backdated pre-memories: Daniel & Jude Who: Daniel & Jude When: Predates Corinthian execution by at least a couple of days What: Tea.
The piano was dubious acquisition, cash exchanged quickly on street corner for a behemoth of an upright that clearly had belonged to someone who’d left it behind, flotsam for the next rental to collect or leave be as they would. Oh for the grand, and Jude conducted small mourning, party of one for all thoughts of the decaying-gently grand piano in the house in the woods that had decayed rather ungracefully fast in the absence of people paying attention to open windows, doors and draughts.
It was installed now, lodged firmly under the eaves and consuming floor-width beyond the line of the rug and the couch that crouched very close behind. It was as well Jude had no interest in fresh coat of paint as the piano nudged deeply in between wall and proximate-wall, the dusty-yellow and oxblood of the room meeting happily behind the lid of the piano itself. Much battered, probably the best-beloved of someone tiny who had spanned fingers over keys: faded stickers were still adhered to ivory, and Jude’s own hands spanned octave easily but remembered the spread and stretch of small finger-bones. She was an old lady, the new piano, in her dotage but her guts were on display and Jude sat in a sprawl over the piano-bench with the piano key in his fingers and striking note after note, several hours after exercise began.
Daniel was conclusion rather than invitee to the behind-the-stage show, and did Jude think he’d show? It was not far at all, span between 2nd and 3rd street, but it was big wide world after the sun had set and Daniel’s confessional of revolution-era France had set Jude to wondering if the world held much in it at all that was worth expedition on the outside. If he showed, when he showed, the lamps were lit in the apartment over the General Store, the uppermost apartment and the small place was furnished now, albeit sparingly other than books, thank you.
Daniel did come. It took him some time, but the horrific blank of the blood rage had loosened some of the holds Repose held on his soul. His movement under open sky was still difficult, and the fear of the unexpected -- large vulnerable crowds, a blank staring sun -- still kept him tethered to his small roofed retreats. And yet he could range somewhat farther than before without being struck dumb, as if all of Repose was now his, and its people, if not his hive, were perhaps extensions of that hive, encircling his home in limited (but predictable) swarms.
So Daniel came in a purple eve. Never had he looked quite so antique, without a belt or zipper in sight, cotton shirt loose, buttons almost invisible in the gray of evening. The shirt was the same violet of the fading sky, and Daniel's eyes and hair looked exceptionally dark, the green islands of his mother's ancestors making his flesh even more pale than immortality implied. His soul was quiet too. The torments of the unknown were limited, for how much damage could be done in less than a few months of loss?
The flat above the General Store reminded him of some Parisienne apartments, bare and swept in the high middle-class style of that age. Only the absence of servants and the distant roar of the highway reminded him of what twilight he occupied. Daniel stared at the door for a little while, thinking of the days in which he might have been announced, then he stretched a hand out and knocked.
Jude startled. It was easy to hear, because there was a plink-plunk of keys now in tune and a scramble-rattle as the door locks clicked and Jude stood in the frame of the door, soft yellow light behind him and barefoot, his shirt sleeves turned up around his elbows. “Hello, sunshine.” And if he felt a scrap of anything at all for opening up invisible boundary that drew itself around the door, it wasn’t apparent.
“Come in.”
The clear direction all the invitation that was needed, and Daniel moved inward, a confident step that desired closer confines in whatever form they took. He tilted his head in Jude's general direction, his expression a listening one, in something that he did sometimes rather than asking someone if they were well. "It's in tune," he observed, walking in a vague circle around Jude in a manner he didn't know could be threatening. He handed Jude a small book.
“Nearly,” Jude agreed as he stood stock-still as Daniel circled with all the uncomfortable resemblance of predator with prey. The last time he’d seen Daniel face-to-face, it had been the house in the woods and that wasn’t an especially fond memory. “I’ve been working for a while on it.”
He took stock of Daniel as Daniel ostensibly looked him over. Pale, but that was a diet of no sunshine for you. As human looking as Daniel was ever. “Thank you?” this quizzically, for the book handed over. “What is it?”
The near-circle divided as Daniel brushed past Jude's left shoulder, in a friendly way, and moved on to the rest of the room. A musician would have headed straight for the piano, but Daniel wanted to see the furnishings and the books. The book in Jude's hand was an old Latin vocabulary, palm-sized, not nearly old enough to be from a young Daniel's personal possession. "A present for you." He paused. "It's in the book."
It was a scrap of old music staff paper, with the printed lines made for composers. There were a few penciled notes, almost entirely indecipherable, and it had been torn along one side before being written upon. It was perhaps three inches square. "Mozart," Daniel said.
The books were in residence in plethora rather than in martialled order. Stacks of them in fact, if you were asking. The apartment had shelves and shelves but books were stacked not-to-neatly in corners. Jude’s taste ran from history to fiction to science with a smattering of biography for good measure, a perambulation past philosophy with a little economics to round it out. He turned the book in hand over to read the length of the spine as Daniel beelined for the bookcases, was leafing pages full of Latin before he came across the present.
“Oh.” It was a sound filled with respectful awe as Jude fingered the edges and blinked real surprised pleasure in Daniel’s direction. “This is marvelous.”
"I won it off a fellow who had lessons from him. Apparently he used to play billiards with him instead of giving the lessons. Not much of a musician, that man was. The gambler, not Mozart, obviously. Apparently the great man didn't want to waste his time. So billiards it was. He left it one night, always overflowing with bits of notes like that." Daniel squinted at the bit of paper. "Or so the fellow said."
Daniel sat on one of the couches, rolling a lumpy pillow underneath his elbow. He gave the Rothko print a baleful stare, but did not comment.
There were so many questions Jude felt necessary to ask in follow-up but the likelihood of Daniel answering all and sundry was limited. “And you held onto it. Who was he, the fellow?” He watched Daniel glare at the artwork, and downed tools onto the piano’s broad wooden back in preference for making tea. “Would you like a cup?” It was distinctly strange, not unsettling but perplexing to see Daniel out of his setting. It was like prying something loose.
“I’ve a selection of tea. D’you not like my choice in art?” A grin as he stood in the frame to the kitchen.
The vampire shrugged, shoving his fingers into the pillow absently. "Naturally I did. It was Mozart, after all. Even a deaf idiot could tell that man was genius, just by listening to the rhythm of a building in which he played. No one had played a piano forte like that, before him." Daniel then lifted a hand to rub the dark hair clustering over one ear. "Peer of the realm. We weren't dear chums, just gambled here and there on the way to Paris. They called him Binky. I haven't the slightest what his title was. Must have been horrific, to prefer Binky. Not of note in history; very few people are. Yes, tea. Black as you can make it."
No one worth the chronicling of history but Jude liked the fact all the same and laughed softly over the kettle at the nature of a name that prompted affinity with ‘Binky’. It was a tiny piece of history attached to the scrap of paper and he liked the preserving of it terribly much. The paper on the other hand, he had sneaking suspicion would require a trip to the Capital for permanent preservation. The clatter of cupboards heralded tea, black as it could be made and the strong smell of assam blooming under hot water.
“Were you the sort to be of note in history? Hi sunshine, I like that pillow, please don’t mangle it.” Jude padded with intent and china cups, the teapot another mission between kitchen and low table drawn up to the couch.
Daniel suspected Jude might enjoy the little scrap more than, say, Sam. It had been one of those things that one suspects is somewhere in the house, but it's been years, and one can't be entirely sure. Especially since he'd taken to stowing the damn thing in various books, like a curiosity bookmark. "Not hardly. A footnote, and if that, in some back index of a latter day Peerage." Daniel yawned to punctuate his point, and stretched some of his fangs from under his top lip, given that Jude's back was turned toward the kitchen. Between that and kneading at the pillow, he was like some sulking cat on the edge of Jude's furniture, criticizing his decorations. "I always assumed Binky got out before Summer of '91, and I think I'll stick with that little fantasy."
Sam, Jude suspected, liked history less than the present day. Jude had spent long enough where the past was under glass, terribly pretty to look at and far more consuming than the (terrible) present that he liked remnants like these ones, reminders. He returned from the kitchen with a teapot brewing steadily, cracked blue-and-white china that belonged in a junk shop, very likely or had been rescued. There was a seam in the lid that had been ably repaired with superglue. The smell of tea was strong and papery and hung in the air like a sheet.
“Budge up, sunshine, I’m not sitting on the floor, even if you destroy my pillow.” Jude turned over tea-cups and gave consideration to departed companions. “What would your footnote say? We’ll agree Binky got out, and was profligate with children. Great-Great-Binky is probably on Broadway.”
Perhaps if he were happily married with a tiny spot of sunshine like Sam's daughter, Daniel might like history less than the present day, too. Sam's happiness pleased Daniel, who enjoyed 'happily ever after' stories far more than the tragedies. There was a certain self-preservation in that, perhaps, but not a conscious one, to Daniel's credit.
Obediently, Daniel moved over, holding out a hand for his cup (on saucer if offered) and balancing it with born skill as he shifted, taking his new pillow with him. "I am too long-lived for a footnote, and better suited as an observer than a participant." Daniel watched sidelong for any trace of discomfort, measuring Jude's reaction to his presence.
Jude believed in happily ever after, but as an abstract concept that belonged to other people. It wasn’t self-denial, or even conscious effort but rather in much the same way as one admires another for being a doctor and terribly heroic: with the self-same knowledge that it simply doesn’t apply. The tea-cups came with saucers, albeit at least one of them was chipped. Jude took that one and slotted into the space Daniel had created.
Daniel was in his right mind or he wouldn’t have turned up with scraps of music from centuries past or demanded the tannin-level of his tea so Jude showed complete absence of discomfort, thank you. He blew gently on the surface of his own cup and watched his pillow - his, Daniel, even if adopted temporarily for the duration of the excursion - slide sideways too.
“Observers write the history books, sunshine.” He crossed legs at the ankle under the coffee table and adopted comfortable posture which was peculiar to Jude’s own space. He’d never taken up quite so much of Daniel’s. “Are we going to talk about the participants?”
Daniel had never before looked like the kind of person who would notice a chipped saucer, or would know how to handle a saucer, period. He did now. He spoke like such a man too, the consonants more carved on the tongue, and his gestures both antique and aristocratic. In the months before, Daniel had deliberately adopted a closer accent to his environment, blending in as well as a yellow cat in summer grass, but these days he stood out, like a black spot.
"Observers write the boring history books. Give me a biased bastard on a page any day. More entertaining." He sipped. It looked natural enough. Daniel raised both brows at his host. "You may dictate the conversation."
Jude laughed comfortably for biased bastards everywhere and he settled into stillness. He blew on tea and sipped and his mouth tucked into a smile at Daniel’s indication of ceded control of conversation.
“Claire. Demons and dimensions and heaven and hell.”
Daniel had been eyeing the inside of Jude's elbow when he spoke. Blinking rapidly, the vampire looked up and into Jude's face, brown eyes focusing on his. "Claire? Are you close?" Close enough to know of demons and angels, it seemed. Trepidation crossed Daniel's face as he wondered if Misha had spoken of him to Jude. The implied vulnerability concerned him.
The practicalities of long-term sustenance for a vampire agoraphobic and very recently restored to his own mind were not unsubstantial. Jude was mindful, thank you and found that much the easiest way to avoid unease was to be more than aware of when Daniel started to take on the slinking features of an especially hungry stray lurking in the shadows. He caught the transition from one point of interest to the next with equanimity: it would likely need to be dealt with but the conversation was more important.
“Not at all.” Rather the opposite, in fact. Jude didn’t dislike many people in Repose, his habit was to take them in rather like somebody watching a movie of a small town, with pleasure at idiosyncrasies. “We fell out, rather, over her being terribly convinced of how right she was with no evidence of being able to scrape you through your difficulties and since then she’s been difficult. But now she’s talking about dying again. Isn’t working at the bar, is preparing to be sucked into a vortex.” Jude catalogued the trepidation but he had no idea why it was present.
Daniel put his cup down on the saucer and turned it slowly counterclockwise with five fingers, his eyes on Jude's face. "Difficult," Daniel repeated. "I would not be surprised if anyone was difficult when dealing with such a creature." He tipped his head again, his gaze penetrating, as if trying to see through Jude and into his thoughts. "She believes she has a fate. This annoys you?"
Jude’s face didn’t give away many secrets. He had a card-player’s solemnity even in repose. “Such a creature being you? Or the present predicament?” Daniel stared at him as if there was something written on his soul that could be read if you looked hard enough.
“I don’t believe in fate.”
Daniel put his chin down toward his chest so slowly that the agreement was not so much a nod as a slow recognition. "Such a creature being me. Bloodmadness brings something entirely different. Something that survives, in all nature's cruelty." He looked down again at his tea. "Fate is not for me either. But it is Claire's belief."
Jude was willing to accede to Daniel being not-Daniel when the almost-poetic and yet distinctly violent state settled. First hand experience and all that. He watched Daniel gaze into the bottom of the teacup and put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder with temporary confidence it would not be akin to rubbing fur the wrong way. “But she was wrong,” he pointed out with equanimity. She had been. Talk of killing Daniel for weeks and weeks, the bobbin run to its end of worry and Daniel sat here, perfectly - well. Not alive, but the point remained.
“She can believe she has a fate all she likes. Where it causes harm, her believing it, to other people, that I can’t tolerate. But the point isn’t then, it’s now. She’s about to do whatever it is she thinks she can and is expecting death or another dimension, I don’t know which. The last time, it wasn’t all death and gloom, there was a way out but it wasn’t fated, so she didn’t believe in it.”
It was difficult to pull a person in when both hands were occupied with teacup and saucer, probably one of the reasons his ancestors had preferred it for social gatherings. Occupied hands could not wander. All the same, when Daniel looked up and moved an inch closer with frank attention, perhaps more rapt connection through hunger, a certain core physical gaze that didn't extend to true attraction, he managed it without spilling a drop. "One day she might not be. I will not be here to make the decision. But someone does. And ideally they make it before I kill too many people." Blunt.
Daniel was picking up on definite hostility toward Claire, perhaps a frustration with her resignation to what she believed to be inevitable. He could understand that. Age made him more patient with the raptures of others, however. "Perhaps she feels something we cannot."
Jude had learned that there were several shades to the way Daniel looked at you and none of them were especially flattering but the kind of thing David Attenborough would have crooned approvingly about on BBC America, evolution and survival instinct. It was not, to his chagrin, especially enlightened in terms of reaction even if you knew the possibility was there. Jude’s hand dropped off the slope of bruise-colored shirt-shoulder as he paid attention to his own tea-cup.
“It’s the kind of thing that needs to be a group decision. Group decision on speed, perhaps, but still one. And perhaps she does,” Jude’s frustration was self-evident, even if the hostility was end product, “But if she’s committed to a course of action ending in death, perhaps she should invite other people who know more about whatever’s going on, to help. She as good as told me she hadn’t. I thought she might have said something to you. I don’t like her, but I don’t want her dead.”
Daniel's eyes brightened ever so slightly in understanding and realization as he connected Jude's complaint with a conversation he had with Claire not long before. "She spoke of something like that, yes." He took another sip of the tea, and then lean forward to slide it soundlessly (at the height of good manners) onto the table, cup intact and saucer spotless. Afterward he deliberately slid nearer on the couch in Jude's direction to take him up with his eyes again, elbow to elbow.
"The problem with fighting demons is that they are difficult to catch hold, moving like smoke and staining souls. If such a creature found a way to get into me, even Claire would have some serious problems to handle. Other humans, like you, might not be so difficult, but you would get hurt very easily, and not recover."
Daniel’s ability to pick over the bones of conversations with people in interested-observer capacity even with undertones of inevitable doom crispened by recent events, made him rather more reassuring than a vampire currently sidling on a cheap couch had any right to be. Claire had conducted similar conversation with inevitability a feature and Jude was assured he was no longer solo.
“You’re edging,” Jude observed, without censure or judgment and perfect justification that this was the halfway point between noticing and being in a state of not caring at all. Daniel had head and shoulders over a leopard in the Savannah, unless gazelles were in the habit of strolling straight into the den. He didn’t move, however.
“If such a creature did find its way into you, it would be calamitous,” Jude agreed. “But Claire isn’t in a town full of souls like me and you with your undead problem. There’s a collection of people here who’ve experience with demons. I don’t think she’s talked to Misha about it at all.” An afterthought. “If you’re about to pounce, at least tell me you think there’s no reason to believe a body’ll turn up with Claire on another plane or something.”
Generally that was the way vampires worked, like particularly potent hypnotizing snakes or particularly beautiful predatory flowers, drawing in and making warm during consumption. At least he had an invested interest in keeping his surroundings hale and healthy--while in his right mind, at least. He smiled a close-lipped smile. "Tell me to stop, then." He didn't particularly expect this to happen.
Daniel's expression became faintly guarded. Angels were not necessarily creatures to be trusted. He had known one to take the smiting and saving of humanity to a whole new level, like sending everyone to God for Him to make the big decisions was the right way to go. Fanatics, typically. Misha wasn't, but Misha was naive. "I think you underestimate her. As with most experts, it is better to let them work when they request it." Daniel's eyebrows sketched upward as he tried to untangle Jude's sentence. Half the time he couldn't understand what the man was saying. "You think a body will turn up on another plane?"
Jude hadn’t pinned down any book that provided a helpful treatise on vampires, one way or the other. He didn’t think of Daniel as a flower, please and thank you, unless that flower was entirely self-aware. It was altogether too sleek, too well-honed to be anything as accidental as a genetic mutation.
“No,” said boy with bare candor, and he watched the smile slide sideways behind shutters on Daniel’s face. Oh, for a translation of the different shades of Daniel’s expressions. Jude set his empty teacup on its saucer and found it a home on the table cluttered with teapot and books. He thought uncharitably of Claire as somebody proficient who reached for fluency, which was thoroughly unkind but Jude had his moments.
Jude’s sentences circled, twisted and dived in upon themselves. “I think she’s willing to die for a cause and if there are two options and her death’s on the cards, she might go with it. But she’s your friend, sunshine.” Jude looked into Daniel’s face with the frankness of momentary honesty. “I thought perhaps you might want to know she’s sounding doom and gloom, even to me when we don’t chat. That’s all, message duly delivered.”
They were out there. Hunters had them. All predators had to be prey at some point, even if it was only to Time. Daniel had only met a handful of hunters in his time, and Claire being one of those, he had survived the encounter by grace only. He was inclined to be more sympathetic to anything Claire-related. But those that knew him would find that the more Daniel cultivated the people around him (for both physical and emotional support) the more likely he was to restrain the overall impulse to be an arse.
Daniel tipped his head, as if trying to visualize the words coming out of Jude's mouth. If death was in the cards as one option, what was the other option? Being a friend? Daniel shook his head slowly. "We converse regularly. I will be sure to inquire after her." He opened one arm and made the couch abruptly much smaller and cozier. With more teeth. "Come. I want to discuss something else."