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“You once asked me if I wanted to hear your story. Is that offer still on the table?”
“What part of that sentence —said in the circumstance it was— did you not regard as predatory, Daniel?”
“Oh, no part of it, but you already fucking killed me, so I figured I’d ask again.”
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“The fuck do you mean you have no other skills, hobbies, or interests?”
Armand blinked, looking so terribly confused where he sat perched in Daniel’s lap. “I…don’t.”
Daniel raised a brow. “No? So you’re not a pompous prick when it comes to art?”
Armand frowned at him.
Daniel went on. “You can’t identify the time period, style, medium, and artist of a painting just by looking at it? And don’t give me that shit that you lived through most of it, it’s more than that. You launch into at least a half hour lecture about any given artist, medium, and/or inspiration for a painting and judge anyone who didn’t already know or who doesn’t 100% agree with your interpretation.”
“I—“
“Did you or did you not spend an hour and a half arguing with the museum curator about that Rembrandt at the Met last month? And did you or did you not win?”
Armand stared at him.
“Are you or are you not an artist in your own right?” Daniel reached around him, snatching the ipad off the table and quickly opening an app. “I’ve seen you drawing. And I’ve definitely creeped over your shoulder when you were too engrossed in it to notice.” He flipped the ipad around, holding up a picture of a scene from their evening walk a few days prior, one Armand had drawn from memory after they got home. “Do you understand how good this is? Or this one?”
Armand froze solid as Daniel swiped to a picture of himself.
“I really strongly considered making a joke about this being creepy —you secretly drawing me— except for the part where this looks like it could be a photograph of me. But it’s not. You drew it.”
Armand opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Vindicated, Daniel put the ipad down and went on. “You’re not completely captivated by fashion and interior design? The anonymous ‘designer’ didn’t doll up the place in Dubai, you did. Have you or have you not somehow redone my entire apartment and replaced half my wardrobe without me noticing and I fucking hate it because you’ve been right about all of it?” He plucked at his shirt. “My clothes fit. They actually fit. I hate it. And what clothes you haven’t replaced —the nice ones anyway— you tailored? Yeah, I know that was you. Not even the best shops in Manhattan can make that many alterations in the period between dawn and dusk. Don't think I didn't see you preening during my last book signing when everyone was complimenting me on my suit. Also there’s a sewing machine in the corner now, and it certainly isn’t mine.”
Armand…shivered, just a little.
Daniel nodded to Armand’s coat draped over the back of the couch. “That smells like curry. Why does it smell like curry? You don’t eat. I don’t eat. Except you somehow still know how to cook and you go down to the local mosque and cook in their food kitchen just because you like to and you’re good at it. How do I know you’re good at it? Because I know you made me some of the food I ate in Dubai. How do I know that? Because it got worse after you revealed yourself. Just like those fucking martinis.”
Armand just kept staring at him, though his breath had grown a little shaky, and bloody tears had welled up in his eyes.
“…You know why I let you in?” Daniel asked, reaching up and brushing away the tears that did fall. “The first time you came to see me here?”
“You didn’t. You slammed the door in my face.”
“And then you broke in my fucking window. I didn’t restrain myself from throwing you right back out it because you’re pretty or because you were giving me a bunch of blood, but because only you would break into somebody’s apartment and give them one of each of a thing because you didn’t know which one they wanted so you got all of them…” He trailed off, unsure how to even describe the feeling that had bloomed in his chest of seeing Armand and eight bags of blood in his arms standing in the middle of his living room with the window open behind him, snow blowing in… “…I let you in and I let you stay because it was you, Armand. You. Not your face, not your skill…just you. God-fucking-help me.”
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