somnum

Armand is like the eldest child in a family with too many children, perpetually overlooked and neglected, but always the one who is expected to clean up everyone else’s mess. He is the one who all responsibility defaults to, always providing the safe landing pad the younger siblings need, and he takes it on himself because he doesn’t know how to say no to the responsibility. But in being forced to grow up too fast, he never actually grows up at all, perpetually stuck lashing out and repeating petty acts of adolescent angst in a desire to be the one cared for again not the one caring.

ASSAD ZAMAN as Armand

imagine you are daniel molloy.

your whole life you've felt like a fuck up. you were a good journalist, but everything else in your life suffered. your two wives, your two daughters. you hid your burgeoning sexuality because being gay in the 90s made you a social pariah, if it didn't cost you your life. but you could write. by god could you write. and you had a point of view. there were stories that needed to be told. so that's what you did, following stories across the globe, all the way to dubai for one last grand adventure. you don't care anymore about your reputation. you want answers. you fucked up everything in your life but this; you need answers.

and then lo and behold you find out, actually, you were loved. you were loved deeply, passionately, beyond reason, beyond anything you could've conjured with words. the monster in him saw the coward in you and vice versa, back and forth like an ouroboros, but somehow, being around him made it better. your sharp edges were still sharp, and you were afraid he'd grow tired of the feel of cut glass against his tongue—this other worldly being, this god. but you were never glass to him. you were life itself. you were curiosity. you were acceptance. because while you were worrying about your rough edges, he was burrowing inside your chest and making a home beside your heart.

sometimes, years later, when you don't remember him, you still feel a tightness in your chest like something is squeezing that vital organ and you don't mind. you don't mind.

he loves you. he loved you then and he loves you now and he's standing in front of you telling you he did the best he could and he's sorry he couldn't be a god for you in the end but would you accept him as a man? as a mentor? as a friend? he is afraid to ask for too much—you can see it in the gaze that mirrors yours. and you can't remember all the beautiful things he's telling you but you know they must be true because that tightness is there again and it feels like an easeful death. that's what he is to you. a life, a shadow, an angel; your death, your mirror, your world.

your name is daniel molloy and you're standing in a park with the vampire armand and he is telling you he loved you then and loves you now and please if there is any faith left in you at all, please let him stay. you've never had someone pleading to stay. you're used to shouts and cries and objects flying through the air as people tell you to go. and you always go; running is what you do best.

you don't want to run anymore. the chase is tiring and you've lived a long life and it wasn't all good, it wasn't all bad, it was just a life. you fucked up. you can write, but you couldn't maintain relationships, your family resents your neglect, and before very recently, you were sure you'd never known what it was to be loved to your muddy gray core.

there's so much fear in you, but he is standing there, bravely telling you he has chosen you, he has always chosen you, and you can see the question in his eyes. will you choose me, too?

you want to. oh god you want to. but you are daniel molloy and you don't know what it looks like to choose someone who already lives inside you, a space carved out in your soul years ago in exactly his shape. you don't know how to do this. but he's looking at you like you're the answer to everything and you want to choose him, too.

PATREON