded awful but there it was. He twisted his head about, craning his neck, in the hopes that he could distract himself for a time in another piece of Leo’s collection.
“Some of my clan give up. They reject everything beautiful just because they can’t be. Personally, I think that’s their loss, don’t you?”
***
1996
His name was David Flavian. Degenerate, novelist and would-be Noddist, primogen’s childe and darling of the moment. When he was asking after translations of the Book of Nod, Finn passed him on to Nell and Nell passed him on to Leonard. “Sorry about that, Leo,” she said when she tipped him off, not sounding particularly sorry. “‘Least he’s not too big of a prick as they go. Bit sweet, bit stupid. Almost think he’s got to be hiding something but, Tories, you know. Throw him a bone, would you?”
When he first met Leonard he didn’t survey his surroundings with contempt but rather with the fascination of a tourist in the Third World looking at quaint local color. With Leonard himself, in the absence of illusionary masks he seemed to concentrate on adjacent items like the top button of his battered overcoat or the point in the air just above his hat, with occasional furtive glances up or down. He spoke easily, strewing false modesty with a generous hand. “I sound awfully silly, don’t I?” he would say, to head off accusations of such at the pass, and he would smile, and Leonard would find himself saying that of course he didn’t, do go on.
“Of course I take creative license,” he said. “Like in my last book – do you want a copy? They sent me a bunch.” And Leonard agreed that he would like a copy (to laugh at if nothing else). And the next time they met David brought along two novels and an anthology. Leonard read them and laughed at them because they were so cheerful, so earnest, all the shadows and heavily-veiled allusions to bloodsucking (so veiled that the creatures in some of his stories were the fictional bastard children of werewolves of all things) just window dressing. The mirror-twin of Hannah Wheatley romance. He stashed them in the back room, amidst the chipped crystal and the armchairs scratched up by divers pets and those things there was nothing wrong with except to the critical eye of someone with nothing better to do than throw things away.
And then there was the time Leonard agreed to meet him in a swankier venue for the latest trade – some dark little club with live music. He could do favors for such a good customer, even if such an obnoxious person. He enhanced his mask with a good chunk of blood for the occasion, working off an old photograph he kept inside a broken music box, and was rewarded by David going into a trance at the sight before realizing who was underneath.
“You used to look like that?” he whispered later, when they were seated against the wall, shy of a corner (Leonard knew that people watched corners).
Leonard nodded.
“That’s terrible. Not the looking, I mean. I mean the used to.”
“It builds character.”
“Well,” said David in a tone that Leonard would’ve described as thoughtful if he didn’t know better, “on the inside you are one of the loveliest Kindred I know.”
“You’re only saying that because I’m not myself, aren’t you?”
“It’s true.”
And it was true, to him. Not for him the greased flattery from behind a hand holding in the vomit, not for him the catty jabs. He had his tricks of the tongue but they were entirely superficial. He was so sincerely stupid, Leonard thought, that he believed his own pretensions, so sincerely stupid that Leonard couldn’t look away.
“It’s got to be awful,” he said, gesturing with his glass half-full of some newfangled cocktail. “I don’t think I could’ve taken it. You must be so strong.”
“Oh, don’t underestimate yourself,” said Leonard, and imagined how his flesh might twist, his bones warp, his smile collapse in on itself, though unless he crossed paths with a Tzimisce he was safe from that particular fate.
Later that night David whispered, leaning over the table, “My sire told me a story about Arikel and Nosferatu once – um, is there another name for him? It sounds kind of odd now that I say them together. Doesn’t match.”
“Can’t say so.” After scores of centuries and as many layers of obfuscation it was pointless trying to pin names on antediluvians, thought Leonard, but let him sling them around if he liked.
“Anyway, it’s supposed to explain the differences.”
“Besides the obvious?”
“Um, yeah, besides the obvious. More like – like differences of opinion.” They would like to believe it was something set in stone from the days of Nod rather than admit they were insufferable in their own right. “I was wondering if you know one like it too. You know, over there.”
“Why don’t you tell me, and we’ll see.”
David leaned even closer and whispered inches from Leonard’s face. “Well, what he said was once Nosferatu used to be beautiful…”
And so it went. His hands fluttered. In the half-light he looked half-alive and made it look easy.
“… in the day they slept entwined in the same crypt. In the night they drank from one another, and with these drinks they were bound so firmly that they imagined it would last forever…”
Leonard kept looking at him.
“So he drove his childer away, into the deeper dark,” he concluded minutes later, “Arikel, though, celebrated when each of hers rose from death, and taught them to celebrate, to delight in the beauty of things. And she taught them a way to be at peace with the human and the Beast – the way she tried to show Caine once. That’s why we’re lucky. I mean. Well. It’s what he said.”
“Fascinating. I can’t say I’ve heard it before.”
“At least not the part where we’re the lucky ones?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that part,” said Leonard. “I’m rather sure I’ve heard that somewhere, at least.”
David laughed behind his hand, with at least enough sense drifting around inside the hollow of his head for the sound to carry the slightest nervous tremor. “It’s only one point of view. So what do you say about that kind of thing? I mean, if you say anything. I guess not everyone’s as – well – as interested.”
“We say plenty of things. Remind me to tell you one of them sometime.” And with that Leonard made his excuses – he still had to find a way to make up for the blood expended on keeping up appearances.
He got the blood from a young man leaving the club, who he left passed out in the narrow gap between buildings. For a few moments struggling in the dark he thought he might have made a mistake and grabbed David, which would have gained him maybe an indignant look and definitely a third of a blood bond (unless the blood was so sickly sweet that immediately he’d vomit back into that face, and oh the indignation that would get).
***
2000
Jonathan’s blood didn’t compare but if he tried sometimes he thought he could pick up hints of Leo’s, mingled with it, and he savored that. He also knew that sometimes Leo drank from Jonathan, in a perpetual cycle, so there was another thing he could try to recognize.
He licked the wound on Jonathan’s wrist closed when he was done. Jonathan, once recovered, wiped off David’s face and left, pulling the string to put out the lightbulb as he went. David wished he wouldn’t do that. When the door was closed there was nowhere for sound and light to come in. There was nowhere to look but inside-out. And inside there were so many pitfalls. There were so many locked doors that he could forget why they were locked and try to open them.
Sometimes Leo was the one to tell him stories. He whispered them so soft that even right next to David’s ear they were almost lost. David remembered most of them being first told in a time he’d carefully locked off. What filtered through from then was fragmented to match – newly-Embraced fledglings tangled in inextricable knots, never-seen phantoms stalking the depths of the earth. Most of it was enhanced later, the blanks filled in.
A story that wasn’t: “Once there was a man, why don’t we call him Charlie, who got everything he wanted. Then one night, while Charlie was out looking for something else to want, he met someone else who looked as handsome as he was. They went into a back alley together and they… they lived happily ever after. Happily ever after. Now will you be quiet?”
***
1997
Early in the new stage of their relations, soon after the third drink, David had if not snapped at least bent considerably. With Toreador vitae already laying indelible claim to his body, it seemed only his mind was left to buckle and collapse and twist around these new facts of his existence. For a time he did this with alacrity. Leonard would sleep in the room, sit by him on the floor or stand before him at the wall, and David would beg him to leave or to stay and Leonard would speak of whatever crossed his mind. At this point he finally told him a little of what the Nosferatu said among themselves.
Once, in search of variety, he’d embarked upon an especially familiar plot. David, lucid enough to realize where it must be headed, went into hysterics. Leonard, not in a mood then to push him and not exactly relishing the tale of dead Charlie himself, had settled for another rumor of the Nictuku, which calmed David somewhat. Maybe it gave him hope that he’d escape through Final Death when one night they came for Leonard.
Even then, at some point every night David had at least enough composure to accept Leonard’s blood, enough to tell the story – sometimes twice in a night when he lost track. Leonard kept the lighter in a pocket but never had to bring it out again.
Sometimes in those nights Leonard listened to the ragged whimpering, the delirious mantras of pleas, remembered his first nights below, and found himself imagining what it would be like to sire someone himself, or even to bring someone down and let David do it. Such a family that would be. He’d been sure he’d have a family once – it was the done thing, and it wasn’t as though Charlie Leonard would have had any trouble finding an available woman.
Really, he told himself, there was no comparison. It was the same face in the mirror, when all was said and done, and the mind reassembled itself in reasonable fashion.
***
1998
A year after coming down, David got a new shirt. He knew it had been a year because Leo told him while he stammered thanks.
He hadn’t changed clothes since his arrival. This wasn’t the issue it would have been for kine, but a layer of miscellaneous grime had still accumulated, especially on his shirt. There were holes front and back on the left side and the collar was stiff with old bloodstains. Leo had said he could cut it right off if David wanted, but David wanted to keep it as long as there was nothing else. Now that there was something else, Leo even agreed to take the nails in his wrists out for as long as he needed to put it on.
At first he continued to lie there, unsure of how his arms were supposed to move, until Leo cleared his throat. His wrists throbbed as he pushed himself into a sitting position, made more awkward by the way his legs stayed folded to the side. He reached up and began to fumble with the buttons. After a while Leo began to help, straddling his legs and working from the bottom. Their hands met just below David’s collarbone. Then Leo peeled the old shirt away from his shoulders and down off his arms.
When it was clear David’s arms came up again to cross his chest. He ducked his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so self-conscious in quite this way. Maybe when he met Andrea – but that was long-faded. He stared at the vanishing marks on either side of his wrists – he’d been healing them without thinking and now he was hungry, distinctly more than usual now that he drank from Leo like clockwork. It made him feel even stranger.
“What is it?” Leo pressed the new shirt onto him. “Do you like what you see?”
He shook his head, mute, and hurried to put his arms through the sleeves. The fabric was dark blue, soft. He used one hand to hold it closed in front and the other to push the gleaming buttons through the holes. Halfway up he realized he was off by one button and had to begin again. He could feel Leo watching all the while and ducked his head lower.
It was something he would have taken for granted a year ago. A year ago he would have had a whole closet to rifle through at his leisure. And now it was a prize to be able to sit up and wear one without bloodstains on the collar… it was such a superficial thing, really, to fixate on. He wanted to do something of his own now. He wanted to shunt them both away from thinking of his failings. He wanted to show that he really was grateful for such a prize.
He put his hands on Leo’s shoulders, then, and pressed their mouths together. He realized only after the fact that he’d closed his eyes. He didn’t dare open them; it might botch things. He was ashamed again that that was even a possibility.
He had no idea how long they remained that way. He worked forward with his tongue and Leo’s mouth opened just enough to allow it in. He felt his hands move inward, resting on either side of Leo’s neck – and he imagined, then, bringing them around his throat. Imagined twisting just so. Imagined the crack. Imagined jamming his fingers into Leo’s eyes. Imagined tearing out his throat, drinking him to nothing, swallowing his soul… What was wrong with him?
He barely noticed when Leo kissed him back, then moved his own hands, pressing David back onto the cross, opening his arms, folding back the cuffs of the new shirt (so considerate of him), prodding his wrists to rediscover the right spots. He should have known this would happen, thought David, regretting the waste of blood. He stared at the ceiling and tried not to cry out when the first nail went back in between his armbones because he’d caused enough trouble already. What was wrong with him?
***
1997
He took up one of the pieces he’d collected in the back room, a porcelain bowl with a chip on the rim he thought would be to David’s taste. David held it with ginger fingers and examined it from all angles, distracted if not entranced entirely. When the stake slid between his ribs his hands twitched open and the bowl smashed against the ground in the alley. If it had been a story, there probably would have been a symbol in there.
The stake didn’t come out until everything was nailed down and bolted in place and left for a few nights for blood to run low, because security won out over Leonard’s desire to hear him scream. Until then he peered in nightly to check that David still hung immobile. The bare feet, he thought, were a nice incongruity to the tableau; he’d taken off the shoes and socks before nailing them.
When the night came Leonard balanced on a chair, drew the stake from David’s chest, and tossed it to the side. David’s extremities twitched. His mouth opened and closed in silence. Thus reminded, Leonard stepped down and engaged the jerry-rigged apparatus to lower and turn the cross. Level on the floor, David squirmed and exhaled.
“Leo?” he said at last, disbelieving. Disbelieving, maybe, that the Leonard hiding beneath three coats and a fedora and the Leonard hiding behind a mask was the same Leonard that stood over him now. Maybe his mind had been paralyzed with the rest of him, so that it took until now for him to start thinking it over. “This isn’t funny, you know.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Okay. Okay, it’s very funny, ha, ha. You made your point. Come on.” Leonard kept his feet, hands folded behind his back, and watched him start to catch up. “Come on,” he repeated, grabbing at the very tips of straws. His eyes were glazed bright blue. “Let me up.”
For a few dizzying seconds this made more sense than it ought to. Then Leonard remembered and turned to look to the side of the room, and the way the feeling popped like a soap bubble once David’s face was out of view confirmed his suspicion. He turned back with care, delving into a pocket. “I don’t believe I made my point.”
David stared back at him and Leonard continued to watch the progression of expression, imagine the gears turning. Perhaps it was a risk to keep looking as David tried to exercise his Presence, but he knew what he was up against (not much) and considered the risk acceptable.
“Look. Leo. You don’t really want to do this, do you?” He clearly knew the answer. “What’s the point? If you just let me go now we can keep it between us –”
“We can’t.” Elysium chatter had it that di Cesare was climbing up the walls and he was almost tempted to visit Elysium just for the sight. Leonard would be more worried about coming under scrutiny if David hadn’t had such an active social life, apparently based off of being harmless and readily soaked for favors. He wouldn’t have been able to keep it up much longer, thought Leonard; Jyhad would have rolled over him and his pleasant idiocy. Really, he was doing him a favor.
“I was after a copy of the new translation. I didn’t tell anyone before because I didn’t want to be embarrassed if I didn’t find it. Which I didn’t. Complete wild goose chase. Come on, please. My arms hurt.”
“How about the rest of you?”
“Leo. Leo.” He began to twist about again. “Please. What do you want?”
Leonard was only too happy to show him. David didn’t reciprocate this happiness, not when Leonard dropped down and aligned their bodies together, their faces nearly touching. Instead he cringed, trying to retreat into the wood beneath him, eyes shut, pretty face contorted with disgust (because when it came down to it he was a Degenerate, he was like the others). Leonard put a hand beneath his chin, tilting it up, and wondered if he had looked like that once.
“I’ve been thinking of that lovely little tale again. The one about Arikel and Nosferatu. But oh,” he asked, with perfect consideration, “aren’t you hungry by now?” And he began to chew on his tongue.
It didn’t take David too long to realize and panic. “I’m sorry,” he started to babble, eyes flying open, as Leonard got a good flow going. “I’m sorry. Sorry. Please – please don’t, I’m sorry, please –”
He stopped and closed his mouth as Leonard’s covered it. That posed little barrier when Leonard forced in his tongue. He wasn’t worried David would try to bite; that would make things even easier. David seemed to know this as well. Instead he shuddered and writhed underneath him, shut his eyes again, gagged, tried to push back Leonard’s tongue and spit back the vitae that made its way into his mouth. Leonard didn’t need to worry about coming up to breathe and so stayed there, the hand under David’s chin spreading out to encompass the lump in his throat, until he was sure that David had swallowed – marked by a movement in the throat and a choked sob, because David could guess very well what would happen on the night after, and the night after that.
He sat up, atop David’s legs, and waited.
“You’re sick.” It sounded paltry, as though David thought it needed to be said but didn’t know how to say it with the requisite force.
“So I’ve been told. There was something else I wanted from you.”
“Like what?” Judging from the pause, it seemed to take a great effort of thought for him to come up with what he flung out next. “My face? Are you missing yours?”
Just like the others – that made things easier. “I already have that. What I’d like now is your tongue.”
“Then cut it out already.”
It really was funny watching him pretend at being a Brujah. Or maybe pretending to be a hero in his own story where it all would come out all right after a dab of cathartic suffering. “You work with words and you can’t understand a little figurative language? I’m not sure of all the details of that little story. I’d love to hear it again.”
“Tell it to yourself, you fucking sick bastard.”
“You’re so much better at it, though.” He reached back into a pocket and brought out the cigarette lighter, preparing himself. He had some obvious advantages where the lighter was concerned, but that didn’t mean he could be utterly cavalier. He used his other hand to delve again, coming up with half a pack of cigarettes.
David’s eyes were still closed. “You might want to look now,” Leonard told him. “I want to give you fair warning.”
He counted to ten, braced, and flipped the lighter open. It was quite an old model and the flame came up immediately. David jerked slightly at the sound. Leonard brought up a cigarette and waited for it to catch; once it did, he closed the lighter and set it down within reach as the cigarette continued to burn. He inhaled a few times; no sense in too much waste. Perhaps it was the smell that finally prompted David to look. When he did, the bravado dissipated posthaste as he stared upward into the glowing ash and the rising strand of smoke with Rotschreck building up behind his eyes.
“If you’d rather, of course – ” Leonard plucked it from what was left of his lips and began to bring his hand forward. “ – there is your face.”
He continued to stare, and Leonard began to wonder if he’d overdone it, frightened him into paralysis in lieu of the impossible fight or flight. When he was contemplating whether it would be more or less helpful to grind it out on David’s cheek David began to babble again, and some of the words in the torrent sounded gratifyingly familiar.
“Please slow down.” Leonard withdrew the cigarette several inches. “Would you begin again?”
David began again. This time it wasn’t particularly engaging, but Leonard still pulled the cigarette further back and when the tale was finished he extinguished it on the concrete. It couldn’t be helped that David’s hands could no longer flutter quite as they had.
“Thank you,” said Leonard, with some light applause for good measure. He retrieved the lighter and climbed off, ready to get the cross back up. He started hauling.
“Leo, please…”
Leonard paused.
“Why? At least tell me…”
“Certainly. Let me tell you why.” He resumed his maneuvering. “Because you are an arrogant child and you’ve only been coddled and encouraged by the like-minded.” The cross jerked upright, followed by David’s choked yowl as all was dragged down again by gravity, arms parting ways with sockets. “Some of us would’ve been happy to educate you while you were breathing, but since a Degenerate snapped you up they think it’s settled. I happen to disagree. Do you still happen to think you’re lucky?”
At this point the incoherent choking that had started halfway through his diatribe finally gave way to speech between gasps as David found the energy to push up on his feet, give his lungs a chance to deflate. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Fear, choked-back fury, but not pity. No more pity.
“You said that before. Are you sure you know what it means?” He secured the bolts. “Stop crying. You’re not human. Don’t fool yourself.”
***
1997
It was the second night with the stake out, not that there was much difference. He was trying not to cry. There was already plenty drying sticky down his face and neck – he needed all he could scrape together. He’d already spent as much as he dared on the strength to pull loose, but he couldn’t counter the strength used to drive in the massive nails. He remembered far more than he wanted to of that.
He almost couldn’t stand the temptation to drop into torpor, but he needed to stay awake in case there was an opportunity. Besides, Leo would probably kill him once he went catatonic and wasn’t entertaining anymore. If he gave up he had no chance. He had to remember that even while his body wanted to cut its losses – even when part of him insisted it was better to die here than live here.
Disgusting. Sick. Who was supposed to be the degenerate? Andrea told him not to lord it over Nosferatu – told him they were ill-starred enough already. And he’d listened, and he’d always tried to be polite. He wasn’t some shallow poseur, assuming the worst from an ugly face. Hadn’t it made perfect sense that someone so fucked-up on the outside would have good insides to balance?
He wasn’t crying anymore, at least. He was too angry now for that. Maybe frenzy could do what conscious effort couldn’t. Maybe he could even kill Leo the next time he came in. Drain him dry. Only then he could be the one in trouble and that wouldn’t be fair at all. And if he killed Leo he’d probably be stuck.
He tried to focus past the hum of pain. If he couldn’t escape then there had to be at least some way to make this easier. At least until the third drink. Maybe then he wouldn’t care anymore –
That was it. Two could play that. He probably couldn’t make a complete blood bond with the chances he had left but if he could sneak it in twice maybe that… maybe that could at least help…
His teeth weren’t jagged as Leo’s but he still had fangs. He worried at the inside of his mouth, careful not to overdo it, until he could taste his own vitae. Now that he knew he could do it, he sucked the wound closed and began to go over the searing details of the last time. He had to be ready for the next.
When the next time came he bit the same spot once he knew what was coming. He knew he couldn’t force Leo’s bloodied tongue back into his putrid mouth, but in the motions of trying he mingled his own blood with it. He wasn’t sure whether it made its way all the way down Leo’s gullet as it needed to, but he could hope.
***
1997
The first thing he said after the third drink was “I still fucking hate you,” as if saying so would make it-keep it true. A lost cause; it was ebbing fast even as he spoke.
“I must say, I’m rather hurt.” And he waited.
After a while David began to cry again. “Don’t do that,” Leonard advised him, dabbing it up. “It’s a waste of good blood.” David cried harder. “For God’s sake.”
“Hate you – hate you –”
“For God’s sake.” He began to brush a hand through David’s hair, winding a dark strand around a finger.
The next time David spoke, when the night was nearly over, he said “I’m sorry I said you were sick.” This time Leonard could tell he meant it.
“Don’t worry your pretty head,” said Leonard.
Some nights later he drifted out of a delirium long enough to say “I love you.”
“Likewise,” said Leonard, for the look on his face.
***
1999
He held off on telling Leo for a very long time. Even when he remembered he’d tried to do it, he didn’t know if it had worked and surely Leo wouldn’t be happy to know about it. There was even a phase when he thought about trying to complete the blood bond, so he’d be sure that Leo loved him just as much. But he remembered a little of how afraid he’d been and thought no, it would be wrong.
Then he thought, he shouldn’t have secrets from the one he loved. He had to show all of himself though it shamed him.
Leo wasn’t as angry as he’d been afraid he would be. He laughed and said “Well, don’t try again.”
“I promise.”
“Now why, you silly thing,” said Leo, leaning closer, “would you think I needed encouragement to fall for someone like you?”
***
1999
Even if he tried it, thought Leonard, it certainly hadn’t worked. How could it have worked? He would have noticed.
“Someone like me?” David whispered.
“Aren’t you accustomed to being loved?”
His head tilted to the side. Leonard watched the fall of his hair, the movements of his eyes, the slight shifts in his face and in a body that still remembered how to move at a wider range than it was now allowed, along the bent length of his legs and the outstretched length of his arms. In a bolder mood David had asked him not to put up the cross anymore. Leonard hadn’t seen why not.
“I guess so,” said David after a while, looking fretful. “But why would they?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“I guess it is. But that – that’s not a very good reason, is it? You’d know better.”
Sometimes Leonard wondered. “You are quite handsome on the inside.”
“Not that much,” David objected.
He could no longer absorb thick layers of flattery with but a token bit of modesty before accepting it as his due. These nights he was always ready with doubts. The secrets to his contentment were puzzles Leonard found intriguing to solve.
“It can’t be that hard to find someone with a brain. Who isn’t so shallow. Who can be what you deserve. Why me?” Leonard lay down atop him and he blinked rapidly before forcing his eyes back open, trying to prove he could look Leonard in the wreck of a face it had taken months for Leonard to look at voluntarily (his sire had delighted in ambushing him with mirrors). “I can’t even – if you knew what was in my head right now…”
He put his head over David’s shoulder, turning to speak beside his ear. “I rather think I know enough.”
“Really?”
“Of course. To take only one reason,” because one reason at a time was better, he’d found, than a multitude, “I know you know the most fascinating stories. And you tell them so well. Would you tell me that one again?”
“All – all right.” A pause. “Once, before Caine cursed him, Nosferatu was beautiful…”
He seemed to have relaxed by the end of the latest recitation. Leonard encouraged this with little murmurs, a stroking hand that he barely flinched from. “You’ve taken quite a journey, my dear, all for the better.” A Kiss atop a kiss, tonight. David opened his mouth readily, sighed with pleasure at Leonard’s ministrations, gradually participated himself, sucking at Leonard’s tongue for the trickle of vitae. Another good sign as this puzzle went; it meant he was at that ideal high point between the long-gone defiance and slack, abject submission.
“I do love you.” He’d said it so many times that Leonard had categories for it. They ranged from frantic desperation to be believed and to believe himself – the tone he might have said it earlier tonight – all the way to this peaceable statement of fact. “I won’t ever stop.”
Someone told him that and meant every word, thought Leonard, pleasantly fuzzy round the edges. Someone would tell him that in perpetuity. “I know.”
He put on the face. He did this once in a long while, as a treat. When David was agitated he would protest further that Leonard didn’t need to do that, that his awful biases didn’t call for accommodation; now he just smiled, accepting it. This was how Leonard was sure he was getting it right.
He didn’t bother getting up. They both slept on the cross that day.
***
2000
A lurch and a concerted effort to lose his nonexistent lunch and everything spiraling on a greased slide to hell. He thought he might have screamed for Leo but there was too much else roaring in his ears to be sure; at some point, whether it actually got out or not, it turned from screaming for to screaming at.
He regained his senses some time later and turned his head uselessly in the dark, taking stock. All extremities still attached; he could move his fingers and toes, if not by much. Hungrier than usual. Had Jonathan come in tonight yet? Or would it be last night, now? And Leo…
“You sick bastard!”
Unless Leo had been off at his historians’ convention for a year and a day, he was probably dead. Good. That was good. Because Leo put a stake through his heart and shut him away down here and forced him into a blood bond and kept him for… two? … three years. Half of his time as Kindred spent crucified, doing nothing but parroting that story to satisfy Charles Leonard’s twisted whims. Bastard.
Leo’s death didn’t pull out the nails. He had revelations but nothing to do with them. His best chance was Jonathan. It wasn’t a very big chance, but it was there. In the meantime, as ever, he could only wait and think.
He’d had some idea of what to expect before it happened but how could he have thought that way, felt that way? How could his mind (his heart) have been so contorted? It was beyond comprehension.
What was worse, he found, was when it began to seem almost comprehensible. When he thought back and Leonard’s face seemed it might have something beautiful hiding behind it besides the mask of what-once-was that he sometimes put in front of it. When he thought further back and was nearly embarrassed by the glamour of his charmed unlife, praised for being, praised for creating, surrounded by other corpses draped in loveliness.
No. Oh, no. No. He couldn’t think that way. Nothing was making him feel anything like that anymore. Actions trumped words and within actions putting nails in his wrists and vitae down his throat certainly trumped the way Leo would pet his hair and kiss him like he meant it and –
And of course he hadn’t meant it. It was David’s own blood that made Leo act that way. He shouldn’t get credit for what David had to trick him into. And as for that, he didn’t need Leo’s laughter and dismissal for forgiveness. He didn’t need forgiveness at all. He just needed out.
And he wouldn’t cry. Anything he should be upset over was three years old by now. Waste of blood.
Part 2 of 2 here.
