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The fledglings come home with red dripping from their mouths, clawing at their eyes. The humans whisper of bloody orgies in the street, siblings fucking siblings and parents devouring children. The music scrapes at the edge of Armand's hearing, Nicki's mastering of the Mind Gift sinking into his head like a circlet of blades.
If Lestat can hear it from wherever he's gone, there is no sign. He's made the mess, and now Armand has to clean it up.
He assembles his tools. A sharp little knife, a mostly polished mirror, a ribbon to tie back his hair. One ear tugged out, a butterfly's wings spread, and then the other. The soft spurt of blood trickling down his neck, glittering like earrings that have nothing to hang off of.
Marius and Santino both enjoyed manufacturing silence--Marius for pleasure, Santino for punishment, although the lines frequently blurred--via careful application of the Mind Gift. Armand's self-application is crude, but effective, a heavy blanket pressing down on either side of his skull.
He slips the ears into his pocket, tucked away for safekeeping. The blood clots in his hair as he shakes it out, adjusting the strings of his cloak before heading out into the midnight city.
It's enough to follow the vibrations, the pulse of mad, frantic, thoughts, the shrieking humans and the tatter-brained vampires and the core of light at their center. Nicki's power is considerable, a true prodigy, but reliant enough on sound that Armand can hold up one well enough.
He walks down a street of writhing, clawing bodies, folding into each other like petals. Nicki spins a circle at their heart, bow a literal blur, face pressed so hard into the wood it must be embedding splinters on his flesh. He grits his teeth when he sees Armand coming, plays faster, harder, the very air shaking with the force of it.
Destroying the violin would be pointless, since he could simply steal another, and Armand would hate to wreck something so beautiful for no real reason. He gently tugs it free with a thought, sends Nicki flying with another.
It ends the way it began, just with no Lestat to rescue him this time. Perhaps Nicki prefers it this way.
Reattaching the ears is a simple enough process, although you have to be precise about it. Marius once told a bloodcurdling story about reattaching a vampire friend's arm and head incorrectly, how they had to be torn off and shoved on again.
He makes Nicki watch the process, understand that this is not permanent. An act of discipline, yes, but also protection for the coven as a whole. Armand brushes his finger over the healing skin, feeling nerves slowly reattach, and mentally orders two fledglings to hold Nicki's wrists down.
Marius lectured extensively upon using the proper brushes for each part of the canvas, the proper tools for the proper occasion. Sometimes you need a small, fine blade, sometimes you need a meat cleaver.
The first sound Armand processes through his reattached ears is Nicki's high-pitched shriek when the blade comes down. His hands tear free, skittering towards the door--actually skittering, callused fingers pulling themselves along, clawing at the unyielding wood, trying to escape when the rest of him can't.
Hmm. Interesting.
Armand goes to collect the hands while Nicki's stumps are cauterized. They quiver in his palms, long nails scratching nearly hard enough to draw blood, circled red rings and bracelets glittering in the low firelight.
Nicki does not become any more agreeable in his cell. Or at least that's what Armand can sense from the endless hurricane of his thoughts--he has no interest in repeated visits, no interest in venomous ravings and rantings, Lestat Lestat Lestat Lestat flung around without end.
He still makes sure Nicki is fed, however. Armand remembers Amadeo's hunger, curled up and pleading in his cell, offering anything and everything for just a few drops of blood. Besides, killing him would be meaningless after all this trouble.
Speaking of trouble, the hands remain a quandary. They rattle and scratch inside the box, wearing their already ragged down nails down, crack and crack as if trying to be irritating. Armand keeps them stored in his room, not wanting them to wriggle away while his back is turned and return to their former faster.
Your fledgling is going mad without you, he projects out into the void. In response he gets the same muffled, sorrowful buzz, the blunted swirl of wine and blood that Lestat has apparently been bathing himself in since he and Gabrielle left, since Gabrielle left him.
Loneliness sweeps through the bond, low and endless. As if Lestat does not have Nicki waiting, does not have Armand waiting,
Armand rolls his eyes (ignores the old blunted stab in his chest, digging, twisting) and turns back to his work. He has to get the accounts in order before the end of the month, has to arrange the abduction of their meal, has to have his notes in order for their next rehearsal, has to, has to. Without the work, he is nothing at all.
He wakes up with the hands around his throat. Of course. Armand lifts his head up from a stack of papers, blinking and rubbing his eyes, sunlight lancing through the tightly drawn curtains as Nicki's hands dangle from him like an ill-fitting necklace.
The box is empty, sagged from where the hands managed to claw out a loose side and skitter free. Blood crusts under their nails, flesh worn down by the struggle.
They squeeze--Nicki squeezes?--with all the might they have, which isn't very much, considering the lack of arms, shoulders. Armand can still breathe fairly well, not that he needs it either way, and it would be an easy enough matter to detach them.
But detaching would leave him with the exact same problem of bubbling, hissing ire, so...perhaps Armand can be more creative, here. He straightens up and runs a cautious finger along the back of one hand, then the other, tracing the flex of delicate bones.
The hands stiffen, one index finger scrabbling upwards, hooking itself over Armand's lip for purchase. It tastes of dirt and iron and deep-buried grain, the nail threatening to scratch his tongue. Impulsively, he sucks the way he used to do for Marius, for Lestat, hot and wet and eager.
Nicki's finger wriggles, surprised. Has Lestat ever done this for him? Is Nicki even feeling any of this, or just numb buzzing where his hands should be? Armand casts his mind down into the cellars, but Nicki has wrapped himself in a concerto right now, wild and frantic.
Armand's reattached ears pulse. He takes hold of the hand hanging from his mouth and lifts his lips from the index finger, and then the ring, and the fourth. The pinky and the thumb almost jam themselves between his lips, the other hand skittering up his throat to join in.
Greedy, Lestat had called Nicki, once. My little sensualist. Armand hadn't wanted to hear anything about Nicki, anymore than Nicki wanted to hear about him, he's sure. It was all about Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
But Lestat is gone, and so Armand pets and strokes Nicki's hands the way he does his own, familiar, soothing motions, as he continues to suck. Nicki's callused fingertips drag over his tongue, tracing sharp, serpentine patterns, fragments of a name. Armand doesn't know who it is, who Nicki thinks he's feeling right now. He doesn't care.
One set of fingers stays jammed in his mouth while the other slips free, making its slick, sticky way back down his shirt. He's wearing it unbuttoned again and Nicki's fingers slip inside, tugging his nipples almost experimentally, giving one a cruel little twist.
Armand jolts, whimpering, and the hand slips free, tumbling into his lap. It settles into place poking and feeling and-- oh.
He hadn't even noticed the soft swelling in his trousers, poking up under the cloth. Pleasure is still a foreign thing after the Children of Darkness, their rough, scornful use, the squeaking rats and cracking whips.
Nicki's hand settles upon it, fumbling and tugging. Keeping the other braced against his mouth, still sucking, still curious, Armand watches his own cock spring free, black hair tickling Nicki's skin as it slowly swells.
The hand touches him roughly, almost painfully--maybe Nicki sees this as revenge, on either Armand or Lestat or both. His nail catches on Armand's sac and Armand moans, face flushed, toes curling in his boots.
As if emboldened, although it couldn't possibly hear him, the hand starts giving him firm, steady strokes. Nicki's thumb curls down to drag across the head of Armand's cock, catching a strand of glistening fluid, bright as the wicked sun outside.
Armand sucks his teeth, hips thrusting forward, lapping frantically at the hand Nicki still has in his mouth. The hand on his cock abruptly curls into a fist for him to fuck, a hot hungry ring of flesh sucking him like a mouth. Nicki's mouth, Marius's, Lestat's, the mouth of a hollow-eyed boy on a creaky wooden deck.
Nicki's fingers spread wide, forcing his mouth into a sickly grin, lunging deep enough they would have triggered his gag reflex if Armand hadn't lost it by the time he was sixteen. As he is, all he can do is whine, low and desperate, a vibration spilling like Nicki's hand like an echo from a strong bone.
An instrument, he realizes, shamelessly humping Nicki's palm. Clever, clever boy. If he can't play pain, he'll play pleasure instead. Grab for pleasure, grab for it, squeeze and tug until Armand's shaking like he hasn't since Lestat left, until he can't speak, can't think, can't--
He comes with a sob, a sugary pink mess burbling up over Nicki's fingers and dripping onto the floor. Another sob, another, shoulders as heaving as bloody tears slip free to join the filth. How long has it been since he cried?
The hand in his mouth slips out to join the one in his lap and Armand gathers them in his hands like children, gathers them to his chest. Holds them there as he cries, loud and noisy and pathetic, dripping all over the floor like a scolded child.
"I know," he whispers, pushing one trembling kiss to the one hand, then the other. Soft kisses, like Lestat always gave right before he left. "Oh, you poor stupid little creature," and he could be speaking to both of them right now. "I know."
He carries the hands into the cell, sitting their open box carefully on the ground. Nicki lies huddled in the corner, eyes haggard, stumps hugged to his chest, and Armand feels something that could be guilt, if creatures like him could feel such things anymore.
The hands scamper out of the box, and Armand tries to resist the urge to grab them back, keep them safe, hold them close and greedy the way Marius once held his. He lets them skitter up to Nicki, ragged nails tapping at his dirty feet. They've been carefully cleaned, along with Armand himself, nails glinting brightly.
Nicki lifts his head very slowly, looking from his hands to Armand and back to his hands again. His mind is a dull swirl of potential responses, curses and insults, prayers and pleas.
He wants to kick the hands away, he wants to beg Armand to make things right, he wants to curse Armand's name. He wants Lestat, and also he wants to never see Lestat again, hopes he crawls into a hole in the ground somewhere and never comes out.
"I miss him, too," Armand says quietly. It's the only thing he can offer.
He helps Nicki get the hands back on, stays with him as the tender fibers stretch and reattach. He helps Nicki hobble out of the cell, an arm around his shoulder, leaving the empty box behind. Nicki's head lolls on Armand's shoulder, playing a quiet lullaby.
It doesn't last. Of course not.
There are the plays, maniacal writing and performing, blood seeping into the ink as the pages tear and scrape. There is the pacing, the muttering, the shrieking, the demands to be given his violin and the threats at being denied, the laughing howling fury.
There is the cell door unlocked and waiting, the knife and the cleaver in their boxes, the gap where Lestat should be, the yawn where eternity stretches out before them. Nicki's hands flutter and twist oddly, like trapped birds desperate to fly away, half-mad and frantic.
Armand offers pleasure, the broken scraps of themselves stitched into something worthwhile. It isn't enough; Nicki can't pretend he's touching Lestat anymore, he lashes out, calls Armand whore and gypsy and worse, hides in his coffin for days on end.
It's almost a relief, when he finally makes the request.
A fiery death in the old way, back down under the cemetery, burnt in the dark where he once was chained. Armand sings the hymn, smoke cutting onto his tongue with every syllable, the crackling flames ringing in his ears.
Nicki's hands brush his face, just once, before he dances into the fire. Arms flung out, fingers sparking like handles, he sings a song of sweetest agony, beautiful that anything which ever bled from his violin.
They dance until there is nothing left of him, but ashes. They dance and the soot scrapes their feet, clots their hair, gowns them like Lady Death's bridesmaids and slips through their fingers in a silver rain.
Lestat shares just enough of his location for them to ship him the Stradivarius and the note with more details. Apparently, he uses Nicki's violin to try and serenade Those Who Must Be Kept, despite not having the slightest idea how to play the fucking thing. Lestat, at least, never changes.
Armand lies in his coffin with the lid pulled tight, breathing gently, staring into the dark. Phantom hands crawl over his skin and stroke his hair, rest on his lips, tracing notes of a long-dead song across his skin.